EVGA X58 SLI LGA 1366 Motherboard Review

Gaming Benchmarks

We have forced ourselves to step up to 3DMark Vantage results for all reviews because the public demands it. 3DMark Vantage is the newest in a long line of 3D benchmarking software from Futuremark and is the most elaborate to date. Featuring multiple presets for various system configurations, Vantage is the culmination of all 3DMarks past relying on system and GPU power for its results. We will stick to the Performance preset as it seems to be the most popular at this point in time.

We thought we would take a look at the synthetic benchmarks first. The indication at this point is that the overclocked setup is stronger, naturally, but in Vantage the gains aren't as pronounced as we thought there might be. Vantage shows less than a 3% gain while 3DMark 06 gives less than a 12% gain in score with the overclocked setup. This pales in comparison to what we saw in the previous sections with the benchmarks and with numbers this close together in synthetic benchmarks between the two setups, it really will be a stretch to find any gains in any of the four games we are about to look at.

We all know what Crysis is and how much it beats up systems but we wanted to add it to the gaming benchmarks to see how system changes can improve performance on a mid-level system. Detail levels are all set to Very High with the resolution at 1680x1050 with 4xAA. We ran the benchmarks with a demo of the Sphere level in DX9 and 64-bit. The game looks great with this setup and plays just well enough to keep us happy.

Crysis is first and like we expected, there is very little difference between frame rates in the two setups. Despite that, this single GTX 280 does quite well with Crysis considering we are playing with Very High settings and 4xAA. This should be the toughest test for the setup as the last three games are a lot lighter on hardware than Crysis.

Another new fall release of this past silly season Far Cry 2 has some beautiful scenery but does lack that buttery smooth gameplay in places. A lot of moaning and groaning has occurred with Far Cry 2 but acceptable frame rates are much easier to achieve than Crysis and the gameplay is plenty smooth enough to enjoy. We were really able to crank up the settings with this benchmark on this setup.

We again really pushed the detail levels in Far Cry 2, like we did Crysis, and the results speak for themselves. Clearly the GPU is the limiting factor because again we see absolutely no difference between the two setups. Average frame rates are excellent in Far Cry 2 and in DX10 with Ultra High details, the game is spectacular looking.

The first of our FRAPS captured frame rate games, Fallout 3 is a little bit of everything. First person shooter meets landscape wanderer and adventure finder. Playing Fallout 3 can become quite addictive and the nature of the game can have hours disappear behind you without having a clue. For our benchmarking today we ran around the landscape just outside vault 101 up to Washington and then back towards Megaton for some fire ant battles. FRAPS was used to record the frame rates so keep this in mind when comparing results, gameplay was similar but without a time demo, it definitely varies.

Despite the seemingly low Minimum frame rates for both setups, the average frame rate in Fallout 3 throughout testing is more than acceptable and the game really didn't feel like it ever got choppy. Overall Fallout 3 plays pretty easy on hardware as we had details through the roof and this setup still handled it quite well. It is a very exciting when 1680x1050 can't even challenge modern games on a single card setup with detail levels maxed out. As for a difference between the stock and overclocked settings...forget it, there is none.

The latest installment of Call of Duty is not unlike the last with high frame rates easily achievable with settings maxed at 1680x1050. This is especially true with this setup and a single GTX 280. We have no problems running full tilt with every detail level set to the max and that is how we benchmarked. We again used FRAPS to record frame rates of the Little Resistance level from the time we leave the boat up to near the end of the level where we enter the hut. Total play time is 10 minutes with the same amount of time spent in the underground bunker for each run. Again, results will have slightly larger margins for error due to the nature of benchmarking actual gameplay versus a time demo.

Rounding out this round of benchmarks, which all but solidifies the fact that this setup outruns the single GTX 280 with ease making it the bottleneck, COD: World at War shows us more of the same. High frame rates with details maxed out but no real difference between the two setups. Again, 1680x1050 just isn't a high enough resolution to push this platform and a single GTX 280 is the obvious bottleneck, not that any more frames per second are needed.

So despite the fact that we didn't really see and differences between the stock and overclocked settings in games, we are able to confirm with almost certainty that a single GTX 280 bottlenecks this i7 setup at even stock settings. This bodes well for gamers as this combination of hardware really seems to be able to handle the newest games on the market. What we look at next is not just a typical SLI comparison, we will do a little investigating into the difference between 16X and 8X PCI-E 2.0 slots on the EVGA X58 SLI, or lack of difference if that is the case.