by Doors4ever
08/20/2009 | 04:10 PM
Some time ago we completed the first round of tests on LGA1366 mainboards for Intel processors. If you check the corresponding section of our site devoted to mainboard reviews, you will see very well familiar names: ASRock, Asus, DFI, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Intel, MSI. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that we managed to cover all mainboard makers who offer solutions on Intel X58 Express. For example, our readers keep asking us if we are going to review any of the Biostar solutions, since this company offers three LGA1366 mainboards on this chipset. Unfortunately, we have to disappoint you: the company is not interested in promoting these solutions and refused to send us any review samples. Considering the small market share currently occupied by Bloomfield processors, this Biostar’s position is understandable. Hopefully, when new LGA1156 processors come out we will be able to finally offer you some reviews of the corresponding Biostar products, too.
While we are waiting for the new processors to launch, we didn’t want to keep our hands in pockets and waste precious time and decided to expand the variety of LGA1366 mainboards reviewed in our lab. From the list of manufacturers mentioned above only Intel has a single solution on Intel X58 Express chipset, all other makers offer several different modifications targeted for different user groups. At first we reviewed two flagship models from Gigabyte, then took a closer look at a mainstream solution and learned that the simpler model practically doesn’t yield to the top ones in anything. The comparison of two ASRock solutions looks even more convincing, where the junior model sometimes looks even more preferable than the top one. Today we are going to continue this good tradition and after the top-of-the-line EVGA X58 SLI Classified will talk about a relatively inexpensive EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard.
EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard ships in a box of standard size:
There are brief technical specifications, included accessories and warranty details listed on the back of the box together with a photo of the mainboard inside:
Besides the actual board, you get the following items:
Besides the drivers, the CD disk also contains the PDF-version of the user manual and Adobe Reader program, E-Leet utility and desktop wallpapers for all resolutions from 1280x720 to 2560x1600.
I would like to make sure that you don’t make a mistake. We called EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard “relatively inexpensive” and it is absolutely correct. It used to be the most inexpensive mainboard until recently, when EVGA released a microATX mainboard – X58 SLI Micro, which sells at a little over $200. As for EVGA X58 SLI LE, a mainboard selling for $240 can hardly be called cheap, but it is not really about the money that much in this case. The word “cheap”, the “LE” index in the mainboard model name – all this subconsciously prepares us for a solution with limited functionality and acceptable quality. However, this is an absolutely wrong impression. In reality, the actual features and functions of the EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard are barely different from those of EVGA X58 SLI Classified as well as from those of other manufacturers’ solutions. As for the quality of this board, it is exceptionally high and there is nothing to suggest that they were trying to lower the production costs at the expense of the product quality or features. EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard looks much more expensive than what they ask for it.
I doubt that you have any immediate comments about the components layout of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard: the design looks very balanced and convenient. The only noticeable drawback is the processor socket that is located very close to the top edge of the mainboard PCB. If the system case is not tall enough you may experience some compatibility issues with large CPU coolers, because their heatsinks may hit against the PSU located above or against the top of the case, if the PSU is at the bottom. Even on the top EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard model the CPU socket was a little lower, although there were also four PCI Express x16 graphics card slots on the PCB. So far we have seen the same not very convenient positioning of the processor socket only on ASRock X58 SuperComputer. Speaking about aesthetics, we have to say that the dark EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard could use a few colored DIMM or expansion slots, but it is only my personal opinion and doesn’t affect the mainboard functionality in anyway, of course.
When you look at the PCB from above, you can get a general idea of the layout and functionality. But if you want to check out the details, you have to look at a slightly different angle. Let’s start with the cooling system. All heatsink on EVGA X58 SLI LE have unique shape, but it is a large aluminum alloy heatsink on the chipset North Bridge that stands out most.
Despite the scarily large size, it is in fact not as big at it seems. For example, the long side of the CoolerMaster GeminII cooler that we used during our test session stretched perfectly fine above it and even had some additional headroom left. By the way, speaking of way to lower the production costs: all mainboard heatsinks use the same secure screw-on retention as the flagship EVGA solution.
