Review and testing of ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE and Ryzen 9 7900X motherboard

The ROG Crosshair X670E Gene motherboard, made in the mATX form factor, is part of the ROG series for compact gaming systems. Thanks to a powerful power supply and cooling subsystem, it is able to unleash the full potential of the new AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors. It also includes a whole bunch of modern components and standards, including the PCIe 5.0 bus, DDR5 memory, Wi-Fi 6E and USB4 interfaces.

This subsection of our review highlights the main aspects of the ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE, such as appearance and hardware configuration.

The motherboard comes in a rather beautiful and compact package, made in all the recognizable style of the ROG series.

The box inside has a fairly compact layout, everything is located very efficiently:

The motherboard's kit is quite significant: we have at our disposal an external WiFi antenna with a magnetic base, a 3.0 GB USB 32 flash drive, a module for connecting PCI-E 5.0 NVMe M2 drives, and even a bracket for supporting large video cards:

To ensure optimal temperature conditions and maximum performance of Ryzen processors and system components, the motherboard ROG Crosshair X670E Gene is equipped with massive heatsinks for VRM, chipset and M.2 modules. Gene also boasts support for an additional fan, which is useful in a compact case.

ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE includes 2 DIMM DDR5 modules with a maximum capacity of up to 64 gigabytes and a frequency of up to 6400 MHz. For the file subsystem, the motherboard supports 3 M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4 slots and 4 SATA 6 Gb/s ports.

We can put only one video card here, although this is not a minus, since SLI and CF are long dead. It is also worth noting the convenience of removing the video card, we no longer need to experience inconvenience and almost blindly poke a screwdriver into the ejection flag for the video card - for this there is a mechanism with a special button brought out within reach.

ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE has the newfangled AMD Socket AM5 for AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, now AMD sockets are as similar as possible to those from Intel:

ROG Crosshair X670E Gene is equipped with a highly reliable power supply system, the 16 power modules of which are designed to work with powerful multi-threaded AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors.

ROG Crosshair X670E Gene offers a large number of USB ports on the rear panel of interfaces, including two USB4 Type-C with 40 Gbps bandwidth and support for 8K display output. Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5G Ethernet interfaces are responsible for high data transfer speeds on the network.

But you're unlikely to see the maximum temperature until you start a workload that uses all CPU cores. During all day work, light loads, and most games, the processor temperature is usually significantly lower.

To give users control, ASUS has released a BIOS update for the X670 and B650 motherboards with new PBO enhancements that can easily balance temperature and performance. PBO Enhancement BIOS makes it easy to limit temperatures for multi-threaded workloads.

To access this option in the UEFI BIOS, you need to activate advanced mode. Let's go to the tab Extreme Tweaker and select Precision Boost Overdrive. UEFI BIOS settings to improve PBO by displaying a drop-down menu where users can select their preferred temperature level.

In the menu that opens, select “Improvement” from the Precision Boost Overdrive drop-down list. You can then choose from three preset temperature limits. Level 1 will set the maximum target temperature to 90° Celsius, which is a slight step down from the default of 95° Celsius. Levels 2 and 3 reduce the maximum processor temperature more aggressively, to 80° and 70° Celsius, respectively.

Well, let's test the Ryzen 9 7900X in Cinebench R23:

Precision Boost Overdrive OFF- limit temperature 95,4 degrees	PBO Enhancement Level 1- limit temperature 90,5 degrees
PBO Enhancement Level 2- limit temperature 80,9 degrees	PBO Enhancement Level 3- limit temperature 71,4 degrees

Activating PBO Enhancement Level 1 reduced the temperature by 5°C, effectively increasing performance - this is because with this PBO Enhancement setting you not only set the temperature limit, but also activate voltage optimization and PBO. Setting PBO Enhancement to level 3 reduced allgo performance by 3,5%, while the maximum temperature dropped by 25° Celsius.

As for overclocking the latest generations of processors, this is already a rather delicate science, because lately processors have been sold at maximum overclocked frequencies. The AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors were also no exception, so by chasing an increase in processor frequency, the average person can even do the opposite - do harm by significantly increasing its heating and thereby reducing performance.

