ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi Motherboard Review

System Benchmarks

SuperPI Benchmark

SuperPi calculates the number of digits of PI in a pure 2D benchmark. For the purposes of this review, calculation to 32 million places will be used. RAM speed, RAM timings, CPU speed, L2 cache, and Operating System tweaks all effect the speed of the calculation, and this has been one of the most popular benchmarks among enthusiasts for several years.


Results: A 24% increase in SuperPI 32M is noted going from 3000Mhz to 4202Mhz on the E3110 and ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi.


CINEBENCH R10:

CINEBENCH R10 is a testing suite that assesses your computer's performance capabilities, both 2D and 3D. CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real world circumstances.

The test procedure consists of two main components: The first test sequence is dedicated to the computer's main processor. Next, a 3D scene file is used to render an image file. The scene makes use of various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders. In the first run, the benchmark only uses one CPU (or CPU core), to ascertain a reference value. On computers that have multiple CPUs or CPU cores, CINEBENCH will run a second test using all available CPU power.

In this review, single-CPU and multi-CPU rendering speeds will be measured for both stock speed and an overclocked system.


Results: The CINEBENCH R10 results show an impressive increase in performance in rendering moving from a stock system to an overclocked system. A 29% improvement in rendering time is noted for both single-CPU and multi-CPU rendering benchmarks. Not bad at all.


Sandra Memory Bandwidth, Processor Multi-Media, and Processor Arithmetic

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. The software suite provides most of the information (including undocumented) users like to know about hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software. The name “Sandra” is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means "defender", "helper of mankind".

The software version used for these tests is SiSoftware Sandra Professional Home XII.SP2c and the three benchmarks used are the Memory Bandwidth, Processor Multi-Media, and Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. These three benchmarks were chosen as they provide a good indication of three varying types of system performance. The bandwidth test shows performance of memory sub-systems, the multi-media test shows how the processor handles multi-media instructions and data, and the arithmetic test shows how the processor handles arithmetic and floating point instructions. These three tests illustrate three important areas of a computer’s speed and provide a wide scope of results.


Results: Sandra processor multi-media and arithmetic show impressive improvements on an overclocked system, with 29-30% gains in performance. Memory bandwidth shows a more modest gain at 19%, however the overclocked memory tests were only running the RAM at 560Mhz @ 6-5-5-20 and the stock tests were using XMP at 666Mhz @ 7-7-7-20. If the 5:6 divider was working we would have saw a larger gain in bandwidth. Still, 19% improvement is still well worth the time to overclock the system.