MSI B450 Tomahawk Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Board Layout and Features4. UEFI5. Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: CPU Related8. Tests: Memory Related9. Tests: Gaming Related10. Tests: Motherboard Features Performance11. Overclocking & Power Consumption12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

AIDA64 Engineer

AIDA64 Engineer is a multi-featured software suite for diagnostics, stress testing, benchmarking, software auditing and various other measurement parameters. We use AIDA64 Engineer to benchmark memory throughput and latency.

Sandra Memory Bandwidth

SiSoft Sandra 2018 is a multi-function utility program that supports remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers, mobile devices and networks. We use the SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth test to provide a set of memory bandwidth results.

Memory performance was down on MSI's B450 Tomahawk but this seems to be related to the instability issues we experienced. As we noted in the UEFI section of this review MSI's B450 Tomahawk was not stable using the XMP profile, we had to increase the voltage to 1.4v to get stability (instead of 1.35). However, it seems that performance is also affected, as well as stability.

For a rough guide of how memory performance compares to Intel's Z370 platform, with an i7 8700K, please see KitGuru's most recent Z370 motherboard review. Please note software and driver versions have changed hence why we caution that results are not directly comparable.

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