EVGA X58 SLI Micro 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.

We start off the Gaming Benchmarks section with a little 3DMark action. We can clearly see the performance gains in 06 out-pace that of Vantage between our two setups. 06 shows a 36% performance increase while Vantage only displays a 9% performance increase. Clearly Vantage is more dependent on GPU than CPU while 06 sees great gains from a system overclock.

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 Tank level in DX9 and 64-bit. The game looks great with this setup and plays just well enough to keep us happy.

Now this is the first time I have ran ATI cards for benchmark results in a review and definitely the first time I have looked at performance gains going from a single to multi card setup with HD4890's. It really shouldn't be a reflection on performance of the motherboard so much as the cards but still nice to see. Ignore the comparison between the single and multi card setups for just a second. Focus on the two longest bars for the average and minimum FPS results. These two bars are the multi-card Crossfired HD4890's at both the stock (blue) and overclocked (red) settings. Coming as a complete surprise, overclocking the system showed a significant improvement in both average and minimum FPS. Up to this point, we have never seen Crysis show any benefit to increased system performance, any gains have come simply from GPU increases. Perhaps it is the HD4890's or the fact that we benched a different time demo, but either way you look at it, we were not expecting to see the results we have here.

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.

Going back to another favorite of ours, Far Cry 2 shows the gains we would expect going from stock to overclock as well as a hefty boost going from a single HD4890 to Crossfired HD4890's. As mentioned, this is the first time I have personally benched single VS multi 4890's and the improvements are very nice to say the least. The game goes from almost unplayable with a single card to absolutely smooth as silk with the second HD4890 added. Crossfire on this motherboard definitely looks to be working great with these MIS R4890 Cyclone's.

The newest game in our testing sweet, I switched to Prototype for this review as I thought we needed some fresh blood in the pool. That and after playing the game for about five minutes on the big screen at 1920x0180, I was hooked. The game is quite playable with a single HD 4890 and an absolute blast running around Manhattan destroying everything in your path. If you haven't already done so, hook a rig up to your 42" and play this game at high res, it is great.

Prototype is the newest kid on the block as far as regency of release but it appears to be the least GPU bound game we looked at today. This is great news as a single HD4890 can easily play the game at max settings at a resolution of 1680x1050. Some may be asking how we benchmarked Prototype since there is no built in benchmarking engine, and that is a great question. We simply loaded up the game with each setup and headed towards the Gentek building on the map. Once we got there we started FRAPS with a 4 minute time limit on results and basically went nuts. We simply had an all out fire fight with the military for 4 minutes and compared the results. Because of this the results can be a little off but for the most part, the length we benched helped even out results and gave us a pretty accurate measurement of performance over the four setups.