The GIGABYTE MW51-HP0 Motherboard Review: Consumer Meets Workstation for Xeon W

Gaming Performance

For motherboard reviews in 2019, we are running an updated version of our test suite, including OS and CPU cooler. This has some effect on our results. Due to the lack of overclocking options within the GIGABYTE MW51-HP0 firmware, the Kingston RDIMM memory is operating at DDR4-2666 CL19 and not DDR4-2666 CL16 like in our previous C422 review of the Supermicro X11SRA. This will have a slight impact on some of the results.

AoTS Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity is a Real-Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any systematic differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.

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.