Except the processor socket that is located too close to the top edge of the mainboard PCB, the upper part of the EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard looks great. MOSFET transistors of the six-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry are cooled with an additional heatsink, all power connectors are in very convenient places and the special contact spots for manual monitoring of the most important voltages are also all in place.
The bottom part of EVGA X58 SLI LE PCB doesn’t have the gigantic heatsink like the one we saw on the flagship solution, but it doesn’t really need it since there is no Nvidia NF200 controller. Intel ICH10R South Bridge is cooled with a low-profile aluminum heatsink that won’t disturb the installed graphics cards in any way. There is also a POST indicator, Power On and Reset buttons, and a small (to avoid accidental pressing) Clear CMOS button. The red Power On button is highlighted with a built-in red LED, and the Reset button – with a yellow LED that indicates HDD activity, which is a very elegant solution.
Just like the high-end model, EVGA X58 SLI LE is equipped with four PCI Express x16 graphics card slots, but they work in a very strange manner. Just in case let me remind you that Intel X58 Express chipset allows using two graphics cards at the same time that is why there must be two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, like on Intel DX58SO, for instance. If a mainboard manufacturers wish to increase the number of slots, they have to be creative. The simplest solution is to assign the remaining four PCI Express lanes to the third slot, like on ASRock X58 Extreme, Asus P6T and DFI LANPARTY DK X58-T3eH6. Gigabyte mainboards we have tested so far offer a different solution. Two graphics cards work at full speed, but when we install the third one, the algorithm changes to x16-x8-x8 — two lower slots split the 16 PCI Express lanes.
So far we have only mentioned mainboards with three PCI Express x16 slots, but even if you want to have four of them using an additional controller, like on EVGA X58 SLI Classified and MSI Eclipse Plus, is not an absolute necessity. Take, for example, ASRock X58 SuperComputer and Foxconn BloodRAGE. These mainboards, just like Gigabyte solutions, have two pairs of slots that split 16 PCI Express lanes between the two slots within each pair. Two graphics cards will work at full speed, while in case of four graphics cards, they will all switch to PCI Express x8. However, EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard used a completely different solution. There is no friendly sharing upon request, all slots work at a clearly set speed: the first one works at full speed, the second and the last one – at PCI Express x8, and the one but last uses the remaining four PCI Express lanes.
I don’t quite understand the reasons for this strange distribution of PCI Express lanes. Most systems with multiple graphics cards use two accelerators or three, but very rarely four. That is why it seems more logical to assign most resources to the first two graphics cards. This is the logics that we saw in all other mainboards previously tested in our lab: no matter how many graphics card slots there were and how the available PCI Express lanes were distributed between them, two graphics cards could always work at full speed. However, two graphics cards installed into EVGA X58 SLI LE don’t have this opportunity right from the start: the second one will always be slower because it can only work as PCI Express x8 or x4. How much slower it is actually going to be, will the speed difference be noticeable and in what operational modes – this is a different question. Besides, the majority of users have only one graphics card, so these problems will have nothing to do this them anyway, but those who are looking to build a multi-card graphics subsystem should definitely take note of this peculiarity.
You may have already noticed that EVGA X58 SLI LE doesn’t have any FDD and IDE connectors. At first when I looked at the back panel I assumed that they simplified the board design and lowered its cost by cutting down on additional controllers, since there are none on the board. True, I didn’t find any controllers that would provide support for PATA and a pair of SATA or eSATA ports. However, I noticed a Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A controller that implements two IEEE1394 (FireWire) ports. There are none on the back panel, but there is an additional bracket with two USB and one IEEE1394 port. As for the mainboard back panel, it has the following ports and connectors:
Now I only have to mention that EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard has six fan connectors, because you might find it difficult to notice small black connectors on the black PCB textolite. Everything else, such as color coded connectors for the front panel buttons and indicators or solid-state capacitors, are fairly easy to spot. Here is components layout schematic from the mainboard user manual that should help you:
We would like to wind up our discussion of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard design and features with a list of its technical specs from the user manual:
Well, now we can sum up a few things and point out the major features distinguishing EVGA X58 SLI LE from its elder sister. The functional differences are quite noticeable, but there are no serious drawbacks except the placing of the CPU socket too close to the PCB edge. As I have already said, I was a little surprised with the strange distribution of the PCI Express lanes between the graphics card slots, however, it won’t really matter for most users. As for the absence of a power-hungry Nvidia NF200 controller, we could even consider it an advantage. Some of you may want to mention the absence of IEEE1394 (FireWire) ports on the mainboard back panel, but this doubtful drawback is immediately compensated by the additional bracket with two USB and one IEEE1394 ports. All other differences are by no means drawbacks or issues, just keep in mind what we already know:
Frankly speaking, all these differences that have minor effect on the mainboard functionality seem even more insignificant keeping in mind that they resulted into a substantial price drop down to almost a half.
