Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review

Written by Antony Leather

April 29, 2016 | 10:59

Tags: #best-skylake-motherboard #best-z170-motherboard #lga1151 #rog #skylake #z170

Companies: #asus

PCMark 8 Video Editing

Video Editing v2 Part 2 (Creative 3.0 test suite)

This workload uses FFmpeg to apply video enhancement filters to a high bitrate H.264 video and then encode it to a format suitable for distribution. The FFmpeg binary used is custom built by Futuremark using a development version of the source available from the project's code repository. The test applies a deshaking filter to a source video at 3,840 x 2160 (4K UHD) before scaling down and outputting at 1,920 x 1,080 (1080p).

Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review - PCMark 8 Image Editing, Video Encoding and Storage

PCMark 8 4K Video Editing

Part 2 test

  • Asus Z170i Pro Gaming (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Gene (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170A XPOWER Gaming Titanium Edition (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Z170-Deluxe (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC (4GHz/4.6GHz)
  • MSI Z170A Gaming M5 (4GHz/4.6GHz)
  • MSI Z170A SLI Plus (4GHz/4.7GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Impact (4GHz/4.9GHz)
  • Asus Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
    • 111
    • 98
    • 111
    • 98
    • 111
    • 98
    • 112
    • 98
    • 112
    • 97
    • 112
    • 98
    • 112
    • 98
    • 112
    • 99
    • 112
    • 101
    • 112
    • 101
    • 113
    • 102
    • 114
    • 96
    • 114
    • 98
    • 115
    • 98
    • 116
    • 98
0
25
50
75
100
125
Seconds, lower is better
  • Stock
  • Overclocked

PCMark 8 Photo Editing V2

This workload involves making a series of adjustments to a set of photographs using ImageMagik - an open-source image processing library to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and gamma. When a favourable balance is found, the changes are then applied to the rest of the images in the set. TIFF files up to 67MB in size are used.

Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review - PCMark 8 Image Editing, Video Encoding and Storage

PCMark 8 Photo Editing V2

Load image matrix + adjusting times

  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170A XPOWER Gaming Titanium Edition (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC (4GHz/4.6GHz)
  • MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Z170i Pro Gaming (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Gene (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Asus Z170-Deluxe (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
  • MSI Z170A SLI Plus (4GHz/4.7GHz)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Impact (4GHz/4.9GHz)
  • MSI Z170A Gaming M5 (4GHz/4.8GHz)
    • 30
    • 27
    • 30
    • 28
    • 31
    • 27
    • 31
    • 28
    • 31
    • 28
    • 31
    • 29
    • 31
    • 29
    • 31
    • 29
    • 31
    • 29
    • 31
    • 30
    • 32
    • 28
    • 32
    • 28
    • 32
    • 29
    • 32
    • 28
    • 32
    • 30
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Seconds, lower is better
  • Stock
  • Overclocked

Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha Review - PCMark 8 Image Editing, Video Encoding and Storage

SATA and M.2 Performance

Website: CrystalDiskMark

We test the SATA and performance with a Samsung SSD 850 PRO, as this is one of the fastest SSDs we've ever tested, and it can saturate the bandwidth of SATA 6Gbps ports.

For the M.2 port, we've upgraded our old Kingston KyperX Predator SSD to Samsung's SSD 950 Pro M.2 256GB NVMe SSD, which has a claimed throughput of 2,200MB/sec read and 900MB/sec write, and also updated to a newer version of CrystalDiskMark. We'll be adding to this graph over time to include more results.

M.2 Performance (Samsung SSD 950 Pro)

CrystalDiskMark (Seq Q32T1)

  • Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5
  • MSI Z170A SLI Plus
  • MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon
  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
  • Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3
    • 2300
    • 962
    • 2300
    • 960
    • 2300
    • 957
    • 2295
    • 960
    • 2293
    • 959
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
MB/sec, higher is better
  • Read
  • Write

SATA 6Gbps Performance

CrystalDiskMark

  • Asus Z170i Pro Gaming (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Formula (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5 (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Impact (Intel SATA 6Gbps)
  • Asus Maximus VIII Formula (ASMedia 6Gbps)
    • 563
    • 531
    • 563
    • 531
    • 563
    • 530
    • 563
    • 530
    • 563
    • 529
    • 561
    • 524
    • 560
    • 522
    • 394
    • 410
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
MB/sec, higher is better
  • Read
  • Write

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