So which comes first? The chicken or the egg? We can’t have a review of the ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 motherboard without a new Intel Sandy Bridge-E processor, can we? Of course we can’t launch the new Intel X79 Express chipset without a review of the LGA2011 processor! So, while Nate has been working hard on the processor review of the Intel Core i7 3960X which he has so eloquently put together for us here, we will be taking a look at one of the first Intel X79 motherboards from ASUS, the ASUS P9X79 Pro! The work Nate is doing is focusing more on the performance of the new Intel Core i7 3960 Sandy Bridge E processor, while we will be focusing on the performance and features of the ASUS P9X79 Pro LGA2011 motherboard and the Intel X79 chipset. We will be taking a look at the performance scaling in NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX as well as the performance of the integrated SATA III 6Gbps and SuperSpeed USB 3.0. Since this is the first Intel X79 to pop up on our radar, we are going to compare it to a handful of systems from both AMD and Intel!

In the tradition of ASUS, they will be releasing a number of LGA2011 motherboards right out of the gate. Each of them will have a different feature set as well as a different price point. The entry level ASUS motherboard will be the ASUS P9X79 and will have a suggested retail price of $299.00. The ASUS P9X79 Pro is the first step up and will retail for $329.00; the Deluxe version of the ASUS P9X79 will have an expected retail price of $399.00. The TUF series of motherboards isn’t being forgotten about for the Intel X79 chipset; ASUS will have a Sabertooth X79 available for $339.00. If you are looking for the ultimate board and are willing to spare no expense, ASUS is releasing their new Republic of Gamers Rampage IV Extreme at $459.00.

The Intel X79 Express chipset is an all new platform. It is designed to replace the aging X58 platform which is the previous ‘enthusiast’ platform. Earlier in the year Intel released the P67 platform and followed that up with the Intel Z68 platform. Both of these chipsets were aimed at the mainstream crowd but they proved to be a solid competitor for the X58 platform. The LGA1155 platform has a couple of processors that proved to be phenomenal overclockers. The Intel Core i7 2600K and the Intel Core i5 2500K both had unlocked processors and we have seen them running at 5+GHz on air cooling! One of the advantages to the new Sandy Bridge-E processors is the 6 core 12 thread aspect. The top LGA1155 processor is the Intel Core i7 2700K and is a quad core processor plus hyper-threading. While there really aren’t any PCIe 3.0 capable cards out there right now, ASUS Intel X79 motherboards are PCIe 3.0 ready. All of the PCIe X16 slots are PCIe 3.0 ready.

Intel opted not to include the Smart Response Technology on the Intel X79 Express chipset. It isn’t a feature that I have been wild about, but that may just be me. If you are though, and you’re a bit disappointed that Intel isn’t including it with the X79 chipset, ASUS has you covered. ASUS has implemented their own technology to accomplish the same feature. The ASUS SSD Caching is geared to be much simpler than the Intel SRT. Simply plug your SSD and hard drive in to the Marvell controlled SATA III 6Gbps ports, fire up AI Suite II and enable the ASUS SSD Caching. It is pretty simple, and you will get SSD like speeds without the size limitations of a low cost SSD.

If you are new to the ASUS UEFI BIOS, you’re likely to get a little lost when you’re looking for a specific setting. If you’re a veteran user, you may just find this new option from ASUS a new favorite. When you hit the shortcut key (F3) it will bring up a dialog window that will allow you to jump to whichever page you are looking for. Whether you need to jump to the ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility, tweak your memory timings or change the DIGI+ Power settings you can easily find what you need.

ASUS has a feature that is quite unique to their motherboards. If you have ever had a motherboard that wasn’t posting correctly, and you needed to update the BIOS but couldn’t because of a hardware conflict that was resolved in a later BIOS version, you were pretty much out of luck unless you had extra hardware lying around to swap out. ASUS has remedied that situation with the ASUS BIOS Flashback! Now all that you need to update the BIOS on many of the ASUS motherboards is a USB flash drive, the motherboard and a power supply. You don’t need to have any other hardware installed! Insert the flash drive, and hit the button on the I/O panel and you’re good to go.

ASUS has made SuperSpeed USB3.0 even faster with the use of ASUS USB 3.0 Boost. Using UASP which is short for USB Attached SCSI Protocol, ASUS was able to increase the performance of the ASMedia USB 3.0 controller that they use on the ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard. You simply need a device that will support the UASP protocol and the latest build of AI Suite II to enable it and away you go. From their internal testing it is up to 170% faster than traditional USB 3.0.

If you have ever used the ASUS AI Suite II, you know how useful it can be. If you haven’t used it, give it a go. It has been redesigned and has a very user friendly interface. Using the ASUS AI Suite II you have access to many of the features in the UEFI BIOS. You will be able to adjust the Bclk frequency, multiplier and voltages through the TurboV EVO controls. Control your fans with the Fan Xpert+, enable the USB Boost and SSD Caching, and manage the DIGI+ Power Control.

The Intel X79 Chipset

In order to understand the Intel X79 platform it is best to take a look at the motherboard chipset that is going to be used.

The Intel X79 Express looks familiar as it very similar to the Intel Z68 Express Chipset that is shown below. One of the main differences between the two platforms is, of course, the sockets. The Intel X79 platform only supports LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors, while the Intel Z68 Express Chipset supports LGA1155 Sandy Bridge processors. The Intel Z68 Express chipset supports Dual Channel Memory architecture while the Intel X79 Express supports Quad Channel Memory Architecture. There are also a number of smaller differences as well.

The Intel X79 Express chipset supports 40 lanes PCI Express 2.0 for the Graphics, while the Intel Z68 Express supports only 16 Lanes for the Graphics. This means that while the Intel Z68 platform can run dual graphics, the Intel X79 Express Chipset will support up to five graphics cards in a 1×16, 2×8, and 2×4 configuration. One of the features that was not included on the Intel X79 platform is the Intel Smart Response Technology. We aren’t terribly surprised that it isn’t included; after all, if you are paying $999.00 for the Intel Core i7 3960X you will likely be using a good sized SSD for your boot drive.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard Retail Packaging

The retail packaging for the ASUS P9X79 Pro doesn’t stand out from the most of the ASUS Boards we have looked at in recent months. Of course, the exception to that is the ASUS Republic of Gamers boards which are dressed in a bright red box. The P9X79 Pro retail packaging is kept simple and to the point. There is very little marketing text on the front of the box. ASUS has a few of the features listed. For the most part, though, everything about the board can be found elsewhere on the box.

The packaging for the ASUS P9X79 Pro features a front cover that opens up to reveal a glimpse of the P9X79 Pro. We will get more in depth on the next page, but we can see that the new Intel LGA2011 socket looks pretty massive, as well as the DIMM slots on either side of the socket.

If you felt like you were missing out since there was no marketing text on the front of the box, you’re in luck. ASUS uses the inside of the front cover for some of the details about the features of the ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard. Inside the front cover we can find details on the USB BIOS Flashback, Fan Xpert+ USB 3.0 Boost, DTS, the TPU and EPU processors.

If the marketing text on the inside of the front cover wasn’t enough for you, just flip the ASUS P9X79 Pro packaging over for more. On the back of the packaging ASUS breaks down some of the specifications and features like the DIGI+ Power control, ASUS SSD Caching, UEFI BIOS and the BT GO!.

Opening up the box for the P9X79 Pro we can see a much fuller image of the new Intel X79 motherboard from ASUS. More on that on the next page, though. It’s always good to see that it is well packaged for shipping.

Once we remove the ASUS P9X79 Pro from the retail packaging we can see that the bundle is hiding below it. The bundle that accompanies the ASUS P9X79 Pro features everything that you would need to set up your system. It includes SATA Cables, I/O Shield, ASUS Q-Connects, SLI and CrossFireX bridges, Manuals, and a driver disk.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard Layout

Overall I like the look of the ASUS P9X79 Pro. It has the same color scheme that we have seen on the non Republic of Gamers boards that we have looked at recently.

The area around the CPU socket is rather crowded. We have a series of solid capacitors on the right hand side of the LGA2011 socket. The most obvious feature of the ASUS P9X79 Pro is the DIMM slots. The ASUS P9X79 features support for quad channel memory and has a grand total of eight DIMM slots! Each of the eight DIMM slots will support an 8GB module for a total of 64GB of system memory. The ASUS P9X79 will support memory at speeds of up to 2400MHz! Just below the DIMM slots we have a number of features that are typical on ASUS motherboards. Among these is the internal SuperSpeed USB 3.0 header, MemOK!, DRAM LED, and a pair of 4pin Chassis Fan Headers, and to the right of the bottom set of DIMM slots we have a pair of 4pin CPU headers.

Spinning the ASUS P9X79 Pro around, we can take a look at what’s going on in this corner of the motherboard. The first feature that stands out to us is the SSD Caching. This is a feature that isn’t available through the chipset, so ASUS has implemented their own solution. Since it isn’t available through the chipset, ASUS uses a Marvell 88SE9128 SATA III controller. In order to enable this feature, all you need is an SSD, a hard drive, and ASUS AI Suite II. It’s a simple one click setup and you’re good to go. The Intel X79 chipset supports six SATA ports, two SATA III 6Gbps (white) and four SATA II 3Gbps (Light blue). On the corner of the ASUS P9X79 Pro we have the pin out for the front panel, TPU switch, 4pin Chassis fan, Clear CMOS button, and three internal USB 2.0 headers.

Swinging the ASUS P9X79 Pro around once again, we can pick up where we left off along the edge of the PCB. Just past the internal USB 2.0 headers is the EPU switch followed by an onboard reset and power switch. We also have the pin out for the front panel audio and SPDIF out. The final feature along the edge of the ASUS P9X79 Pro is the Debug LED. The ASUS P9X79 Pro is equipped with four PCIe X16 slots and two PCIe x1 slots. The Intel X79 chipset supports 32 PCIe lanes and will run quad SLI. The ASUS P9X79 Pro will support 3 Way SLI or Quad-GPU SLI. It also supports CrossFireX with two cards and two dual GPU cards. The ASUS P9X79 Pro uses a Realtek ALC898 Audio Codec high def Audio Codec, the super I/O controller is a NUVOTON NCT6776F, for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ASUS has implemented an ASMedia ASM 1042 controller.

The ASUS P9X79 Pro I/O panel features a total of ten USB ports, four (blue) of which are SuperSpeed USB 3.0. The P9X79 Pro is also equipped with two eSATA, optical SPDIF, GIGABIT LAN, Bluetooth, six audio jacks, and a Clear CMOS button.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard System UEFI BIOS

The ASUS P9X79 uses the same great UEFI BIOS that we have come to love since the first ASUS first introduced it on their Intel P67 series of boards. There haven’t been a whole lot of changes to the layout of the ASUS UEFI BIOS as they have worked great from the start. Above we can see the image of the ASUS EZ mode. Here we can see the general information about the system with regards to temperatures and voltages. We also have a couple of tweaks we can make to the system. The first is the system performance; we can set it to an energy saving setting, normal, or performance. For our testing we will be leaving it in ‘normal’ mode. The performance mode will give the system a quick overclock to the system. It will be conservative but safe. We can also change the boot order of the connected devices, in our case we only have our Kingston SSDNow connected. One change that has been added to the ASUS UEFI BIOS is a shortcut key.

Once you press the shortcut key (F3) it will bring up a menu that will allow you to quickly navigate to a number of pages. Each of these pages can be found in the advanced portion of the ASUS UEFI BIOS, but this makes it much easier to jump quickly to the needed page. A number of pages are available through the shortcut and they include DIGI+ Power Control, CPU Performance Settings, CPU Configuration, DRAM Timing Control, DRAM SPD Information, ASUS O.C. Profile, Fan Controls, and the ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility.

If you prefer to navigate your way through the ASUS UEFI and switch over to the Advanced version of the UEFI BIOS, this is the page you will be presented with first. We can see the information about the BIOS Version, system language, date and time, as well as security that will allow you to password the BIOS.

The second tab of the Advanced ASUS UEFI BIOS is the AI Tweaker. Here we can find most of the settings that are used to overclock your choice of Intel’s second generation of Core i7 processor.

Scrolling down in the AI Tweaker we can see the maximum voltages on the ASUS P9X79 Pro should be more than enough to satisfy 99% of the enthusiasts out there.

Just a few more voltage options on the ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard.

The DRAM Timing Control sub page in the AI Tweaker lets you tweak all the memory timings of your memory.

Above we have an image of the DIGI+ Power Control. The DIGI+ Power control is where we can find the options for CPU Load-Line Calibration, the various Current Capability options, and phase controls.

The CPU Performance settings has options for the Turbo Mode. We can set the power limits, Additional Turbo Voltage, and CPU Core Current Limit.

The Advanced tab of the Advanced UEFI BIOS will bring up the options for additional sub-pages which include; CPU Configuration, System Agent Configuration, PCH Configuration, SATA Configuration, USB Configuration, Onboard Device Configuration, and APM.

The CPU Configuration page shows the information about the CPU. We also have some options for the CPU settings. We can enable or disable the Intel Adaptive Thermal Monitor, Hyper-threading, active processor cores, Limit CPUID Maximum, Execute Disable Bit, Intel Virtualization Technology, and we have access to the CPU Power Management Configuration page.

The CPU Power Management Configuration page will allow us to adjust the CPU Ratio, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Turbo Mode, and the various C-States.

The System Agent Configuration page will allow you to switch your PCIe X16 slots between Gen1, Gen2, and Gen3 link speeds.

The SATA Configuration page lets you switch your SATA mode between IDE mode, AHCI Mode (Default), or RAID mode. You can also disable it if you plan on running a third party SATA Controller card.

The USB Configuration page lets you enable or disable the legacy support on the ports. You can also see if you have a mass storage device plugged into the ASUS P9X79 Pro.

On the Onboard Device Configuration page we can enable or disable the various integrated peripherals of the ASUS P9X79 Pro.

The APM page has a few options for the power management of the ASUS P9X79 Pro.

The Monitor page shows off all of the temperatures of the system as well as the various fan speeds. We can also control all of the system fans from this page.

A few more fan settings on the ASUS P9X79. If we were to scroll down just a bit further we would see the system voltages as well as the ability to enable or disable the ASUS P9X79 Pro Anti Surge Support.

The Boot page of the ASUS P9X79 Pro UEFI BIOS lets us change the various boot options of the system.

The Tools tab of the P9X79 Pro UEFI BIOS gives us access to the ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility, ASUS DRAM SPD information, ASUS OC Profile, and the ASUS Drive Xpert.

In the ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility we can easily flash the BIOS from a USB drive, hard drive, or a CD.

The ASUS DRAM SPD information lists out each of the 8 DIMM slots individually; it will also let you know if it detects an abnormal operation in any of the slots.

Clicking one of the DIMM slots on the previous page, you can check out the JEDEC and XMP profiles of the memory you choose to use.

The OC Profile page will allow you to save up to eight different profiles for the BIOS.

Above we can see the options for the ASUS Drive Xpert page.

The final page of the ASUS P9X79 Pro UEFI BIOS is the Exit page. Here we can load the optimized Defaults, Save Changes and reset, Discard the changes and exit, switch to the ASUS EZ Mode, or launch and EFI Shell.

The Legit Reviews Test System

Before we look at the numbers, here is a brief glance at the test systems that were used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running.

Intel X79 System

Intel Z68 System

Intel X58 Platform

AMD AM3+ Platform

The AMD AM3+ platform that we used to test the AMD Phenom and FX processors were run on the ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard with BIOS 9901 that came out on 9/26/2011. The Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600MHz memory kit was set to 1600MHz with 1.5v and 9-9-9-24 1T memory timings on the AMD FX-8150 and then at 1600MHz with 1.5v and 9-9-9-24 1T memory timings on the Phenom II X6 1100T processor.

SiSoftware Sandra 2011 SP5 Memory Bandwidth

The Sisoft Sandra 2011 SP5 benchmark utility just came out a few weeks ago and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. Sandra 2011comes with support for Virtualisation (Virtual PC/Server, Hyper-V, VMware) and GPGPU (OpenCL, DirectX 11 DirectCompute), but today we will be using the program to look at memory and CPU performance!

Results: The ASUS P9X79 Pro is the clear victor in the SiSoftware Sandra Sp5 Memory benchmark. Thanks to the Quad-channel memory the ASUS P9X79 Pro has more than double the performance of the nearest system! The Float B/F AVX/128 memory bandwidth of the P9X79 Pro was an impressive 38.92GB/s. The ASUS Sabertooth X58 with our Intel Core i7 970 hex core processor had a bandwidth of 19.066GB/s. Now granted, the first generation of Intel Core i7 hex core processors isn’t known for their memory bandwidth. If we were using a Core i7 quad core processor like the i7 950 we used in the ASUS Sabertooth X58 review we would probably see around 27GB/s with the triple channel memory, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to the ASUS P9X79 Pro with quad channel memory.

Futuremark 3DMark11 Synthetic Gaming Benchmark

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the 3D graphics performance of gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 uses a native DirectX 11 engine designed to make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Since Futuremark is releasing 3DMark11 today we decided to run the benchmark at both performance and extreme presets to see how our hardware will run.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard 3DMark11 Extreme Preset Benchmark Results

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard 3DMark11 Performance Preset Benchmark Results

Benchmark results: We were a little surprised to see that the ASUS Crosshair V Formula and the AMD FX-8150 ‘Bulldozer’ processor were able to edge out the ASUS P9X79 Pro and Core i7 3960X, at least during the extreme preset. The ‘Bulldozer’ platform was able to manage a score of 1651 3DMarks overall with a graphics score of 1494 backing it up. The ASUS P9X79 Pro was close with an overall score of 1644 and a graphics score of 1465. When we fired up 3DMark 11 in the performance preset, the ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to take the lead from the ‘Bulldozer’ platform by 90 points, though the graphics score was 78 points lower on the Intel Core i7 3960X.

AMD CrossFire Gaming Performance

As with the previous page where we tested the NVIDIA SLI scaling between the chipsets, we want to do the same for the AMD CrossfireX. When we decided to run this series of tests, we were able to get in touch with our friends over at XFX and they kindly sent over a pair of XFX Radeon HD 6950′s.

The Aliens Vs. Predator benchmark is very dependent on the graphics cards being used. Across all of our platforms the single card score varies very little. It isn’t until we fire up the systems in AMD CrossFireX that we start to see a difference in the performance. At the lower resolution of 1280×1024 the ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to average 111.7 frames per second followed closely by the ASUS Crosshair V Formula with the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T BE with 111.4 frames per second. The previous generation Intel X58 “enthusiast” platform had the lowest performance scaling with 96.4 frames per second. Increasing the resolution to 1920×1080 the ASUS P9X79 Pro maintains the lead with an average of 81.7 frames per second, followed once again by the ASUS Crosshair V Formula as both of the processors were able to hit 81.1 frames per second. Our Intel X58 platform once again brought up the back of the pack with 73.9 frames per second.

If we were to look solely at the single card performance of the systems the ASUS Crosshair V Formula with either the Phenom II X6 1100T or AMD FX-8150 would have the slight lead. Though just about all of the systems were within about 1.5 frames per second. The exception to this is the ASUS Sabertooth X58 system which was ~5 frames per second behind at 1280×1024 and 3 frames per second at 1920×1080. Once we tossed in the second XFX Radeon HD 6950 for a little CrossFireX action, we started to see the different platforms stand apart. The ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to scale 81.4% going from 44.39 frames per second to 80.54 frames per second. The Intel X58 system saw a performance gain of only 50.3% while our Intel Z68 platform saw a gain of 71.9%. Running the Metro 2033 benchmark at 1920×1080 the ASUS P9X79 Pro saw a performance gain of 86.5%. The Intel X58 saw a gain of 59.7% and the Intel Z68 saw a gain between the two of them at 75.7%.

Our Intel systems clearly dominated in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. The Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E platforms were able to maintain a solid lead over the previous generation Intel X58 system. Running our benchmark at 1280×1024 all of the Intel systems were within less than 2% of each other with a single XFX Radeon HD 6950, once we set up our AMD CrossFireX configurations we saw the game change. The ASUS P9X79 saw a gain of 65.1%. This is an improvement over what we saw over the previous generations, where the Intel X58 saw a gain of 39.3% and the EVGA Z68 FTW saw a gain of 53.9%. When we run the benchmark at 1920×1080 the ASUS P9X79 continues to dominate the field of battle. Once again all of the single card performances show minimal differences, AMD CrossFireX scaling is a totally different story. In CrossFireX the ASUS P9X79 Pro hit an average framerate of 128.5 frames per second, the EVGA Z68 FTW wasn’t far off with 121.6 frames per second or 61.3% and the ASUS Sabertooth X58 maintained an average of 110.3 frames per second which is a gain of 48.3%.

NVIDIA SLI Gaming Performance

Now that the AMD 990FX chipset supports NVIDIA SLI, we decided to update the NVIDIA graphics cards for our SLI testing. In order to do this we contacted our friends over at MSI and they were kind enough to send over a pair of their NVIDIA GeForce N560GTX-Ti HAWX edition graphics cards.

The Aliens Vs. Predator benchmark always scales well in both AMD CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI. The single MSI GeForce N560GTX-Ti HAWX edition test results were all pretty consistent. Though the ASUS P9X79 Pro was the fastest of the systems with an average of 52.6 frames per second, followed closely by the Sabertooth X58 with 52.4 frames per second while the remaining boards averaged 50.6-50.8. Setting up NVIDIA SLI with the pair of MSI GeForce N560GTX-Ti HAWX edition does start to show off some differences between our test systems. The ASUS P9X79 Pro was the fastest setup we have tested today, but the scaling wasn’t the highest. We saw a boost of 86.5% in SLI while the best scaling system was the ASUS Crosshair V Formula (with the Phenom II X6) with an improvement of 89.6%. Increasing the resolution to 1920×1080 we see some very similar results to our 1280×1024 results. The ASUS P9X79 Pro was the fastest in both the single card configuration as well as in SLI. In terms of scaling performance the ASUS P9X79 Pro saw a jump in performance of 87.2% while the ASUS Crosshair V Formula was once again the largest benefit from the second MSI GPU with a jump of 92.4%.

Much like the previous gaming benchmarks, we are seeing very little difference in the single card configurations. The ASUS Sabertooth X58 did take a slight lead with a single card, but the performance dropped off significantly once a second MSI N560GTX-Ti HAWX was added. The Intel X79 platform took the top spot in SLI with 74.71 frames per second. That’s a performance gain of 84.2% at 1280×1024. Increasing the resolution to 1920×1080 the ASUS P9X79 Pro held onto the top spot with a average of 52.89 frames per second, though the AMD ‘Bulldozer’ platform was right on the heels of the X79 system with 52.3 frames per second in SLI. Taking a look at the scaling numbers, the ASUS P9X79 Pro was the top performer with a boost of 85.3%, followed by the ASUS Crosshair V Formula/FX-8150 with 83.9%, ASUS Crosshair V Formula/Phenom II X6 1100T with 82.1%, EVGA Z68 FTW with 76.4%, and the ASUS Sabertooth X58 finishing out the chart with only 40.9%.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat really gave us some great performance numbers on the ASUS P9X79 Pro Sandy Bridge E platform. At 1280×1024 the ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to average 214 frames per second in SLI and had a single card performance of 123 frames per second. That’s an overall performance boost of 74%! The next closest system was the EVGA Z68 FTW with our Intel Core i7 2600K with 185.3 frames per second in SLI and 122.6 frames per second with a single MSI N560GTX-Ti HAWX graphics card. The EVGA Z68 FTW saw a boost of 51.1% which isn’t bad, but doesn’t quite compare to the 74% of Sandy Bridge E. Cranking up the resolution to 1920×1080 the ASUS P9X79 Pro saw a performance gain of 86.2% while the EVGA Z68 FTW saw a gain of 72.1%.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard SATA III 6Gbps Performance

CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.

The SATA III 6Gbps Testing was done using OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA6 SSD drive.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS P9X79 Pro had a solid Sequential read of 471.6MB/s and Sequential Write of 177.7MB/s. These aren’t the fastest numbers that we have come across but they are still quite respectable.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard HD Tune Pro 4.61 Write Benchmark Results

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard HD Tune Pro 4.61 Read Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: In HD Tune 4.61 the ASUS P9X79 Pro had an average read of 493.3MB/s and an average write of 443.9MB/s. Once again they don’t break any records, but the performance is still incredibly fast. The Intel X79 chipset doesn’t really have any performance improvements for SATA III over the Intel P67/Z68 platforms, but comparing it to the Intel X58 platform there is a world of difference. The Sandy Bridge platforms all feature an integrated SATA III controller while the Intel X58 platforms were forced to use a third party controller like the Marvell PCIe 9128 controller found on our ASUS Sabertooth X58 motherboard.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance

There are a number of different Super Speed USB 3.0 host controllers out there. In order to know which ones perform the best we run a series of tests that will put the controller through the ringer and see how it comes out on the other side. Each of our motherboards uses a different Super Speed USB 3.0 controller and you can find them below.

