The ASRock AB350 Gaming K4 Motherboard Review: Dual M.2 at $90
by Gavin Bonshor on April 9, 2018 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
Ashes of the Singularity
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of DirectX12s features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
Rise Of The Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
Thief
Thief has been a long-standing title in PC gamers hearts since the introduction of the very first iteration which was released back in 1998 (Thief: The Dark Project). Thief as it is simply known rebooted the long-standing series and renowned publisher Square Enix took over the task from where Eidos Interactive left off back in 2004. The game itself utilises the fluid Unreal Engine 3 engine and is known for optimised and improved destructible environments, large crowd simulation and soft body dynamics.
Total War: WARHAMMER
Not only is the Total War franchise one of the most popular real-time tactical strategy titles of all time, but Sega delve into multiple worlds such as the Roman Empire, Napoleonic era and even Attila the Hun, but more recently they nosedived into the world of Games Workshop via the WARHAMMER series. Developers Creative Assembly have used their latest RTS battle title with the much talked about DirectX 12 API so that this title can benefit from all the associated features that comes with it. The game itself is very CPU intensive and is capable of pushing any top end system to their limits.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
43 Comments
View All Comments
coder543 - Monday, April 9, 2018 - link
Isn't it strange to have a whole series of reviews planned for this generation of AMD motherboards right now? A new motherboard (and processor) generation is expected to launch within the next 2 to 3 weeks. This ASRock AB350 should be forwards compatible (with a BIOS update), but wouldn't people buying a new motherboard be better off buying one with a newer chipset from the upcoming generation?But, according to the first page of this article, there are four other motherboards from this same generation with reviews in the works. Just something I find interesting.
The_Assimilator - Monday, April 9, 2018 - link
Welcome to AnandTech anno 2018 - so perpetually late with certain reviews that it's often a wonder they bother putting them up. I guess Purch, "The Future of Digital Publishing", can't afford to hire more writers (because they sure as hell can't afford editors worth a damn, as shown by the ever-increasing amount of basic grammar and spelling mistakes in the articles that do get put up).I mean, it's certainly not like Purch bought AnandTech so that they can bleed it dry, then dump it once not even its name is worth anything. Nope. Not at all.
DigitalFreak - Monday, April 9, 2018 - link
I really miss Anand.close - Tuesday, April 10, 2018 - link
These days the only 2 reasons to come here are if you still have some sort of muscle memory (like going to the fridge even if you don't want anything), or pure mistake - you actually wanted ArsTechnica or something like that.Dr. Swag - Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - link
ArsTechnica over Anandtech? Is that a joke? The only thing they win in is timeliness. In everything else, especially CPU and smartphone reviews, Anandtech is WAY more thorough, especially on the benchmark side of things.NesteaZen - Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - link
Oh? He sold the website? I'm not an uber active anandtech readerDr. Swag - Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - link
He sold it to Purch in 2014Lolimaster - Monday, April 9, 2018 - link
They make a intel propaganda site, that's the goal.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 10, 2018 - link
If you see any errors or typos, please by all means let us know.Time is fleeting and Google cares more about who's first than who's best, so while I always strive to keep quality high, we do have to move quickly to stay relevant.
SlyNine - Tuesday, April 10, 2018 - link
"A mid-range GPU, no overclock, a discrete graphics card"Not sure if this is an error or not. But it seems a tad redundant to mention GPU and discrete graphics card.