by Doors4ever
05/26/2009 | 06:53 PM
EVGA products are very well-known not only outside California, where the company head-quarters are, but also outside the United States. The first things we think of are EVGA graphics cards, of course, but they have also been selling EVGA branded mainboards for a few years now. Until recently all EVGA mainboards have been based on Nvidia chipsets, because EVGA Corporation is one of Nvidia’s primary partners. Now, however, EVGA started offering mainboards on Intel chipsets for the first time. The reasons behind this decision are pretty obvious to everyone: Nvidia doesn’t have any chipsets supporting the new generation Intel processors because of some licensing issues. Moreover, there is no certainty that these chipsets will come in the near or even far away future. Intel X58 Express is currently the only core logic set supporting Intel Core i7 processors that is why it is absolutely natural that EVGA started launching mainboards based on this chipset.
It is no secret that many graphics cards and mainboards based on Nvidia chips use reference design. The only way to distinguish between the solutions from different makers is by the package design, brand name sticker and accessories bundle inside. Therefore, it is extremely interesting to see how successful EVGA’s own proprietary design turned out and what functionality their new mainboard has to offer. We decided to start with the top mainboard in the new family – the EVGA X58 SLI Classified.
EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard ships in a very large box:
There are brief technical specifications, the list of included accessories and a photo of the board itself on the back of the box:
When you open the box, you immediately understand why it was made so big: EVGA made sure their packaging fits the product perfectly and fulfils its protective functions in full. The mainboard is sealed in a traditional antistatic bag and besides cardboard casing is also surrounded with a soft foam frame. All accessories are sealed in metalized bags with EVGA logos on them. The bundled accessories include the following items:
Besides all these pretty standard accessories, EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard comes with a numbered certificate stating that you have purchased an authentic product that has been tested manually and is guaranteed to meet EVGA quality standards. There is also ECP (EVGA Control Panel) that is connected to a special mainboard connector with two cables.
As you can see, this panel is not covered with any decorative casing, there are no stands or retentions for installing it into the 5-inch bay. It is not designed for decorative or entertainment purposes, it is a purely utilitarian device that makes it easier to work with this board on an open testbed. This panel mostly duplicates the functions of the board: Power On, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, POST indicator, a set of jumpers used for disabling idle graphics card PCI Express connectors. The unique peculiarity of this mainboard is three buttons, each sending an additional 0.1V to the CPU. The increment is way too big for using these buttons during CPU overclocking. This dramatic voltage increase may come in handy if you use some extreme cooling, which this particular mainboard allows. However, we are going to talk about it a little later in this review and in the meantime, let’s take a closer look at EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard.
Red and black colors make EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard look very serious and solemn. You really have to take a closer look in order to notice a number of very interesting technological solutions implemented on this mainboard.
As usual, let’s start with the top part of the mainboard PCB:
The digital ten-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry is topped with a heatsink that may only seem common. There is a heatsink plate of complex shape over the voltage regulator components. It transfers the heat through a heatpipe that has been slightly flattened to ensure larger contact area to a heatsink that dissipates all the heat.
Another peculiarity hides behind this heatsink. You can power the CPU using two 8-pin ATX12V power connectors!
There are six DIMM slots that can accommodate up to 24GB of DDR3 SDRAM. There are special contact sets right next to them that allow controlling the whole bunch of very important parameters such as processor, memory and chipset voltages.
Now let’s take a look at the lower part of the mainboard PCB. Just like many other previously reviewed mainboards based on Intel X58 Express, EVGA X58 SLI Classified is equipped with four PCI Express x16 graphics card slots with two top connectors always working at their full speed as PCI Express 2.0 x16 and two bottom ones sharing 16 PCI Express lanes. Moreover, the board also carries one PCI Express x1 and one regular PCI slot.
Along the lower edge of the PCB, from left to right, there are a PC Speaker that cannot be turned off, Reset, Power On and Clear CMOS buttons, several fan connectors, pin-connectors for IEEE1394 (FireWire) and four USB ports, POST indicator, color coded front panel connectors and ECP (EVGA Control Panel) connectors.
Frankly speaking, I don’t like it when you can’t turn off the integrated PC-speaker. I consider pretty loud beeping on every boot up to be more of a drawback, although certainly not a serious one. However, this time I even had some fun with it. After reflashing the BIOS with AWDFlash utility you see a blinking message that asks the user to remove the floppy and press F1 to reboot the system. This is hen PC-speaker warbled like a nightingale.
The red Power On button is highlighted with a red LED when on. And the black Reset button has a built-in yellow LED that lights up when the HDDs are active. When the board is installed into an open testbed it is very convenient to have the storage devices status indicator in front of you. Unfortunately, there are very few mainboards, besides EVGA X58 SLI Classified, that offer the same convenient feature.