Mainboard makers have different approaches to product differentiation when it comes to BIOS functionality. By some makers, the BIOS functionality of junior and senior models differs dramatically, by others, it is merely the same. EVGA Company belongs to the latter type, the BIOS of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard is practically the same as that of the flagship solution.
We will not dwell in the first several sections of the BIOS, as their functionality has already been discussed in detail in previous articles. Let’s move over to the section called “PC Health Status”.
I would like to point out once again how pleased we are with the extremely detailed information about the voltages, temperatures and fans rotation speeds. The “SmartFan Function” sub-section will let you manually set the rotation speed at a fixed rate (in percents from the maximum) or so that it could change dynamically depending on the corresponding temperature. Compared with the previous model, they also introduced the “Aux Fan” option allowing to adjust the corresponding fan rotation speed.
“Frequency/Voltage Control” section with all the settings related to overclocking and increasing the performance has also remained unchanged compared with the flagship mainboard solution. It is very convenient and quite informative; all parameters are intuitively understandable from their names.
I would only like to specifically mention “Dummy O.C.” parameter. It allows automatic overclocking by locking the processor clock frequency multiplier at 20x, which is the nominal setting for our processor. It also disables Intel processor power-saving technologies, lowers the memory frequency and increases the base frequency from 133 to 160 MHz.
Numerous parameters dealing with the memory subsystem configuration are singled out into a separate sub-section called “Memory Feature”. Everything is again very informative and convenient. We know the current memory frequency and all memory timings. All parameters can be adjusted individually, independent of the others.
Only the “Voltage Control” sub-section differs a little from the corresponding sub-section on the flagship EVGA solution. However, all most important parameters are still in place and the sub-section remained highly informative: they use easy-to-understand color coding scheme, display the current voltages.
“CPU Feature” sub-section offers you to manage all processor-related technologies:
The BIOS of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard allows saving up to eight settings profiles and load the desired one quickly when needed. This is a sufficient number of profiles, but the implementation could have been a little more convenient. You can’t give profiles your own unique names or descriptions, you can’t see which profiles are already in use, there is no warning popping up that you are attempting to write over the existing profile.
At first glance the BIOS of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard is if not absolutely ideal, but at least very close perfection. Inconvenient work with settings profiles is the only drawback we can point out. Unfortunately, we uncovered a few frustrating issues in the BIOS during our work with EVGA X58 SLI LE, which we are going to discuss later in this review.
All our tests were performed in the following system:
We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 operating system with Service Pack 2, a set of chipset drivers version 9.1.0.1012, and ATI Catalyst 9.7 graphics card driver.
If you don’t change much in the mainboard BIOS and don’t touch any of the essential settings, then normally you shouldn’t experience any problems in the nominal mode. This time we also didn’t experience any difficulties neither during system assembly, nor during further work with EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard. When there is no serious processor load in place, all power-saving technologies (that are disabled by default for some reason) lower the processor clock frequency multiplier and Vcore.
When the CPU is loaded heavily, its core voltage returns to its nominal value and the multiplier increases to 21x due to Intel Turbo Boost technology kicking in. the only peculiarity that we managed to notice so far is the following: unlike other mainboards that tend to slightly, maybe by only a few MHz, increase the base clock, EVGA X58 SLI LE lowers it just a little.
On system boot-up the board reports very detailed info about the system operational parameters: current and nominal CPU frequency, memory size and frequency, a complete list of connected storage devices, BIOS date and version number, a list of available “hot” keys.
