Benchmarks
Sandra Dhrystone
Naturally, the higher minimum speed for the P-Cores enables the manually overclocked Core i9 12900K to pull ahead of the other test configurations. Interesting, the MAXIMUS Z690 EXTREME is way behind the APEX in this test.
Sandra Whetstone
In this test, we see nearly the reverse of the previous test delta. The APEX falls well short of the EXTREME using the same settings. Even odder, the EXTREME does its best to work here using the Intel defaults. There are a couple of things to note here. Primarily that the EXTREME data was taken from my personal system which is under custom water cooling which likely skewed the results here.
POV-Ray v3.7
In this test, the results are within a stone’s throw of each other. Again, the Z690 EXTREME does a little better here, likely due to being able to maintain slightly higher clocks than the APEX due to the cooling advantage.
V-Ray
In a bit of a shocking twist, the manual overclock on the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 APEX really makes a difference in this test coming in almost a thousand points higher than that of the other test configurations. Alternatively, the other test systems are within a margin of error with each other.
Cinebench R23 – Single Thread
Once again, we see very close results between all of our test systems. I’m actually surprised the Z690 EXTREME didn’t achieve the highest score here. Although, ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 APEX is using ASUS defaults which are more aggressive than the Intel ones. Although, it amounts to very little in terms of performance in this test.
Cinebench R23 Multithread
Again, the deltas we saw here echo that of the other test. Cooling matters and so does a manual overclock. That higher minimum clock speed seems to pay off here although at the cost of heat and power consumption. (More on that later.)
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →Comment number one. Armoury crate sucks. It sucks big hairy old man testies. Seriously just take a look at the driver versions on offer in the app. And then go online and check with the driver vendors. Armoury is at least two revisions behind. Then go look at the Bios available from Asus directly. Yep... Armoury crate doesn't even see an update but you also won't know how many revisions behind you are because armoury crate doesn't even report on that. Armoury crate is just poorly done and needs to be retired.
I have an Asus TUF laptop and would have to agree with the Armory crate. I hated it so much on my Z690-E board that I regulated it to my back up PC that hardly gets used. Asus basically forces you to use it unfortunately.
I've not owned an Asus laptop, but at least with the motherboards, I've never felt required to use it. I usually try it once after a new build - remember why I hated it, then fresh install Windows again without it.
It is pretty useless in my opinion - all flash and no substance.
It's good to see more Z690 boards reviewed here, thanks.