There are six Serial ATA ports (black color) along the right side of the mainboard. They allow building RAID arrays, as the ICH10R South Bridge provides the corresponding RAID support. Another two SATA connectors (red color) and one PATA connector are implemented via an additional JMicron JMB363 controller.
As you can see, the heatsink over the chipset South Bridge is very large:
It is connected with the heatsink over the chipset North Bridge with a heatpipe:
The heatsink over the chipset North Bridge is simply gigantic. Three heatpipes transfer the heat from the chip to the heatsink. And a large “E” designed as the first letter of the EVGA logo is highlighted with twinkling and therefore not annoying red light.
All heatsinks are attached using secure screw-on retention; there are no plastic push-pins or clips of any kind. You can clearly see it, if you turn the board over and look at the bottom side of it:
We could once again joke about the inertia that drives the developers or the intentions behind the marketing approach to placing humongous heatsinks over the core logic chips on Intel X58 Express based mainboards. We could also smile about those trusting users who happily purchase mainboards with these “enhanced” chipset cooling systems. As we all know, Intel X58 Express based mainboards do not require increasing the North Bridge voltage even during overclocking that is why even a small heatsink would be enough for proper North Bridge cooling. However, we are not going to be sarcastic this time, because looks like these large heatsinks are not for decoration: EVGA X58 SLI Classified really does need them. The thing is that the heatsink over the chipset South Bridge covers not only the ICH10R chip, but also additional storage controllers as well as Nvidia NF200 chip. Just like all PCI Express bus controllers we have discussed before, NF200 chip eats up a lot of energy and runs very hot. Therefore, the heatpipe between the heatsinks over the North and the South Bridge chips runs right above it and that is why the large size of the chipset heatsinks is absolutely justified.
You can easily guess why they needed the additional Nvidia NF200 controller for. As you know, Nvidia never supported SLI configurations on platforms based on third-party chipsets before. The only way out in this case was to integrate a corresponding Nvidia controller. We are already familiar with this solution from our Intel Skulltrail platform review. EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard was supposed to boast this unique advantage – fully-fledged Nvidia SLI support - over the competitor solutions that could only support ATI CrossFire. Who could have known at the development stage that Nvidia will remove this ban? Although, I think, that being Nvidia’s close partner EVGA should have known about it in advance. Maybe they found out too late…
According to EVGA representatives, integrating Nvidia NF200 onto EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard still has its unique benefits for the platform. To be more exact, it will show a little later. This controller should speed up data transfer between the two cards installed into the second and third slots, for instance. You will see the difference with the next generation graphics cards, the current graphics accelerators show no performance improvement of any kind. So, it is quite possible that some time down the road Nvidia NF200 controller will in fact prove worthy with a few new graphics accelerators installed into the system. However, at this point it is an evident drawback to have an additional controller that consumes a lot of energy and runs very hot at work. Anyway, we are going to talk more about power consumption later in this article.
There is one PS/2 keyboard port on the mainboard connector panel. The mouse is supposed to be connected to one of the eight USB ports. Besides, there is a Clear CMOS button, an optical and coaxial S/PDIF connector and six audio-connectors implemented via an eight-channel Realtek ALC889 HD codec. There are two RJ45 network connectors delivered by two Realtek 8111C chips, one IEEE1394 (FireWire) and one eSATA port.
eSATA connector on the back panel appeared there due to another additional controller – JMicron JMB362. It provides support for two Serial ATA ports, so the second SATA port is located very close by: between PCI Express x1 and the top PCI Express x16 slots. If you have already forgotten where they are, you can take a look at the components layout from the user manual:
If you take a close look at EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, you can notice a couple of mysterious jumpers. One is a little lower than the memory slots and is called “X-COOL”. The second one is located next to the “CPU FAN” connector and is marked as “CSC Strap I-LIMIT”. There is no information about these jumpers in the user manual, the search didn’t produce any results, but the response from the company’s technical support group did make things clear. The only time you may need to reset the “X-COOL” jumper is if you use liquid nitrogen for CPU cooling and the temperatures drop below -50°C. By the way, there is a similar parameter in the mainboard BIOS. It is called “Extreme Cooling”. As for the “CSC Strap I-LIMIT” jumper, it has been reserved for future generation processors and is non-operational at this time.
The list of technical specifications from the mainboard manual will sum up everything we have just discussed in relation to EVGA X58 SLI Classified PCB design and functionality:
In my opinion, EVGA engineers who designed this unique board did a great job. Despite numerous additional controllers, the components are spread out in an almost classical manner that is why the board is very convenient to work with. All components that may run hot are covered larger with heatsinks; however, their very well thought-through shape shouldn’t cause any issues during system assembly. There is enough free room around the processor socket to accommodate large CPU coolers. The Power On, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, the POST indicator and their duplicates on the external ECP panel make work in an open testbed very easy, too. The board truly impresses with such rarely seen features as two eight-pin ATX12V power connectors, a set of jumpers disabling idle graphics card slots or contact spots for voltage monitoring. The board doesn’t have any COM or LPT ports, which may be worth keeping in mind, but it is no longer a drawback these days anyway.