However, there is one small issue, we noticed. The memory frequency you see is not the actual memory frequency, but the BIOS setting, which is the result of the selected base frequency times the chosen multiplier. If we increase the base frequency during overclocking, then the memory frequency will increase accordingly, but we will still see the old, lower setting on system boot-up.
This is when we usually proceed with the performance tests, but we have recently got another interesting opportunity for additional investigation of mainboard functionality due to Crown AGE12025F12J fan with PWM control function. It turned out that different mainboards cope with this seemingly simple task very differently.
I would like to remind you that the rotation speed control of the CPU fan is enabled in the BIOS by default. Supposedly, if the CPU temperature is below 30 °C, the fan rotation speed should be at 50% of the nominal, and as soon as the temperature reaches 60 °C, it should increase to 100%. While the nominal fan rotation speed is 2200 RPM, in idle mode the board lowered it to approximately 1330 RPM.
I was a little upset to discover that during fan rotation speed management the board uses not the actual processor temperature, but the readings it takes on its own. And the sad thing is that the board’s readings are considerably lower than the actual temps. According to mainboard monitoring, the CPU temperature was around 22-24 °C in idle mode, which was about the same or even lower than the ambient room temperature, and as you realize, it is simply impossible. Therefore, I was very concerned that this mainboard would be unable to ensure acceptable thermal conditions for the CPU, just like the recently tested ASRock X58 Extreme. Luckily, my concerns didn’t come true. We experienced no issues when we increased the memory frequency and even during CPU overclocking. So, what’s the difference between the boards then? In the time it takes the board to respond to conditions changes.
In our ASRock X58 Extreme review we wrongly claimed that it takes the readings off the thermal diode beneath the processor socket. In fact, we should have mentioned some kind of a diode next to the CPU socket. When the processor load increased, it started heating up little by little, and then it took very long to cool down after the CPU had already switched to energy-efficient mode. As a result, we had to give up automatic management of processor fan rotation speed on ASRock X58 Extreme, because in this case we couldn’t overclock the CPU. It overheated before the fan could switch to higher rotation speed mode. The difference between the actual and measured CPU temperature on EVGA X58 SLI LE board is even greater, but the outcome is not the same. When the workload increased, CPU temperature rose very rapidly and the processor fan immediately switched to higher rotation speed mode. It means that you can in fact use automatic fan rotation speed management not only in nominal mode but also during overclocking.
I was very grateful to EVGA X58 SLI LE board when I found out that I didn’t have to keep the fan at its maximum rotation speed all the time during CPU overclocking.. only those applications that load the CPU very heavily require the fan to speed up to its maximum. Among the applications that we would normally use during our review process are Cinebench 10, Fritz Chess Benchmark, 3DMark Vantage CPU tests and video encoding in Custom PC Bench 2007. In all other cases the CPU cooler could cool the CPU sufficiently even at lower fan rotation speed.
However, we couldn’t help pointing out a few things, despite the above described successful resolution of our experiments. Although automatic fan rotation speed management on ASRock X58 Extreme doesn’t really work because the boards measures CPU temperature incorrectly, it is based on absolutely correct management principles. We have only two parameters at our disposal: startup fan rotation speed and temperature threshold at which the rotation speed should start increasing. This was exactly how it worked: once we exceeded the set temperature threshold, the fan rotation speed started to gradually increase. Unlike ASRock, EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard boasts broader and more flexible configuring options. It offers three parameters that we can use:
In my understanding, fan rotation speed management should work the following way:
Unfortunately, our tests showed that the startup temperature doesn’t have any effect on the way fan rotation speed management works, so the second item is eliminated from the algorithm. Just like on ASRock mainboard, only two parameters actually matter: startup fan rotation speed and maximum CPU temperature. The only difference is that as soon as the temperature reaches the maximum mark, fan rotation speed on EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard jumps up to its maximum immediately. As a result, when the CPU load increases its temperature to the maximum threshold value, the fan rotation speed immediately hits the ceiling. The CPU temperature goes down, and so does the fan rotation speed. CPU continues working, the temperature increases again, and so does the fan rotation speed – up to the maximum, and this endless cycle goes on and on…
My shattered nerve system begged to tell EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard that this limited algorithm for the management of processor fan rotation speed can only work during low CPU load, when the processor temperature doesn’t reach the set maximum mark. Or on the contrary, during work in extremely CPU-heavy applications when even maximum fan rotation speed can’t help keep the CPU temperature within an acceptable thermal interval and therefore, its rotation speed is constantly at its maximum. As for the pretty widely spread average workload, the constant cyclic howling of the EVGA X58 SLI LE processor fan make it absolutely impossible to work comfortably and affect the users’ mental health. Only properly implemented management of the processor fan rotation speed on EVGA boards can save the day. If the rotation speed starts increasing gradually as soon as the CPU temperature reaches the minimum mark, then maybe it will be possible to keep the thermals within the acceptable interval without reaching maximum fan rotation speed. If not, then maybe at least this transition won’t be as abrupt and annoying from acoustical standpoint.