• ASUS P9X79 Pro – ASMedia USB 3.0 controller
• ASUS Sabertooth X58 – NEC USB 3.0 controller
• ASUS Crosshair V Formula – ASMedia USB 3.0 controller

CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.

Testing of the USB3 was done using the Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station. The drive used was an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS P9X79 Pro was right on track with our other motherboards that we have in the lineup. Our sequential read was 212.2MB/s which fell right between the Crosshair V Formula’s 204.2MB/s and the Sabertooth X58′s 218.3MB/s. The sequential write of the ASUS P9X79 Pro was slightly ahead of the pack with 178.2MB/s.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard USB 3.0 HD Tune 4.61 Write Benchmark Results

ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Motherboard USB 3.0 HD Tune 4.61 Read Benchmark Results

Testing of the USB3 was done using the Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station. The drive used was an OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to take the top spot in both the read and write tests in HD Tune 4.61. The ASUS P9X79 Pro was able to hit 228.0MB/s which was enough to edge out the ASUS Sabertooth X58′s read rate of 225.7MB/s. The Average write of the P9X79 Pro was 236.5MB/s which is 32.2MB/s faster than the Crosshair V Formula and 77.2MB/s faster than the ASUS Sabertooth X58!

System Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with the power supplies, case fans, video cards and hard drives. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement. For load measurements, Prime95′s in-place large FFT’s were run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat. Curious about real world scenarios, we decided to drop Furmark and ran 3DMark 11 on the performance preset and took the maximum power consumption during the first GPU test.

Benchmark Results: The idle power consumption of the ASUS P9X79 Pro was just below the 100Watt mark at 97Watts. When we loaded up the Intel Core i7 3960X with Prime95 Large FFT’s we saw an average power draw of 288Watts once the i7 3960X dropped out of Turbo. During the first few moments when turbo was active we saw a power draw of 330Watts on the ASUS P9X79 Pro. Our gaming load using 3DMark 11 was lower than most of our systems drawing only 236Watts. The only system that had a lower gaming power consumption was the EVGA Z68 FTW with 208 Watts.

ASUS P9X79 Pro Overclocking

Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Always remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so our results will differ from what you might be able to get.

The Intel Core I7 3960X features a Bclk of 100MHz and uses a x33 multiplier to achieve the final processor speed of 3.3GHz. In the above CPUz 1.58.7 screen shot it also has a Turbo Mode. With all of the cores loaded it will increase the multiplier to 36 and all the way up to 39 depending on the system load. The Intel Core i7 3960X is the latest in a long line of Extreme Edition processors. Being an Extreme Edition processor means that the i7 3960X has an unlocked multiplier. Unlike the previous LGA1155 Sandy Bridge processors, LGA2011 processors can also be overclocked by increasing the Bclk.

The ASUS P9X79 Pro features the ability to Auto Tune the system, without heading into the BIOS. To tempt our fate with overclocking, we simply flipped the TPU switch on the ASUS P9X79 Pro while the system was shut down, and then fired it up. Once we loaded into Windows we opened up CPUz 1.58.7 and found our Intel Core i7 3960X had been overclocked to ~4.3GHz! Not bad considering all we did was flip a switch. The overclock was achieved with a Bclk of 126MHz and a multiplier of 34.

We couldn’t leave well enough alone. We had to tempt our fate even further. We fired up ASUS AI Suite II and started increasing the system multiplier to see how far we could push all six cores of the Intel Core i7 3960X. After a few Blue Screens of Death, and a few tweaks to the system we were able to hit a rock solid processor speed of 4.9GHz! We had to increase the voltage to 1.495V and tweak a few other settings through the AI Suite II utility (you can find the settings we used below), overall though the ASUS AI Suite II utility made the overclock extremely easy to do.

To test the system stability we fired up wPrime. Since we were already running it, we figured why not hang on to the scores, so that we could see exactly what the Intel Core i7 3960X is capable of. In the 32m runs we were able to knock off 1.364 seconds off of the standard settings, the 1024m runs were an average of 29.874 seconds faster!

The TurboV EVO tool in the ASUS AI Suite II worked flawlessly during our time with the ASUS P9X79 Pro. Above you can see that we had the CPU Vcore set to 1.495V and the Multiplier set at 49.

Our CPU Load-Line Calibration was set to Ultra High, the CPU Current Capability was set to 130% and the VCCSA Current Capability was set to 120%, and our CPU Power Phase Control was set at Optimized.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The performance of the Intel X79 Express chipset didn’t exactly wow me by any means. At least not in the series of tests that we run for our motherboard reviews. Please don’t get me wrong, it pretty much outperformed all of the systems that we compared it to. Especially in the SiSoftware Sandra Memory Bandwidth test where it was more than double the performance of anything else we tested. The series of tests that we used today were designed more to gauge the performance of the ASUS P9X79 Pro rather than the performance of the Intel Core i7 3960X. With that being said, looking at the more CPU specific tests of the Intel Core i7 3960X I was definitely impressed. The CPU performance of the Intel Core i7 3960X is going to be tough to beat for anything that can take advantage of the multiple threads. For more details on the more CPU orientated performance of the Intel Core i7 3960X be sure to check out the Legit Reviews Intel Core i7 3960X Processor Review here.

Back to the matter at hand: the ASUS P9X79 Pro Intel X79 Express motherboard. While the overall performance of the Intel X79 Express chipset didn’t wow me (in my battery of tests), the gaming performance does outperform all of our other systems in multi-GPU setups. The single card performance of the Intel X79 platform was right on par with our other systems, but once we fired up two graphics cards in either NVIDIA SLI or AMD CrossFireX the ASUS P9X79 Pro started to shine! In some of our gaming tests the ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard was as much as 30 frames per second faster than the next board. What makes this impressive is the fact that both of the systems had nearly the same single card performance! Intel has really made some improvement in the way that multi-GPU scaling is performed.

Typically speaking, there isn’t a huge difference between motherboard performances, at least not in day-to-day usage. What does separate motherboards is the feature set. When it comes to features the ASUS P9X79 Pro didn’t leave much out. With features like the ASUS SSD Caching, USB Boost, DTS audio, and the added benefit of the ASUS AI Suite II that offers many of the BIOS options from within Windows, this is a feature set that will be tough to beat!

Once we get a few more Intel X79 motherboards on hand, it’s going to be interesting to see how each one performs. Since the ASUS P9X79 Pro is the first Intel X79 motherboard to come across our bench, it’s really too early to say that the P9X79 Pro is a great performing motherboard. If our history with ASUS motherboards is any sort of indicator, the ASUS P9X79 Pro has set the bar nice and high for our future X79 boards!

One of the features that has been optimized for the Intel X79 Express chipset is three-way SLI. When running three NVIDIA GPU’s in SLI on the X79 platform they’re seeing 10-30% gains over the performance of the same setup on an Intel X58 platform. Between the increased PCIe lanes and the improved bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 ready slots the graphics cards have more room to stretch their legs.

One of the aspects of the Intel X79 platform that I’m not too keen on is the price point. At $329.00 the ASUS P9X79 Pro is on the lower end of the price spectrum. We are hearing that the expected price of all Intel X79 motherboards will likely be between $300 and $500. This may be a tough pill for some to swallow in today’s economy. I’m not saying that the ASUS P9X79 Pro price is out of line, it’s right in line with what we were expecting before we got our hands on any of the hardware. Since Intel has the top performing gear right now, if we want the best performance out there, we’ll have to pay for it. The ASUS P9X79 Pro is backed by a three year warranty from ASUS.

Legit Bottom Line: If you are looking for a great motherboard to build an Intel Sandy Bridge-E machine around, the ASUS P9X79 Pro was incredibly easy to work with, was rock solid, and has a feature set that that will make many envious.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1767/1/

Last month Legit Reviews reviewed the AMD A8-3850 ‘Llano’ APU and our article looks like it was well received by our readers with the exception of one thing.  We’ve had a number of readers write in saying that it was great that we tested this platform with 1866MHz memory, but they are building budget systems and want to use 1333MHz or 1600MHz memory. It is true that we didn’t look at performance numbers of AMD’s A-Series APUs on the A75 chipset at 1333MHz, 1600MHz and since this platform is very budget friendly we see this as a valid point.

Legit Reviews does not want to ostracize any of our readers and pride ourselves on our no-BS straight forward and honest reviews, so we went back to the drawing board to get you the performance data you need before ordering in a new platform. We’ll be using the Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard for testing again, but since we updated the BIOS to version F3 we re-did all of the performance numbers as we did see improved performance with the new BIOS.

We also got a few questions about how the platform handles 16GB of memory and if there are any stability issues with running all four memory slots fully populated. We’ve seen performance gains with all the memory slots full on AMD platforms in the past, so we’ll be looking at 2x4GB and 4x4GB performance as well in our test results. Not too many people will be running 16GB of memory on the Llano A-Series APU, but we found no issues in doing so with G.Skill Ripjaws

So, to reiterate what our goals are for this article one more time:

• Benchmark 2x4GB memory kits at 1333MHz, 1600MHz, 1866MHz to find performance differences
• Benchmark 2x4GB versus 4x4GB to see if filling all the memory slots impacts performance
• See if we have any issues running 16GB of memory

This should be easy enough, so let’s take a look at the test system and get right to the performance numbers.

The Test System

Before we look at the numbers, here is a brief glance at the test system that was used. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running.

The AMD Test System:

The test system was run in dual-channel memory in four configurations:

• 2x4GB at 1333MHz with 8-8-8-24 1T timings and 1.50V
• 2x4GB at 1600MHz with 8-8-8-24 1T timings and 1.50V
• 2x4GB at 1866MHz with 9-10-9-28 1T timings and 1.50V
• 4x4GB at 1866MHz with 9-10-9-28 1T timings and 1.50V

We had to relax the timings at 1866MHz as the G.Skill memory kit would not run with CL8 timings at clock frequencies this high. The nice thing about testing these memory settings is that it is all done with the memory divider in the BIOS, so the GPU and CPU clock speeds remain constant throughout the benchmarking process. The Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD4H motherboard was running BIOS F3, which was the latest build available when testing was completed. You can see all of the CPU-Z and GPU-Z information for this test platform below.

The integrated graphics comes up as Radeon HD 6550D according to GPU-Z and we used AMD CATALYST 11.6 drivers was used for testing.

Sisoft Sandra 2011 SP3

The Sisoft Sandra 2011 SP3 benchmark utility just came out a few weeks ago and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. Sandra 2011 comes with support for Virtualisation (Virtual PC/Server, Hyper-V, VMware) and GPGPU (OpenCL, DirectX 11 DirectCompute), but today we will be using the program to look at memory and CPU performance!

Results: Our test system uses the AMD A8-3850 ‘Llano’ APU and as you can see from the Sandra Memory Bandwidth test results the memory clock speed greatly impacts the memory bandwidth. The 2x4GB 1333MHz CL8 memory kit was able to hit ~12.7GB/s memory bandwidth. Moving up to the 2x4GB 1600MHz CL8 memory kit we saw the bandwidth jump up to ~15.0GB/s, which is a 18% improvement over 1333MHz. The jump up to the 2x4GB 1866MHz CL9 memory kit was only 1GB/s, but we had to loosen the timings from 8-8-8-24 1T to 9-10-9-28 1T and the looser timings always hurt performance.  Running the 4x4GB 1866MHz CL9 memory kit offered the most performance as once again we found that this AMD APU loved having all the memory banks occupied and with more memory lanes available for the APU the performance was able to improve.

Since we are looking at memory performance in this article we felt that memory latency needs to be looked at, so we ran the Sandra Memory Latency benchmark to see what the performance looked like.

Results: We found that the 1333MHz memory kit had a memory latency of 86.8ns, 1600MHz was at 80.1ns and 1866MHz was 76.2ns.  It was a bit odd to see the 4x4GB 1866MHz CL9 kit running slower than the 2x4GB 1866MHz CL9 kit, but the difference is not significant or a concern.

x264 HD Encoding

Simply put, it is a reproducible measure of how fast your machine can encode a short HD-quality video clip into a high quality x264 video file. It’s nice because everyone running it will use the same video clip and software. The video encoder (x264.exe) reports a fairly accurate internal benchmark (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encode and it also uses multi-core processors very efficiently. All these factors make this an ideal benchmark to compare different processors and systems to each other. We are using x264 HD v4.0 for this test.

This application did fairly well when run on 4 threads, as you can see from the screen shot above. The first pass was not using all of the processing power available on the four cores, but on the second pass all 4 threads were at ~98% load.

Benchmark Results: Running the x264 HD benchmark showed that running an 1866MHz memory kit with an AMD A-Series APU means you’ll get roughly 4% better performance than a system running 1333MHz memory. We are talking small differences here between all three memory speeds, but the results are measurable and repeatable. 

Handbrake

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It is popular today as it allows you to transcode multiple input video formats to h.264 output format and is highly multithreaded.

This workload is a 43-second HDV. The input file is encoded in Mpeg format. Video encode parameters are 23.9mbps, 1440*1080, 29.9fps. Audio encode parameters are 384 kbps, 48kHz, 2channel, mpeg audio version 1 layer 2. File size is 128MB. The workload is encoded into h.264 output format using the preset – high profile. HandBrake version 0.9.5 was used for benchmarking.

Benchmark Results: HandBrake version 0.9.5 also showed that as memory clock speed increases that the performance of the platform does improve, but not by a significant amount on our 43 second video clip.  If you were using a video clip that was an hour long you’ll obviously see completion time differences that are minutes apart and not seconds apart.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is a survival horror video game developed and published by Capcom. Resident Evil 5 features similar gameplay to Resident Evil 4, with context-sensitive controls and dynamic cut scenes also making a return. The player can control Chris Redfield or Sheva Alomar in a similar fashion to Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil 4, with the same over-the-shoulder perspective.

We ran the Resident Evil 5 benchmark in DX10 mode with all the image quality settings turned down, which just happens to be the default settings of the game.

This game title runs on up to four threads as you can see from the task manager shot above that was taken on a test system that was running the Intel Core i7-2820QM processor.

Benchmark Results: We had a gut feeling that gaming performance would be the most impacted area when it comes to performance across different memory speeds on the AMD A-Series APU and we found that to be very true.  Running the 2x4GB 1333MHz CL8 memory kit we were able to get 50.9FPS at a resolution of 1280×720.  Switching to the 2x4GB 1600MHz CL8 memory kit we saw performance jump up to 60.7FPS, which is a performance difference of more than 19% and we could really notice a difference in other game titles as well. The move up to 1866MHz CL9 memory bumped up performance around 1FPS, which isn’t nearly as impressive as the jump from 1333MHz to 1600MHz. Populating all four of the memory slots with the 4x4GB 1866MHz memory kit once again shows that running four DDR3 memory modules does help boost performance over running just two DDR3 modules.  This is true for all memory speeds in case you are wondering.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

The events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl following the ending in which Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness. Having discovered the open path to the Zone’s center, the government decides to stage a large-scale operation to take control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat utilizes the XRAY 1.6 Engine, allowing advanced modern graphical features through the use of DirectX 11 to be fully integrated; one outstanding feature being the inclusion of real-time GPU tessellation. Regions and maps feature photo realistic scenes of the region it is made to represent. There is also extensive support for older versions of DirectX, meaning that Call of Pripyat is also compatible with older DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 10.1 graphics cards.

The game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CoP has no internal benchmarking tools built into the game engine, but they do have a standalone benchmark available that we used for our testing purposes. The screen capture above shows the main window of the benchmark with our settings. Notice we are running Enhanced Full Dynamic Lighting “DX10″ as our renderer. Under the advanced settings we disabled tessellation, MSAA and ambient occlusion.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat looks to only be threaded for one CPU core as you can see from the Windows Task Manager screen capture that was done during a benchmark run.

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat has results similar to Resident Evil 5 and shows a significant performance jump from 1333MHz to 1600MHz.  More performance was seen moving up to 1866MHz, but again it was just around 1FPS again at respectable gaming resolutions like 1280×720 and 1920×1080.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

We are very happy that the readers of Legit Reviews wrote in and asked us about how memory performance scales with clock frequency on AMD’s A-Series APU. We learned a good deal about this platform by doing more memory specific testing and we are happy to report back that we found no stability or performance issues on our test platforms at any of the clock frequencies and even with 16GB of memory stuffed into this platform.

We found that the memory bandwidth ranges from 13GB/s to 16GB/s with typical dual channel memory kits on our AMD A8-3850 APU and Gigabyte A75-UD4H motherboard. This difference doesn’t sound that great, but a 3GB/s increase when dealing with 13GB is a very nice 23% performance increase. Most of this performance gain is seen when moving up from a 1333Mhz to a 1600MHz memory kit is where you’ll see the largest performance jump. For example 2x4GB 1333MHz CL8 memory kit was able to hit ~12.7GB/s memory bandwidth, but the 2x4GB 1600MHz CL8 memory kit has ~15.0GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a very nice 18% improvement over 1333MHz. Loading up all of the boards memory slots with four memory modules rather than just two modules did result in a slight performance boost that was noticed in nearly all of the benchmarks that we ran. Some areas like video encoding offered minimal performance gains though, so if you just surf the web and rip a video here and there a super fast 1866MHz memory kit isn’t necessary.

We also saw over a 20% gain in performance in gaming benchmarks, so if you ever plan on playing games with an A6-3650 or A8-3850 APU then you’ll most certainly want to invest in a 1600MHz or 1800MHz memory kit. Since the AMD A-Series APU and A75 chipset are all about being budget friendly, you’ll want to get a memory kit at a good price too.

The Lowest Priced 8GB (2x4GB) Memory Kits on Newegg Today:

• 1333MHz: Crucial CT2KIT51264BA1339 at $56.99 shipped
• 1600MHz: ADATA XPG Gaming Series AX3U1600GC4G9-2G at $54.99 Shipped AR
• 1866MHz: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL at $69.99 Shipped

At this time the best bang for your buck clearly a 1600MHz memory kit as it performs much better than a 1333MHz kit and actually costs less after a rebate. The 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 1866MHz memory kit that we used for this review normally retails for $84.99, but is available in a Newegg Shell Shocker deal right now at a great price of $69.99 shipped. If you want to get the most performance from this platform running 1866MHz is the best method, but you’ll have to pay a premium for memory that fast. Not too many surprises to be found here. As you might have guessed having memory at higher clock speeds and having more memory in the system resulted in faster performance numbers!

The AMD A8-3850 APU is an impressive little processor that certainly won’t break the bank. For example if you wanted a budget beater system you can get away with a processor, micro-ATX motherboard and a 8GB 1600MHz memory kit for under $260:

Shopping List:

• ECS A75F-M2 FM1 AMD A75 motherboard – $62.98
• AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz APU – $139.99
• 8GB ADATA XPG Gaming Series 1600MHz memory – $54.99

Grand Total: $257.96 shipped after two rebates

We hope that this review helped you figure out what the best memory speed is for this platform! We enjoy listening to reader feedback and when we can we will do our best to running the benchmarks that you request!

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1652/1/

A few weeks back Legit Reviews was able to take a look at the new AMD Llano ‘Sabine’ mobile platform, without a doubt in our minds we were able to give it our “Editors Choice” award for the impressive performance we saw from the system. Today we have the opportunity to look at the desktop version of Llano code named “Lynx”. The architecture between the mobile and desktop versions is virtually identical. For our delve into the AMD “Lynx” platform our board of choice is the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard. This particular motherboard became available earlier in the day prior to the official embargo lift and is retailing for $119.99 plus shipping. While it may be a low cost board, it is by no means lacking in features.

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro features DIGI+ VRM with dual intelligent processors. The first of the two is the TPU, also known as the TurboV Processing unit. The TPU will automatically adjust your systems performance with a simple switch onboard the F1A75-M Pro or it can be accomplished through the use of ASUS AI Suite II software. The second of the intelligent processors is the EPU. Like the TPU the EPU can be accessed on the motherboard by flipping a switch, or through AI Suite II as well. The EPU will moderate the power consumption and

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro offers the latest technologies available. The AMD A75 FCH supports the latest SATA III 6Gbps interface as well as Super Speed USB 3.0. Super Speed USB 3.0 offers up to 5Gbps transfer rates and is up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0! The ASUS F1A75-M Pro combined with the AMD A8-3850 APU offers DirectX 11 capabilities via the AMD Radeon HD 6550D integrated in to the APU itself.

The AMD A8-3850 we will be using in conjunction with the ASUS F1A75-M Pro uses a base frequency of 100MHz and a 29x multiplier to achieve the 2900MHz core clock. All of the A Series APUs have locked multipliers which means that any overclocking will have to be done through the base clock.

The AMD A8-3850 has a discrete level graphics engine built right in to it. The AMD Radeon HD 6550D. The Radeon HD 6550D has 400 Radeon ‘STARS’ cores, 5 SIMDs, 20 Texture Units, and a GPU Core Clock Speed of 600MHz. the total GPU Peak Compute power is 480 GFLOPS.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro Features and Specifications

ASUS F1A75-M Pro Retail Packaging and Bundle

The front of the retail packaging for the ASUS F1A75-M Pro displays the name of the product as well as some of the technologies behind it. A couple of the key points displayed on the front of the box are the ASUS DIGI+ VRM, TPU, Super Speed USB 3.0, and that it is an AMD A8 Vision motherboard.

The back of the retail packaging for the ASUS F1A75-M Pro goes into detail on the key points from the front of the packaging. Along the left side is a bullet point of the features as well as a diagram of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard.

Opening up the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard packaging we can see that it is well protected within the packaging.

The bundle that accompanies the ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard seems a little on the light side, but it does include everything you will need to set it up. We have the manual, driver disc, I/O shield, as a pair of SATA cables.

Now that we have taken a look at the retail packaging and bundle for the ASUS F1A75-M Pro, we can pull the board out of the anti-static bag and take an in-depth look at the F1A75-M Pro APU motherboard.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro Motherboard Layout

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro features the blue and black color scheme that we have seen on the recent ASUS motherboards, except of course for a few of the segment boards. The F1A75-M Pro Packs a lot of features into the smail micro ATX form factor, so let’s scroll down and take a look!

The new AMD FM1 socket and AMD APU’s will support memory up to 1866MHz. The ASUS F1A75-M Pro takes full advantage of this and will support up to 64Gb of memory in a dual channel configuration. Along the edge of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro we have a couple of switches for the E.P.U. and the T.P.U., with the MemOK! button to the left. Along the right side of the F1A75-M Pro we can see the four pin CPU fan header.

To the left of the 24 pin motherboard power plug is an additional four pin fan header followed by six SATA III 6Gbps ports. Working our way up the left edge of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro we have the pin out for the front panel L.E.D.’s and switches. Just past that is solder points the TPM would be, though the ASUS F1A75-M Pro isn’t equipped with it. After the location for the TPM is the clear CMOS jumper, Super Speed USB 3.0 header and an additional four USB 2.0 headers.

Swinging the ASUS F1A75-M Pro around once again, we can see the COM port header as well as the front panel audio header. Working our way around the corner and up the edge we can catch a peek at the Realtek ALC892 Hi-Def audio Codec right in the corner with the ITE IT8728F super I/O controller, as well as the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller just beyond. The ASUS F1A75-M Pro supports dual AMD Graphics cards in CrossfireX with a pair of PCIe X16 slots. The F1A75-M Pro also has a single PCIe X1 slot and an old school PCI slot.

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro has a total of six USB ports, two of which are Super Speed USB 3.0 while the remaining four are USB 2.0. We also have a DVI, DSub, and HDMI for video outputs. For audio out we have an optical SPDIF and six 3.5mm audio jacks, and last but not least is the RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet controlled by the Realtek RTL8111E.

The retention bracket for the FM1 socket is the same as what is on the new AMD 990FX motherboards as well as what we have seen in previous sockets from AMD. This is great news if you are upgrading from and earlier platform and don’t want to part with your custom cooler.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro UEFI BIOS

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro motherboard uses the UEFI BIOS that we have come to love from ASUS. The main page of the UEFI BIOS is the ASUS EZ Mode. Here we can check the system temps, voltages, and fan speeds. The ASUS EZ Mode also allows us to change the boot priority between the different devices connected to the system.