At the time of tests the last official BIOS version for EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard was version S21H from 03.30.2009. However, I did find a link to the newer version S21N from 04.17.2009 in one of the forums. S21N Beta-BIOS appeared more user-friendly than the official one because it clearly states the processor and memory frequencies and you don’t have to manually calculate them. Besides, it also offers “Overclock Recovery Feature” that restores the settings after over-overclocking and improved fan rotation speed management with “Smart Fan Control”. Therefore, we used S21N version during our test session and are going to talk about it in this part of our review.
EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard uses a BIOS based on Phoenix-Award code. We are well familiar with most of its standard features that is why we are going to proceed with the discussion of those sections and sub-sections that have new and unique functionality in them. The first one will be “PC Health Status” section.
The functionality of this section makes a very good overall impression. We know all major voltages, chipset North Bridge and processor voltage regulator temperatures besides the CPU and system temps. Here we can control the rotation speed of three fans out of five that can be connected to the board. “SmartFan Function” allows setting the fan rotation speed adjustment in dependence with the temperature or set the constant rotation speed in percents from the maximum.
Now let’s move over to the “Frequency/Voltage Control” section that contains all the settings related to overclocking and performance increase.
“Dummy O.C.” parameter automatically overclocked our test Intel Core i7-920 processor by raising the base frequency from 133MHz to 160MHz. The result may vary for different CPU models. “Extreme Cooling” parameter serves to ensure system stability when extreme cooling methods are in place, such as Freon or liquid nitro. Overclockers are familiar with the issues caused by too low CPU temperatures referred to as “Cold Bug”. By selecting one of the three “Extreme Cooling” modes, you can eliminate these issues.
Most other parameters hardly require an explanation, their functions are pretty obvious. Therefore, let’s take a look at the first sub-section dealing with the memory parameters. “Memory Feature” sub-section has the biggest number of parameters in it, but it is very convenient to work with. Each memory timing may be set to “Auto”, which means you can adjust each of them individually, independently from all the others. The “Current” column lists the current parameter values.
“Voltage Control” sub-section contains numerous settings related to power and voltage management. For most of them you can set not only higher values, but also values below the nominal. Dangerously high values will be highlighted red. It is extremely convenient that there is a separate column with default settings for your reference.
Parameters for management of processor technologies are summed up in the “CPU Feature” sub-section. Everything here is also very clear and convenient. We were only a little surprised to see all processor power-saving technologies disabled by default.
The BIOS of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, just like the BIOS of many other contemporary mainboards, allows saving and loading settings profiles. You can save eight complete profiles and that is more than enough; however, the implementation of this function could have been more convenient. The window shows only profile numbers, you can’t provide them with explanatory descriptions or names upon saving, the occupied slots aren’t marked in any way and there is no warning if you are about to save a profile over the existing one.
The inconveniently set up work with settings profiles is probably the only serious issue with the EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard BIOS. Other than that all parameters necessary for successful overclocking and optimization for maximum performance are there; they are all very smartly arranged and are very easy and convenient to work with.
All our tests were performed in the following system:
We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 OS.
The assembly process went on smoothly. We also revealed no problems during work in nominal mode. However, like any other mainboard, EVGA X58 SLI Classified does have certain peculiarities. The first one is connected with the implementation of XMP technology (eXtreme Memory Profile). If you want to use settings profiles recorded in the SPD of Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX DDR3 memory modules, you will need to change the “memory SPD” setting in the “Memory Feature” sub-section of the BIOS.
I was a little surprised that only the anticipated memory frequency was changing in this case and all timings (as well as all voltages in “Voltage Control” sub-section) remained set to Auto. It would be much more convenient if they changed right away. Right now, however, we can only see the actual settings the board makes only after rebooting.
After reboot we see that the board set all timings recorded in XMP absolutely correctly for the 1867MHz frequency. After rebooting we can also see the voltages set by the mainboard. The memory voltage was increased to 1.65V and the voltage of the part of the chipset North Bridge containing the memory controller integrated into the CPU – CPU VTT Voltage – was raised by 300mV (0.3V).
It is interesting to recall that Asus and Gigabyte mainboards set the memory frequency at 1800MHz if you selected the second profile. It is a non-standard setting that cannot be obtained in a common manner – by selecting an appropriate memory divider. The list of standard frequencies includes 800, 1067, 1333, 1600, 1867MHz, etc. In this case, Asus and Gigabyte mainboards perform a few pretty complicated manipulations. They raise the base frequency from 133MHz to 150MHz to obtain d1800MHz memory frequency, but at the same time lower the CPU clock multiplier to make its resulting clock speed as close to the nominal as possible despite the increased base frequency. EVGA X58 SLI Classified does it in a simpler way: if you select the second XMP profile, it sets the memory frequency at 1600MHz raising the voltage on the modules to 1.65V and setting CPU VTT Voltage 250mV higher.
