ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI Apex Motherboard Review

Multimedia, Compression and Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks

X264 FHD

x264 is a free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. x264 FHD measures how efficient a system is in encoding H.264 video and produces results in frames-per-second. H.265/HEVC video encoding is the future of video able to compress significantly larger resolution videos including 4K and make streaming a possibility. On the Z390 Aorus Pro, our 9900k ran the x264 FHD benchmark at an average of 58.1 frames per second. On the Z390 Maximus XI Apex, the 9900k runs the X264 FHD benchmark at an average of 60.97 frames per second.

X265

x265 is an open-source implementation of the H.265 standard and x.265 HD benchmark tests the CPU’s ability to process an HEVC video. This benchmark is run by the processor alone. Like other benchmarks, the 9900k did slightly better on the Z390 Maximus XI Apex than it did on the Z390 Aorus Pro. But not by much.you could say that the results are within the margin of error. On the Z390 Aorus Pro, the 9900k averaged 35.96 frames per second. On the Z390 Maximus XI Apex, the 9900k averaged 36.08 frames per second. So, as you see, there is almost no difference.

7-Zip

The 7-zip benchmark shows a rating in MIPS (million instructions per second). The rating value is calculated from the measured speed, and it is normalized with results of Intel Core 2 CPU with multi-threading option switched off. So, if you have modern CPU from Intel or AMD, rating values in single-thread mode must be close to real CPU frequency. There are two tests, compression with LZMA method and decompression with LZMA method. Once the total passes reach 100, the score is taken. 7-Zip gives the resulting score for decompressing, compressing and an overall score.  As the chart shows, the Z390 Maximus XI Apex was the clear winner in 7-Zip. On the Z390 Aorus Pro, the total rating score was 49454. On the Z390 Maximus XI Apex, the best total rating score was 56947.

WINRAR

WinRAR is a file archiver utility for Windows, developed by Eugene Roshal of win.rar GmbH. It can create and view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats and unpack numerous archive file formats. In Winrar, the Z390 Maximus XI Apex did far better than the Z390 Pro. The chart below shows the resulting speed in KB/s. The Z90 Pro had a resulting speed on 21373 KB/s. This was a fair distance behind the resulting speed of 28589 KB/s on the Z390 Maximus XI Apex.

Handbrake

HandBrake is a free and open-source video transcoder, originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit to make ripping a film from a DVD to a data storage device easier. Essentially, it can convert video to almost any modern format. HandBrake is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The workload video file is a ~6.27 GB, 3840 x 1714, 73.4 Mbps, 24fps, H.264, .mov video file that is transcoded to a ~1480 MB, 1920×858, ~17.1 Mbps, 24fps, H.264, .mp4 video file. The File was transcoded by the 9900k on the Z390 Aorus Pro in 7 minutes and 27 seconds. The same Intel 9900k on the Z390 Maximus XI Apex was able to transcode the same file in 7 minutes in 20 seconds. Not a huge difference, but as they say, every second count.