Once we switch in to the Advanced mode we are first brought to the Main page. Here we can change the language, date, time, and security settings.

The AI Tweaker with in the ASUS F1A75-M Pro is where we can set all of the settings for the CPU and RAM. Including frequencies and voltages.

We can also set the DIGI+ VRM settings within the AI Tweaker.

The Advanced tab of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro will grant us access to the CPU Configuration, SATA Configuration, USB Configuration, North Bridge Configuration, Onboard Devices, and APM.

The CPU Configuration sub-page will let us change various CPU settings like the C6 states, and AMD Powernow function.

The SATA Configuration sub-page will let us change switch between IDE, AHCI, and RAID mode.

The USB Configuration sub-page allowsus to change the various USB Settings for both USB 2.0 and the Super Speed USB 3.0.

The NB Configuration is where we will find the graphic settings for the AMD A8-3850 APU.

The Onboard Device configuration lets us disable the various onboard devices like the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller, and onboard audio.

The hardware monitor page within the ASUS F1A75-M Pro UEFI BIOS is quite possibly one of the most important pages, at least to me. If you have ever failed to mount a CPU cooler properly or forgotten to plug in the CPU fan (guilty), you know how important it is to check temperatures before you start the build. On the monitor page we can check the temperatures of the CPU, and motherboard. We can check fan speeds of the four fans, as well as checking the voltages of the CPU, 3.3V, 5V, and 12 Volt rails as detected by the ASUS F1A75-M Pro.

The Boot page has all of the settings for the system boot process.

The Tools Page has the ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility, ASUS OC Profile, as well as the ASUS SPD Information.

Last but by no means least is the Exit options.

The Legit Reviews Test System

All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with all the latest updates installed. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. The Corsair Vengeance memory modules were run in Dual-channel mode at 1600MHz with 9-9-9-24-2t timings. The XFX Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards were run with 11.5B CATALYST suite drivers and the MSI N560GTX-Ti HAWX graphics cards were running Forceware drivers 275.36. The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition processor was running at the default clock of 3.3GHz with turbo enabled. The ASUS Sabertooth 990FX was running the latest BIOS.

SiSoftware Sandra 2011 SP3 Memory Bandwidth

A year ago, SiSoftware released Sandra 2010 with full support for Windows 7; in the 18 months since the launch of Windows 7, more than ever before we have seen the line blur between PC and entertainment hubs. Two months ago we released a Blu-Ray benchmark, now we have added a brand-new Media Transcoding benchmark using the new Media Foundation of Windows 7. We have also added yet another benchmark (GPGPU Cryptography) which allows direct comparison of CPU performance (using crypto instruction sets) and GPGPU performance.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro didn’t quite compete with the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro memory bandwidth. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro was able to average 20+GB/s in both tests while the ASUS F1A75-M Pro averaged 14.655/14.782GB/s. One thing worth noting, although two different versions of Sandra 2011 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to squeeze more memory performance out of the Corsair Vengeance kit than the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX was able to by nearly 2GB/s!

ASUS F1A75-M Pro IGP directx 9 Performance

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro had some extremely playable framerates in Total War: Shogun 2 at both resolutions that we tested. At 1280×1024 the A8-3850 APU was able to crank out 56.15 frames per second while the Intel Core i5 2500k was only 23.07 frames per second. The F1A75-M Pro and the A8-3850 out performed the 2500k by 143.4%! Cranking up the resolution to 1920×1080 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was still playable with 37.98 frames per second while the Core i7 2500k system averaged just over 15 frames per second. That is a difference of 151% at 1920×1080!

Batman Arkham Asylum tells us a tale very similar to Total War: Shogun 2. At 1280×1024 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro with the AMD A8-3850 APU was able to average 51 frames per second while the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro and Intel Core i5 2500k averaged only 29 frames per second. At 1920×1080 the AMD APU system averaged 32 frames per second while the 2500k system averaged only 19 frames per second.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro IGP DirectX 11 Performance

Total War: Shogun 2 has the option for DirectX 11 graphics. We decided to give the integrated graphics on our systems a bit of a workout with DirectX 11. Unfortunately only one of our systems is DirectX 11 capable when using the Integrated Graphics. Obviously that is the AMD A8-3850 APU, so while the AMD APU system was busy cranking out DirectX 11 benchmarks, the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro and the Intel Core i5 2500k sat idly by. With the graphics quality set to low in Total War: Shogun 2 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to crank out 92.85 frames per second at 1280×1024 and 65.23 frames per second at 1920×1080.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat was able to maintain a playable framerate at both resolutions with the image quality turned down. At 1280×1024 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to pull an average framerate of 40.2 frames per second and at 1920×1080 we saw an average of 30.7 frames per second in DirectX 11

In Aliens Vs. Predator the AMD A8-3850 and ASUS F1A75-M Pro did struggle a bit. At 1280×1024 we saw an average of 26.1 frames per second while at the resolution of 1920×1080 we saw only 18 frames per second.

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to pull out an overall score of 1783 3DMarks in Futuremark 3DMark11 at the entry level preset. The GPU score in 3DMark 11 was 1645 3DMarks. Overall not a bad performance considering it is integrated graphics!

ASUS F1A75-M Pro Dedicated Card performance

Taking a look at DirectX 11 gaming performance with a discrete graphics card we can see a little bit of difference between the platforms in Total War: Shogun 2. At 1280×1024 the 2500K filled ASUS P8Z68-V Pro had a slight edge over the ASUS F1A75-M Pro with 75.9 frames per second compared to 72.04 frames per second. At 1920×1080 the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro continued to lead but the margin diminished. We saw a difference of only .33 frames per second at the higher resolution.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to average 94.2 frames per second at 1280×1024 while the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro average 13% higher with 106.4 frames per second. The margins at 1920×1080 were once again smaller than they were at 1280×1024. At 1920×1080 the ASUS F1A75-M Pro averaged 70.8 frames per second while the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro was 5.2% faster with an average of 74.5 frames per second.

The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro lead in Aliens Vs. Predator by an ever so slight margin. At 1280×1024 there was only .5 frames per second difference between the two platforms. At 1920×1080 we saw a difference of only .3 frames per second with the ASUS F1A75-M Pro just behind.

Futuremark 3DMark11 Synthetic Gaming Benchmark with Discrete Graphics

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the 3D graphics performance of gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 uses a native DirectX 11 engine designed to make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Since Futuremark is releasing 3DMark11 today we decided to run the benchmark at both performance and extreme presets to see how our hardware will run.

ASUS ASUS F1A75-M Pro 3DMark11 Performance Preset Benchmark Results

ASUS ASUS F1A75-M Pro 3DMark11 Extreme Preset Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: In Futuremark 3DMark11 we are seeing some hefty differences at the Performance Preset. the overall performance of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro came in at 4330 3DMarks while the Intel Platform came in at 5003 3DMarks. The GPU scores were quite a bit closer though. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro had a GPU score of 4698 while the ASUS F1A75-M Pro had a GPU score of 4551. That is only a 3.23% difference while the overall score showed a 15.54% difference. The Extreme Preset the scores were closer though the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro still had a slight edge with an overall score of 1609 while the ASUS F1A75-M Pro had an overall score of 1547.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage Synthetic Benchmark

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware. 3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro AMD APU 3DMark Vantage Entry Level Benchmark Results

ASUS F1A75-M Pro AMD APU 3DMark Vantage Performance Benchmark Results

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro pretty much ran the table in 3DMark Vantage. During the Entry Level Preset test the ASUS F1A75-M Pro had an overall score of 15689 3DMarks and a GPU score of 19479. The integrated graphics on the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro and Intel Core i5 2500k couldn’t keep up with an overall score of 10106 and a GPU score of 8700. The overall score of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was 55.2% higher than the Intel Combo and the GPU score was 123.9% higher! Cranking the preset level to Performance in 3DMark Vantage the ASUS F1A75-M Pro pulls further ahead of the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro/Intel Core i5 2500k. The overall score of the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was 4155 3DMarks compared to the Intel systems score of 1846 3DMarks. Thats a performance difference of 125%. The GPU scores were 3481 3DMarks for the APU system and 1418 3DMarks for the Intel system. That is a difference of 145.5%!

Rightmark Audio Analyzer

The RightMark Audio Analyzer suite is designed for testing quality of analog and digital paths of any audio devices, be it a sound card, an MP3 player, a consumer CD/DVD player or an acoustic set. The results are obtained by playing and recording test signals passed through the tested audio path by means of frequency analysis algorithms. The latest version of RightMark Audio Analyzer can be found here.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer Comparison Chart

• ASUS F1A75-M Pro – Realtek ALC892 8-Ch High Definition Audio CODEC
• ASUS P8Z68-V Pro- Realtek ALC892 8-Ch High Definition Audio CODEC

There isn’t any discernible difference between our two platforms today. Likely that is because they are from the same manufacturer, same audio codec and likely the same implementation of the IC. Though, what time I have had with them I haven’t heard any issues with the audio quality.

Network Throughput Testing

The Gigabit PCIe Ethernet controllers vary on each board, so it will be interesting to see what the performance is on all the boards. Each of the boards uses a different Gigabit Controller. Let’s take a look at what controller is on each of the boards.

• ASUS F1A75-M Pro – Realtek 8111E Gigabit LAN Controller
• ASUS P8Z68-V Pro – Intel 82579, 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller

To test the Gigabit PCIe Ethernet controllers we used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet Throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet controllers used on the AMD Motherboards. To do this properly we set up one machine as the server: in this test an Intel Core i7 970 system with an MSI Big Bang XPower motherboard acted as our Gigabit LAN server.

On the server side, we used the following Command Line for Gigabit PCIe Ethernet Testing:

Ntttcpr -m 4,0,<Client IP> -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

On the client side (the motherboard being tested), we used the following Command Line:

Ntttcps -m 4,0,<Server IP> -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

At the conclusion of each test we recorded the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen as that is the system being tested.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro has a slight edge in total throughput, leading the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro with 945.612MB/s throughput versus the 938.668MB/s. The Intel 82579 Gigabit LAN Controller on the P8Z68-V Pro used significantly less CPU power.

SATA III 6Gbps Performance Testing

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

The SATA6 Testing was done using Crucial RealSSD C300 256Gb SATA6 SSD drive.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro averaged 278.9MB/s on the read and 195.9MB/s for the write tests. This is below what we saw with the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to hit an average of 286.8MB/s read rate and 221.7MB/s average read rate. The Average read was ~20MB/s below the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro but the average write was just above the Intel system by 1.7MB/s.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance Testing

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device as possible.

Testing of the USB3 was done using the SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure. The drive used was a Crucial Technology RealSSD C300 SSD.

Benchmark Results: The ASUS F1A75-M Pro fell short of the performance of the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro. Though the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to pull out an Average Read of 106.9MB/s and an Average Write of 103.0MB/s.

HD Tune Pro 4.01 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

Our testing of the USB 3.0 performance was done using the SUNBEAMTECH Airbox USB3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure. The drive used was a Crucial Technology RealSSD C300 SSD.

Benchmark Results: In HD Tune the ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to hit an Average Read rate of 101.4MB/s and an Average Write speed of 99.1MB/s. This isn’t the best performance we have ever seen for Super Speed USB 3.0 performance, nor is it the worst by a long shot.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro System Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with identical power supplies, Solid-Sate Drives, Memory kits and motherboards from the same company. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement. For load measurements, Prime95′s in-place large FFT’s were run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat. Curious about other test  scenarios, we decided to 3DMark Vantage the performance preset and took the maximum power consumption during the first GPU test. We also tested a video transcode using HandBrake 0.95 to see how the power draw on that was.

Benchmark Results: The Intel Core i5-2500k Processor is a quad-core processor that has a maximum TDP of 95 Watts, while the AMD A8-3850 APU has a TDP of 100W. One would expect the two processors to use roughly the same amount of power, but we saw huge differences at an idle and measurable differences at load.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I’m gonna have to take a step back and look at the ASUS F1A75-M Pro from a little bit of a different angle than usual. Much of my background with computers is from an enthusiast point of view. I like to to go fast, score high on the benchmarks, and have an excessive number of frames per second. That’s not exactly what the AMD Lynx platform is design for. The “Lynx” platform is aimed at the mainstream market and the casual gamer. Though it did do pretty darn well, but well touch on performance shortly.

Before we get to far into this, I would like to spend a few moments discussing the differences between the systems that we compared today. Most of the components used were identical between our two systems.

• XFX Radeon HD 6950
• Corsair Vengeance 8Gb kit
• Corsair TX 750 Watt PSU

The above components won’t effect the price comparison of the build. What is different is the CPU or APU, and the Motherboard. The key component that is going to effect the price in our particular case is the processor. The Intel Core i5 2500K is currently retailing for $219.99. The AMD A8-3850 is going to have an suggested retail price of only $135.00. Throw in the fact that the ASUS F1A75-M Pro is retailing for $119.99 plus shipping and you have a motherboard and CPU that doesn’t cost much more than the Intel Core i5 2500k alone.

When we compared performance between the Intel Core i5 2500k system and the ASUS F1A75-M Pro APU system, there were a few areas that the ASUS F1A75-M Pro fell short on. To be fair though, as we pointed out above the Core i5 2500k system is a more expensive system to build. Where we saw the differences was when using the XFX Radeon HD 6950. When we tested with the discrete card we saw a little bit lower game performance, but nothing horribly significant. When it comes down to it the performance differences that we saw wouldn’t effect day to day use.

Where the ASUS F1A75-M Pro truly excelled today was the performance of the integrated graphics. Every one of our graphics tests that we compared the Intel HD Graphics 3000 to the AMD A8-3850 with AMD Radeon HD 6550D there was a clear and decisive winner. For our recap of the graphics performance let’s start with Total War: Shogun 2 in DirectX 9 mode. The ASUS F1A75-M Pro was able to pull out an average that was 143.4% (1280×1024)faster than the Intel system! Increasing the resolution to 1920×1080 we saw an even larger difference of 151%! We also tested Batman Arkham Asylum and saw differences of 76% at 1280×1024 and 68% at 1920×1080. That’s a pretty significant difference considering the ASUS F1A75-M Pro costs significantly less! We’re not done yet with the advantages of the F1A75-M Pro!

DirectX 11 is the latest and greatest version of DirectX and adds some eye-candy to today’s games. Our combination of AMD A8-3850 and ASUS F1A75-M Pro is quite capable of DirectX 11 performance. If we were to compare our systems from today with DirextX 11 it would once again be the ASUS F1A75-M Pro coming out on top simply because the Intel HD Graphics 3000 inside the Intel Core i5 2500 doesn’t support DirectX 11. While that makes it easy to declare the AMD APU system a winner, just supporting it isn’t enough. If it doesn’t perform it would be a waste of technology. Fortunately it does perform! In Futuremark 3DMark 11 the AMD Radeon HD 6550D was able to hit a solid score of E1783 3Dmarks! It isn’t the worlds fastest 3DMark 11 score, though it gets the job done in style.

The ASUS F1A75-M Pro retails for only $119.99 plus shipping and the AMD A8-3850 is expected to retail for only $135.00. As with most motherboards from ASUS the F1A75-M Pro is backed by a three year warranty for that piece of mind in the event of a motherboard failure.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1644/1/

Companies like ASUS have a their own design engineers and every so often the management will unlock their collar and let them run free. When that happens you end up with a ridiculous product that pushes the boundaries for what can be done with current technology. ASUS took the Republic of Gamers (ROG) product engineers and challenged them to design the fastest NVIDIA graphics card possible. One that could easily beat the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 or as some would dare say, design the card properly. By this we mean one that looks good, has two NVIDIA GF110 GPUs, has good cooling, amazing VRM and some room left for overclocking fun.

The end result is inside this box.  It is the ASUS ROG MARS II, which is basically a pair of GeForce GTX 580 cores running in SLI on a single PCB.  You might say that this has already been done before as NVIDIA has the GeForce GTX 590, but ASUS didn’t lower the core clock speeds on this card – they actually increased the speeds!

As you can see from the chart above the ASUS ROG MARS II has the same cores as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX590 graphics card, but they are clocked higher and with more power phases.  The price of the ASUS ROG MARS II is $1499, which is exactly double the cost of a regular ASUS GeForce GTX590! This card is for those that want the ultimate in single card performance and a conversation piece to brag about. When you buy the ASUS MARS II you enter an elite club as this card is a limited edition piece with just 999 being made worldwide.

The back of the box isn’t too exciting, but it does clearly list all the features of the ASUS ROG MARS II.

The box also has a front lid that opens up that gives you a peak at the card and a more in-depth look at some of the features of the card.  You can all see the aluminum number plate that shows you the number of the MARS II that is inside the box.

Sliding the card out of the box we see that it is packed in laser cut foam and shipped without a static bag.

The ASUS ROG MARS II comes with a business card sized aluminum plate that has the production number of this limited edition video card laser engraved on it. Our card that we received to review is number 511 of 999 being made.

The back of the card has the following saying on it:

This document certifies that the limited edition MARS II is an unique work of art designed by the ASUS ROG team. This Aluminum plate is individually laser carved and sequentially numbered to certify limited edition status, making it a collector’s item.

With the first layer of foam removed from the box we get our first look at the full MARS II video card and a look at some of the bundle that comes with the card.

For a card that costs $1499 the bundle isn’t really that impressive. You’ll find a single SLI bridge, DVI-to-VGA adapter, ASUS ROG case badge, two 2×6-pin PCIe to 8-pin PCIe power adapters, two rubber spacers for the PCI slots on the case and the driver CD and quick start guide.  The thought of running two of these cards in Quad-SLI is scary, but I’m sure someone will do it as some people don’t have a budget to worry about. It would have been nice to see some games or other items included with this card, but if you have $1500 to spend on a video card you likely don’t need some old game title to sweeten the deal.

Pulling the ASUS MARS II out of the box for the first time was magical. It’s almost the same feeling you get when you are seeing a blind date for the first time and finding out that you think she’s cute. You know the card is going to be a beast, but you didn’t expect how much it was going to hit you.

This is hard to do in pictures, but here is a shot of the ASUS MARS II sitting next to the MSI GeForce GTX 520. There is just a small different in size between the two video cards.

If the picture next to the GeForce GT 520 doesn’t do it for you, how about this one on a scale? The ASUS MARS II video card weighs in at 5 pounds 3.75 ounces or 2.37 kilograms for our friends in Europe.This is hands down the heaviest video card that we have ever held or seen!

Let’s take a look at all of the sides on the card.

A Closer Look at the MARS II

The ASUS MARS II is a massive video card that is 13″ in length, 6.2″ in height and an amazing 2.5″ thick. Since it is 2.5-inches in thickness it means that this is a triple slot video card. ASUS has the red and black color scheme going one, which is common with their ROG product line.

Looking down from the top of the card you see some branding on it, which is great for those that have a case window. If you buy this card you better have a case window! You can also see the two massive 12cm or 120mm cooling fans.  These gigantic fans push more than 600% more air flow than the solution that NVIDIA used on their reference GeForce GTX 590 video card.

The back of the card features a backplate that helps absorbs heat, reduces PCB bending by reinforcing the circuit board and looks awesome. ASUS also put some branding here and while it might look backwards, when installed in a system it will read properly.  Good job to ASUS for not overlooking little things like that on a card like this.

You might have noticed that there are two large black components clearly visible through the backplate. These are marked NEC/TOKIN 0E907 and are high speed Proadlizers. These are basically some of the best capacitors on the market right now as they feature extremely low ESL and ESR, have high current capability and high capacitance. We’ve seen ASUS use this on other high-end graphics cards and motherboards before, so you might have seen these before on other products.

The end of the card isn’t that exciting and has just some holes cut in a plate for improved airflow.

Spinning the card around to the other end we see the I/O panel and why the ASUS ROG MARS II takes up three PCI slots. When it comes to display connectivity you have two DVI ports, a regular sized HDMI port and DisplayPort. What still sucks on this card is that you are still limited to running just two active displays at a time. If ASUS could have found a way around this and could have enabled three monitor support from one cards it would have been amazing or even epic. Triple monitor gaming with this bad boy would have been awesome.

For those with too much money on their hands you have the ability to buy two of these cards and run Quad-SLI with them. You’ll notice that along the top edge of this card that there is something peeling. At first we thought this was protective film over the black paint, but it’s a black sticker that is already peeling off. Not what you want to see on a $1500 card that hasn’t even been used yet.

The ASUS MARS II doesn’t exactly sip power and it’s 21 power phases need plenty of power to run. ASUS placed three 8-pin PCIe video card power connectors on the top edge of the video card to solve this issue. If our math is correct these three connections should be able to geed 525 Watts of power to the card.  The little red button to the right of the connectors has a fan on it and text that says ’100%’. This button gives you the ability to run the fans at 100% without the need for any software. This is a pretty neat feature and these two 12cm fans really move some air when set to 100%!

We haven’t done temperature testing on the card yet, so we didn’t want fully remove the two GPU coolers. We did want to give you a peak under the metal case, so we removed the casing to give you a better look.The left GPU cooler also helps cool the NVIDIA NF200 chipset that serves as the PCI-Express bridge chip that marries the two GF110 GPUs together and then out the single PCI-Express 2.0 connector.

The GPU coolers being used on the ASUS MARS II feature four copper heatpipes that connect to a very large aluminum cooling fin array. We couldn’t get a good picture, but right under the heatpipes we could see that ASUS was using Samsung GDDR5 memory ICs with part number K4G10325FE-HC04. These are rated at 1250MHz (5000MHz effective) and ASUS is only running them at 4000MHz! This card should be fun to overclock!

ASUS Marketing Slides

ASUS placed an NDA on North American websites, so we can’t show you any performance numbers until next week. This is a bit silly since other sites in Asia and Europe have already posted full reviews. Legit Reviews plays by the rules, so we’ll conclude this preview with some marketing slides that ASUS sent over. Yes, this is mostly just filler and to give you something to look at since we can’t show you any performance numbers.

With that being said, one company’s flagship model proved to be a well placed choice though many didn’t know it at the time. Vertex series of drives from OCZ continue to weather the storm of quickly expanding SSD technology and still offer some of the best performance around. Today we are going to look at the brand new OCZ Vertex 3 240GB to see if this new iteration lives up to the “Vertex” brand name.

Due to past experiences, our expectations for this drive are naturally quite high. After all, it sports the latest 25nm NAND and SandForce’s newest SATA 6 Gb/s controller so the potential for groundbreaking speeds is certainly there. Unfortunately, there are some concerns bumping around the market regarding the lifespan afforded by 25nm NAND but we’ll get to that a bit later.

Helping balance out concerns over the NAND is the fact that your hard earned dollar does go further with this drive than it has ever gone before. The 240GB version of the Vertex 2 was very expensive, and while a real world online price of about $450 for the Vertex 3 is not exactly “cheap”, it is now low enough to be within the realm of feasibility for many.

Introducing the SandForce SF2000 Family

Features

A Look at DuraWrite, RAISE and More

Wading Into The 25nm Endurance Debate

A Closer look at the Vertex 3 240GB

Testing Methodology

Read Bandwidth

Write Performance

Crystal DiskMark

Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB.

While the single queue depth 4K numbers are only moderately higher than some other drives, the true difference in performance comes to light when you look at the 32 queue depth numbers. On the read side of things the OCZ Vertex 3 posted a 4k32 queue depth number which is actually greater than the Vertex 2’s Crystal DiskMark sequential read performance numbers.

PCMark Vantage

While there are numerous suites of tests that make up PCMark Vantage, only one is pertinent: the HDD Suite. The HDD Suite consists of 8 tests that try and replicate real world drive usage. Everything from how long a simulated virus scan takes to complete, to MS Vista start up time to game load time is tested in these 8 core tests; however we do not consider this anything other than just another suite of synthetic tests. For this reason, while each test is scored individually we have opted to include only the overall score.

Well it appears that even PCMark Vantage loves this SSD. This also makes the OCZ Vertex 3 “four for four” with synthetic tests as it has out right dominated all the other solid state drives we have looked at. Colour us impressed to say the least.

AS-SSD

AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data

This certainly is interesting. While once again the power of this drive is simply awe inspiring it is not a clean sweep. With an ultra deep 64 queue depth – for a home user environment – the Vertex 3 is only able to come in second place. It seems that the Marvel controller inside the Crucial C300 is more positively inclined towards deep queue depths. This is most likely because of the added overhead the SandForce controller has to deal with (e.g. data encryption) and the fact it does not have an external RAM cache to fall back on. With that being said the write speed of this drive is simply amazing and the reads are nothing to be ashamed of either.

