The Z490 Mini-ITX Showdown: GIGABYTE's Z490I Aorus Ultra and MSI's MEG Z490I Unify Reviewed
by Gavin Bonshor on August 4, 2020 10:30 AM ESTGaming Performance
For Z490 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update.
Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
F1 2018
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained; otherwise, we should see any newer versions of Codemasters' EGO engine find its way into F1. Graphically demanding in its own right, F1 2018 keeps a useful racing-type graphics workload in our benchmarks.
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained. We use the in-game benchmark, set to run on the Montreal track in the wet, driving as Lewis Hamilton from last place on the grid. Data is taken over a one-lap race.
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 arose 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.
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hansip87 - Tuesday, August 4, 2020 - link
In my country these boards are just plain expensive. Instead i went with Asrock Z490M ITX AC with 10400f. which like half the price of these boards. I know VRM not as good but for actual tiny build who really cares?Beaver M. - Thursday, August 6, 2020 - link
ASRock is pretty awesome with ITX boards. Its still sad that they dont do their ITX-E series anymore, though.The much bigger problem is their 10+ year old issues with long or extended USB cables losing connection from time to time or not working at all. No other manufacturer has those issues.
Back in the day you could at least dodge it by using the extra USB chip onboard for devices that had longer or extended cables, which handled newer USB standards, but nowadays they are all integrated by Intel, and thus they all have the same issue on ASRock boards.
artifex - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
If you're not overclocking, I'll bet it's fine.Tomatotech - Tuesday, August 4, 2020 - link
Nice review. But I’m not sure who in AnandTech’s readership is going to buy these boards. Intel sales to the DIY / home build sector are dropping off a cliff - most of the top selling CPUs on Amazon are now AMD.Showtime - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
I'm sure lots of people at AT are into ITX . Intel hasn't fallen off that much. AMD simply has louder fans. You couldn't find a 10600k for months, and Intel sales are strong going by pricing. I noticed this article because I was looking at an i7 10700 over a 3700x. They trade blows with the 10700 being slightly better at gaming at basically the same overall price (CPU/Mobo/RAM). So AMD may have the 6 core, and lower covered, and the higher counts covered, but somehow that vanilla 10700, that AT did meh review on, ends up being a better buy than the very popular 3700x for me.Koenig168 - Tuesday, August 4, 2020 - link
Waited quite a while for this review. Gigabyte has done a really impressive job with VRM cooling recently. While I like the Unify for its aesthetics, I could have done without the VRM fan and would prefer instead a beefier passive cooler. Now if MSI could fix that and replace the Intel chipset with an X570 or B550, that would be perfect. :)Beaver M. - Thursday, August 6, 2020 - link
The first thing I look at especially ITX boards (since you cant just add an addon USB slot bracket) is the amount of USB ports.MSI fails completely at that.
Gigabyte isnt much better though, because they messed up the audio connections.
Also ITX boards shouldnt waste that much space with SATA ports anymore. 2 are more than enough.
Fixed WIFI is bad too. I know its integrated nowadays in Intel chipsets, but standards change and some people dont need WIFI at all, or need to use USB WIFI anyway, because they need to position their antennas far away. Wasted space on the backplate and PCB.
Also they are completely overpriced.
JlHADJOE - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
All I really need to know here is how MSI treats the smaller reviewers like crap, which automatically disqualifies them in my book for the next 5-10 years.Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
The names of these products are preposterous.saol - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
Hope there will be the B550 mini-ITX showdown.