ASUS PRIME X570 Pro review

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Conclusion

Final Words 

Recent AGESA firmware updates for AMD have improved performance a tiny little bit, it's with our processor marginal though. As such the prime falls within an offset of properly performing Ryzen 3000 motherboards. The Prime pro is one of the cheaper motherboards, yet still priced at 259 USD/EUR, and that is still steep considering you can get X470 at far better prices. the one difference is PCIe gen 4.0, really that's it as this Prime Pro also did not get an AX WIFI6 treatment. Neither did the Prime pro get a Multi-GigE (2.5 Gigabit, 5 or 10 Gigabit) treatment so that's a little disappointing to see as well. other than that it is offering all features you'll need at nice and agile speeds.


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Gaming performance on Ryzen 3000

Previous Ryzen reviews have taught me that it is extremely hard to convince a big part of the guru3d community and reader base that Ryzen 1000/2000 was plenty fast for gaming, at least mainstream gaming. For the new Zen2 Matisse based processors that will be less difficult. Combined with the respective platform, ZEN2 offers far more oomph compared to the previous two generations Ryzen processors. There are mostly wins for Intel, there will be wins for AMD based on competing and price level matched processors. It's a much closer call to make, and that by itself is a win for AMD all thanks to the increased IPC and clock frequencies. So based on the fastest consumer card on the globe,  GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, we can calculate and average out roughly a 5% to 10% advantage for the 9900K compared to the 3900X and 3700X overall. With varying differences per game title, of course. Guys, this is how close things have gotten in the year 2019 with Ryzen 3000. And we did pick Intel's most expensive 8-core proc here and, again, who really owns an RTX 2080 Ti? All slower cards are more GPU limited and thus the performance differences are narrower.

DDR4 Memory

Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. With Ryzen Generation 3 you can go higher in DDR4 clock frequency if you want to. We advise that up-to 3600 MHz and CL16 is fine, after that frequency value a 2:1 divider kicks in, and that can have an effect on the Infinity Fabric bandwidth, inter-core CCX bandwidth. We see no reason for faster DDR4 memory anyways, it's expensive and does not bring in added perf, much like what you see on Intel platforms as well. So my advice is a minimum 3200 MHz frequency for the memory, CL14 would be awesome of course especially since DDR4 prices have been on the decline for a year now. 

 

The conclusion

The combination of X570 with Ryzen 3000 is a sweet one. The Prime Pro performs well and is a nice looking motherboard if you like that white theme. The VRM and power stage design is done right. It is, however, lacking Multi-GigE ethernet and AX WIFI. So the difference in-between a much cheaper B450 or X470 motherboards really was eliminated aside from the better VRM design and PCIe gen 4. PCIe Gen 4 is not enough to make that difference if you ask me. Ergo ASUS skipped a few features making this motherboard a more run of the mill one. Other than that you get it all from proper M.2 performance, dual multi-GPU slots, six SATA3 slots, all the USB connectivity you need and overall a lovely looking product. X570 does offer that PCIe Gen 4.0 infrastructure the X570 platform with Ryzen 3000 offers. It does open up a plethora of faster storage options. If you do not care about AX WIFI and PCIe gen 4.0 you probably want to settle with a fast PCIe Gen 3.0 storage unit, so X470 is fine and cheaper as well. There will be no perf differential for CPU and memory, that's is the honest truth. The DDR4 memory worked straight out of the box, we enabled the 3200 MHz XMP and even 3600 MHz memory will work on X470. As a side note, we advise a good 3200 MHz CL14 kit though as that is plenty fast and offers better value. Tweaking wise, the motherboards will not be any limitation, the processors however are. The PRIME X570 pro is going to be a tough sell. You really need to like that all-white design, and then ASUS stripped away features that hardly justify the 259 EUR/USD price tag. Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the motherboard, it's a proper design based on a quality build of components and a good VRM design. But relatively speaking, you can get much more value if you seek in the X470 range unless you truly desire PCIe Gen 4.0. If ASUS would have included WIFI6 I would probably have given an award. In this design, it really should be a sub-200 USD product if you ask me. So yes, I am a little conflicted, on one side this is an excellent motherboard, but on the other side it's just too much money for what it offers.

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