3DMark Vantage

At high processor clock speeds the CPU test of 3DMark Vantage is great at weeding out board weaknesses in power delivery. Along with WPrime 1024M, this test represents one of the toughest loads these boards will be subjected to when benchmarking for scores. We used a stock clocked 4870 X2 for apples to apples comparisons of both the final score and also the maximum CPU clock we could run the entire 3D mark suite at.


3D
Mark Vanatge - Max Clock frequency and Score

The boards all fell within 50MHz of one another for outright CPU speeds. The Gigabyte board would not complete 3DMark Vantage with CPU speeds over 5GHz for us regardless of voltage changes; although the overall score per clock rate is very good. We utilized both stock memory sub-timings as set by the BIOS and then tuned each memory sub timing option. In the end, any manual changes we made did not increase stability enough to improve CPU MHz scaling the test boards.

Test Setup WPrime 1024M
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  • Rajinder Gill - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    For max BCLK testingPCI/e speeds were increased (where required) to 115MHz or so (the highest the CPU's I had could run were between 115-118MHz). I tried changes to RTL, memory dividers and all voltages were also changed. Subtiming ranges were shifted out to near maximums to see if that helped and also matched between the best and worst boards in the tests just to make sure something was not creating a hurdle.

    regards
    Raja
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    wow the p55 platform is totally screwd if this problem persists...any overclocker still oc'ing the hell out of their p55 must be either brave, rich or (michael jackson voice on:) ignoraaaant
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    oops, this was supposed to be a comment, not a reply...damn UI :P
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    now if we could only edit our posts I would so happy
  • petergab - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    What about any MSI boards? I know they may not count to the "extreme" OC but I think they should have a representative in such reviews.
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    The MSI board was due to be included but left out becasue of CPU damage that occurred during the socket burnouts. This left no real way of cross comparing the prior results with the MSI boards abilities on the same CPU. At that point I decided to run with what I had at the time rather than starting afresh thus delaying the article even further.

    regards
    Raja


  • spiderbutt - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Are you planning to include the MSI boards at a later date? I am curious to see how they compare to the other boards.

    Thanks for your hard work Raja it is appreciated!
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Hi,

    There will be some MSI P55 board reviews coming, although those were planned in more typical usage scenarios. I guess what I can do is use a different CPU in the E657 EVGA board for cross compare to any high-end P55 MSI offering we review to see how things stack up.

    regards
    Raja
  • 1stguess - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Wow. This is a bold article. Does anyone dare OC their P55 setup? Madness.
  • jav6454 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    I've been looking at these P55 boards and somehow I always thought high of the EVGA. However these results have proven my gut feeling right.

    Bad thing of the EVGA boards is sometimes their higher price tag.

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