Access Time

To obtain an accurate reading on the read and write latency of a given drive, AS-SSD was used for this benchmark. A low number means that the drive’ data can be accessed quickly while a high number means that more time is taken trying to access different parts of the drive.

While the write access time of the Vertex 3 has not improved much over its predecessor the Vertex 2, the same cannot be said of the read latency. With a read latency which is less than HALF of that of the Vertex 2 this is easily the best performance we have ever seen. It seems that the second generation SandForce controller has a lot to offer and not just in the raw horsepower department.

IOMETER

IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.

Words like “best in class” and the like simply do not do justice to the Vertex 3. It is not only the best solid state drive, it is in a whole different class from previous models. The only drive which can come even close to it – and not all that close – is the Crucial C300.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

If we thought the IOMeter performance of the Vertex 3 was insanely good for a single drive, words fail to describe exactly how impressive these results are. The Vertex 3 starts off very good and then literally explodes into the stratosphere.

Vista Start Up

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. While all the other tests were run with a Windows 7 operating system, this particular test uses another older test bed’s “day to day” OS (copied over to our new testbed) which has accumulated a lot of crud over the months from installs and removals. We chose the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line as it is the last program to be loaded on start up.

It seems like the Vertex 3 has the real world performance chops to back up its kick ass synthetic results. It has been a long time since we’ve seen double digit improvements in a single generation and the only thing which even remotely came close to this kind of jump was the original Vertex and its Indilinx Barefoot controller which set the storage world on fire. If we were Marvel, Intel, JMicron or any of the other controller manufactures we would be awfully, awfully worried right about now.

Adobe CS5 Load Time

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit fared in the Adobe crucible!

While the difference is not as radical as it was with system boot time, there is still a significant reduction in how long it takes for CS5 to load. To be honest, we are actually more impressed with this level of performance than we were with Windows boot time. After all, we are for the first time ever on the cusp of single digit load times for an Adobe product loaded up with a ton of custom palettes.

Real World Data Transfers

No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it can not really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 10.00GB contiguous RAR file and a folder containing 400 subfolders with a total 12,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (10.00 GB total).

Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy (set to 1 file depth) and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found.

Its funny, but we really think we these numbers would even better still if it was not for the fact that our OCZ RevoDrive was slower than than the Vertex on large sequential transfer speeds. Lets just say that again: a PCI-E device with insanely good write speeds may be the bottleneck when it came to judging how fast the Vertex 3 240GB drive is in real world scenarios. This drive is simply the best we have ever seen in small and large file performance testing and has set the bar awfully darn high.

Conclusion

There are good solid state drives, there are great solid state drives and then there is the OCZ Vertex 3. It not only raises the bar for what a single SSD can do but this drive may actually breathe some serious excitement into the storage market. No matter what test we threw at – be it synthetic or real world – the OCZ Vertex 3 was simply in a league of its own. Some of this improvement is thanks to the wider SATA 6Gb/s bus, but even when compared to a very, very good SATA 6GB/s enabled SSD like the Crucial C300 128GB this new OCZ drive just can’t be touched.

To our way of thinking OCZ has once again proven why they are at the forefront of the Solid State Drive industry. This is one of only a handful of companies that continuously strives to innovate in the market instead of running alongside the pack. While OCZ may not always succeed, in our experience their achievements far outweigh their failures.

We dislike saying that a certain drive is “the best of the best”, especially in the fast paced SSD industry where today’s “perfect” drive may be tomorrow’s symbol of mediocrity. So rather than bestowing that somewhat hollow honor upon the Vertex 3, let’s just say that OCZ has once again produced a drive which simply redefines what we thought was possible. It really does provide a level of performance which only a few months ago would have required a pair of high performance SSDs in a RAID 0 setup.

Sadly, while experienced and educated consumers will understand the 25nm endurance “issue” on this drive is a simply a drama lama that (as Shakespeare puts it) “struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, there will always be those who will over react. OCZ’s near lack of an aggressive education campaign in the face of media hype has put a completely unjust mantle of inferiority on the OCZ Vertex 3 in the minds of many consumers. This is a damn shame as it is one hell of a drive. If you do pass on it because of the ill-perceived lack of longevity or performance issues associated with other 25nm NAND products, you will be overlooking one of the best SSDs on the market today. As we saw most users wouldn’t even come close to scratching surface of the Vertex’s endurance limits and it is vertainly not lacking in the performance department either.

All in all, we feel that the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB is a triumph of engineering which is worth every penny of its current asking price. Naturally it caters to a specific market niche but if you are in the market for a high end SSD, the buck stops here.

Pros:

- Best in class read and write performance
- Best in class real world performance
- Best in class minimum write performance
- Plenty of space for nearly any enthusiast’s needs

Cons:

- Price while good for a brand new 240GB SSD is still a lot of money
- 16GB of over-provisioning may be on the low side
- Perceived issue with 25nm longevity may hurt sales

 

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/42821-ocz-vertex-3-240gb-solid-state-drive-review.html

While a lot of PC hardware is labelled as “designed for gamers”, what distinguishes this new motherboard series from past models is something that GIGABYTE describes as ‘Super Sight, Super Hearing, Super Speed, Super Shield’. First and foremost, this is highlighted by the inclusion of dedicated gaming-oriented hardware in the form of the onboard Bigfoot Killer E2100 network processing unit (NPU) and/or Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi digital audio processor. Those are just the big additions though since G1-Killer boards have a plethora of other unique elements such as a front audio headphone amplifier, Nichicon MUSE audio capacitors, a hardware auto-overclocking button, Smart Fan pin headers, and of course the eye-catching black/lime green theme and Locked & Loaded heatpipe design. There are a few other interesting bits, but we will touch on those throughout the review.

Today, we are reviewing the flagship model, the ambitious G1.Assassin. Priced at around $480CDN, this is a high-end motherboard if there ever was one. GIGABYTE has outfitted this large XL-ATX form factor model with both the Bigfoot Killer E2100 NPU and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi digital audio processor, which supports EAX 5.0, Dolby Digital Live, DTS Connect, and DTS Neo: PC. Complementing the audio portion are also a front audio headphone amplifier, which can power up to 150 Ohm headphones, and the aforementioned Nichicon audio-class capacitors which are touted to deliver the highest quality sound.

When it comes to connectivity, there are two SATA 6GB/s ports, six SATA 3GB/s ports, up to eight USB 2.0 ports, up to eight USB 3.0 ports, and powered eSATA port. Expansion slot wise there are an impressive four mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, with support for 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI. Rounding off the specifications are a 16-phase power design with the latest generation Driver MOSFETs, an impressive cooling system, five Smart Fan heaters with individual thermal sensors, Quick Boost button that allows for an automatic one-button system overclock, support for 3TB+ hard drives, and the usual string of GIGABYTE-specific features like On/Off charge, USB 3x power, Smart6, Ultra Durable 3 design, and Dynamic Energy Saver 2. Basically, it’s fully featured, packed to the rafters, stuffed to the gills, and any other cliché you can think of that indicates an overabundance of stuff.

Specifications

As a necessary companion to the Core i7 processors, Intel released the X58 Tylersburg northbridge, now known as the IO Hub (IOH). This reclassification has occurred because of the fact that the memory controller has been integrated into the processor itself. As a result, the IO Hub is now solely responsible for implementing PCI Express lanes and linking to the I/O Controller Hub (ICH) southbridge. Since the front side bus is no more, the X58 communicates with the processor via the new high-speed QuickPath Interface (QPI), and it is connected to the southbridge (ICH) via the traditional Direct Media Interface (DMI). The southbridge is the venerable ICH10R that was first introduced with P45 Express chipset, and it supports six SATA II ports, AHCI, and Matrix RAID technology.

The X58 features 36 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes, which signifies that it supports two proper PCI-E x16 slots. However, depending on the motherboard manufacturer’s design, those 36 PCI-E 2.0 lanes can also be utilized in a triple PCI-E x16 (x16/x8/x8) and/or quad PCI-E x16 (x8/x8/x8/x8) configuration. The G1.Assassin that we are reviewing today supports up to 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI. For those who are curious, 4-way SLI would have required an NVIDIA NF200 PCI-E bridge chip, which would have added cost, heat, and latency to this model, so we can do without it.

Officially, Intel’s specifications list DDR3-1066 as the highest supported memory speed on the Bloomfield/X58 platform. However, all motherboard manufacturers have marketed their models as DDR3-1600 capable, and Gigabyte have certified the G1.Assassin for up to DDR3-2200.

Now that we have examined some of the specifications inherent to the new platform, let’s see what kind of motherboard Gigabyte have built around this new chipset:

Package & Accessories

Now that we have gone over the G1.Assassin’s chipset and its extensive specifications, it is time to take a look at the packaging and the included accessories. At almost $500, this model is at the very high-end of the motherboard market, so we expect to see a nice selection of accessories.

Let’s check it out:

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As you can see, GIGABYTE designed the G1-Killer series packaging to look like a WW2-style military ammo box, a rusty one at that. The handle that adorns most upper-end GB packaging definitely helps sell the look. The already cool packaging gets a further boost by the the undeniably eye-catching G1-Killer logo. The only real issue with this packaging is that it’s huge, with measurements of 16” x 16” x 5.5”, and a pain to store for the length of the warranty period (3 years).

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Once you open the outside packaging, you are greeted with an inner box featuring a
camouflage print. Inside that box is another two separate sections, the top half contains the motherboard while the bottom half has all the accessories.

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A Closer Look at the G1.Assassin

Although it may not look it at first glance, the G1.Assassin is significantly larger than the standard ATX form factor. This motherboard measures 13.6″ long by 10.3″ wide, easily surpassing the 12″ x 9.6″ ATX spec, and thus gets slapped with the new and unofficial XL-ATX label. This is noteworthy because obviously many cases don’t have that extra clearance needed to accommodate this motherboard, so definitely do your homework before buying one.

On the layout front, the G1.Assassin is as perfect as it gets. The 24-pin ATX power connector, the angled SATA ports, the fan headers, the USB headers, and one of the molex power connectors are all right on the edge of the board where they should be. The two 8-pin CPU power connectors are not sandwiched between the MOSFET heatsink and the back of the rear I/O panel, there is good amount of clearance which makes our fingers happy. On any other motherboard we might bring up the issue that if you install a second graphics card in the third mechanical PCI-E x16 slot (which is actually the second ‘proper’ electrical x16 slot), then you end blocking the one PCI slot. However, since PCI slots are nowadays basically only used for sound cards, and the G1.Assassin has a terrific onboard audio solution, this is essentially a non-issue.

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Taken as a whole, this motherboard has a very clean and large CPU socket area, which makes it a joy to work with and ensures compatibility with any cooling option you can possibly want.

When it comes to supplying juice to the processor, this motherboard features a 16-phase power design, plus an additional 4 phases for the Uncore. While 16 phases might not seem like much when compared to a previous model like the X58A-UD7, this PWM features the very latest Driver MOSFETs, also known as DrMOS, which have better electrical performance, are much more efficient, and run cooler. You truthfully only need 6 to 8 phases on these motherboards, even when doing heavy air or water-cooled overclocking, but the benefit of having this more robust power design is that the load gets spread across many phases, resulting in lower temperatures and potentially greater reliability as well.

Another neat little feature is that there are LEDs to the top-right of the socket, which alert you in case of CPU overvoltage and high CPU temperatures.

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The MOSFET heatsinks were supposedly designed to resemble the M203 grenade launcher, which is an attachment to the M16 and M4 assault rifles. Whether the design is a success lies in the eye of the beholder, but either way they are eye-catching. While these heatsinks don’t have a lot of fin area for airflow to pass through, they do have a fair bit of mass which does help absorb a lot of heat. Whether they actually cool well is something that we will test in a later part of this review.

While GIGABYTE has added two 8-pin CPU connectors to this motherboard, the need for them is somewhat debatable given the fact that this is not really a model designed for hardcore overclocking. Having said that, if you have a power supply that features two 8-pin connectors it doesn’t hurt to use them.

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The IOH/Northbridge heatsink is another unique design element. It was designed to look like the foregrip of the aforementioned M4 rifle, and it does except when viewed from the side, which reveals its very odd shape. This heatsink does feature five bright green LEDs, which do add some bling to the overall effect.

The X58 IOH chipset itself is fed by its own more than capable 2-phase power design. GIGABYTE have added overvoltage LEDs for this component as well, but they can be quite difficult to see if you have a graphics card installed in the first PCI-E x16 slot.

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The black and lime green memory slots have the same spacing as we have seen on all other six slot motherboards, which is to say that you will not want to use any memory modules with abnormally thick heatspreaders. This motherboard supports 24GB of system memory, and it has been certified as DDR3-2200 capable with a 6GB kit. GIGABYTE has outfitted this model with a two-phase power design for the memory, which is the norm. We can also see the perfectly located 24-pin ATX power connector.

As you can see, there is a whole bunch of LEDs around the memory slots. There are CPU phase LEDs, which only work used Dynamic Energy Saver 2 is installed, DDR overvoltage LEDs, DDR phase LEDs, and northbridge phase LEDs. This all helps users get a good indication of how their system is running, if they care of course.

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Continuing the weapon theme, the southbridge heatsink is in the shape of AK47 magazine, and is even
adorned by a bullet. Hilariously, GIGABYTE had to print a warning on the heatsink, just to ensure that stupid people don’t have any crazy ideas.

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The six black SATA 3Gb/s ports come from the ICH10R southbridge and support RAID 0/1/5/10. However, the two white ports are SATA 6Gb/s and come from the new Marvell SE9182 controller. This BIOS-less controller supports RAID 0/1, can use up to two PCI-E x1 lanes, and performs almost as well as the the native SATA 6Gb/s interface found on the new Intel P67 PCH chipset and is a great chip to integrate to an X58 motherboard.

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The bottom-right corner of the motherboard is home to the user-friendly colour-coded front panel header. The USB header with the red marking supports GIGABYTE’s On/Off Charge technology, which allows you to charge your mobile devices even when the PC is turned off. The Clear CMOS jumper is quite difficult to find since it is not where the labeling is. You have to carefully follow a thin white line which sort of leads to the jumper to the right of the mounting hole. Also, there is no jumper cap to be found, so users can’t clear the CMOS useless they have one lying around or use a metal object to bridge the pins, an unnerving proposition for most users. What this tells us is that GIGABYTE is extremely confident in their motherboard’s auto-recovery capabilities, but a jumper cap would have been nice nevertheless.

The “OC_Button” header is where you plug in one of the cables for the 5.25″ Front Access Control Panel, which has the Quick Boost auto-overclocking button. As most GIGABYTE motherboards do, this G1-Killer series model features two soldered BIOS chips, preventing a BIOS-related issue from causing your system any downtime.

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A Closer Look at the G1.Assassin pt.2

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The G1.Assassin is one of the few X58 motherboards with four physical PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, and is one of the even fewer models that can actually fit four dual-slot graphics cards.

In a dual graphics card configuration, the first and third PCI-E x16 slots will operate at the full x16 speed (x16/x16). When three graphics cards are installed, either the first or third x16 slot will run at x16, while the other two will operate at x8 (x16/x8/x8). If four graphics cards are installed, all four PCI-E x16 slots will operate at x8 (x8/x8/x8/x8). GIGABYTE has certified this motherboard for 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI. There is no quad SLI since this model doesn’t feature an NVIDIA NF200 chip. This might seem like a negative but it is a blessing in disguise since that PCI-E bridge chip adds latency, a 1-3% performance penalty, and a not inconsiderable amount of extra heat as well.

If you do end up setting up a triple or quad graphics card system, you should definitely make use of the two PCI-E 12V power connectors in order to ensure that PCI-E slots get the power that they require for such a power-hungry configuration.

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Here we have the G1.Assassin’s strongest attribute: the onboard audio. GIGABYTE has really outdone themselves here, since every part of the audio subsystem has been well thought out and is graced with high quality components. This is obviously important since you need quality components at every stage of the process in order to achieve optimal sound quality.

First and foremost, we have the terrific Creative CA20K2 audio processor. This RISC-based processor supports 24-bit digital audio, up to 128 simultaneous channels (think individual sounds), and even sports a ridiculous 384 KHz sample rate. By comparison, Blu-ray’s only feature 24bit/192kHz audio. As you would expect, this Creative-based gaming audio solution supports OpenAL and EAX 5.0, as well as a suite of X-Fi technologies like the X-Fi Crystalizer and X-Fi CMSS 3D. For those that have an eye towards the home theater, there is also support for Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect.

This is exactly the same chip that Creative use on their high-end Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium series sound cards. However, whereas those sound cards only have up to 64MB of onboard memory, this motherboard has 128MB. This onboard memory is used by the audio processor to cache and store uncompressed audio, which reduces the need for on-the-fly decompression of the audio data, and thus ultimately reduces CPU utilization and improves frame rates.

Now it’s time to take a peek at all the individual components that make up this high-end audio solution. Among the most noticeable elements is the row of stubby audiophile-grade Nichicon 33uF 16v MW series capacitors. All the audio channels go through these capacitors, and while we are not going to get into specifics, the end result is that the audio has a more natural tone and superior resolution.

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To the lower-left of the Creative chip is this busy little area. The Wolfson WM8775 is a 24-bit 96 KHz 4-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC), it turns the analog signals from line-in microphone inputs into digital sound. The STMicroelectronics MC33078 is the built-in front audio headphone amplifier, which can provide a wider range of sounds, crisper detail, less distortion if you have some adequately competent headphones. The AKM 53588ET is a 24-bit 96 KHz analog-to-digital converter, also for the front panel header inputs. The Texas Instruments LC245A IC is responsible for the S/PDIF digital output on the rear I/O panel. The STMicroelectronics C4558 is one of the three low-noise amplifiers, capable of driving up to 150 Ohms, which are connected to the center/subwoofer, side speaker, rear speaker outputs.

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A bit out of the picture, below this group of Schottky rectifiers, is the single-phase power design that was implemented just for this audio solution.

Here we have one of the aforementioned C4558 amplifiers beside the larger New Japan Radio 4556A amplifier. This latter amp is connected to the rear line out, which is used for the front speaker output, and is is capable of driving 150 Ohm loads.

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The Cirrus Logic CS4382ACOZ is an 8-channel 24-bit Digital-to-Analog (DAC) converter, which can output 114dB along all 8 channels at a very high 192 KHz. This chip is responsible for converting the digital bits into crisp, clean, and continuous analog for your headphones and speakers. The audio passes through this very important chip before heading to the amplifiers, capacitors, and then the outputs.

The tall green capacitors are the audiophile-grade Nichicon 33uF 16v ES series capacitors. These bi-polarized electrolytic capacitors might feature an ‘old design’, but they are specially designed for audio equipment. They are not cheap components by any means, and it shows that GIGABYTE did their homework and didn’t skimp out on the quality of any of the components in the audio subsystem.

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The Bigfoot Killer E2100 network processing unit (NPU) is a dedicated network co-processor that runs at 400Mhz, features its own 1GB of DDR2 memory, and uses a PCI-E x1 lane. It is designed to offload network processing from the CPU, in order to lower CPU utilization, as well as shape and control traffic in order to ensure the best possible network/online gaming experience via lower latency. It does this through the Game Networking DNA software that cleverly bypasses the usual Windows network stack, which is not really optimized for game-type data. Does it work? Well we test that out in a later section.

The Spansion IC is merely an 8MB flash chip that allows for driver and firmware updates to the E2100 NPU.

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The NEC/Renesas D720200AF1 is a very widely used USB 3.0 controller responsible for two of the four USB 3.0 ports on the rear I/O panel. The aforementioned VLI VL810 USB 3.0 controller provides the other two ports. Now to be honest, we aren’t sure why GIGABYTE has outfitted this motherboard with a Marvell 88E118R PCI-E Gigabit controller. Common sense would dictate that it is a backup controller just in case of incompatibilities with the E2100 NPU, but there are no separate drivers for it, yet.

On the rear I/O panel, we have a PS/2 keyboard port, a PS/2 mouse ports, a coaxial S/PDIF port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN port, two additional USB 2.0 ports, six audio jacks, and an optical S/PDIFport.

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Hardware Installation

In the Hardware Installation section we examine how major components fit on the motherboard, and whether there are any serious issues that may affect installation and general functionality. Specifically, we are interested in determining whether there is adequate clearance in all critical areas.

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The G1.Assassin’s cooling system is sufficiently spaced-out and low-profile so that it shouldn’t cause any clearance issues with most large CPU coolers.

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When installed in the traditional North-South orientation, the fan clips from our Prolimatech Mega Shadow did prevent the installation of memory modules with tall heatspreaders in the first memory slot. However, if we removed the fan clip, the memory modules fit perfectly and actually held the fan in place. It is definitely not an ideal solution, but it does work. The best idea is simply to use the black memory slots or get modules that are the standard height.

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Thanks to the expansion slot layout, there is a huge gap between the memory clips and the back of the graphics card, so there are no issues when installing/removing memory modules. The 24-pin ATX power connector and the 8-pin CPU power connector are both ideally placed, so that makes assembling and disassembling the system just a tad easier.

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Frankly, thanks to the awesome layout, no matter what graphics cards configuration you choose it will work perfectly.

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If you install a dual-slot graphics card in the fourth PCI-E x16 slot you will obviously be restricting access to the front panel audio header, front panel header, and various USB 2.0/3.0 headers. By the way, the graphics card will overhang the motherboard, so keep that in mind if you have a case that already has very little clearance due to the motherboard’s large XL-ATX form factor.

The eight 90-degree SATA ports are obviously accessible no matter how many graphics cards are installed.

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The mounting bracket of our Prolimatech Mega Shadow came pretty close to the Uncore MOSFETs on the back of the motherboard, so keep that in mind if your CPU cooler has an unusually large mounting bracket.BIOS Rundown

The G1-Killer series motherboards have a traditional Award BIOS, but GIGABYTE have spruced it up a bit by adding some EFI technology in order to support 3TB+ HDD support. This is version F2 of the G1.Assassin’s BIOS, and since it is a very high-end motherboard, we do expect a very option-rich and user-friendly experience.

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The G1-Killer series motherboards have a cool splash screen, but you will obviously want to disable it if you want to shave a few seconds off the boot time.

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Recently, GIGABYTE revamped the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) section and broke it down into five main sub-menus. This is where enthusiasts should expect to spend 99% of their BIOS time. First and foremost, we have M.I.T Current Status sub-menu which contains a brief overview of all the system frequencies, memory sizes and timings.

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When you open the Advanced Frequency Settings sub-menu, you are greeted with all the essential system clock control options that a serious overclocker needs: CPU & memory multiplier, BLCK, UCLK (Uncore), QPI Link, PCI-E, etc.

The Advanced CPU Core Features sub-menu is where you can enable or disable the various CPU-specific settings like Turbo Boost, C1E, C-STATE, Thermal Monitor, and Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST).

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As its name suggests, the Advanced Memory Settings section is where you will find all the memory-related settings. Within this section you can select the memory multiplier, change the performance profile, enter the memory and QPI (VTT/Uncore) voltages, and obviously tweak the memory timings. Each memory channel has its own section, within which you can alter the primary and secondary timings. It had just about every memory setting that an enthusiast or overclock will need to fine-tune their memory modules.

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The Advanced Voltage Settings is where you can enable or disable Load-Line Control (LLC), and more importantly, where you can control up to 16(!) system voltages. They all feature drop-down menus, but you can also manually enter your desired voltage which is a big time saver for most.

BIOS Rundown pt.2

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The Miscellaneous Settings section is where you can enable or disable the CPU’s Virtualization Technology.

The Standard CMOS Features section displays all the connected storage devices some basic system memory information, and of course the date and time.

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The Advanced BIOS Features is where you can select the boot device priority, enable/disable the full screen logo, and also saving the BIOS image to a hard drive.

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The Integrated Peripherals section is where you can enable or disable all of the various onboard devices (RAID & SATA 6Gb/s controllers, audio, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSATA, GbE LAN, etc).

The Power Management Setup section contains the power management settings linked to the power-saving sleep modes, it also allows you to enable/disable the new EuP standard.

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As on most motherboards, the PC Health Status section is a slight disappointment since there is insufficient voltages and temperatures readouts. On a motherboard of this caliber there is no reason not to have all vital voltages available for scrutiny in the bios. However, there is some great control over the Smart Fan headers.

When you press on F11 you will get a pop-up screen allowing you to save your current settings to a BIOS profile. If you press F12, you can load one of the profiles you have saved.

