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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Gich - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
Those prices are insane.Mid-range? Full-theft more like it.
Threska - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
$350-400 is the new normal. It's like complaining eggs are no longer a quarter for a dozen (1930).shabby - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
No it's not, that's like saying a $500 cpu is middle of the pack.Samus - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
$400 isn't normal. I've never spent more than $250 on a motherboard (and that was the Asus P6T X58 Deluxe almost 15 years ago)Mainstream Z690 boards are ~$200. You get diminishing returns beyond that, especially if you don't plan to overclock. Most people would be better off with the $250 MSI Tomahawk Z690 over the MPG Z690 as they are virtually identical and the $100-$150 price difference can be better allocated on other components such as CPU or GPU.
Paying twice as much for a motherboard is like paying twice as much for RAM, the cost:benefit is among the worst of any other component.
Duwelon - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
Has anyone else noticed that the cheapest boards are generally ugly but very expensive boards are generally cleaner looking and match commonly sought after color schemes? Been a trend for awhile now.Duwelon - Thursday, September 8, 2022 - link
I mean this "Carbon" skin that MSI is using probably costs them less than $5 compared to their cheapest option. People avoid the cheaper options out of vanity when they have 95% or more of the same features, and motherboard makers know this, hence they make their lowest end SKUs butt ugly.thestryker - Friday, September 9, 2022 - link
FWIW I was thinking similarly as I had that same board, but adding inflation in that board would be around $350 today so it's right in line with these offerings. This *does* constitute the new midrange, but I do agree that you need to evaluate what you're doing with your system and pick off of that since many cheaper boards are great.Emyof4D - Saturday, September 10, 2022 - link
I might be misinterpreting, but think the point was that it was hardly a "mid-range" board at the time. X58 was already the enthusiast version of the chips, so even a "basic" X58 board was fairly high end. A more comparable board might be a MSI P55-GD80 for socket 1156, which was about 175 back when it launched.timecop1818 - Saturday, September 10, 2022 - link
Lol no. And this board is a fucking scam. MSI's own PRO Z690-A is < $200 almost anywhere and has exactly the same feature set as this scam, minus dumb RGB shite. $200 is about the max I'd pay for a Z-series board, and 100-150 max for B-series. Anything > $400 is ridiculous.Samus - Monday, September 12, 2022 - link
The VRM's are slightly different on the Pro (14 phase) but the Tomahawk and the MPG both have 18+1 (the MPG is technically 20 phase I guess -_-) and the Tomahawk is $150 less. So if you want high boost for prolonged periods on a hungry chip both boards will probably perform identically.The Pro-A, however, would probably be the board I get because I don't see myself getting a K CPU anyway. They are all so ridiculously fast and most demanding loads only need momentary boost clocks (like extracting a RAR or loading a game) that any Z690 board will have a decent enough VRM package to comply before the power stage heats up and scales the clock back. In the case of the boards with really cheap components (like the Gigabyte Aorus Ultra Lite with the 10+2+1) you might never hit Boost 2.0 even though they claim its for a laughably high 105A while many 14+ phase can't even do 60A. Potential power delivery doesn't equal constant power delivery.