Even in the nominal CPU mode “CPU VTT Voltage” on EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard is set relatively high and equals about 1.23V. For the sake of comparison I have to say that its default value on Gigabyte mainboards is 1.175V, and on Asus ones – 1.2V. Therefore, increasing it by additional 0.25-0.3V seems to be little too much, which we have successfully proven during our test session. 0.1-0.125V increase in the “CPU VTT Voltage” proved enough to ensure memory stability at higher frequencies. You should lower the default voltages on EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard not only because the system will run too hot with them increased that much. The board has one more peculiarity: under heavy load it will increase the voltages quite noticeably. However, we are going to talk about it later in this article.
We started checking out the potential of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard for processor overclocking as usual: with finding the maximum base frequency. It turned out that by lowering the memory frequency and reducing the processor clock frequency multiplier to 12, we could easily get the board to work at 215MHz base frequency. It is a very good result, this should be more than enough for our Core i7-920 processor sample and the mainboards inability to increase the base frequency high enough will not be a bottleneck in our case.
However, after the very first experiments we found out that the mainboard increases the voltages set in the BIOS quite noticeably under heavy load. Speaking of increased voltages, I mean not only the processor Vcore, although you can more or less deal with all other increased voltages by setting their values initially lower than desired. For example, when we set the memory voltage in the BIOS to the nominal value of 1.65V for our modules, it would increase to 1.72V. To avoid this excessive increase, we had to lower the initial setting to 1.6V. Maybe we should have set it even lower than that, because it would eventually increase to 1.66-1.68V during the tests. As for the processor core voltage, things are not as simple here, you shouldn’t really change it unless you absolutely have to. If you increase or even lower the processor Vcore, then on most mainboards Intel CPU power-saving technologies may partially stop working they way they should. It means that when the load reduces to minimum, only the clock frequency multiplier will be lowered, while the Vcore will remain the same, though too high for idle mode anyway.
This way, if you intend to overclock your processor but maintain the system power-efficiency, we should leave the processor Vcore at Auto in the mainboard BIOS. Under heavy load the current consumed by the CPU increases, while the voltage goes down and it is no longer enough for successful CPU overclocking. In this case we enable “EVGA VDroop Control” in the BIOS. This function shouldn’t increase the voltage but maintain it at the nominal level preventing from dropping. However, when we enabled “EVGA VDroop Control” on EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, the processor Vcore went from the nominal 1.225V to 1.27-1.28V under heavy load. It is way too much.
Many mainboards from different manufacturers have something similar to “EVGA VDroop Control” in their BIOS. Everyone understands how dangerous it is to drop the processor Vcore under load. At some point it may lower too much and cause processor instability at the given clock frequency. That is why we are trying to prevent it from lowering. However, not everyone understands that increasing the Vcore is also harmful. You may think: we do increase the processor Vcore during overclocking in order to achieve higher clock frequencies, so what’s wrong about it? I believe I have to explain a few things.
The most obvious damage from raising the processor core voltage too high is the temperature increase. We set a specific value in the mainboard BIOS that is needed for stable work of our processor at the given frequency taking into account the utilized cooling solution. If the Vcore is increased, the cooler may no longer be efficient enough and we won’t be able to achieve maximum overclocking results. It seems that all we have to do in this case is to lower the processor core voltage by a certain value in advance, in order to avoid overheating. However, this is not a good way-out, because the core voltage doesn’t increase momentarily, it grows little by little that is why we may not have enough voltage in the beginning of our tests and again may fail to overclock our CPU fully. Moreover, the processor core voltage also depends on the load levels. I have seen multiple times how a CPU could successfully pass the long-term stability tests when all eight threads were busy, but would fail under small workload. In this case the Vcore doesn’t increase too much and hence is insufficient for stable operation.
Overall, overclocking results suffer when the voltage not only drops but also increases. The most optimal situation is when the board can maintain the core voltage at a certain level. Luckily, EVGA X58 SLI Classified knows how to do it. The processor Vcore is only increases significantly if it is set to Auto and “EVGA VDroop Control” function is enabled. However, if we set the processor Vcore at a certain specific value, the board stays on it pretty precisely. As a result, thanks to this feature as well as to overall excellent overclocking functionality of the EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard we managed to overclock our Intel Core i7-920 to 3.95GHz.
We have first achieved a similar result in early 2009 when we tested Gigabyte mainboards for Core i7 processors. Several months went by but none of the mainboards we tested afterwards could repeat this success. Now it has finally happened. EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard lowers the base frequency set in the BIOS by about 0.5MHz that is why we had to set it at 189MHz instead of 188MHz.