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Included Software

EasyTune6

EasyTune6 is a system management utility that displays system clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and fan rotation but more importantly it allows users to overclock from within Windows. Anyone familiar with past EasyTune iterations knows that although this utility has always contained a fair bit of functionality, its ease of use left much to be desired. Thankfully Gigabyte went back to the drawing board and created a brand new EasyTune version from scratch. Let’s check it out.

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The CPU and Memory tabs provide basic component information and are somewhat reminiscent of the widely used CPU-Z utility.

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The Tuner section is really the only one that’s important. First, it contains the Quick Boost feature, which allows automatic overclocking at the touch of a button. Simply pick the Quick Boost level that best suits your needs/courage, reboot the system, and voila! Overclock achieved.

If you click on Easy or Advanced mode, three additional tabs appear: frequency, ratio, voltage. The Frequency tab allows you to tweak the BCLK, memory, and PCI-E frequencies.
Within the Tuner section, the Ratio tab allows you to independently set the multiplier on every individual CPU core, even the ‘virtual’ logical cores…which is unnecessary to be honest.

The Voltage tab is arguably the most important one since it allows complete control over every voltage option that is found in the BIOS. This is a great tool to fine tune an overclock.

The Graphics tab can be used to manipulate your graphics card’s core/memory/shader clock speeds. Unlike past versions of ET6, this section no longer allows you to control the GPU fan, nor monitor the GPU temperature.

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The Smart tab gives you access to the Smart Fan feature and its finely-tuned control over the 5 Smart Fan headers.

Dynamic Energy Saver 2

Now let’s have a look at the brand new Dynamic Energy Saver (DES) 2 energy saving solution, which is one of Gigabyte’s most highly-publicized features.

After first installing the DES2 software, we are greeted with a powered down control panel. This means all energy saving functions are turned off and disabled. Only when we click on the large logo to the right does the panel come to life and the power savings begin.

The software is pretty straightforward; we have our power savings meter in the top portion providing us with information about how much wattage was saved, a CPU Power meter showing real-time CPU power consumption, the power phase status displaying how many of the 16 CPU phases are being utilized, and a representation of which components are being manipulated by the DES2 software. Dynamic Energy Saver 2 works even when the system is overclocked, while other the other manufacturers solutions do not.

AutoGreen

In effect, the AutoGreen utility can help reduce energy consumption when you are away from your computer by putting the system into a low power state when it doesn’t sense your bluetooth-enabled cell phone in the vicinity. Once again, since there is no bluetooth receiver included, we didn’t get a chance to test out this feature.

@BIOS

This is GIGABYTE’s Windows-based BIOS flashing utility. While we strongly recommend that you use the BIOS-based Q-Flash utility to do your flashing, @BIOS has never let us down yet.

Cloud OC

Included Software pt.2

Smart 6

One of the keynote new technologies introduced by GIGABYTE at Computex 2010 was Smart 6, which is a collection of six user-friendly system management tools. In their own words, Smart 6 “allows you to speed up system performance, reduce boot-up time, manage a secure platform and recover previous system setting easily with a click of the mouse.”

As you can see, Smart 6 has its own dock that allows quick access to the six SMART utilities.

Smart QuickBoot, as the name suggests, helps reduce boot-up time. This tool consists of BIOS QuickBoot and OS QuickBoot. BIOS Quick Boot allows your system bypass the time-consuming power-on self test (POST) procedure after three successful boots, if no changes are made to the BIOS or hardware configuration. The OS QuickBoot on the other hand makes the system go into an advanced S3 sleep mode upon exiting the operation system, and it permits a quick resume to full OS functionality.

Smart Recovery 2 is kind of like Windows Restore/Apple Time Capsule function, where you can roll-back system settings to a previous working status. Users can select just about any day, week, or month to roll-back from, without having had to manually tell the program to create a backup flag.

Now most GIGABYTE motherboards feature two physical BIOS ROMs, but with Smart DualBIOS this is the first time that important passwords and dates can be saved directly to the new 16MB BIOS chips (up from the previous 8MB). While this might seem like a security risk, the only way to access Smart DualBIOS is with a password. It is simply a secure way of storing the countless passwords that most people have nowadays.

Smart Recorder monitors and records system activities, such as when a system was turned on or off, and what data files were accessed or copied.

Smart TimeLock is a feature all kids will despise, as it allows parents the ability to schedule time limits for their children to use the PC. Parents can even make different usage time rules for weekdays and weekends.

Bigfoot Networks Killer Network Manager

Click on image to enlarge

The Bigfoot Networks Killer Network Manager is the software control interface for the E2100 NPU that is installed along with the drivers. This utility provides users with a lot of control and monitoring capabilities over every application that is accessing the network. It displays CPU usage, NPU usage, ICMP and UDP average ping, and the network utilization of every system process and program. This tool also allows you give priority to certain applications, and throttle or block others to free network resources for other applications. It is your one-stop tool for monitoring and controlling all network traffic.

Creative Software Suite

While not strictly a separate piece of software, the Creative drivers do add a significant amount of options and settings to the Audio Control Panel. Within the control panel the most useful area is the Mode tab, which allows users to select between the Entertainment, Audio Creation, and Gaming modes. These are presets that enable or disable certain of the numerous settings and features in order to suit the specific audio task that users want to engage in, The sound output is substantially different between each mode.

Depending on what mode you select, the Audio Console switch between radically different interfaces with unique settings and features for the user to tweak. The Audio Console is powerful piece of software in the right hands.

Test Setups & Methodology

For this review, we have prepared four different test setups, representing all the popular platforms at the moment, as well as most of the best-selling processors. As much as possible, the four test setups feature identical components, memory timings, drivers, etc. Aside from manually selecting memory frequencies and timings, every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

Intel Core i7 LGA1366 Test Setup

Although Windows Vista SP1 was our principal OS for the majority of benchmarks, we did use Windows 7 (with all the latest updates) when benchmarking AIDA64 and when testing the onboard Bigfoot Killer E2100 LAN and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi audio.

For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed followed by a defragment and a reboot.

C)To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks were applied to Windows Vista and the NVIDIA control panel:

• Sidebar – Disabled
• UAC – Disabled
• System Protection/Restore – Disabled
• Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
• Remote Desktop/Assistance – Disabled
• Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
• Windows Defender – Disabled
• Screensaver – Disabled
• Power Plan – High Performance
• NVIDIA PhysX – Disabled
• V-Sync – Off

D) Programs and games are then installed & updated followed by another defragment.

E) Windows updates are then completed installing all available updates followed by a defragment.

F) Benchmarks are each run three times after a clean reboot, then the results are averaged. If they are any clearly anomalous results, the benchmark was run 3 times again. If they remained, we make mention of it in the individual benchmark write-up.

Here is a full list of the applications that we utilized in our benchmarking suite:

• AIDA64 Extreme Edition v1.50.1200
• ScienceMark 2.0 32-bit
• MaxxMEM2 Preview
• wPrime Benchmark v2.03
• HyperPI 0.99b
• PCMark Vantage Advanced 64-bit Edition (1.0.2.0)
• Cinebench R10 64-bit
• Cinebench R11.5.2.9 64-bit
• WinRAR 3.94 x64
• Photoshop CS4 64-bit
• Lame Front-End 1.0
• X264 Benchmark HD (2nd pass)
• 7-Zip 9.20 x64
• POV-Ray v3.7 beta 40
• Deep Fritz 12
• 3DMark06 v1.2.0
• 3DMark Vantage v1.0.2
• Crysis v1.21
• Far Cry 2 1.02
• Left 4 Dead
• Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
• Word in Conflict v1.0.0.0
• Resident Evil 5 1.0.0.129
• X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0

Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64 / MaxxMEM

AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.50 – CPU & FPU Benchmarks

AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.50 – Cache Benchmark

AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.50 – Memory Benchmarks

MaxxMEM² – Memory Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

SuperPi Mod v1.5

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi via the HyperPi 0.99b interface. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.03

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we’re sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f’(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R10

Cinebench R10 64-bit
Test1: Single CPU Image Render
Test2: Multi CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders

Cinebench R11.5

Cinebench R11.5 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R11.5 makes use of all your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

PCMark Vantage x64

PCMark Vantage Advanced 64-bit Edition (1.0.2.0)
PCMark Suite / Default Settings
Comparison: Generated Score

The main focus of our General Tasks category lies with the most recent installment of the PCMark series, Vantage. While still classified under the description of a Synthetic benchmark, PCMark Vantage uses many of Vista’s (Note – Vantage is Vista-only) built-in programs and features along with its own tests, so it is “real-world” applicable in regards to CPU performance. The following is a general list of the tests in the PCMark suite, very much in line with tasks of an average user: Data encryption, Data compression, CPU image manipulation (compression/decompression/resize), Audio transcoding, Video transcoding, Text editing, Web page rendering, Windows Mail, Windows Contacts, and CPU game test.

Lame Front End

Lame Front End v1.0 is a single-threaded application, which means that it only utilizes a single processor core. This will obviously limit performance but it will allow us to see the benefits of Lynnfield aggressive Turbo Boost with single-threaded loads. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the highest fidelity VBR 0 quality preset.

Photoshop CS4

For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS4 in coordination with Driver Heaven’s Photoshop Benchmark V3, which is an excellent test of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 15 different filters to a 109MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 15 results to reach the final figure.

x264 HD Benchmark

x264 HD Benchmark v1.0
Test: MPEG-2 HD 720P Video Clip Conversion to x264
DVD Video Length: 30 Seconds
Comparison: FPS of Second Pass

x264 is quickly becoming the new codec of choice for encoding a growing number of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC videos. Think of it as the new Divx of HD and you can understand why we felt it critical to include. Tech Arp’s recent development of the x264 HD Benchmark takes a 30 second HD video clip and encodes it into the x264 codec with the intention of little to no quality loss. The test is measured using the average frames per second achieved during encoding, which scales with processor speed and efficiency. The benchmark also allows the use of multi-core processors so it gives a very accurate depiction of what to expect when using encoding application on a typical full length video.

WinRAR

WinRAR 3.94 x64
Test: Compression of 1GB of Assorted Files
Comparison: Time to Finish

One of the most popular file compression/decompresion tools, we use WinRAR to compress a 1GB batch of files and archive them, timing the task until completion.

7-Zip

9.20 x64
Test: Compression/Extraction of 1GB of Assorted Files, with AES-256 encryption
Comparison: Time to Finish

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark06

3DMark06 v1.2.0
Graphic Settings: Default
Resolution: 1280X1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3Dmarks
Comparison: Generated Score

The Futuremark 3DMark series has been a part of the backbone in computer and hardware reviews since its conception. The trend continues today as 3DMark06 provides consumers with a solid synthetic benchmark geared for performance and comparison in the 3D gaming realm. This remains one of the most sought after statistics, as well as an excellent tool for accurate CPU comparison, and it will undoubtedly be used for years to come.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.0.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3Dmarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Crysis

Crysis v1.21
Resolution: 1680×1050
Anti Aliasing: 0
Quality Settings: High
Global Settings: DX10 / 64-Bit

Test 1: Ice benchmark_CPU2 demo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Still one of the most hardware intensive game on the market today, Crysis has been chosen for its obvious ability to be able to showcase the differences between platforms and to showcase just how far one will need to go in the quest for maximum performance. The game also features the renowned CryEngine, the power behind the incredible graphics, which is expected to be foundation of future titles.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 1.02
Resolution: 1680×1050
Anti Aliasing: 0
Quality Settings: Very High
Global Settings: DX10 Enabled

Test 1: Ranch Long Demo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Far Cry 2 is the hot new new first-person shooter from Ubisoft’s Montreal studio, and the first game to utilize the new visually stunning Dunia Engine, which will undoubtedly be used by numerous future games. Using the included Benchmarking Tool, we ran the Long Ranch demo in DX10 mode at 1680×1050 with all settings set to very high.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1680×1050
Texture Quality: High
Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: None
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead (Latest Update)
Resolution: 1680×1050
Filtering: 4X MSAA / Anisotropic 8X
Graphic Settings: High
Shader Detail: Very High
Test 1: HWC Custom Timedemo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

Left 4 Dead is the latest disorienting, fast-paced zombie apocalypse mega-hit from Valve. L4D uses the latest version of the Source engine with enhancements such as multi-core processor support and physics-based animation. We test here at 1680×1050 with in-game details set to their highest levels, with MSAA 4X and AA 8X. For benching, we used a pre-recorded 20 minute timedemo taken on the No Mercy campaign during The Apartments mission.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Default
Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own “Particle Performance Metric”, which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 1.0.0.129
Resolution: 1680×1050
Anti-Aliasing: Off
Motion Blur: Off
Shadow Detail: High
Texture Detail: High
Overall Quality: High
Test 1: Built-in Timedemo
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

World in Conflict

World in Conflict v1.010
Resolution: 1680×1050
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 4X
Graphic Settings: Very High
Test 1: Built-in Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

One of the most visually stunning real-time strategy games in recent history, World in Conflict can really push systems to the brink, which is what we attempt by running the game in DirectX 10 mode at 1680×1050 with all settings maxed out. For this test we used the in-game benchmarking tool.

Bigfoot Killer E2100 & Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Testing

In this section, we are going to found out whether the two key pieces of dedicated gaming hardware that GIGABYTE have outfitted to this motherboard actually improve the overall gaming experience. We are going to do this using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, since ‘gaming feel’ and sound quality aren’t things you can capture and explain with numbers.

Competitors:

• GIGABYTE G1.Assassin: Creative CA20K2 (Audio) | Bigfoot Killer E2100 (LAN)
• ASUS Rampage III Extreme: Realtek ALC889 (Audio) | Intel WG82567V (LAN)
• Sapphire Pure Black X58: Realtek ALC892 (Audio) | Marvell 88E8057 (LAN)

As you can see, all three motherboards feature different audio and LAN chipsets, so this is going to allow us to see what kind of difference there is between the G1.Assassin’s high-end onboard hardware and more common parts.

Bigfoot Killer E2100 Network Testing

• PassMark PerformanceTest 7 x64 – Advanced Network Test

The PassMark Advanced Network Test is designed to test the data transfer rate between two computers both of which must be running PerformanceTest. One of the computers must act as the server and will sit waiting for a connection. The other computer acts as a client. It connects to the server machine and sends data to it for the duration of the test.

TCP is a connection-oriented protocol, which means it is a very reliable means of data transfer. It is used when data integrity is important, errors are corrected using data re-transmission. Your LAN, WAN, WiFi, and internet connection all use TCP/IP. Some games, like World of Warcraft, use it as well.

UDP is a connectionless protocol, which means it is an unreliable means of data transfer. UDP is a simple transmission model that provides no checking of the transferred or received data. This is the protocol that is used for video streaming and by most online games today, since these are applications that are tolerant to data loss such.

Settings:

TCP: Variable Block Size: 20 Bytes to 16384 Bytes – Test Duration: 60 Seconds
UDP: Variable Block Size: 20 Bytes to 1024 Bytes – Test Duration: 60 Seconds
Best of 5

As you can see, the G1.Assassin gets clobbered in this test. We suspect that the Killer E2100 NPU is shaping this non-game traffic in a certain way that is hindering this particular benchmark, at least with our selected settings. However, if we selected a large fixed block size for both TCP and UDP, in this case 16384 bytes and 1024 bytes respectively, the results were quite a bit different. The G1.Assassin still lost to the other two motherboards, but it put in a much more respectable showing.

Based on the in-app ‘CPU Load’ meter, the G1.Assassin also had the highest CPU utilization during this benchmark. However, if our assumption is correct that the NPU is actively managing traffic during this test, a little higher CPU utilization wouldn’t be unexpected, even though the NPU is supposed to be offloading the bulk of the workload from the CPU.

• AIDA32 V3.94.2 – Network Benchmark

The Network Benchmark Plugin for AIDA32 is designed to measure the performance of TCP/IP networks using the classic HTTP protocol in a master-slave architecture between 2 computers.

Best of 4

In this older, but very reliable benchmark, the G1.Assassin puts in a better showing, but still has a average transfer rate that is a solid 10% lower than the competition.

The G1.Assassin tied for lowest CPU utilization with the Pure Black X58, while the Intel-based GbE LAN on the Rampage III Extreme had extremely high CPU utilization.

• Gaming-related Ping

In this test, we wanted to determine whether the E2100 NPU would provide lower latency to our favourite servers outside of actual game play. We averaged the ping of 40 pre-selected Team Fortress 2 servers, on 3 different occasions per motherboard. This test was done on all 3 motherboards in the span of about one hour, before dawn in order to minimize the effect of congestion. The G1.Assassin ended up having highest average latency results, but really only by a bit. Online testing is a reviewer’s nemesis since it’s really not a controlled testing environment. Therefore, since the margin is so small and the nature of the test so unpredictable that we can’t really make a judgment one way or another.

Once again, this test was done on all 3 motherboards in the span of about one hour, before dawn in order to minimize the effect of congestion, and all on the same Team Fortress 2 server. We simply ran around with the scoreboard visible for 10 minutes, noted down the ping every 30 seconds, and then averaged the results. Surprisingly, in this actual online game play test we achieve identical pings across all three motherboards.

While this all suggests that the Killer E2100 NPU has no effect, we did some notice some differences that are a little harder to quantify. On the G1.Assassin, we seemed to enter games faster and were more often the first to load a map/round, even when we did not have the lowest ping. Given the fact that all three of our setups had the same configuration, and the fact that we weren’t using a faster disk subsystem than your average joe, this is indeed an advantage that the NPU is responsible for. Is it a big advantage? We supposed that depends on how much of a hardcore gamer you are.

• Left 4 Dead & Team Fortress 2 Benchmarks

Left 4 Dead: Blood Harvest campaign – Chapter 4 & 5 – 4 rounds per motherboard.
Team Fortress 2: Dustbowl map – Soldier class – 10 rounds per motherboard.
FRAPS 3.3.3 was used to record the frame rates.
Reliability and Performance Monitor was used to record the CPU utilization.

First, let us restate that online gaming is a reviewer’s nightmare since it’s really not a controlled testing environment. There is simply no way to control all the elements and reproduce the same scenes time and time again. Having said that, we are quite confident in our results given our little variance there was between the individual rounds. Much to our surprise, the G1.Assassin did in fact manage to pull a small 3% to 6% victory when it comes to average frame rates in both Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. The GIGABYTE motherboard did seem to take a small hit when it comes to minimum framerate in L4D, but then took a small lead in the minimum framerate in TF2.

When it came to overall CPU utilization, there was effectively no difference between the three motherboards. There might have been expectations of lower utilization given the dedicated gaming hardware that is supposed to offload work from the CPU. However, the G1.Assassin is also doing a lot more gaming-related processing (audio effects, traffic shaping, etc) than the other two motherboards, and none of that is ever really done independently of the CPU. Overall, not too bad when you consider the overall experience on the G1.Assassin motherboard is fair bit better than on the other two thanks to the onboard Creative X-Fi audio.

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Audio Testing

The Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Creative CA20K2 digital audio processor (and accompanying audio subsystem) really is the crown jewel of the G1.Assassin, and as we have alluded to throughout the review, it is pretty awesome. Here is where we show you why.

• RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) 6.2.3

A sample size of 16-bit and sample rate of 44.1 kHz , also known as ‘CD Quality’, is the accepted norm when it comes to PC audio, it is the Windows default setting after all. However, we wanted to kick things up a notch since more and more records are being offered in a higher resolution 24-bit format, and even Apple is supposedly mulling over introducing 24-bit music files in iTunes. As a result, we selected a sampling mode of 24-bit @ 48 kHz in RMAA in order to see just how well these three onboard audio solutions could handle high quality audio.

Sampling mode: 24-bit, 48 kHz
Interface: MME
Testing chain External loopback (line-out – line-in)
20 Hz – 20 kHz filter: ON
Normalize amplitude: ON
Level change: 0.4 dB / 0.4 dB
Mono mode: OFF
Calibration signal, Hz: 1000
Polarity: correct/correct

As you can see, when it comes to the basic fundamentals of audio performance, the G1.Assassin crushes the competition. The Creative chip achieves significantly better results than the Realtek CODECs in six of the eight tests, and is only slightly let down by its frequency response. For some reason, this alone knocks down its general performance rating to ‘very good’, while the Realtek ALC889 solution on the Rampage III Extreme gets ‘excellent’. Needless to say, we found those overall ratings more than a little out of touch.Ultimately, this is irrelevant though because audio is one area where quantitative analysis really doesn’t tell much of the story, since sound quality is obviously qualitative and different to everyone. Based on our 40-50 hours of total listening – with a mix of Grado SR225i and well-worn Koss PortaPro headphones, Westone UM1 IEMs, and Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers – we can tell you that whether it is for gaming, music, or movies, the G1.Assassin sounds distinctly better than any onboard audio solution or dedicated sound card that we have ever used yet.Most importantly though, the X-Fi chip is unmatched with regard to in-game audio thanks to EAX 5.0, OpenAL, and the surprisingly good X-Fi CMSS-3D capabilities. Footsteps, ricocheting bullets, and gib hitting the floor were as clear, loud, and directional as we have ever heard. Not only could we better tell what direction enemy gunfire or footsteps was coming from, but we could much better tell how far away those noises were coming from. Just a better soundstage in general, properly three-dimensional for the lack of a better description.

Voltage Regulation

For this review we decided to forgo our usual elaborate voltage regulation testing, instead of taking a peak at how the vCore behaved with and without Load-Line Calibration (LLC) enabled. This was done with one hour OCCT run, using all twelve threads, and without Core i7-980X overclocked to 4.0Ghz at 1.35V (in the BIOS).

As you can see, GIGABYTE have not enabled Load-Line Calibration (LLC) by default on the G1.Assassin. With LLC on auto, the vDroop from 1.35V (BIOS) to 1.28V (actual) might seem excessive, but it is actually within the 5% spec outlined by Intel. When you set LLC to Level 2, the most aggressive option, the voltage droop is totally eliminated and the vCore line is free of fluctuations. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Temperature Testing

For this test, we set all the BIOS settings to default, and then ran one hour of both Prime 95 V26.3 64-bit In-place large FFTs and OCCT v3.1.0 GPU:OCCT stress at the same time.

Given the G1.Assassin’s impressive cooling system, we simply had to test it out. With thermal paste on the IOH heatsink, thermal tape on the other heatsinks, and tight screws holding the entire assembly together, we knew the cooling solution was making good contact everywhere. As a result, we decided to measure the temperatures directly off the heatsinks themselves to see just how hot the components were running under full system load.

Overall, we were quite impressed with the results we got since the motherboard received zero airflow aside from whatever the CPU cooler fan put off. Based on our results, it is pretty clear that the the Driver MOSFETS to the left of the CPU socket were under significantly more load than those above the socket. Having said that, the MOSFET heatsinks never touched 50C so there is nothing to worry about there. The heatsink for the beastly X58 IOH did peak at 50C, which is perfectly fine and frankly better than expected for this 24W TDP chip. The ICH southbridge also seemed to be adequately cooled by the unique magazine heatsink.

Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the respective BIOSes and the Windows Vista power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced.

For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter.

For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 V26.3 64-bit In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter.

For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, while simultaneously loading the GPU with OCCT v3.1.0 GPU:OCCT stress test at 1680×1050@60Hz in full screen mode.

Surprisingly, the fully-packed G1.Assassin consumes just a bit more power than rival high-end motherboards like the ASUS Rampage III Extreme. This is impressive since it features the Creative X-Fi digital audio processor, Bigfoot E2100 NPU, two additional USB 3.0 controllers, and a bunch of amplifiers and assorted ICs for the complex audio sub-system. The Sapphire Pure Black X58 is not really in the same league as these other two models, since it features a modern but less complex CPU VRM design and has quite a few less controllers onboard.

Overclocking Results

Overclocking the Bloomfield/X58 platform is quite different than anything else on the market, even the Lynnfield/P55 or Sandy Bridge/P67. There are five clock speeds (CPU/BCLK/MEM/UCLK/QPI) and four multipliers (CPU/MEM/UCLK/QPI) to tweak and monitor, as well as eight different important voltages. Put simply, there are lot of variables and potential limitations that an overclocker must take into consideration.

Highest Stable CPU Overclock

Although the G1-Killer series is not explicitly designed for overclocking, it should come as no surprise that it handles this task very well indeed. On the G1.Assassin, we were able to match the highest stable CPU overclock that we originally achieved on the GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 motherboard. Obviously, there is a lot of extra potential CPU headroom here, but since we restrict vCore to about 1.35V our results have thus far been slightly limited to 4.42Ghz.

