The MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI (DDR5) Motherboard Review: A Decent Mid-Ranged Z690
by Gavin Bonshor on September 8, 2022 8:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
For Z690 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 21H2 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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worldsenvy - Sunday, September 11, 2022 - link
It would be more apt to compare it to if they made the price of eggs $24 for a dozen. 390 for a Mid range board is ridiculous.PeachNCream - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
Agreed that PC component prices are utterly absurd at the moment. Some of the cost is tied up in inflation but there is also cost passed onto consumers through the addition of non-functional additions like plastic coverings and lighting. The establishment of various chipset categories (remember when there was basically one chipset to support a CPU generation and it had all the features instead of a set of progressively more stripped down alternatives that now supposedly justify the higher component cost of less feature-limited motherboards?) has done a lot to build a market segment that snags the extra dollars once lost to tinkerers and overclockers that were actually getting extra performance for free instead of pay a price premium for unlocked parts that basically roll the price of overclocking performance gains into said parts.Probably the best thing you can do to shut this sort of garbage from OEMs down is to buy a good enough for work/communication laptop - something lower cost - and either work within its capabilities to play games it can run well. There are lots and lots of games that do not need anything beyond a bottom feeder budget laptop with a garbo iGPU that can keep you amused for the rest of your life. Alternatively, you can always use the cost of a motherboard like this plus a few extra dollars to buy a console. The money you save in additional components can go into the somewhat higher cost of the games on a closed console platform and still buy you a LOT of amusement for the same total price as a desktop gaming PC without any software.
Basically, at this point, gaming PCs are not very cost-effective purchases on just hardware alone. Nevermind the power demands and, if you live in a warm climate, the secondary power costs incurred moving their waste heat out of your home. It's a no-brainer to just change how you entertain yourself a little bit to move the needle to more practical alternatives and you ultimately don't really have to compromise on the end goal of killing time in a fun way either.
meacupla - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
List of things making mobos more expensive these days:PCIe 5.0 capable traces
DDR5 capable traces
VRM design that can handle overclocked 12900K
Copper prices have gone up
Supply chain issues
Tariffs
Inflation
That and this mobo is not mid-range. It is high end. It's not a halo product, but it is packed with above average features. IDK why anandtech insists on calling it "mid-ranged", when it's price point is 5th from the top in MSI's intel 12th gen lineup.
MSI Z690 Tomahawk Wifi, and Z690-A Wifi are significantly cheaper.
timecop1818 - Saturday, September 10, 2022 - link
> DDR5 capable tracesThe price difference between PRO-A Z690 and PRO-A Z690 DDR5 is like $15.
meacupla - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
Those memory overclock speeds from the corsair kit are abysmal.Is the corsair kit using Micron dies? because I am getting a lot of info that those are trash and can barely hit 5400.
You really need to get your hands on some SK Hynix or Samsung die DDR5, preferably SK Hynix, to see what the mobo is really capable of.
sonny73n - Saturday, September 10, 2022 - link
18 true phase for CPU VRM is way overkilled. Back in Sandy Bridge day, 6-8 true phase considered premium and we could overclock the hell out of the chip. Nowadays processors get heat up too fast, I'd rather leave them on stock clock or underclock in case of GPU.They should instead implement a better audio design with a high end DAC (ESS or AKM comes to mind) and a good headphones amp to drive 600 Ohms headphones.
RestChem - Sunday, September 18, 2022 - link
What kinda baffles me is how quickly all the manufacturers spat out not just a couple but five or more Z690 boards, then for good measure additional some SKUs with tacit DDR5 support (though in all cases I've bothered to check so far the claimed support for dual-rank configs is limited to about five kits total from reference up to 6000) but all their top-end stuff is loused up with WiFi and blinky dragons and various, often questionable airguide/heatsink/EMF-shielding combos as though that's what's going to sell a board to hardcore OCers. Who the hell buys a $500-1000 mobo and connects through WiFi, or would want that on-board? Why not lots of room, great cooling, great unadorned boards and, I don't know, some free GPU braces? How do you sell this thing against the Pro Z690-A at a bit over half the price?