The most reliable overclocking at this time is to buy good RAM for your system, increase its frequency and significantly reduce its timings. For tests, we took a 32 GB DDR5 6000 CL36 Kingston FURY Renegade, lowering the timings to 30-37-37-27, increasing the frequency to 6400 MHz and increasing the voltage to 1,4 W. Now we will show you how gaming performance changes at a frequency of 5200 CL 40, 6000 CL36 and 6400 CL30 using the Fire Strike combined test (we sometimes run this when we suspect configuration settings are degrading their gaming CPU performance):

Well, as we see, although overall performance increases when moving from 5200 to 6000, the speed of the L3 cache decreases, which can even lead to a decrease in performance in games. Therefore, manually reducing the final timings gives an increase in gaming performance. The video card in this test is loaded at 25% - there is no emphasis on it in this test.

Test configuration
test stands	GIGABYTE X570 AORUS MASTER MSI MPG Z490 GAMING CARBON WIFI MSI MPG Z590 GAMING CARBON WIFI ROG MAX Z690 HERO   ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE
Multimedia equipment	Water cooling system ROG RYUJIN II 360  Monitor Philips 326M6VJRMB/00 Seasonic PRIME TX-1000 power supply 32 GB DDR4 3200 CL15 ZEN1 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 ZEN2 32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 ZEN3 32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 Comet Lake 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 Rocket Lake 32 GB DDR5 6000@6400 CL30 Kingston FURY Renegade Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
Software configuration
Operating system	Windows 10 21H2/ Windows 11(Alder Lake)
Graphics driver	Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 522.25 WHQL
Monitoring programs	MSI Afterburner

 

Testing was done at maximum quality settings and even without DLSS - ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition works wonders! 

In Horizon Zero Dawn, Intel Core i9 12900K 3.2 GHz + ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO in terms of minimum FPS is quite noticeably faster than AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE, the game clearly loves Intel more.

Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with ray tracing.

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered doesn't have ray tracing AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE again in second place .

With ray tracing, the balance of power doesn't change much, but AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE shows quite a decent result.

Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with ray tracing with and without DLSS.

В Cyberpunk 2077 AMD have never been particularly good, but the result of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE is at a fairly high level, significantly ahead of the previous generation.

With ray tracing, the balance of power remains unchanged.

Testing took place at maximum quality settings.

In Days Gone, the best result was shown by the assembly on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE. 

Testing took place at maximum quality settings.

In UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection we see almost equal parity between the Intel Core i9 12900K 3.2 GHz + ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE.

Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with and without ray tracing. We have been asked for a long time to test processors in HITMAN 3 in the mission The Farewell, and now it has finally happened!

Without ray tracing, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE lags behind the Intel Core i9 12900K 3.2 GHz + ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO by about 10%.

But with ray tracing, the Intel Core i9 12900K 3.2 GHz + ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO leaves no chance for anyone and is 1,5-2 times ahead of all builds in terms of minimum FPS.

Testing took place at maximum quality settings with DLSS.

В Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Bundle with AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz + ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE turned out to be slightly faster than Intel Core i9 12900K 3.2 GHz + ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO.

 Well, let's summarize: the motherboard ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE This is a fairly functional and productive solution for AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, belonging to the ROG Crosshair series - the flagship line of motherboards for AMD with rich capabilities.

It is also worth considering the latest feature of the BIOS update ASUS PBO Enhancement- optimizing the performance of the new AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, taking into account their thermal characteristics. The board is also quite interesting in terms of overclocking, and especially the RAM, which gives quite noticeable gains in gaming applications.

It is also worth considering that the ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE board is made in mATX format. Motherboards of this class are rarely made in this format. There is a certain trend for very cool, but compact systems, which is exactly where Gene fits in.

Advantages

 - high performance of the new AM5 platform

- ASUS PBO Enhancement features

- excellent RAM overclocking with extremely low timings and high frequencies

- compactness

Disadvantages

- price