Highest Stable BCLK Overclock

On this motherboard we were able to achieve a very respectable 221Mhz BCLK at 1.35V VTT/QPI, which is 24/7 stable remember. This result is a fair bit better than the 216Mhz BCLK we achieve on the aforementioned X58A-UD7. With this type of BCLK, a user with lowly Core i7-920 can expect to overclocking headroom up to 4641Mhz. Good luck with that though unless you have serious cooling!

Auto-Overclocking Results

The G1.Assassin features two types of automatic overclocking. There is the software Quick Boost feature, and the Quick Boost button on the 5.25″ Front Access Control Panel. The Quick Boost included in the Smart6 utility caused us instant BSODs, but the physical button did work.

The Quick Boost button is easily super simple, you just press it and the automatic overclocking is achieved. You can enable it before booting or on-the-fly while gaming.

As you can see the Quick Boost overclock is very lackluster. It works, but it only increases the BLCK by 5%. That is not really going to have an impact on gaming performance. It would be much cooler if users could assign their own overclocking profile to that button, making it a real modern Turbo button. Having said that, if the profile caused too much of an increase it would undoubtedly BSOD if you were trying to achieve the overclock on-the-fly while gaming.

Conclusion

First and foremost, GIGABYTE have to be commended for undertaking such ambitious product. We are not saying this because they made a motherboard series targeted towards gamers, but because they did it right. When we look at the G1.Assassin it is immediately obvious that a lot of thought went into the design and that no corners were cut. This motherboard features the best dedicated gaming hardware currently available and the best implementation of that hardware too.

The onboard Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi CA20K2 digital audio processor is an excellent feature-filled chip, which has been previously seen on highly regarded sound cards like the Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1. However, the digital audio processor is just one part of the complex audio sub-system that GIGABYTE have designed for this motherboard. Thanks to almost a dozen different audio-related ICs and sixteen audiophile-grade capacitors, the G1.Assassin features a proper high fidelity built-in headphone amplifier; something that’s unheard of on most motherboards. If you have some quality headphones (or headset) you will be rewarded with music that sounds distinctly superior to any onboard audio solution and all but two or three dedicated sound cards. Where the X-Fi chip is unmatched though is in-game audio thanks to EAX 5.0, OpenAL, and the surprisingly good X-Fi CMSS-3D capabilities. Footsteps, ricocheting bullets, and gib hitting the floor were as clear, loud, and directional as we have ever heard.

We can’t be quite as bold when discussing the Bigfoot Killer E2100 network processing unit (NPU) though. We simply didn’t experience any in game pings reductions, nor a drop in CPU utilization, and there seemed to be a negative impact on network throughput in some scenarios. Having said that, when using the NPU we seemed to enter games faster and were more often the first to load a map, even when we did not have the lowest ping. This might not be a huge advantage, but we’ll take it.

Turning our focus towards connectivity, the G1.Assassin did not disappoint at all. It manages to be thoroughly modern thanks to the very high performance Marvell SE9182 SATA 6Gb/s controller and NEC/Renesas + VLI USB 3.0 controllers. When it came to overall performance, this motherboard didn’t set any new records, but there’s not much to be done on such a mature platform. When we stepped away from timedemos and into in actual gameplay though, we did notice a slightly higher average framerate than the two other boards. The differences were minor, but it does suggest that the dedicated gaming-oriented hardware was having a positive effect.

Speaking of differences, unlike the Sapphire Pure Black X58 that we recently reviewed, this is a motherboard that properly utilizes the strengths that the proven LGA1366/X58 platform has over the newer LGA1155/P67 platform, which is to say superior multi-GPU capabilities courtesy of the native 32 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. Specifically, GIGABYTE has this model certified for 4-way CrossFireX and 3-way SLI operation. Some may see the lack of Quad SLI as a shortcoming, but in order to add this feature GIGABYTE would have had to add two NVIDIA NF200 bridge chips and pay for an official 4-way license key. Furthermore, to be perfectly honest, attempting to game on a system with four graphics cards can be a troublesome affair at best and a disaster at worst.

One of this motherboard’s biggest drawbacks is caused by the fact that it supports four dual-slot graphics cards, since that required this to be a large motherboard. The G1.Assassin is based on the XL-ATX form factor, and there still aren’t that many cases that have been certified (.pdf file) to support its massive bulk. Thankfully, some E-ATX cases can hold this motherboard, but you will need to do your homework. Either way, chances are that not only will you have to spend ~$480 on the motherboard, but another $150-200+ on a new case as well.

While we are on the subject of price, while the G1.Assassin is obviously quite expensive, we don’t necessarily view it as overpriced. When you consider that a dedicated sound card comparable to what’s found on this motherboard would retail for at least $150, and that a standalone Bigfoot Killer E2100 card retails for $80, the price for the rest of motherboard ends up being about $250. This is actually quite reasonable for an X58 motherboard that can house four dual-slot graphics cards and has great connectivity.

In the end, if you are a hardcore gamer with the means to afford the best, the venerable LGA1366 platform shouldn’t be overlooked. This G1.Assassin motherboard combined with a six-core Intel Gulftown processor and some high-end graphics cards will give you an overall gaming experience that you aren’t likely to find anywhere else. Yes, we would have liked to see the G1.Killer concept launched on the LGA1155 platform, and hope to see this in the future, but in the mean time the G1.Assassin is definitely a product worthy of our Dam Good and Dam Innovative awards.

Pros

- Fantastic layout.
- Four mechanical PCI-E x16 slots, and room for four dual-slot graphics cards.
- 4-way CrossFireX & 3-way SLI support.
- Great overclocking capabilities with flawless auto-recovery.
- Unparalled onboard audio with built-in headphone amplifier.
- Top-notch SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 connectivity.
- 5.25″ enclosure gives users front panel access to two USB 3.0 ports.
- Dual BIOS chips.
- Full supports for 3TB+ hard drives.
- 5 Smart Fan 4-pin PWM headers that can be independently fine-tuned.
- Great array of diagnostic LEDs.

Cons

- No onboard power and reset buttons.
- XL-ATX form factor is too large for most cases.
- Quick Boost button only increases the BCLK by 5%.
- No voltage read points (maybe a non-issue on a gaming motherboard).
- Not enough temperature and voltage readouts in the BIOS and EasyTune.
- No integrated bluetooth to take full advantage of the bluetooth-based software utilities.

Our thanks to GIGABYTE for making this review possible!

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/41697-gigabyte-g1-assassin-g1-killer-lga1366-motherboard-review.html

NVIDIA has been hard at work refining their Fermi architecture. The result has been a series of products that offer higher performance per watt and almost none of the rampant thermal issues that characterized their predecessors. Through the use of some careful design evolution, the GF100 core has morphed into the successful GF110 and it’s this “new” core that was picked for use in NVIDIA’s reentry into the dual GPU market: the GTX 590.

Internally code named Gemini, the GTX 590 blends a pair of fully enabled GF110 cores (each with 512 CUDA cores) with 3GB of GDDR5 to produce what’s billed as the fastest DX11 card on the market. Naturally some sacrifices had to be made in terms of clock speeds – we’ll get into those later – but it makes up for any possible shortcomings with a long list of features. This is NVIDIA’s first official product that supports Surround multi-monitor setups from a single card. Also, the dual GPUs can be set up in such a way that one can process CUDA (PhysX, Folding@Home, transcoding and the like) while the other goes about rendering in-game scenes. In our eyes, the potential here is almost limitless.

Alongside all of the usual marketing points like PhysX and 3D Vision, the GTX 590’s true goal is to compete with AMD’s own Radeon HD 6990. In NVIDIA’s eyes they are doing this on several fronts and not only from a performance perspective either. One of their main intents was to offer a better overall gaming experience by decreasing the acoustical profile and slimming down dimensions. In addition, the decision has been made to offer the GTX 590 at the same price as the HD 6990: $699. If this sounds like a tall order for a dual GPU design, that’s because it is.

The GTX 590 3GB is a card which has been theorized about for the more than a year now so it will be interesting to see whether it lives up to expectations.

The GTX 590 in NVIDIA’s Current Lineup

Naturally, the GTX 590 will initially take over the flagship position in NVIDIA’s lineup and will go toe-to-toe against AMD’s HD 6990. Since NVIDIA hasn’t had a dual GPU card since the GTX 295 was discontinued, there is very little to compare it to but the price alone can almost guarantee its place among some of the most expensive cards ever released.

Speaking of the price, things really are starting to look interesting. Dual GPU cards usually come with a hefty price premium over two cards purchased individually, but at $699 this new flagship model is very comparable to a pair of GTX 570s, which can be found for a little under $680. On the flip side of the coin, a single GTX 590 consumes significantly less power and takes up less space than two GTX 570 cards.

A Closer Look at the NVIDIA GTX 590

After such a long time waiting for this card, we’re sure many people will be more than a bit surprised by its appearance. Instead of going with their usual dual PCB design, NVIDIA has taken a page out of AMD’s book and has used a single PCB setup with a centrally mounted fan. However, when taken in from afar, this doesn’t look like the dual GPU totting monster many thought it would be.

The real beauty of this design lies within its heatsink. Somehow NVIDIA has designed the GTX 590 in such a way that its 80mm fan is able to adequately cool off the two cores without resorting to an overly tall internal heatsink or an annoyingly high acoustical profile. You can see hints of the internal heatsinks peaking out here and there which show that the fan pushes air in both directions in order to offer equal cooling to both cores.

Flipping the card over reveals two black anodized aluminum heatsinks which cover and disperse heat from the GDDR5 memory modules. In addition they act as backplates for the two individual GPU heatsinks on the flip side of the GTX 590. Between these covers are two banks of secondary voltage regulation modules which are left open to the elements since they don’t generate much heat.

Since the GTX 590 has a TDP of 365W, a pair of 8-pin power connectors is needed, which means a suitably high end power supply will be essential for potential owners. We’ll get a bit further into the PSU requirements a bit later in this review, but NVIDIA states that an 800W unit is recommended. Below the power connectors is a GeForce logo that is backlit with an LED. The effect is pretty cool and should spice up any windowed case.

Meanwhile, a single SLI connector has been installed in order to pair this card up with another GTX 590. Unlike AMD, NVIDIA doesn’t allow for mixed card solutions so don’t expect to be using a GTX 580 alongside a GTX 590.

The GTX 590’s rear connector layout is interesting to say the least. Since there are two GPUs, this is NVIDIA’s first card that natively supports a Surround multi monitor setup through a trio of DVI connectors. Alongside these is a lone DisplayPort output that can be used for an additional accessory display if needed.

With a length of 11”, the GTX 590 is slightly longer than the GTX 580 but the real story here is how NVIDIA somehow designed the main fan shroud and the heatsinks it contains to be so slim. If it wasn’t for the backplate’s connectors, this card could have been kept under the height of a typical dual slot GPU.

A Look Under the Hood

Popping the top off of the GTX 590 shows us what looks to be a standard dual heatsink design with a centrally mounted 80mm intake fan. However, there is much more than what first meets the eye since NVIDIA has designed a complex system in order to curb the heat produced by a pair of GF110 cores and 3GB of GDDR5.

In an effort to ensure easy cleaning of the fan and internal heatsinks, the plastic shroud is easily taken off by removing a few screws located around the perimeter and moving a latch above the two power connectors.

The main stars of this show are the two vapor chamber-equipped heatsinks which come with a pure copper contact plate and a dense fin array. In order to better fit with the design of this card, these heatsinks are slightly different shapes but still offer comparable cooling performance to one another.

Many high-end cards have been using vapor chambers in order to ensure efficient cooling of hot running transistors and we have discussed the benefits of this approach quite a few times already. Basically, a vapor chamber allows for quick heat transfer to the aluminum fins which in turn allows for lower temperatures and increased transistor efficiency. Naturally, this is hugely important on a card where lower power consumption is an absolute must.

Between and around the two vapor chambers is a full length anodized aluminum secondary heatsink that has small “posts” which increase its overall surface area to allow for higher thermal dissipation. This secondary heatsink runs the length of the GTX 590 and allows for cooling of VRMs and other hot running components.

Image provided by NVIDIA

Partner Cards from EVGA & ASUS

In North America there will be a total of two board partners who will be initially selling the GTX 590: EVGA and ASUS. From our understanding, the choice to use a limited number of launch partners was to better focus resources and ensure the channel was well supplied from day one. Below are some details about the products these companies will be bringing to the table.

ASUS

The ASUS card will be sticking to the reference design and MSRP of $699 but its core and memory speeds have been edged up by a hair to 612Mhz and 3420Mhz respectively. In addition, the ASUS GTX 590 will carry their Voltage Tweak software which supposedly has the ability to allow the core to increase its speed to the 900Mhz mark if sufficient cooling is applied.

EVGA

3DMark 11 (DX11)

3DMark 11 is the latest in a long line of synthetic benchmarking programs from the Futuremark Corporation. This is their first foray into the DX11 rendering field and the result is a program that incorporates all of the latest techniques into a stunning display of imagery. Tessellation, depth of field, HDR, OpenCL physics and many others are on display here. In the benchmarks below we have included the results (at default settings) for both the Performance and Extreme presets.

Performance Preset

Extreme Preset

Aliens Versus Predator (DX11)

When benchmarking Aliens Versus Predator, we played through the whole game in order to find a section which represents a “worst case” scenario. We finally decided to include “The Refinery” level which includes a large open space and several visual features that really tax a GPU. For this run-through, we start from within the first tunnel, make our way over the bridge on the right (blowing up several propane tanks in the process), head back over the bridge and finally climb the tower until the first run-in with an Alien. In total, the time spent is about four minutes per run. Framerates are recorded with FRAPS.

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2560 x 1600

BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

To benchmark BF: BC2 we used a five minute stretch of gameplay starting from the second checkpoint (after the helicopter takes off) of the second single player mission up until your battle with the tank commences. Framerates are recorded with FRAPS.

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2560 x 1600

DiRT 2 (DX11)

Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not representative of the final product. DX11 was forced through the game’s config file. In addition, you will see that these scores do not line up with our older benchmarks at all. This is due to the fact that a patch was recently rolled out for the game which included performance optimizations in addition to new graphics options.

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2560 x 1600

F1 2010 (DX11)

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2560 x 1600

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Just Cause 2 has quickly become known as one of the best-looking games on the market and while it doesn’t include DX11 support, it uses the full stable of DX10 features to deliver a truly awe-inspiring visual experience. For this benchmark we used the car chase scene directly following the Casino Assault level. This scene includes perfectly scripted events, some of the most GPU-strenuous effects and lasts a little less than four minutes. We chose to not use the in-game benchmarking tool due to its inaccuracy when it comes to depicting actual gameplay performance.

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2560 x 1600

Lost Planet 2 (DX11)

Lost Planet is a game that was originally released on consoles but in its port over to the PC, it gained some highly impressive DX11 features. For this benchmark, we forgo the two built-in tools and instead use a 2 minute gameplay sequence from the second level in the first chapter. The reason we use this level is because it makes use of three elements that are seen throughout the game world: jungles, water and open terrain.

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2560 x 1600

Metro 2033 (DX11)

There has been a lot of buzz about Metro 2033 which has mostly centered on its amazing graphics coupled with absolutely brutal framerates on even the best GPUs on the market. For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.

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2560 x 1600

Unigine: Heaven v2.0 (DX11)

Unigine’s Heaven benchmark is currently the de-facto standard when it comes to simple, straightforward DX11 performance estimates. While it is considered a synthetic benchmark by many, it is important to remember that no less than four games based on this engine will be released within the next year or so. In this test we will be using a standard benchmark run with and without tessellation enabled at three resolutions,

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2560 x 1600

8xMSAA Testing

In this section we take a number of games we have tested previously in this review and bring things to the next level by pushing the in-game MSAA up to 8x. All other methodologies remain the same.

BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

Note that 8x MSAA is enabled via the game’s config file for the NVIDIA cards since it is not a selectable option within the game menu

Dirt 2 (DX11)

F1 2010 (DX11)

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Surround / Eyefinity Gaming Performance

Both NVIDIA and AMD now have multi monitor output options for some truly immersive gaming. However, spanning a game across three or more monitors demands a serious amount of resources which makes this a perfect test for ultra high-end solutions.

In this section, we will be testing multi card setups across three 1080P monitors with and without AA enabled. While all solutions have the ability to implement bezel correction, we leave this feature disabled in order to ensure compatibility. The benchmarks run remain the same as in normal testing scenarios.

Aliens versus Predator (DX11)

BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

Dirt 2 (DX11)

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Lost Planet 2 (DX11)

Metro 2033 (DX11)

3D Vision Performance

In this section, we push things even further by enabling 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround on the NVIDIA solutions. The reason we picked the two games below is due to their excellent compatibility with the three dimensional features offered by 3D Vision. Otherwise, all methodologies remain the same as before.

3D Vision takes a massive bite out of the overall performance with every one of the solutions we tested. Basically, it forces the GPU(s) to render two frames at the same time which effectively doubles the amount of information being processed.

The GTX 590 is able to perform quite well in these games and is the only single card solution that can conceivably offer playable framerates.

3D Vision Surround Performance

This is the mack-daddy of tests since we’re basically asking the system to render two 5760 x 1080 frames at the same time. 3D Vision Surround simply brings every one of these setups to their knees but remember that higher framerates can be achieved by slightly lowering detail levels. We should also mention that the GTX 590 didn’t display any driver issues or hiccups throughout these tests.

Folding@Home w/ Dual & Single GPUs Investigated

Until Stanford puts the final touches on their updated and thoroughly revised OpenCL-based Folding @ Home application for AMD graphics cards, NVIDIA will continue to be the sole supplier of high performance folding cards. Naturally, the GTX 590 represents a unique opportunity for the community since it incorporates a pair of 512 CUDA core GPUs

By using two cores on a single PCB and a straightforward way to interact with CUDA, NVIDIA has opened up a new range of possibilities for Folding systems. Many of these options are available on the previous generation GTX 295 but the GTX 590 is the first DX11 card that can pull double duty as a number cruncher and gaming card…at the same time.

Click on image to zoom

After letting the system work on Folding for the better part of 30 hours and almost continually pulling P6801 work units, performance hovered around the 13,500 PPD mark per GPU for a total of ~27,000 PPD for the GTX 590. Due to the limited core overclocking capabilities with default voltages, don’t expect to go much beyond this unless you’re willing to sacrifice heat production, noise and power consumption.

 

Along with the ability to dedicate one of the GTX 590’s GPUs to processing PhysX, the main Multi GPU section in NVIDIA’s control panel allows the two cores to be disconnected from one another by disabling SLI. Many may find this to be a pointless exercise since it effectively halves the 590’s rendering capability but in order to use Folding @ Home and game at the same time, this is a necessary step. In addition, disabling SLI allows both GPUs and their associated memory to be overclocked independently of one another.

NVIDIA’s also allows for direct control over which onboard GPU processes CUDA information. As we will see below, setting CUDA to be processed on GPU #2 is an absolute must for optimal parallel gaming / Folding performance.

Parallel gaming & folding on the GTX 590

Once set up properly via Stanford’s excellent dual GPU setup guide, and the steps we have outlined above, the results speak for themselves. As GPU #2 chugs happily through the latest WU, GPU 1’s 512 cores are left free to be used for gaming. There are some challenges however …

Temperature Analysis

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

Luckily for NVIDIA, some of the more sensational theories about out of control GPU temperatures on a dual Fermi card have finally been put to rest. Through the use of a high-end cooling design equipped with a pair of vapor chamber coolers, the GTX 590’s temperatures are kept well in check. Considering the effect high temperatures have on the power consumption of transistors, keeping the cores under the 80°C mark is one of the main reasons why NVIDIA lists this card as having a TDP of “only” 365W.

The only real concern we have is the direction of the GTX 590’s exhaust being in the direct opposite of a normal case’s airflow pattern. As such, we’re going to recommend that in-chassis air movement be a priority when using one or more of these cards.

Acoustical Testing

Yes, we have finally added decibel testing to our repertoire and this section will expand in future reviews. What you see below are the baseline idle dB(A) results attained for a relatively quiet open-case system (specs are in the Methodology section) sans GPU along with the attained results for each individual card in idle and load scenarios. The meter we use has been calibrated and is placed at seated ear-level exactly 12” away from the GPU’s fan. For the load scenarios, a loop of Unigine Heave 2.5 is used in order to generate a constant load on the GPU(s) over the course of 20 minutes. For Idle results, the average was taken over the course of 5 minutes.

The Average results you see are based on a log taken once every 30 seconds throughout the Load and Idle tests.

Due to the short timeframe we had with the decibel meter the number of cards we were able to test was limited at best. Nonetheless, we can see that NVIDIA’s approach of a compact yet potent cooling design with a centrally mounted 80mm fan is definitely paying dividends. The GTX 590 is downright silent for a dual GPU card and even gives the normally quiet GTX 580 a good run for its acoustical money. Even the HD 6970 – AMD’s flagship single GPU card – is louder.

One of the major critiques we had with the HD 6990 was the high pitched squeal it exhibited when stressed in certain applications. Once that noise was paired up with the cooling fan’s drone, AMD’s Antilles became thoroughly unpleasant to use and really made its presence felt. The GTX 590 on the other hand just feels more refined since its fan doesn’t spin past the 1700 RPM mark and VRM whine is next to nonexistent.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

Overclocking Results

Increasing the clock speeds of AMD’s HD 6990 wasn’t exactly a fun affair with its default voltages in place and the GTX 590 follows in these footsteps to a certain extent. Core overclocking did go a bit better than expected but still stopped short of the 700Mhz mark.

Meanwhile, the memory speeds were tightly curtailed by the default voltage as well. It was nigh on impossible to elevate speeds past the final results listed below without having the GDDR5’s error correction come into play and basically cap performance.

We understand MSI’s AfterBurner software supports voltage increases for the GTX 590 but we’d hesitate to recommend going this direction since it could void the warranty on an extremely expensive piece of hardware.

Final Results:

Core Clock: 689Mhz
Processor Clock: 1378Mhz
Memory Clock: 3744Mhz (QDR)

Conclusion

So there you have it; NVIDIA has finally released their almost mythical dual Fermi card, and contrary to all the worries than have been floating around it exceeded our expectations in most respects. In many ways the GTX 590 has truly set a new high water mark not by soundly beating the competition in a framerate war but by redefining the market’s preconceptions of dual GPU solutions.

The GTX 590’s real accomplishment is the feeling of refinement that it exudes. Unlike the HD 6990, its VRMs don’t squeal like a scared piglet and fan noise is kept to an absolute minimum. The fact that its svelte 11” length will fit into a wide variety of cases should also make it in vastly more appealing than the behemoth AMD is currently saddled with.

Click on images to enlarge

Refinement is always welcome but the bread and butter of any $700 graphics card is performance. In this respect, the GTX 590 puts up some great numbers but ultimately falls short of dethroning AMD’s HD6990 in convincing fashion. The two dual GPU cards trade blows from one game and resolution to the next which means the HD 6990 no longer boasts the title of “fastest graphics card in the world” but neither does the GTX 590. The end result between these two cards on the performance front is just too close to call.

When pitted against the available high end SLI solutions, the GTX 590 tends to flip flop between impressive and underwhelming since both its memory and core speeds have been pared down. The higher amount of texture memory does allow it to easily muscle past the GTX 570 SLI solution in bandwidth limited situations (particularly in the minimum framerate department) but the two individual cards were still able to come out on top in most games. It should be mentioned that a single card which can run three monitors and still perform up to expectations with 3D Vision enabled is definitely a welcome addition to NVIDIA’s lineup.

Within our review of the HD 6990 we mentioned that a strong driver stack is a must for any dual GPU product. Without quick SLI support for new games, the GTX 590 will be dead in the water. A good example of this was the GTX 590’s performance in Just Cause 2 where framerates took an unexpectedly plunge at higher resolutions with AA enabled. This in effect had a profound impact upon the 2560 x 1600 / 8x AA results we have above. Hopefully a situation like this is the exception rather than an omen of things to come.

The GTX 590 is a card that’s full of surprises. It may not decisively beat the HD 6990 but it’s quite obvious that NVIDIA has raised the bar for dual core graphics cards by lessening the perceived shortcomings. Their solution is quiet, runs cool, doesn’t consume as much power as many were predicting and is immensely powerful while boasting one of the most complete feature sets currently available. A price which puts it on level footing with Antilles is just icing on the cake. The GTX 590’s inability to blow the HD 6990 out of the water on the performance front may disappoint some but when looked at as a complete package, we couldn’t have asked for more.