I would like to wind up the discussion of EVGA X58 SLI LE features and operational specifics on a highly positive note. I was very pleased that the board shares its own extensive monitoring info with the corresponding utilities. Look at the screenshot from CPUID Hardware Monitor window: we know all the major voltages, temperatures and fan rotation speeds. Moreover, it is for the first time that I see this utility display the current PWM-control value in percents.
However, you can also notice how greatly the processor temperature readings actually differ, as we have already mentioned earlier in this review. According to the mainboard diode, the CPU temp is only 22 °C, while the actual CPU core temperature is between 34 and 37 °C. so, there is still room for improvement, that’s for sure.
Our overclocking experiments with EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard got off to a flying start. I have to say right away that it ended also on a positive note, although a lot of questions arose in the process.
Let’s start with the memory subsystem, is it capable of working at its nominal frequency of 1867 MHz on EVGA X58 SLI LE? Yes, no problem. Just select the X.M.P. (Extended Memory Profile) profile in the BIOS corresponding to the desired frequency. Although, this is when we uncovered the first issue. Most BIOS parameters such as frequencies, timings and voltages are set to “Auto” by default. The board knows how to react to our actions: when we change the memory frequency, the Uncore bus frequency will be changed accordingly, when we select an X.M.P. profile or enable automatic overclocking function, the voltages will be bumped up as well. However, we don’t see the expected results to all these actions. Almost all parameters remain at Auto and only after rebooting the system we can see the result of our changes. Not the most convenient implementation.
Once we restarted the system we found out that if we select the first X.M.P. profile, EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard, just like all other boards supporting Extended Memory Profile technology increases the memory voltage to 1.65 V and adds 300 mV to UnCore bus voltage (CPU VTT Voltage), which brigns this parameter to 1.5 V. we have no problems with the memory voltage, as it is the maximum allowed setting for DDR3 SDRAM on an LGA1366 platform and a nominal setting for our specific memory modules. However, 1.5 V for UnCore bus is way too much. By raising this voltage we push the CPU temperature higher up, so the lower it is the better. We don’t know a single mainboard that required this voltage setting to be at 1.5 V. As a rule, you have to raise CPU VTT Voltage to 1.35 V, but EVGA X58 SLI LE required 1.425 V. It is not a tragedy, but a little too high.
After that we lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier to the minimal 12x and find the highest base frequency, when the board remains stable. 215 MHz is a good result, which is typical of most mainboards suitable for successful CPU overclocking.
This is when we uncovered another unpleasant peculiarity about the BIOS of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard: we can’t control Intel Turbo Boost technology. We can’t disable it and if it is disabled, we can’t turn it back on. Formally, there is a parameter in the “CPU Feature” sub-section called “Turbo Mode Function”. By default the technology is enabled and we can change this setting from Enabled to Disabled. However, when we return to this sub-section we will still see the Enabled setting in place. The opposite is also true. As we have already said, EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard, just like other good overclocking mainboards knows how to adequately react to our actions. We lowered the processor clock multiplier in order to find out the maximum operational base frequency. In this case the board disables Intel Turbo Boost technology by itself, which is an absolutely correct action in this situation. However, after that, when we return the multiplier to its nominal value, we can’t enable Intel Turbo Boost technology anymore, just like we couldn’t disable it previously.