It is a great result, however when the processor Vcore changes Intel CPU power-saving technologies stop working on EVGA X58 SLI Classified, just like almost all other contemporary mainboards. It means that in idle mode only the processor clock frequency multiplier lowers, while the Vcore remains as is, at a relatively high level. It just doesn’t increase anymore.
Most mainboards we have tested so far could have the CPU working stably at 3.8GHz without increasing its Vcore and with the base frequency set at 181MHz. However, we were again luckier this time. EVGA X58 SLI Classified increased the processor core voltage in such a way that we could push the stability maximum a little further and overclock our CPU to 3.9GHz with the base frequency raised to 186MHz.
Under heavy load the CPU Vcore increased significantly, up to 1.28V. However, formally we overclocked without changing the CPU Vcore in the mainboard BIOS that is why all Intel processor power-saving technologies remained intact. Both: the processor clock frequency multiplier as well as the core voltage were lowered in idle mode.
It is very interesting that besides EVGA X58 SLI Classified, both recently tested mainboards – Foxconn BloodRAGE and DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 – also boasted the same “distinguishing feature”: they increased the CPU Vcore. However, they were not as good at it. Excessive Vcore increase wouldn’t let us overclock our processor to its maximum. As for overclocking without increasing the Vcore, it would be raised insufficiently to ensure stability at anything beyond the “standard” 3.8GHz.
Overall, we can conclude that although EVGA X58 SLI Classified does increase the processor Vcore under load, which is no good, it is done in such a smart way that it allows us not only to successfully overclock our processor to its maximum with the given cooling solution, but also to overclock it more without changing the core voltage in the BIOS. As you can see from the screenshots, the mainboard also allows raising the memory frequency to its maximum and setting the appropriate timings for it. As a result, we were very excited about the upcoming EVGA X58 SLI Classified performance tests in different operational modes.
Since EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard is the only one besides Gigabyte solutions that could overclock our test processor to its maximum frequencies, it would be absolutely natural to pick one of the Gigabyte boards for performance comparison. However, unfortunately, we won’t be able to offer you a comparison like that today. Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard that we had at our disposal passed all the tests in nominal mode, but for some reason refused to boot once we increased the memory or base frequencies. I took the entire testbed apart and then put it back together three times, but everything stayed the same: even when we raised the base frequency from 133MHz to only 134MHz, the board announced “over-overclocking” and reset all parameters to their nominal values after a few failed reboots.
In fact, the board didn’t die as an overclocker solution. We have recently confirmed that it still does overclock processors and memory just fine on a different testbed. Therefore, we are going to go back to this matter a little later and try to find out what was the reason behind this strange problem with our Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard. And in the meanwhile let’s compare the performance of EVGA X58 SLI Classified against Asus P6T mainboard that we have reviewed a while back. The first chart will represent the results obtained in nominal mode, when nothing is overclocked and all parameters are set by the mainboards themselves:
Well, we could probably consider a 1-3% difference to be within the measuring error margin, even though we repeated each test multiple times, discarded the results that fell out of line and calculated the average for the charts and further analysis. However, the SuperPi results are usually very stable and 8 seconds for calculation of 167 million digits is the worst result we have ever got. No other system based on Intel Core i7-920 processor and any of the mainboards on Intel X58 Express chipset has ever been so slow here. Besides, more that 7% difference in FarCry 2 and almost 12% in Image Editing benchmark fall way beyond the acceptable error margins.
And what do we have during overclocking? We overclocked our processor to 3.8GHz on Asus P6T mainboard, and that was the best we could get. As for EVGA X58 SLI Classified, we decided to take overclocking to 3.9GHz frequency. Of course, the board could overclock even higher, to 3.95GHz. However, 50MHz is not that much of a difference, while we lose in the memory frequency and don’t have Intel processor power-saving technologies working properly. These are the reasons why I consider overclocking to 3.9GHz to be a more optimal choice here. Let’s check out the results now:
We can explain a slight advantage of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard in Cinebench 10, Fritz Chess Benchmark, SuperPi 8M and Crysis Warhead by 100MHz higher CPU clock frequency. However, there is barely any difference in 3DMark Vantage, the board starts falling a little behind the competitor in FarCry 2, and in Image Editing benchmark the gap increases enormously again. So, what’s the matter? If you think about it, you may come up with at least three reasons.
Here is the first one. In fact the “standard” overclocking of our particular Intel Core i7-920 processor sample by raising its base frequency to 181MHz, which most mainboards do even without increasing their Vcore, is very good from two standpoints. First of all, we all remember about Intel processor power-saving technologies that remain up and running. But besides that, this particular mode appeared great for Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX DDR3 SDRAM. When we first talked about this memory, we learned that by setting CAS Latency 8 you could get these modules to work at maximum 1812MHz frequency. Overclocking your system to 181MHz base frequency allows setting the memory frequency very close to this maximum for CL8. At 186MHz base, the memory frequency is a little – 50MHz – higher, however, in this case we have to increase the timings and set CL9. We do get a performance boost in some applications due to higher processor and memory frequencies, but lose in a few others because of higher memory timings.
