Benchmark MethodologyAs mentioned earlier in the review, the EVGA X58 SLI motherboard does not support XMP profiles so for our stock results, instead of a straight plug and play like we would have for an XMP capable setup, we will have to manually set the timings. In manually setting the timings, we basically matched up everything we could to what the XMP profile dictates so in essence, the stock results in the benchmarks will be with the XMP profiles. All of the processor settings will be left at default excluding the Turbo function of the i7 965 processor. The processor will be locked in at 3.2GHz with the QPI set to the default 6.4 GT/s. The only settings that will be adjusted are the memory ones changing the frequency to 800MHz or DDR3-1600 and the rated 8-8-8-24-2T timings. The EVGA X58 SLI really makes it easy to get this memory up to the rated frequency despite the lack of XMP profiles and it should be said that there were absolutely no compatibility issues with this memory and the board.
For the red results in the benchmarks, we will be running our two Stable Overclock results that we just looked at. The CL7 and CL8 clocks we achieved managed to come pretty close to the same CPU frequency with BCLK/memory ratio/CPU ratio adjustments so what we did was made minor changes to the clocks in order to have as close a dead heat comparison between the 7-7-7 clocks and 8-8-8 clocks. The grey results are going to depict the performance of the 3x1GB setup that was clocked identical to the 8-8-8 3x2GB setup. This will provide the direct comparison we are looking for. The video card used for all results will be the pre-overclocked BFG GTX 280 OCX running at its default clocks of 665/2400/1458. Keep this in mind when looking at the 3D results that these are overclocked values from the reference GTX 280 specifications of 602/2214/1296. Here is how the rest of the test setup will be derived as far as operating system and software goes: - Windows Vista x64 w/SP1 is installed using a full format
- Intel Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed followed by a defragment and a reboot
- At time of benchmarks the latest drivers were downloaded from their official web sites as the latest drivers, most notable, NVIDIA GeForce Release 180.48 WHQL
- Programs and games are then installed followed by another defragment
- Windows updates are then completed installing all available updates followed by a defragment
- Benchmarks are each ran three times after a clean reboot for every iteration of the benchmark unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged
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