Luckily, after we rebooted the system, this technology appeared turned back on, but I have to admit that this incident upset us a lot and had a serious negative effect on initially great impression from EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard, because the problem appeared to be not only with the “Turbo Mode Function” parameter, but with the entire BIOS. We saw very similar things when we tried to use BIOS settings profiles. When we loaded the previously saved profile, we noticed that not all the settings corresponded to what they were supposed to be. After system reboot, all settings magically turned out exactly what we needed. It turns out that the BIOS is sometimes simply unable to display the correct information and reflect the actual state of things.
We know that even minor BIOS changes may seriously affect the resulting performance and overall system stability. Imagine how significant the effect from Intel Turbo Boost is, which adjusts the CPU clock frequency multiplier. We take any BIOS changes very responsibly and want to be certain that our actions will produce an anticipated result. To our great disappointment, EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard doesn’t give us this chance, it is unreliable and unpredictable. It may start or not start, the setting may increase or not increase, a function may work or not work… How can we trust a board in this case? I don’t think we can, which is sad.
But let’s get back to our CPU overclocking experience. We already know that the board can work fine at pretty high base clock settings and we also know that it can have the memory working at higher frequencies, too. Let’s try and find the most optimal combination of processor and memory overclocking. We increase the base frequency to 181 MHz, set the memory frequency at 1810 MHz and timings at 8-8-8-22-1T. The system passes the stability test successfully.
Unfortunately, we one more time face a widespread problem: increase in the CPU Vcore under heavy load. The screenshot above from Lavalys Everest CPUID shows 1.305 V, while the nominal setting for our particular processor is 1.225 V. However, we didn’t increase it in the BIOS, but just enabled protection against voltage drop. EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard has formally passed the stability tests in this case, but remember that besides increased Vcore we also had to increase CPU VTT Voltage more than usual to ensure that the memory would work at high frequency with low timings. As a result, after 8 test cycles in LinX utility the CPU core temperature reached 93 °C. During long-term stability tests the total system power consumption got as high as 400 W. Of course, if the system case is not properly cooled, or if the room temperature increases, we won’t be able to guarantee stability during this overclocking.
It is always bad to excessively increase the voltages, but EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard managed to turn this issue into an advantage. As you may remember, without formally increasing the CPU core voltage, i.e. with all Intel processor power-saving technologies up and running, we managed to increase the base clock to 186 MHz and hence push CPU frequency to 3.9 GHz. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for EVGA X58 SLI LE and we had to stop at 181 MHz base clock. However, all power-saving technologies remained intact lowering the voltage as well as the multiplier in idle mode.
And why don’t we try and lock the processor core voltage manually in the mainboard BIOS at the nominal setting of 1.225 V? Yes, in this case Intel processor power-saving technologies will be partially disabled and the CPU Vcore will no longer drop in idle mode. However, it won’t increase that much under heavy processor load, which will offer us better thermal conditions for processor cores. Our attempt, however, led to very unexpected and I would even say paradoxical results. The processor core voltage in idle mode turned out much higher than 1.07-1.09 V when all power-saving technologies kicked in. Now it equaled 1.15 V, which is still way below the BIOS setting anyway.
When we got down to stability tests and loaded the CPU, the voltage increased, but not as much as before, when the mainboard was in control and VDroop was enabled.
In reality, things were even worse than before, because the maximum registered CPU Vcore was 1.32 V vs 1.31 V with Auto setting and VDroop enabled. However, the core voltage increased to 1.32 V only between the test cycles for a few seconds when the load was taken off. On average it varied somewhere between 1.235 and 1.247 V, which is not that far from the nominal 1.225 V. However, when voltage protection was enabled, Vcore was constantly equal to 1.29-1.31 V under heavy load. The outcome is quite logical: not only all tests were passed successfully, but the core temperature after the same eight runs of LinX utility reached only 83 °C instead of 93 °C as before.