The second possible explanation is the following. We compared performance of two mainboards, but in fact, there was no direct comparison. The results for Asus P6T were taken from our earlier test session when we compared it against Foxconn BloodRAGE. As for EVGA X58 SLI Classified, we took the performance readings not on the freshly installed OS, but on the OS used for our DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 tests. There should formally be no noticeable difference, because all settings are the same, just as the list of test applications. But when it comes to principal comparisons like this, every trifle counts.
And finally, there is one more hypothesis to be considered. Maybe EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard is simply slower than Asus P6T?
Actually, we could check out all three possible explanations to get to the roots of things here. Since EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard could overclock the CPU without increasing its Vcore by simply pushing the base frequency to 186MHz, then maybe it could stop a little earlier, at 181MHz. The only question is if the board can ensure that the memory works stably at frequencies close to 1812MHz with low enough timings. The board proved absolutely comfortable with this work mode:
Now we must test the performance of EVGA X58 SLI Classified with the CPU overclocked to 3.8GHz, and, to eliminate any doubts we might have here, retest Asus P6T in the same mode. As we have expected, the results for Asus P6T, are practically the same as the older ones. The table below will show you the details:
Except a slight advantage in Crysis Warhead, EVGA X58 SLI Classified loses to its competitor in all other tests. However, the difference is really minimal in most apps and can be disregarded. However, we can’t overlook a significant lag in FarCry 2 and Custom PC Bench 2007.
At this point I came up with one more possible reason for the significant performance difference between the two boards. We set only the major memory timings for both of them: 8-8-8-20. All other timings were set by the boards themselves. Could there be big differences in secondary timings settings of the two boards that explain the defeat of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard? Let’s check out these settings now: Asus - on the left, EVGA - on the right:
|
|
There is barely any difference here. Some timings are better by Asus, some – by EVGA, but overall, the differences are minimal. The performance can also be increased by raising the Uncore frequency (the North Bridge part integrated into the CPU containing the memory controller). However, we didn’t increase this frequency on purpose and the board set it themselves at twice the memory frequency. The screenshots below show Asus board on the left and EVGA on the right:
|
|
The conclusion is obvious: EVGA X58 SLI Classified loses to Asus P6T in identical testing conditions.
However, EVGA X58 SLI Classified still has one last bullet left in the charger: maximum CPU overclocking to 3.95GHz. Yes, we will have to lower the memory frequency, but more aggressive timings should make up for that. Besides, the difference in CPU clock frequency will already be 150MHz.
Unfortunately, no wonder happened. We have to admit once again that in any operational modes and conditions EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard is slower than Asus P6T. It can’t outperform the competitor not in the nominal mode, not in identical testing conditions, not during higher CPU overclocking.
We used Extech Power Analyzer 380803 for our power consumption measurements. This device is connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measures the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself.
This time we have slightly changed our approach to measurements, in order to eliminate some inconsistencies and be able to provide more precise readings. We have no issue with the readings that we used to take off the systems in idle mode. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: we waited until all activity after boot-up is over and there were even no requests sent to the hard drive anymore. We also were totally satisfied with the graphics card load created by FurMark test. In this case the load was even higher than in many computer games. However, as for the system power consumption readings that were obtained after a single run of Fritz Chess Benchmark utility turned out lower than the actual power consumption of a working system. And in fact, it was much lower.
Here is an example. Power consumption of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard during CPU overclocking measured following our initial methodology involving Fritz Chess Benchmark utility varies between 353W and 370W depending on the overclocking mode. However, during stability tests with Prime95 utility power consumption proved way higher and reached 415-418W. as you can see, the difference is significant, although Prime95 is far not the most resource-consuming application.
The problem is that it is very inconvenient to measure power consumption with Prime95. This program loads the system in recurring cycles when the load increases and then decreases, so it takes a lot of time to get trustworthy readings. Besides, it is pretty hard to ensure equal testing conditions for different mainboards. Power consumption depends not only on the load but also on the temperature. The higher the temperature, the higher is the power consumption. And I am not talking about room temperature here, because the difference between 22°C and 25°C is really insignificant. However, when the microchips temperature skyrockets from 22-25°C to 60-90°C, this is where the differences start to matter. Therefore, you should take the readings as soon as possible, to prevent the temperature differences from contributing to the power consumption measurements error.
