EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified LGA1366 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.

After the two pages of benchmarks we just looked, we aren't likely looking at much difference between the two similar setups. Both Vantage and 06 show about the same results, we did experience some inconsistency in 06 with scores varying as much as 300 points from one run to the next. Running 06 in Vista is likely the culprit as it is much better suited for Windows XP.

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 as Crysis does showing virtually no difference amongst any of the setups outlining one thing. Even with a 3.3GHz quad core i7, a single GTX 295 is the bottleneck at 1680x1050 with detail levels set pretty high. The game is obviously 100% playable at these settings so it just goes to show that overclocking doesn't always have a benefit and GPU power still rules the roost in demanding games.

Another new fall release of this past silly season Far Cry 2 has some beautiful scenery but does lack that buttery smooth game play 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 game play is plenty smooth enough to enjoy. We were really able to crank up the settings with this benchmark on this setup.

The results tell the story so there is no point repeating what was just said above for Crysis.

The newest game in our testing sweet, Left 4 Dead was just added after we were asked to include a Source powered game in our memory benchmarks. Being based on the Source engine, there is definitely a chance that system performance will heavily influence the results. We used FRAPs to measure frame per second on a custom time demo of the rooftop level.

Left 4 Dead is the only game that we found to show some discrepancy amongst the three setups, but of course, the two equally clocked setups show absolutely no difference. In fact, the stock clocked system performed almost equally well despite the substantially lower maximum. Obviously there is a portion in the time demo we recorded that requires substantial CPU power to reach the 250FPS+ maximum that the two overclocked systems reached. The average and minimum FPS were about equal though.