The EVGA Z590 Dark Motherboard Review: For Extreme Enthusiasts
by Gavin Bonshor on October 15, 2021 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
For Z590 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 20H2 update.
Civilization 6
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer underflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but I have played every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, and it is a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest installment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
Strange Brigade (DX12)
Strange Brigade is based in 1903’s Egypt and follows a story which is very similar to that of the Mummy film franchise. This particular third-person shooter is developed by Rebellion Developments which is more widely known for games such as the Sniper Elite and Alien vs Predator series. The game follows the hunt for Seteki the Witch Queen who has arisen once again and the only ‘troop’ who can ultimately stop her. Gameplay is cooperative-centric with a wide variety of different levels and many puzzles which need solving by the British colonial Secret Service agents sent to put an end to her reign of barbaric and brutality.
The game supports both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs and houses its own built-in benchmark which offers various options up for customization including textures, anti-aliasing, reflections, draw distance and even allows users to enable or disable motion blur, ambient occlusion and tessellation among others. AMD has boasted previously that Strange Brigade is part of its Vulkan API implementation offering scalability for AMD multi-graphics card configurations. For our testing, we use the DirectX 12 benchmark.
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Wrs - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
AM4 isn't that bad. AMD has a ways to catch up to Intel in architecture & support, but the Zen 3 core is great, the CCD process node is world class, and PBO is effortlessly stable. As of April 2021 the USB issues are no longer. I specifically waited till then to buy a 5800x. That's 8C, 1 CCD, comparable to RKL but at half the power. You really don't need to upgrade BIOS/AGESA unless there are issues, or you're changing the CPU/OS. Haven't heard of AM4 specific PCIe issues (shoddy riser cables are a physical thing), and WHEA errors come from unstable all-core OCs or not taking a few hours to test and tune XMP RAM, seeing as XMP is tested on Intel platforms.That said, AM4 is nearing EOL as well, just 7 or 9 months later than Z590. I view performance as effectively a toss-up between the two, but that is a painful power delta over several years of ownership.
Silver5urfer - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
Sorry you are wrong. I've seen people reporting USB issues on OCN, Reddit, NBR and other forums. All the issues are an inherent design flaw of Ryzen. This is AMD's specific first time come back so It's kinda expected. Nobody should push their IMC part 3600MHz of 1:1 FCLK.You are parroting April because that's the AGESA 1.2.0.2 fix which did not fix anything. I read already 70 pages of the thread on OCN about initial batch issues and the new thread as well regarding WHEA, as I said. Run Zen 3 on barebone stock or don't bother if you bother the CPU will glitch out with all the issues. Period. I'm a new buyer man what should I have even an incentive for looking for all these ? because I don't want to dabble in headaches on a DIY build.
Wrs - Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - link
Idk how else to tell ya this. I actually run a 5800x, it sits on a B550 board, there's 64 GB of RAM (4 sticks) at 3600 MHz, and Fclk is 1800 MHz aka 1:1 as listed on CPU-z. I do not get USB dropouts for my mouse, keyboard, external drive, or occasional printer or thumb drive. I don't get WHEA errors when I leave HWInfo running for a few days. My average uptime (wall clock time between reboots) is 8 days 14 hours. I haven't had a bluescreen since I gave up per-core undervolting.We're in agreement that people reported USB issues. That's why I waited before buying the 5800x. I do not know if it was a design flaw or configuration error or even if my specific system needed fixing, but with AGESA 1.2.0.1 Patch A back in April (my mobo maker listed USB connectivity among the release notes) I've never had the chance to experience USB dropouts.
danny11 - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
Unfortunately TiN is retired from EVGA. He moved to US I guess due to family. Now those nice amazing articles on Xdevs are nowhere since Z490 series. <a href="www.abcd.com">abc</a>KennethHo - Saturday, February 19, 2022 - link
Is this not a weird MB?It's a massive E-ATX board, but only has 2 usable PCIe slots and 2 DIMM slots, for $600, with OK performance.
https://jaredspears.com/
ridnout - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
That is to accommodate NVLink with 4-slot spacing because of the size of premium 30 Series Nvidia and 6000 series AMD offerings. Blower style fans are limited as per Nvidia, so adequate spacing for cards using NVLink (think SLI on steroids) is a must for cooling the hotter 3080/90 graphics cards. For machine learning, scientific computing, CAD, video editing, and host of other professional applications that can leverage NVLink, a linked pair of 3090 will markedly outperform on most tasks a an A6000 for a fraction of the cost. Remember, the consumer cards won't do high precision...limitations of the drivers.Just 2 cents.
haileynelson10 - Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - link
Appreciate detailed reviews for EVGA Z590 Dark Motherboard. I still have some doubts but this post solves it.https://findaword.co/