Luckily, we did find a more suitable utility for our power consumption tests. New version of LinX program already knows to load Intel Core i7 processors with eight computational threads. This utility offers simple and convenient interface for Intel Linpack benchmark, which is very famous for loading the CPUs extremely heavily. As a result, we get pretty high system power consumption readings within a very short period of time, which are closer to what we see in real life.
Well, let’s check out the “correct” power consumption readings in different operational modes for two systems in question: one based on EVGA X58 SLI Classified and another – on Asus P6T:
As we have expected, EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard consumes much more power. The power consumption of Asus P6T mainboard is comparable with what other solutions have to offer and acceptable from the consumer standpoint only in the nominal mode. Because of specific issues that we have already discussed before Intel processor power-saving technologies do not work on this mainboard when the base frequency increases past 152MHz. therefore, I would expect Asus board to lose during overclocking, however, it turns out more energy-efficient in all modes. Even during CPU overclocking on EVGA X58 SLI Classified by raising the base frequency to 181MHz or 186MHz, when all Intel processor power-saving technologies remain up and running, it consumes way more power. The reason is obvious: the use of hot energy-hungry Nvidia NF200 controller.
As we know, EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard as well as the additional EVGA ECP panel have a special set of jumpers that allows to selectively disable those PCI Express x16 graphics cards slots that aren’t used at the moment. Just in case we checked it out as well, but even when we disabled all slots except the first one with the graphics card in it Nvidia NF200 controller didn’t disconnect and the power consumption didn’t go down. Frankly speaking, we are extremely curious to see how big of an advantage this controller will bring us one day. And how long will it take for the new graphics card generations to appear? Six months? A year? A year and a half? I believe that there will be new mainboard models by then equipped with an Nvidia NF200 or similar controllers. However, all this time, our mainboard will waste tens of watts of energy and turn them into heat. I am afraid this integration might have been a little too early and the hypothetical future benefits cannot justify extremely high power consumption of EVGA X58 SLI Classified today.
We first introduced a chapter like that in our DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 Review although we have touched upon the same aspects in our earlier articles as well. It doesn’t mean that each review from now on will have a part like that: sometimes there is nothing we could praise or complain about. Today the situation is a little different - we can say a lot of good things about EVGA, there are a few things we could criticize. However, I am not 100% sure that my criticism is justified from all aspects. In my opinion, the company web-site is not very convenient to work with, there is not enough product information, the search is imperfect, but maybe not everyone shares my views. Therefore, I am going to share with you my personal opinions and you will decide for yourselves, whether to agree with me or not.
Let me start with the good stuff. Unlike many other manufacturers who turn to noname programmers to create unattractive “brand name” utilities with poor functionality, EVGA chose a different approach. They use the best experienced software developers recognized worldwide to write utilities for them. For example, EVGA Precision utility is based on the engine from an excellent tool called RivaTuner. The same way EVGA E-LEET utility looks very much like famous CPU-Z for a good reason: it is based on CPUID SDK.
I think it is a very smart approach. EVGA product owners receive fully operational program versions that are very easy and convenient to work with instead of a bunch of utilities that will be removed shortly after installation.
Now a few words about several drawbacks. We ended our “PCB Design and Functionality” chapter with a list of mainboard’s technical specifications taken from the user manual. In my opinion, even this list is not ideal, but there is even less information on the official web-site. Once you’ve got the board, you can easily read the name of the integrated sound codec or network controllers, however, it would be nice to know it beforehand. Moreover, we still don’t know what controller is used to implement IEEE1394 (FireWire). The chip is covered with a heatsink and there is no mention of it neither in the manual, nor on the company web-site. If you go to the product page devoted to EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, you will be offered to download a PDF-file with the product specifications, however, they are as brief as the ones on the web-site.
In the previous review of an EVGA mainboard I mentioned that I got into a really silly situation when I couldn’t find a BIOS update by choosing the mainboard model name from the menu in the “Download The Latest Drivers” section. This issue has already been fixed: now you can find the latest updates not only in the “BIOS Updates” sub-section, but also by choosing the mainboard model name from the list.
By why not go a bit further and provide a link to download a user’s manual, for example? But all manuals are singled out into a separate page of the “Support” sub-section. There is no direct link to it on the mainboard product page.
The site offers a comparison tool that seems pretty useless to me. The reason for that is again insufficient information and limited technical briefs. Since there are very few parameters and no details, it is fairly hard to see the difference between several mainboard models. Here is a good example: EVGA offers two models of EVGA X58 SLI Classified board. As you can learn on the company web-site, they have different part numbers: “141-BL-E759-A1” is the part number of our today’s board and “141-BL-E760-A1” – is a different less expensive model. What’s the difference between them? Let’s take a look at what the comparison tool tells us:
By clicking on the picture you can unfold the full list of compared specifications. I assure you, the only differences will be in part numbers and price. So what is in fact the difference between these two mainboards? It turns out you had to look at the titles, and not the specifications and features list. You can learn only from the title that our mainboard comes with EVGA ECP control panel and “true 3x16x Design”. WE already know what EVGA ECP is, but what is “true 3x16x design” and how is it different from “un-true design”? Unfortunately, we don’t know it.
