Performance – Part 1
All tests were performed on the ASRock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi motherboard, Intel i7-13700K processor, Powercolor RX6800XT Red Devil graphics card, 32GB Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5-6400 CL32 memory kit, and Silicon Power XS70 PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 SSD. For the tests has been used Win11 x64 environment with the latest updates. Everything else will be mentioned during the tests.
Memory performance
The motherboard has no problem handling memory up to DDR5-6800, so exactly as specified. Not many users will go for a higher frequency, and it’s not really important as the performance gain above DDR5-6400 is barely visible.
Results at XMP settings of our Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5-6400 CL32 memory kit are slightly better than on some other motherboards. Nothing really significant, but it suggests that the motherboard is training memory well.
Processor performance and mixed load tests
Results in compressing and decompressing tests like 7-Zip built-in benchmark are also about as high as on other Z790 motherboards.
There is no surprise in rendering benchmarks like Cinebench R23.
Also, Blender shows some nice numbers.
PCMark 10
PCMark results are essential as they show how all components work with each other in a mixed-load environment. It can be translated into regular daily work, so what we all do and expect good results. The Z790 Steel Legend performs well in PCMark 10 tests. All results are high for our test platform and similar to what we could reach on other Z790 motherboards or even slightly higher.
Storage performance
M.2 SSD tests show us that Intel still hasn’t improved its storage controller. As long as AMD chipsets can go up to 7400MB/s, or slightly higher, then all Z690 and Z790 motherboards are limited to about 7000MB/s. The Steel Legend reached nearly 7100MB/s, which is better than could make some other motherboards in our tests.
A Full System Drive benchmark in PCMark 10 confirms the high performance of the M.2 SSD. In this test, random operations count much more, so we are not limited like in sequential bandwidth.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark confirms high storage performance in games. Nearly 678MB/s is a great result for a single SSD.
USB controller handles external SSD well. We could reach 1042MB/s on a Patriot SSD, which is rated at 1000MB/s, so the result is clearly high.