When taken at face value, the reference GTX 550 Ti 1GB really isn’t anything to get too excited about even though it does bring forth some unique technologies which could very well filter down to many future NVIDIA cards. But the board partners set out to rectify this situation by releasing a long list of pre overclocked and altogether custom cards that push the GF116 in new directions. Some don’t even come with an associated price premium over the MSRP.

ASUS and EVGA get things started with cards from opposite ends of the spectrum. The ASUS Ultimate Edition is an unassuming card that is saddled with a drool-worthy core clock that’s in excess of 1Ghz but comes with a $20 price premium over the reference version. Meanwhile, EVGA’s GTX 550 FPB takes a bit more mundane approach with slightly increased clock speeds but doesn’t deviate from NVIDIA’s MSRP of $149.

Perennial competitors Gigabyte and MSI have both sent cards which feature similar pre-overclocked clock speeds along with custom designs and are only priced a few bucks over the reference price. It will likely be a race that’s too close to call between these two but from where we’re standing, it’s hard to imagine where either could go wrong.

Considering the clock speeds and feature sets these four cards come with, this roundup should give you a good cross section of the GTX 550 Ti product stack. All in all, it should be interesting to see how NVIDIA’s board partners have risen to the challenge of breathing life into a new GPU.

GF106 to GF116; Another Revised Architecture

Unlike past revised Fermi cores, NVIDIA really didn’t have to make too many changes to the GF106 architecture in order to bring its features in line with the rest of their product stack. Nonetheless, NVIDIA still decided to revise the GF116’s layout so more of the faster, higher leakage transistors were placed on the critical rendering paths instead of being used for periphery tasks. Meanwhile, the slower low leakage transistors were placed where speed wasn’t a primary concern.

Strategically distributing the transistors in this way allows for a small speed-up in overall rendering performance. More importantly it also means the fastest transistors will now be fully utilized instead of being used for non critical tasks and thus lowering overall performance per watt. In addition, some other not so insignificant tweaks were made.

The GF116 core looks very much like that of the GF106 but there are a number of noteworthy additions. The basic layout of four individual SMs bringing with them 192 CUDA cores 16 texture units and a quartet of all-important PolyMorph engines has remained unchanged from the GF106.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA has gone to work expanding other portions of the architecture. The GF106’s remaining ROP partition and 64-bit memory controller were enabled which brought along an additional 128KB of L2 cache. This means GF116-based products will have 24 ROPs, 384KB of L2 cache and a 192-bit memory interface.

With the addition of a 192-bit memory interface, NVIDIA was faced with a bit of a challenge. Usually, memory controllers and drivers are meant to function with balanced memory allotments. Take for example the GTX 560 Ti’s layout; it uses four 64-bit memory controllers each of which is paired up with two 128MB GDDR5 modules equaling 256MB per controller and 1GB when all of the modules are combined.

The above-mentioned formula led a version of the GTX 460 having a 192-bit memory interface along with 768MB of memory and the 8800 GS having a 192 / 384MB layout. NVIDIA wanted to avoid reducing the overall memory allotment from the GTS 450’s 1GB to 768MB on the GTX 550 Ti so they implemented an obvious yet innovative solution.

NVIDIA now has a way to allow for mixed memory allotments on a per-channel basis. Since the technology is proprietary and will presumably a closely guarded secret, they declined to discuss the specifics with us. What we do know is that two of the GTX 550 Ti’s memory controllers are populated with 256MB of memory (in two 128MB modules) while the other is paired up with 512MB of GDDR5. Presumably, there is some sort of load balancing going on behind the scenes which is facilitated by a slightly revised driver stack but we’re sure that some core changes were implemented as well.

In our opinion, this newfound ability to mix memory sizes is truly a game changer that could have a huge impact upon upcoming NVIDIA products.

With the refined process bringing the ability for increased clock speeds and the addition of an expanded memory interface, the GTX 550Ti performs above and beyond the GTS 450 which is likely why this new card isn’t going to replace its predecessor in NVIDIA’s lineup. The 192-bit interface in particular brings massively increased memory bandwidth (an area in which the GTS 450 was lacking) which could lead to some dramatic increases in games.

The GTX 550Ti’s Place in NVIDIA’s New Lineup

Before we get too far into this section, it should be mentioned that NVIDIA’s aim for the GTX 550 Ti 1GB isn’t to replace the GTS 450. Rather, the GF116-based card will occupy the all-important $150 price point which makes it highly appealing for OEMs and the retail channel alike.

Increasing performance over the GTS 450 while maintaining an optimal TDP was one of NVIDIA’s major goals for the GTX 550 Ti and it looks like they have accomplished this. 116W represents a mere 10W increase over its predecessor despite much higher clock speeds and a fully enabled core with an additional active memory controller and eight more ROPs. Memory bandwidth has also increased exponentially due to the 192-bit interface and is actually a step above what’s offered on the GTX 460 768MB.

Judging from the specifications and pricing structure of the newest card in NVIDIA’s lineup, it should be quite obvious that the GTX 550 Ti is aimed to take a chunk out of AMD’s HD 5770 market share. Up until now the HD 5770 has been sitting in a position which was largely uncontested since there just weren’t any GeForce products to compete with it. That’s about to change but the GTX 550’s impending release has already had a profound effect on the HD 5770 since AMD has finally seen fit to reduce its price to about $130 after rebates.

The only issue we see with NVIDIA’s approach is the GTX 460’s volatile pricing structure has made it available for under $150 if you look hard enough. Despite lower clock speeds, the GF104 core can simply overpower anything the GTX 550 Ti can offer. Even the rare yet underpowered GTX 460 SE (a card that seemed to be released in a desperate attempt to dump GF104 cores) holds an edge over the 550.

From our understanding there is still a huge amount of GTX 460 cards in the channel which may be preventing NVIDIA from releasing any products between the GTX 560 and GTX 550. This in effect leads to a yawning gap in the 500-series product stack which is currently of occupied by the three GF104-based cards. Hopefully as stocks of the older cores decrease, we will see NVIDIA releasing cut down GTX 560 products but until that time comes, there will be GeForce cards sitting at literally every conceivable step of the $150 to $200 staircase.

ASUS GTX 550 Ti Ultimate

After a long hiatus, ASUS has finally seen fit to reintroduce their Ultimate series of graphics cards. Sporting some massive clock speeds but a slightly slimmed down accessory package without a mini HDMI to HDMI adaptor, this card is geared towards gamers who don’t need any superfluous accessories. However, it does come with a “hefty” price tag of $169.

ASUS has used their DirectCu heatsink on this card along with what they call Super Alloy Power which is supposed to ensure clean and effective power delivery to various onboard components. Basically, the components are upgraded over the reference card.

At around 8 ¾” in length, the Ultimate is slightly longer than the reference version’s 8 ¼” but since this card uses a PCI-E power connector that’s placed at a right angle to the PCB, it actually winds up taking the same amount of place once installed. Meanwhile, the backplate sports a unique layout and includes a full size HDMI output which is why no adaptor was included in the box.

EVGA GTX 550 Ti 1GB FPB

Last year, EVGA introduced the first of their FPB or Free Performance Boost branded graphics cards. These offered higher performance than the reference-based versions while retailing for not a penny more than the MSRP. This series has now been brought over into the budget friendly market by offering a reasonable clock speed bump on the GTX 550 Ti. The FPB also comes with EVGA’s 3 year standard warranty which can be upgraded to 5 or 10 year coverage for a nominal fee.

Like most other EVGA cards, this one adheres to NVIDIA’s reference design which means it’s equipped with a centrally mounted 80mm fan blowing down onto a standard aluminum heatsink. Naturally, EVGA applies their own brand stickers which actually look quite good in this case.

As we said, nothing here is any different from the reference design. There is still a 6-pin PCI-E header on the back of the card while output connectors consist of two DVIs and a single mini HDMI.

Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti 1GB OC

Gigabyte’s OC series of graphics cards has always played second fiddle to their SOC (Super Overclock) branded products but this doesn’t stop them from shining well in their own light. In the case of their GTX 550 Ti OC, the core clocks have been pushed beyond those of MSI and EVGA but the GDDR5 picks up a bit more leisurely pace.

Without a doubt, this card’s defining feature is the absolutely gargantuan 92 mm fan placed atop it. This Sikorsky-like propeller spins quite slowly while pushing cool air down onto a decidedly rudimentary heatsink design made up of aluminum fins. Gigabyte has also gone with a custom PCB and PWM design for their OC version which is keeping with the Ultra Durable VGA methodology behind many of their products.

The backplate is once again equipped with the standard layout of one mini HDMI output and a pair of dual link DVIs.

MSI GTX 550 Ti 1GB Cyclone II OC

Like other cards in this roundup, MSI has joined the game with their own unique take on a custom GTX 550 Ti. Along with upgraded components from the Military Class spec, they have also equipped this card with the next generation of their Cyclone heatsink. One of the more interesting aspects of this card is that MSI is asking for a mere $5 more over the reference design for it.

MSI’s card is distinguishable by its large Cyclone II heatsink which takes up a full two slots of height. While the PCB itself does feature upgraded components, it sticks to the reference length of about 8 ¼” which should make it adaptable to almost any enclosure.

The heatsink itself consists of a contact plate which is attached to a primary fin array as well as two large heatpipes. These heatpipes allow any excess heat to be moved away from the core to be dispersed by the secondary fin array. MSI has also incorporated an aluminum stiffener along the length of the PCB.

Like most of the other cards in this roundup, MSI has equipped their card with the stock output connectors which are hooked up to a custom designed backplate.

Test System & Setup

Processor: Intel Core i7 920(ES) @ 4.0Ghz (Turbo Mode Enabled)
Memory: Corsair 3x2GB Dominator DDR3 1600Mhz
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD5
Cooling: CoolIT Boreas mTEC + Scythe Fan Controller (Off for Power Consumption tests)
Disk Drive: Pioneer DVD Writer
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000W
Monitor: Samsung 305T 30” widescreen LCD
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate N x64 SP1

Graphics Cards:

GTX 550 Ti 1GB (EVGA, Flashed w/ref. BIOS)
ASUS GTX 550 Ti Ultimate
EVGA GTX 550 Ti FPB
Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti OC
MSI GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II OC

HD 6850 1GB (Ref)
HD 5770 1GB (Ref)

GTX 460 1GB (Ref)
GTX 460 1GB SE (Gigabyte / Custom Cooled)
GTX 460 768MB (Ref)

Drivers:

NVIDIA 267.59 (GTX 550 Ti)
NVIDIA 267.31 Beta
ATI 11.4 Preview + CAP 11.2 R4

Note: Even though AMD claims the “AMD Optimized Tessellation” feature in the 11.1a drivers has not yet been implemented, we have changed the setting to “Off” in order to ensure additional, untested optimizations are not enabled.

Applications Used:

3DMark 11
Aliens Versus Predator
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
DiRT 2
F1 2010
Just Cause 2
Lost Planet
Metro 2033
Unigine: Heaven

*Notes:

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR BENCHMARKING PROCESS PLEASE SEE THIS ARTICLE

- All games tested have been patched to their latest version

- The OS has had all the latest hotfixes and updates installed

- All scores you see are the averages after 3 benchmark runs

All game-specific methodologies are explained above the graphs for each game

All IQ settings were adjusted in-game

3DMark 11 (DX11)

3DMark 11 is the latest in a long line of synthetic benchmarking programs from the Futuremark Corporation. This is their first foray into the DX11 rendering field and the result is a program that incorporates all of the latest techniques into a stunning display of imagery. Tessellation, depth of field, HDR, OpenCL physics and many others are on display here. In the benchmarks below we have included the results (at default settings) for both the Performance and Extreme presets.

Performance Preset

Extreme Preset

Aliens Versus Predator (DX11)

When benchmarking Aliens Versus Predator, we played through the whole game in order to find a section which represents a “worst case” scenario. We finally decided to include “The Refinery” level which includes a large open space and several visual features that really tax a GPU. For this run-through, we start from within the first tunnel, make our way over the bridge on the right (blowing up several propane tanks in the process), head back over the bridge and finally climb the tower until the first run-in with an Alien. In total, the time spent is about four minutes per run. Framerates are recorded with FRAPS.

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BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

To benchmark BF: BC2 we used a five minute stretch of gameplay starting from the second checkpoint (after the helicopter takes off) of the second single player mission up until your battle with the tank commences. Framerates are recorded with FRAPS.

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DiRT 2 (DX11)

Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not representative of the final product. DX11 was forced through the game’s config file. In addition, you will see that these scores do not line up with our older benchmarks at all. This is due to the fact that a patch was recently rolled out for the game which included performance optimizations in addition to new graphics options.

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F1 2010 (DX11)

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Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Just Cause 2 has quickly become known as one of the best-looking games on the market and while it doesn’t include DX11 support, it uses the full stable of DX10 features to deliver a truly awe-inspiring visual experience. For this benchmark we used the car chase scene directly following the Casino Assault level. This scene includes perfectly scripted events, some of the most GPU-strenuous effects and lasts a little less than four minutes. We chose to not use the in-game benchmarking tool due to its inaccuracy when it comes to depicting actual gameplay performance.

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Lost Planet 2 (DX11)

Lost Planet is a game that was originally released on consoles but in its port over to the PC, it gained some highly impressive DX11 features. For this benchmark, we forgo the two built-in tools and instead use a 2 minute gameplay sequence from the second level in the first chapter. The reason we use this level is because it makes use of three elements that are seen throughout the game world: jungles, water and open terrain.

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Metro 2033 (DX11)

There has been a lot of buzz about Metro 2033 which has mostly centered on its amazing graphics coupled with absolutely brutal framerates on even the best GPUs on the market. For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.

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1920 x 1200

Unigine: Heaven v2.0 (DX11)

Unigine’s Heaven benchmark is currently the de-facto standard when it comes to simple, straightforward DX11 performance estimates. While it is considered a synthetic benchmark by many, it is important to remember that no less than four games based on this engine will be released within the next year or so. In this test we will be using a standard benchmark run with and without tessellation enabled at three resolutions,

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Overclocking Results

In order to overclock these cards, we used the software which each comes with; ASUS’ SmartDoctor, EVGA’s Precision, Gigabyte’s OC Guru and MSI’s AfterBurner.

While many of these offer the option to increase voltage, we are going to explore overclocking without increasing the default voltage. Note that some cards have a slightly higher than reference voltage.

ASUS GTX 550 Ti Ultimate

Core Speed: 1109Mhz
Memory Speed: 4504Mhz (QDR)

EVGA GTX 550 Ti FPB

Core Speed: 1050Mhz
Memory Speed: 4544Mhz (QDR)

Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti OC

Core Speed: 1022Mhz
Memory Speed: 4412Mhz (QDR)

MSI GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II OC

Core Speed: 1066Mhz
Memory Speed: 4508Mhz (QDR)

Core Temperature & Acoustics

While all of the cards in this roundup have overclocked cores, not once did we see any of them showing higher than reference temperatures. In fact, both Gigabyte and MSI’s heatsinks provided some downright great results with the Cyclone II heatsink flexing its serious cooling muscles throughout the test. ASUS’s DirectCu design was good but the fan speed never ramped up to the point where lower temperatures could be achieved while EVGA’s card retains the stock heatsink so its numbers were very much in-line with what we expected.

In terms of acoustical footprints we can say that the cards from MSI and Gigabyte were clear winners here since one has more than enough heatsink mass while the other has a massive fan that doesn’t need to spin up all than much. EVGA’s card is also quite quiet but it did tend to reach a slightly higher RPM range than the reference design. Meanwhile, ASUS’ card wasn’t audible over the system fans but it did idle at a point higher than the rest of the cards featured here.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

Power consumption numbers for all of these cards was understandably higher than the reference clock version but some like the ASUS Ultimate easily outstripped higher performing products like the GTX 460 SE. Meanwhile, the MSI Cyclone was able to hold higher efficiency numbers possibly due to its lower temperatures.

Conclusions

To read our full review of the reference card, CLICK HERE.

Our review of the reference GTX 550 Ti shone some light upon NVIDIA’s new card and our opinions about its positioning within the current market. Truth be told, our initial response was one of disappointment but these retail-bound products have allowed us to look at things in a slightly different light.

Value is quickly becoming a new cornerstone of this industry and it seems like NVIDIA’s board partners have taken this to heart as they went about designing their GTX 550 Ti cards. In our opinion, some of the manufacturers featured in this roundup have done a good job in bridging the gap between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 460 series. Unfortunately, we’d still recommend you take a close look at AMD’s HD 6850 before taking the plunge with any of these products.

ASUS GTX 550 Ti 1GB Ultimate

Based on our past experiences, the reintroduction of ASUS’ Ultimate series had some extremely high expectations to live up to and the GTX 550 Ti version delivered. Its high clock speeds allowed for performance which almost equaled that of the GTX 460 SE and came relatively close to the GTX 460 768MB. There was even some overclocking juice left in the tank.

Pricing naturally takes a bit of a back seat when it comes to Ultimate-branded cards but we find $20 a completely acceptable premium to pay for this GTX 550. It brings a laundry list of features to the table while pushing framerates to levels we wish the reference card achieved. As such, it wins our Dam Good Award.

EVGA GTX 550 Ti 1GB FPB

We have to applaud what EVGA did with this card. Instead of sticking with the reference version’s clock speeds ad calling it a day, they took the time and effort to implement measures that ensure slightly higher performance without increasing the asking price. Add to this EVGA’s award winning customer service and their innovative new warranty plan and you have a recipe for success in the $150 market.

Basically, the FPB makes any other reference-clocked card that’s released at NVIDIA’s MSRP look overpriced by comparison and we’re more than happy to accept that.

Gigabyte GTX 550 Ti 1GB OC

Gigabyte’s OC Edition has us sitting on the fence. On one hand, we love the near-silence of its massive fan, good performance results and excellent temperatures.

The flip side of the coin had Gigabyte unable to provide us with a price and the heatsink assembly felt…well…kinda cheap. Its shroud is attached to the fin array by a trio of very thin plastic straps which flex back and forth whenever the card is touched. Yes, we’re nit picking but when you have the high quality heatsinks of MSI and ASUS sitting alongside this card, every minor detail counts.

The real question mark here is price. If Gigabyte can get this card out there for the same price as EVGA’s FPB then it will represent a great value for your money. However, any higher than that and you’d be better off with the MSI Cyclone II or EVGA FPB.

MSI GTX 550 Ti 1GB Cyclone II OC

Over the last year or so MSI has been highly aggressive when it came to pricing their graphics cards and the Cyclone II OC continues this trend. In the past it used to be next to impossible to find a card with a decent custom cooler for anywhere close to the cost of a reference edition. Yet here we are staring at a GTX 550 Ti with a high end heatsink, upgraded components and a clock speed bump for a mere $5 more than NVIDIA’s base MSRP. That’s a winning combination in our books.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/41619-nvidia-geforce-gtx-550-ti-roundup-asus-evga-gigabyte-msi.html

If you have been waiting for the dual-GPU monster from AMD called Antilles, you can finally jump for joy as the Radeon HD 6990 4GB video card has officially been released. This video card has been at the center talked about openly by AMD for nearly half a year now, so to see it out in the wild is a relief. AMD should be relieved too as this is their first Dual-GPU video card that they have launched since the Radeon HD 5970 was released back in 2009. They also managed to get it out the door before the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 comes to market, which is always good.

AMD sent us the Radeon HD 6990 4GB video card in a silver briefcase that had a rather large advertisement for Dragon Age II on the cover, but sadly the game was no where to be found. Inside the briefcase up we found more marketing material that said, “Rise to power with the AMD Radeon HD 6990, the fastest graphics card in the world”. Below the sign we found the foot long behemoth and no we aren’t talking about a Subway Footlong sandwich! This isn’t a $5 Subway Footlong though as this is a flagship video card that comes with a hefty price tag of $699. A Radeon HD 6970 can be had for $319.99 after rebate, which is interesting as this video card uses the same GPU cores.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB video isn’t something totally new as AMD basically took two of their Cayman GPU’s used on the Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 series and slapped them on a single PCB.  If you recall the Radeon HD 6970 video card runs at 880MHz on the core clock and has 24 SIMD units with 1536 ALU stream processors. We thought that AMD would have to reduce the clock speeds on the GPU for a dual-GPU card and we were partly right.

The Radeon HD 6990 has a core clock speed of 830MHz with a memory clock speed of 1250MHz (5.0Gbps). The Radeon HD 6990 has compute performance rating of 5.1TFLOPs (single precisions) and 1.27TFLOPs (double-precision). This is very impressive, but as you can see they had to reduce the clock speeds.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. The AMD 6900 series has two BIOS versions that you can change between and AMD allowed one to be set at 880MHz on the 6990! That means that the Radeon HD 6990 really does have two GPU’s that are basically running at the same core clock speeds as the core on a Radeon HD 6970 video card. AMD has done a ton of engineering to pull this feat off and this should mean that this single card should easily defeat the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and become the fastest video card on the planet. The slide above shows that the overclocked profile is called the 6990 OC.

Let’s take a quick look at the card and our test system and then see how the video card performs against dozens of other video cards.  Once we do that we’ll look at temperatures, power consumption and overclocking performance!

A Closer Look At The Radeon HD 6990

The Radeon HD 6990 4GB GDDR5 is the first video card looks similar to the Radeon HD 6800 and 6900 series, but you should be able to tell that it is different due to the output connections on the end of the card and the centrally located cooling fan. For the most part, AMD stuck with the red/black color scheme with the wave motif, as you can see from the picture above. We are dealing with a reference design card that came without any bundle.  We asked AMD what bundle consumers can expect with this $699 card and we were told this:

All AMD Radeon HD 6990s ship with an extremely cable-rich package, including 1x mini DisplayPort to SL-DVI passive, 1x mini DisplayPort to SL-DVI active, and 1x mini DisplayPort to HDMI passive adapters (not present by default in other products), enabling 3×1 Eyefinity gaming out of the box with legacy displays. The HDMI adapter also provides HDMI 1.4a compatibility as well for AMD HD3D technology. All of these adapters if purchased separately would be worth over $60. – AMD PR

Right away we noticed that the Radeon HD 6990 is longer than the Radeon HD 6950 and 6850 video cards.  We took the picture above to show you the length difference between these three popular gaming graphics cards.  The AMD Radeon HD 6850/6870 are 9.5″ long, the Radeon HD 6950/6970 are both 10.5″ in length, but the Radeon HD 6990 is a massive 12″ in length!  The PCB is only 11.5″ long, but the backplate and fan shroud extend past the card! This card obviously won’t fit in many compact or OEM cases, so be sure to measure inside you chassis if you want to fit one of these cards inside!

As you can see, the Radeon HD 6990 video card is a dual-slot card with a single squirrel cage type cooling fan right in the middle of the video card between the two GPU cores.

The back of the Radeon HD 6990 is blocked off by the metal plate shown above, so we can’t see what is going on underneath that plate. Having a plate like this is nice as it usually helps dissipate heat and also protects the components on the backside from the card when you set the card down and install/remove it from the system. As you can see the AMD Radeon HD 6990 uses a PCI Express slot and this is a PCI Express 2.1 slot.

The AMD Radeon HD 6900 series has what they are calling a ‘Dual BIOS Toggle Switch’ and this is a pretty neat feature that we need to talk about.  This switch allows you to switch between two totally separate BIOS versions on the Radeon HD 6900 series graphics card. AMD said that these boards have two BIOS chips (EEPROM) that both have separate lanes.  If you want to tweak or flash the card to a different BIOS you can always do so on setting number 1, which is unprotected and for user updates.  Setting number 2 is protected as the factory default and can’t be flashed by end users.

The switch on the AMD Radeon HD 6990 that was sent to us for review came with an overclocking profile already setup and ready to use on Postion 1. This profile had the core clock at 880MHz and had the voltage cranked up to 1.175V for stability. The settings on Position 2 were what we tested with and were the cards rated clock speeds of 830MHz at 1.12V.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 uses two 8-pin PCIe power connectors located at the along the top corner of the video card.  AMD didn’t tell us what the power supply requirements are, but we do know the card uses more than 375W at max load. We also know that AMD designed this card to work at 450W as it was designed with overclocking from the start.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 has four mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors on it that have double the data-rate of DisplayPort 1.1. In addition to the higher data-rate, DP 1.2 also brings support for higher resolution support and support for stereoscopic 3D. To the right of the mini-DisplayPort connectors is a dual-link DVI-I output.

This means that with the three adapters that comes with every card you’ll be able to setup and run an eyefinity display setup if you wish. Our card didn’t include any cables with it, but you can check out the cables that come with the card in the image above.

The Radeon HD 6990 only has one CrossFire interconnect.  This means that you’ll be able to run just another card with it for quad CrossFire down the road.