Another example of insufficient information. Since the board is equipped with an additional Nvidia NF200 controller, comes bundled with several SLI bridges, even has “SLI” in the EVGA X58 SLI Classified model name and has Nvidia 2-Way and 3-Way SLI mentioned numerous times, we all understand that it supports different Nvidia SLI graphics cards configurations. And what do you think, is it possible to build an ATI CrossFire configuration on EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard? It is indeed a mystery. Looks like the word “CrossFire” is forbidden for EVGA. There is no mention of CrossFire support anywhere: neither on the company web-site, nor in the user manual. There is only a modest mention in the FAQ, namely, that “the X58 motherboard will support all crossfire capable ATI cards in a crossfire configuration”.
Surprising, but it seems that EVGA Company keeps quiet about some features of their mainboard on purpose, thus limiting the number of potential buyers. Far not every user will dig through the FAQ’s before buying a board. No mention means no support, as well as no buyer: either EVGA is not concerned, or the dependence on Nvidia is way too high. Now I tend to think that they may have deliberately integrated the Nvidia NF200 controller, although they knew that it was no longer necessary. It was only for everyone’s good. It was good for EVGA, because they could boast one of the few Intel X58 Express based mainboards with an additional Nvidia NF200 controller. It was good for Nvidia who sell these chips. It was even good for power companies who would receive more money for electricity from EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard owners. Unfortunately, there is no real good for these owners yet. But maybe later there will be.
Users in the USA can get support over the phone. If you wish to email your question, you have to fill out a form with numerous personal information, such as home address. By the way, you have to register in order to download or update EVGA’s brand name tools and utilities. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too happy about this extra work I had to do.
Overall, I think it is a pretty unfair deal we have here. EVGA provides users with too little information, but to get even that you need submit the whole bunch of personal data first. I don’t like registering, but I am eager to do so, I can come up with a login and password and even share my e-mail address, but I can’t figure out why may EVGA need my home address? I don’t think that it matters for the answer to my question or download procedure in any way.
I can’t say that things are bad, but they are not impeccable either. Of course, there might be a different opinion, according to which EVGA’s approach is absolutely justifies. The company provides only basic info, which is enough for a mainstream user. Why overload your brain with microchip names and other excessive details. Yes, I can agree that a web-site should contain only the basic information, but there should also be detailed specifications available somewhere: in the manual, in a PDF-file, or on a separate page. Some users may find it useful, important or simply interesting to know. Sometimes, there are tiny differences between several mainboard models, but they may determine the choice of a particular product for someone’s specific needs.
While we were raving about EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard right from the start, by the time we got to the conclusion the overall mood changed. EVGA X58 SLI Classified has a lot of advantages. It boasts very convenient PCB design, offers excellent functionality, and although some of the features aren’t revealed to us, they are still there. Of course, I am talking about ATI CrossFireX and a few other features that haven’t been disclosed to us for some reason. The board has very informative BIOS that is extremely easy to work with and offers anything you might need for successful system overclocking. As we found out the board increases the voltages under heavy load, but even despite this issue it managed to overclock our test processor to its maximum – it is the only mainboard after Gigabyte solutions that actually did it. Moreover, this particular issue made it possible to overclock our processor even higher than on any other mainboards without actually touching the voltage settings. Unfortunately, despite the formal advantage in overclocking results over Asus P6T, EVGA X58 SLI Classified failed to outperform its competitor in all test modes. Besides, it consumes more power, even though Asus P6T is also no energy-efficient product.
So, who may be the ideal user of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard? It works great in nominal mode - however, it will waste a lot of power in this case. It is practically ideal for CPU overclocking - however, other mainboards will offer higher performance levels and, again, will consume less power that simply turns into heat. So, it appears that EVGA X58 SLI Classified won’t suit just any user. It is for those of you who know with all certainty that they need this particular mainboard. A potential user should have a couple of Nvidia graphics cards to build an SLI configuration. He or she should demonstrate clear intention to upgrade to the next-generation Nvidia graphics solutions in the future, so that the NF200 chip could finally do some good. Moreover, it would be best to use CPU cooling solutions of extreme efficiency, such as liquid nitro or Freon phase-changers, especially since the board has a number of special features that should eliminate certain problems caused by extreme cooling methods and make extreme overclocking experience more enjoyable. Besides, when the CPU frequency changes are measured in GHz instead of hundreds of MHz, no one will be concerned with the low performance of this EVGA mainboard. It may allow you to push your CPU to 5-7GHz frequency: at this point, performance at 3.8-3.9GHz speed is of no immediate importance any more…
