ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte & MSI: Four Flagship X58 Motherboards Reviewed
by Rajinder Gill on July 15, 2010 10:00 PM ESTFar Cry 2
Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with 2xAA. Multi card results are generated using Ultra High settings with 4XAA.
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II
We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU. We crank all options to Ultra, enable AA, and then run the built-in performance benchmark for our result.
Futuremark 3D Mark Vantage
We utilize the performance preset of Futuremark's 3D Mark Vanatge to compare 3-way SLI performance .
ASUS's R3E scores high consistently in all benchmarking tests thus far. The MSI turns in decent scores but comes in below the NF200 supporting boards when loaded with three GPUs. We're not sure on the exact cause though will conject that it's possibly down to PCIe bandwidth. Either way, the loss is not significant enough to warrant alarm at this point. The Gigabyte and EVGA boards are hampered slightly by the latency penalty of the NF200, and give up 3~5% of performance to the ASUS R3E under normal operating conditions.
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eva2000 - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link
Shame bclk hasn't improved much with those sample boards. Interesting to see if you got 4 samples of each model and averaged their max bclk, how would each brand/board do.Rajinder Gill - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link
Probably the same as four samples from first gen boards.mapesdhs - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link
These prices do seem a bit wierd given there are dual-socket boads starting at around $300 (eg.
Tyan S7002G2NR-LE) though of course such boards don't boast RAM speeds or other features
that enthusiast boards have. On the other hand, a Tyan with two i7s is going to stomp all over
an enthusiast board with just one i7 for any task that can exploit the higher thread limit, eg. rendering,
scientific apps, etc.
Flip side of course is such boards don't normally support SLI/CF. All depends on what one wants
to use it for. A fair chunk of the enthusiast market might be bragging rights and downright fun, but
if there's a demand for such things (and there is) then what the heck. :)
Ian.
Zombie1914 - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link
Nice review as always.Could you post some infos on the temperatures of the Northbridge/Southbridge in standard and overclocking modes?
Triple Omega - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link
Google Translate much?Well at least your stuff doesn't cost $700.
laosaaaa - Thursday, July 22, 2010 - link
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nyran125 - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
So far ive got a ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi and its outlasted everything and still running everything smooth 4 adn a hlaf years later with no issue and the ASUS video cards seem to be more vigilant and outlast the rest... This is from experience with various boards adn video cards and ive been happy with every ASUS product ive bought thus far.Rare.human - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link
Hey guys, what's the best motherboard currently available that I could buy?Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Very broad question that. Best X58 board you mean? Typically don't spend more than $250 and you'll get what you need - ASUS & Gigabyte is where I'd personally go from a BIOS standpoint in that price range. If you don't want to overclock, then ASRock, Biostar and EVGA and MSI will do the job too.-Raja