The Radeon HD 6990 video card has a rather beefy GPU cooler underneath the fan shroud as you can see from the image above.

In this shot of the PCB you can see both of the GPU cores along with the PLX bridge chip that is used to bridge the two chips together.  As you can see the is rather full and it really does need to be 11.5″ in length!

The Test System

All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with all the latest updates installed. All benchmarks were completed on the desktop with no other software programs running. The Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 memory modules were run in triple-channel mode at 1866MHz with 8-8-8-24 1T timings. The ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard was run using BIOS 0502 with the processor running stock settings and Turbo enabled.

Drivers Used For Testing:

• The ATI Radeon HD 5000 series cards were all tested using CATALYST 10.10 drivers
• The AMD Radeon HD 6000 series cards were tests using CATALYST 10.11 drivers
• The AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB was tested using 11.1a Hotfix drivers.
• The AMD Radeon HD 6990 1GB was tested using 11.4 beta drivers.
• All of the NVIDIA video cards were tested with Forceware 260.89 WHQL drivers with the exception of;
• The GeForce GTX480/GTX570/GTX580 as those were tested with 263.09 WHQL drivers
• The GeForce GTX 560 Ti was tested with Forceware 266.56 drivers

Windows 7 Drivers Used:
Intel Chipset Inf Update Program V9.1.1.1025
Realtek Audio Driver V6.0.1.6037 for Windows 64bit Windows 7.(WHQL)
Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet Driver V11.10.5.3 for 32/64bit Windows 7.(WHQL)
Marvell 9128 SATA 6Gbps Controller Driver V1.0.0.1036 for 32/64bit Windows 7.

Here is the Intel LGA 1366 Test platform:

Video Cards Tested:

• ASUS GeForce GTX 580 – 782MHz Core/1564MHz Shader/1002MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 – 772MHz Core/1544MHz Shader/1002MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 – 732MHz/1464MHz Shader/950MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti – 823MHz/1645MHz Shader/1002MHz Memory
• Galaxy GeForce GTX 480 – 700MHz Core/1401MHz Shader/924MHz Memory
• ASUS ENGTX470 GeForce GTX 470 – 608MHz Core/1215MHz Shader/837MHz Memory
• EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1GB FTW  – 850MHz Core/1700MHz Shader/1000MHz Memory
• EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB SuperClocked  – 763MHz Core/1526MHz Shader/950MHz Memory
• NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB – 783MHz Core/1566MHz Shader/902MHz Memory
• EVGA GeForce GTS 450 1GB FTW – 920MHz Core/1840MHz Shader/1026MHz Memory
• ASUS GeForce GTS 430 1GBDDR3 – 700MHz Core/1400MHz Shader/800MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6990 – 830MHz Core / 1250MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6970 – 880MHz Core / 1375Hz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB – 880MHz Core /1250MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB – 880MHz Core /1250MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6870 – 900Mhz Core / 1050MHz Memory
• Diamond Radeon HD 6870 – 940Mhz Core / 1100MHz Memory
• AMD Radeon HD 6850 – 775Mhz Core / 1000MHz Memory
• XFX Radeon HD 6850 – 775Mhz Core / 1000MHz Memory
• ATI Radeon HD 5970 – 735Mhz Core / 1010MHz Memory
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 – 850Mhz Core / 1200MHz Memory
• ATI Radeon HD 5850 – 725Mhz Core / 1000MHz Memory
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 – 850Mhz Core / 1200MHz Memory
• HIS Radeon HD 5570 512MB GDDR5 – 650MHz Core / 1000MHz Memory

AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card GPU-Z 0.5.1 Details:

Aliens vs. Predator

Aliens vs Predator D3D11 Benchmark v1.03 is a standalone benchmark test based upon Rebellion’s 2010 inter-species shooter Aliens vs. Predator. The test shows xenomorph-tastic scenes using heavy tessellation among other DX11 features.

We cranked up all the image quality settings in the benchmark to the highest level possible, so we were running 4x AA and 16x AF with SSAO enabled at both 1920×1200 and 1280×1024 on all the video cards.

Benchmark Results: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 falls right behind a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s do in CrossfireX. At 1280×1024 the Radeon 6990 was 3.8 frames per second or 3.26% behind the Radeon HD 6970′s. At 1920×1200 the performance gap closed to 2.88%. The pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580′s running is SLI were 6.8% faster at 1280×1024 and 5.81% faster at 1920×1200.

Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 is a sandbox style action video game currently under development by Swedish developer Avalanche Studios and Eidos Interactive, published by Square Enix. It is the sequel to the 2006 video game, Just Cause.

Just Cause 2 employs a new version of the Avalanche Engine, Avalanche Engine 2.0, which is an updated version of the engine used in Just Cause. The game will be set on the other side of the world, compared to Just Cause, which is on the fictional tropical island of Panau in Southeast Asia. Rico Rodriguez will return as the protagonist, aiming to overthrow the evil dictator Pandak “Baby” Panay and confront his former boss, Tom Sheldon.

Benchmark Results: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 was just behind below the top spot at 1280×1024 by .1 frames per second, second only to the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s running in CrossfireX. At the higher resolution of 1920×1200 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 was still in the second spot, though the performance gap increased to 1.1 frames per second or 1.4%.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in the Ukraine. The game is played from the perspective of a character named Artyom. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro station where the player’s character was raised (he was born before the war, in an unharmed city), but occasionally the player has to go above ground on certain missions and scavenge for valuables.

This is another extremely demanding game. Settings were left at High quality and Advanced DirectX 11 settings were left at default. The section of Metro 2033 tested was the Prologue with fraps polling from when you are climbing up the ladder until opening the door to exit the metro station. This section includes many features found throughout the game including four creatures which attack you before you exit the building, dense particles, ammo in cabinets, a few computer controlled sections and, of course, Miller, your first companion.

Benchmark Results: Whether it is a driver issue with the new AMD 11.4 beta drivers or the Catalyst Application Profile our results at 1280×1024 aren’t to hot, and the reason isn’t quite clear to us. Though our results at 1920×1200 do look much more promising, at least when it comes to our AMD Graphics cards. At 1920×1200 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 was 9.4% faster than a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s in CrossfireX. Despite high hopes, the AMD 6990 wasn’t able to compete with the single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 which was ~10% faster at 1920×1200. We have contacted AMD about this benchmarking issue and will let you know what the solution is!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

The events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl following the ending in which Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness. Having discovered the open path to the Zone’s center, the government decides to stage a large-scale operation to take control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat utilizes the XRAY 1.6 Engine, allowing advanced modern graphical features through the use of DirectX 11 to be fully integrated; one outstanding feature being the inclusion of real-time GPU tessellation. Regions and maps feature photo realistic scenes of the region it is made to represent. There is also extensive support for older versions of DirectX, meaning that Call of Pripyat is also compatible with older DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 10.1 graphics cards.

The game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CoP has no internal benchmarking tools built into the game engine, but they do have a standalone benchmark available that we used for our testing purposes. The screen capture above shows the main window of the benchmark with our settings. Notice we are running Enhanced Full Dynamic Lighting “DX11″ as our renderer.

Under the advanced settings we enabled tessellation and 4x MSAA. We didn’t enable ambient occlusion as we wanted to use these test settings for mainstream cards down the road and these settings should be tough enough to stress any and all DX11 enabled video cards.

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat showed that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 fell behind the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s by 8% at 1280×1024 and 11.1% at 1920×1200.

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware. 3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

The Extreme settings were used for testing, so a resolution of 1920×1200 was used.

Benchmark Results: Once again the AMD Radeon HD 6990 fell inline where we expected it to. 16% faster than the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6950′s in CrossfireX, and 4.7% behind a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s! Significantly faster than the AMD Radeon HD 6990 was the pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580′s in SLI. These were faster than the AMD Radeon HD 6990 by nearly 29%, though that’s roughly the price difference as well.

3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark for measuring the 3D graphics performance of gaming PCs. 3DMark 11 uses a native DirectX 11 engine designed to make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Since Futuremark has recently released 3DMark11 we decided to run the benchmark at both performance and extreme presets to see how our hardware will run.

3DMark 11 Extreme Benchmark Results:

3DMark 11 Performance Benchmark Results:

Much like many of our benchmarks today, the AMD Radeon HD 6990 fell short of the performance of a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s in CrossfireX in FutureMark 3DMark 11. Running the Extreme Preset the AMD Radeon HD 6990 was ~5.3% behind the AMD Radeon HD 6970′s for the overall score as well as the GPU score. The performance preset shows a much closer margin for the overall score, only 77 3DMarks or .8%. The GPU score tells us a different tale though. The Radeon HD 6970′s gave us a GPU score of 9737, while the AMD Radeon HD 6990 gives us a GPU score of 9317. That’s a difference of 420 3DMarks or 4.3%.

Unigine ‘Heaven’ DX11

The ‘Heaven’ benchmark that uses the Unigine easily shows off the full potential of DirectX 11 graphics cards. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode emerging, experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extent and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming. The distinguishing feature of the benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand.

We ran the Heaven v2.1 benchmark that just recently out with VSync turned disabled, but with 8x AA and 16x AF enabled to check out system performance. We ran the benchmark at 1920×1200 and 1280×1024 to see how the benchmark ran at some different monitor resolutions. It should be noted that we ran the new extreme tessellation mode on this benchmark.  These are the toughest settings that you can run on this benchmark, so it should really put the hurt on any graphics card.

Benchmark Results: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 was out paced by the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s by ~5% at 1280×1024 and ~10% at 1920×1200.

FurMark 1.8.2

FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that’s why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card.

The benchmark was rendered in full screen mode with no AA enabled on both video cards.

Benchmark Results: Furmark showed the AMD Radeon HD 6990 taking the top spot of this test. It wasn’t by a small margin either. At 1280×1024 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 averaged 216 frames per second, while the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s in CrossfireX averaged only 177 frames per second. Interestingly enough, a single AMD Radeon HD 6970 averaged 193 frames per second. Firing up Furmark 1.8.2 at 1920×1200 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 raced along at 175 frames per second, while the AMD Radeon HD 6970′s were cruising along at 135 frames per second and the single AMD Radeon HD 6970 kept pace at 133 frames per second.

FurMark 1.8.2

FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that’s why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card.

The benchmark was rendered in full screen mode with no AA enabled on both video cards.

Benchmark Results: Furmark showed the AMD Radeon HD 6990 taking the top spot of this test. It wasn’t by a small margin either. At 1280×1024 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 averaged 216 frames per second, while the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s in CrossfireX averaged only 177 frames per second. Interestingly enough, a single AMD Radeon HD 6970 averaged 193 frames per second. Firing up Furmark 1.8.2 at 1920×1200 the AMD Radeon HD 6990 raced along at 175 frames per second, while the AMD Radeon HD 6970′s were cruising along at 135 frames per second and the single AMD Radeon HD 6970 kept pace at 133 frames per second.

Temperature Testing

Since video card temperatures and the heat generated by next-generation cards have become an area of concern among enthusiasts and gamers, we want to take a closer look at how the graphics cards do at idle and under a full load.

AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Video Card Idle Temperature:

As you can see from the screen shot above, the idle state of the Radeon HD 6990 drops the GPU core clock frequency down to 250MHz and the memory clock down to 150MHz to help conserve power and lower temperatures.  At idle on an open test bench the Radeon HD 6990 video card temperature was observed at 40C with the fan spinning at 1337RPM or 30%.

We fired up FurMark and ran the stability at 640×480, which was enough to put the GPU core at 100% load in order to get the highest load temperature possible. This application also charts the temperature results so you can see how the temperature rises and levels off, which is very nice. The fans on the video cards were left on auto during temperature testing. When we hit the space bar to stop the rendering the temperature dropped.

AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Video Card Load Temperature:

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB peaked at 77C according to Furmark, but we noticed that GPU-Z 0.51 and Furmark were reporting two different load temperatures.

GPU-Z showed the one core hitting 76C and the other hitting 82C. We aren’t sure which core is which, but one core looks to be running hotter than the other.

When it comes to noise levels the Radeon HD 6990 was at about the same noise level as our CPU cooler, but at full load it was a bit loud.  At full load we noticed that the RPM on the single fan got up to nearly 5800RPM and at that speed you could most certainly hear it over anything else on the test system by a long shot.  We hope to see companies bring out custom cooling solutions for this card in the future! It should be noted that we tested the card on the open test bench in a room that was 70F.

Power Consumption

For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Kill-A-Watt power meter. For idle numbers, we allowed the system to idle on the desktop for 15 minutes and took the reading. For load numbers we measured the peak wattage used by the system while running the OpenGL benchmark FurMark 1.8.2 at 1280×1024 resolution.

Power Consumption Results: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 is pulling 499 Watts at the wall. At first glance that seems excessive. If we compare it to what the pair of AMD Radeon HD 6970′s is pulling, it will make us feel a little better. Under full load with Furmark 1.8.2 the of AMD Radeon HD 6990 draws nearly 100 Watt’s less than the pair of AMD Radeon 6970′s and the pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580′s in SLI. Idle numbers for the AMD Radeon HD 6990 and the pair of AMD 6970′s in CrossfireX are both sitting pretty at 132 Watts at the wall which is only 21 Watts more than a single AMD Radeon HD 6970.

Radeon HD 6990 Overclocking

To overclock the AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB graphics cards series, we used the ATI Overdrive utility that is part of the CATALYST Control Center. When you ‘unlock’ the ATI Overdrive, you can manually set the clock and memory settings.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 starts off life at 830MHz on the core and 1250MHz on the memory.  We were able to use AMD Overdrive and get the card up to 950MHz core and 1350MHz on the memory and didn’t see any issues in the games with PowerTune left alone. This is a 120MHz overclock on the core and a 100MHz boost on the 4GB worth of GDDR5 memory ICs.

To test out the overclock we fired up 3DMark Vantage to see what this overclock was like.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Stock 830MHz/1250MHz:

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Overclocked 950MHz/1350MHz:

Running 3DMark Vantage with the Extreme preset we got a score of X18781 with the card at reference clock settings.  The score went up X20735 3DMarks when overclocked, which was an improvement of 1954 points or 10.4% thanks to spending a bit of time overclocking.

Radeon HD 6990 Overclocking

To overclock the AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB graphics cards series, we used the ATI Overdrive utility that is part of the CATALYST Control Center. When you ‘unlock’ the ATI Overdrive, you can manually set the clock and memory settings.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 starts off life at 830MHz on the core and 1250MHz on the memory.  We were able to use AMD Overdrive and get the card up to 950MHz core and 1350MHz on the memory and didn’t see any issues in the games with PowerTune left alone. This is a 120MHz overclock on the core and a 100MHz boost on the 4GB worth of GDDR5 memory ICs.

To test out the overclock we fired up 3DMark Vantage to see what this overclock was like.

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Stock 830MHz/1250MHz:

The AMD Radeon HD 6990 Video Card Overclocked 950MHz/1350MHz:

Running 3DMark Vantage with the Extreme preset we got a score of X18781 with the card at reference clock settings.  The score went up X20735 3DMarks when overclocked, which was an improvement of 1954 points or 10.4% thanks to spending a bit of time overclocking.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1566/1/

It seems like every week another company joins the SSD fray with a drive of their own. Granted, there’s still a lot of users that still haven’t made the leap from the trusty old platter hard drive but that number is rapidly dwindling. Does Zalman, a company best known for their cooling and cases, have what it takes to get a piece of the SSD pie? They’re making an effort with their launch of two different SSD lines. One, the S Series, carries the JMicron controller and the second, the N Series, sports the popular SandForce controller. We’ll have a look at the N Series to see if it stacks up with the other SandForce drives already on the market.

The N Series drives are their enthusiast level offering and have a retail price of $289 for the 128GB drive, $169 for the 64GB drive and should be available at the time of this writing. The S Series are more value oriented with drives of capacities of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB at an MSRP of $99, $149 and $249 respectively.

EDITORS UPDATE: These are finally hitting retailers and the N128GB and N64GB are selling for $249 and $155 respectively.

Let’s have a look at the features and specifications as listed by Zalman.

Zalman N Series Features:

• Optimized for AHCI Mode
• Support WIN7 Trim Command
• SandForce Technology Inside
• Ultra fast start-up and access speed
• Reliable
• Silent and low power operation

Zalman N Series Performance Specifications:

In the box is simply the drive and a small brochure with specifications and instructions. The drive itself is black with a brushed texture and the familiar SATA II data and power connectors.

Let’s see if there are any surprises on the inside.

Zalman N Series – The Internals

Breaking open the case required the usual four screw removal, although the back plate nestled into the front section making it a little more tricky to remove.

Only 2 screws hold the PCB to the case on one end and padding is affixed to each side of the casing on the other end to keep things snug and safe. This is a little different than other drives we have seen.

The back side of the PCB is where we’ll find half of the total 128GB of flash, numbering in eight total.

The Intel branded 34nm MLC NAND carries part number 29F64G08CAMDB and 8GB in density. With 16 total on board, the total drive capacity caps out at 128GB but not all of that will be available to the user as we’ll detail on the final page of the article.

Flipping the board over reveals a similar layout with the exception of the SandForce SF-1222 controller taking up residence in the center. If you’ve seen any of our other reviews of SandForce based drives, this should look very familiar. Absent is any sign of Zalman branding on the PCB.

The controller, more often generically referred to as just ‘SF-1200′, has largely been heralded as the best SSD controller so far this year which is principally due to the DuraClass technology it employs for drive maintenance and on the fly error correction. It requires no use of external cache for buffering and relies on real-time data compression to boost performance.

Zalman N Series – Test System

TEST SYSTEM

All tests were performed on a fresh and up-to-date install of Windows 7 Pro x64 with no other applications running while using AHCI mode set through the BIOS. Synthetic Benchmarks were run with the OS loaded on a 40GB Corsair Force SSD. The ASUS P6T Deluxe (BIOS v1701) motherboard uses an ICH10R south bridge chipset which supports TRIM. In between every test, the drive was secure erased. As such, all results should be indicative of optimal performance. All components were set to their default speeds and are listed below:

Comparison Drives & Other Models We Have Tested

Since there are so many SSDs out there now with different controllers, we started a reference table of which controllers are used by each drive to help you compare results. Different controllers definitely perform differently and each has various strengths and weaknesses. Like CPU’s, even identical drives will have variations in performance and part of that variance may be attributable to the NAND flash used.

As you can see from the readout on CrystalDiskInfo 3.9.1, both NCQ and S.M.A.R.T. are enabled, as is TRIM. This is a great free tool to see what version of firmware the drive is running in the event there are updates available. Before we started, we made sure we were running the latest available firmware for the drive.

On to the benchmarks!

ATTO & AS-SSD Synthetic Benches

ATTO v2.41

ATTO is one of the oldest drive benchmarks still being used today and is still very relevant in the SSD world. ATTO measures transfers across a specific volume length. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and places the data into graphs that can be very easily interpreted. The test was run with the default runs of 0.5kb through 8192kb transfer sizes with the total length being 256mb.

Benchmark Results: It’s no surprise that the numbers here are almost exactly (identical in one case) like the other SandForce drives. This is not a knock on the Zalman N Series – these are good scores!

AS-SSD Benchmark

We have been running the AS-SSD Benchmark app for over a year now and found that it gives a broad result set. Many testers are using the 4k file size read/write results for the IO Meter benchmark which is an old tool and the AS-SSD benchmark essentially shows the same metric in its results set. The programmer worked very hard on this software and continues to make updates often so if you use it, show him some love.

Benchmark Results: So what is going to be a recurring theme in this article is the performance that, for all intents and purposes, matches that of the other SATA II SandForce drives. If I hid the names of them, guessing which drive was which would be a pure random guess.

HD Tach & CrystalDiskMark Synthetic Benches

HD TACH 3.0.4.0

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device as possible.

Benchmark Results: The results are very typical of a SandForce drive with a very smooth graph line as we see above with the Zalman N Series drive. The raw numbers also reflect the expected results which a very favorable.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.0h

CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for drives and enables rapid measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Note that CDM only supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with a queue depth of 32 (as noted) for the last listed benchmark score. This can skew some results in favor of controllers that also do not support NCQ.

Benchmark Results: Because this benchmark uses incompressible data, the SandForce drives don’t perform as well as some of the other drives on the sequential read/writes but strut their stuff on the 4k tests. The Zalman blends right in.

PCMark Vantage Synthetic Benchmark

PC Mark Vantage

PCMark Vantage v1.01 measures the performance of the latest PC hardware across a variety of common scenarios. PCMark Vantage supports both system level and component level benchmarking and comprises several different test suites but for the purposes of this review, we stuck with just the HDD suite. The nice thing about PCMark Vantage is that you can submit your scores online and compare against others.

Benchmark Results: No surprises here with predictable yet admirable performance for the Zalman N Series. Consistency is a good thing.

Zalman N Series -Real World Tests

One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called Teracopy, we copied large numbers of two file types from one folder to another on the same drive. Teracopy allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer and using the same drive prevents other devices from tainting the outcome. The operation requires the drive to perform both sustained read and writes simultaneously. The first was a 2.12GB collection of mostly JPG files (with a few .MOV files thrown in) of variable sizes which were taken at CES in January of 2010.

The second was a collection of MP3 files of various sizes that totaled 4.65GB collectively. These file types were chosen due to their wide use and mixture of file sizes and compression levels.

Install Results: The Zalman N Series showed great performance here although the MP3 copy test showed slightly longer times which was consistent when repeated.

We also timed the installation of a few rather lengthy applications/suites as app installs is something everyone does and waiting for completion can be a drag. We used Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, Microsoft Office 2010 Professional and Futuremark’s 3DMark Vantage as our test subjects with all install settings at default. Both were installed from an installer located on the target drive itself as installing from another drive, especially an optical drive, would cause a bottle-neck that would corrupt the results. The timing for these had to be done via stopwatch so there should be about a half second +/- error margin. Again, with the source and target drives being the same, concurrent read/write activity is required.

Install Results: The times here for the N Series are so close to the others that the differences are statistically insignificant. Beats the snot out of installing on an HDD!

Last but not least, everyone’s favorite is the Windows startup/shutdown time check. This is one of the big reasons you want an SSD as your boot drive!

This test was also performed with a manual timing method via stopwatch and should also carry the same half second +/- margin of error. The methodology employed was to force the BIOS to allow user selection of startup drive after load and begin timing from the time the enter button is pressed until the Windows desktop appears on the screen. All of the instances of Windows were identical and freshly installed with only the NVIDIA video driver manually installed.

Install Results: The Zalman drive had a quicker startup than expected, albeit by just a few seconds. Shutdown is right where we expected the time to be.

Capacity, Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Zalman N Series 128GB SSD has a fair amount of overprovisioning with only 111GB being available to the user once Windows takes its share. This is a 15% chunk gone bye-bye but the tradeoff is that the extra room set aside will aid in drive longevity and generally, the more overprovisioning the better for drive life.

So what have we learned about the Zalman N Series SSD? Frankly, nothing that we couldn’t have forecast before even connecting it to our test bench. The benchmark scores show little, if any difference between the Zalman N Series drive and the other SandForce based drives of the same configuration.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing. The SandForce drives have pretty much been leading the way all year and have proven to be very resilient and this drive is no different. The performance pushes that of the SATA II interface and is about as far as we’ll see without RAID or interface changes. Zalman also offers a 3-year warranty which seems to be pretty much the norm although a few have precariously stepped out on the ledge with longer warranties. At an MSRP of $289 (this is likely to drop as supply increases), they are priced slightly higher than that of their peers.

EDITORS UPDATE: These are finally hitting retailers and the N128GB and N64GB are selling for $249 and $155 respectively. This pricing puts them closer in line with others of the same build.

The problem for Zalman is that they are a little late for the party. SandForce has already announced that they’ll be rolling out new controllers soon and there are at least a half dozen SandForce SF-1200 drives out there, including one by MicroCenter. There’s not much here to differentiate the N Series drive, so for the few who haven’t purchased yet, there’s little incentive to look Zalman’s way unless the customer is already a fan of the brand. The similar drives that have been on the market awhile are already being discounted with rebates and price cuts so Zalman has a bit of a hill to climb to play catch-up. I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on Zalman, because I’m not. They have a great drive on their hands but at this point the market seems to be saturated with a number of drives that are more or less clones.

Legit Bottom Line: The Zalman N Series 128GB SSD is just what we expected from a SandForce drive – speedy, resilient, and reliable. However, it remains to be seen if a company not typically associated with data storage can make a splash when entering the SSD market behind its established competitors.

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