I don’t think I can explain why EVGA X58 SLI LE behaved the way it did. Logically, when the processor core voltage was set a fixed value in the BIOS, Intel processor power-saving technologies had to partially stop working and it had to remain constant all the time. In reality we see some kind of EIST imitation: pretty low voltage in idle mode (although still higher than with power-saving technologies working normally), which somehow increases under heavy load. Does it mean that despite the voltage changes Intel processor power-saving technologies remain up and running? Or maybe it is the result of another BIOS bug: we disabled VDroop, but in reality the protection continued to work? We don’t know for sure, but the result is really nice: thanks to this mysterious feature or drawback successfully turned to the board’s advantage, we managed to overclock our CPU and memory with acceptable power consumption and processor thermal readings. However, we are going to talk more about power consumption later on and now let’s sum everything related to EVGA X58 SLI LE overclocking in the following table:
When we got ready to start testing EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard we upgraded our testbed. We replaced the Samsung SP2504C hard drive with a pair of young and fast Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS HDDs, and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card with 512 MB of memory yielded its place to ATI Radeon HD 4890 with 1 GB GDDR5. So, it is not totally correct to compare the results obtained today with the results from our previous reviews.
Overall, the upgrade worked well. Although the performance increased, the graphics card power consumption lowered and the level of generated noise remained the same. As for the hard drives, the outcome is actually twofold. They outperform the old HDD significantly, of course; the noise from the read/write heads is minor and not annoying. However a high-pitch whistling sound from the platters spinning at 10,000 RPM is very unpleasant. These are good hard drives, but looks like they are not quite fit for an open case like Antec Skeleton.
We are going to compare EVGA X58 SLI LE against a solution from the same price range – Asus P6T. At the first strange we will compare the performance of two testbed configurations in nominal mode. The only change that was made to the EVGA X58 SLI LE BIOS settings was enabling of Intel processor power-saving technologies that are disabled by default for some reason.
Unfortunately, Asus mainboard was often ahead and sometimes quite significantly. In fact, we have come across only one mainboard so far that would take so long – 167 seconds – to calculate 8 million digits of the Pi. You may not be surprised to find out that it was EVGA X58 SLI Classified. And again we see the same result, and again on an EVGA mainboard.
Now let’s see how the two solutions compare during CPU overclocking to 3.8 GHz and memory frequency at 1810 MHz:
In fact, nothing has changed. The minimal fps rate in Crysis Warhead turned out unexpectedly high, while in other tests things are not so rosy again for EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard. We saw very similar situation during our tests of EVGA X58 SLI Classified mainboard, but at that time our readers expressed an opinion that the lag had to do with the additional NVIDIA NF200 controller. It was allegedly creating additional delays. As we can see now, the controller has nothing to do with it. Even without it EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard is still considerably behind the competitor.
We measured the power consumption using Extech Power Analyzer 380803 device. This device was connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measured the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used LinX program to load the CPU. For more illustrative picture we created a graph showing the power consumption growth depending on the increase in CPU utilization as the number of active computational threads in LinX changed.
In nominal mode when the system is idle or under relatively low workload, EVGA X58 SLI LE consumes more power, but in case of maximum CPU utilization it becomes more energy-efficient than the Asus platform, although the difference is not dramatic. During system overclocking the strange ability of EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard to emulate the work of power-saving technologies improves the situation even more. Under all types of load the boards consume the same amount of power.
In conclusion I have to say that unlike its elder sister, EVGA X58 SLI LE consumes very moderate amount of power during overclocking. It is in fact comparable with the most energy-efficient solution on Intel X58 Express. This is a very pleasing observation.
Having come across pretty strange and barely predictable behavior demonstrated by EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard, we shared our results with the company representatives and asked if we could get a new BIOS version that would hopefully be free from the uncovered issues. WE sincerely hope that the EVGA developers responsible for BIOS updates are simply on summer vacation and haven’t been laid off as a result of difficult economic situation, because there was no new BIOS revision available to us. Therefore, we had to work with the current, relatively old BIOS version from May 22, 2009.
Instead of a new BIOS version e were offered several ways of avoiding the problems we had pointed out. Namely, our inability to control the operation of Intel Turbo Boost. After changing the “Turbo Mode Function” parameter to Disabled we had stay in the same screen, press F10 key to save and exit without actually exiting to the main screen. As for the increasing processor Vcore under heavy load, we were assured that the voltage setting is within normal range, and the higher readings are just the result of not very precise monitoring.
At this point we would like to take the opportunity and ask EVGA engineers to possibly fix the incorrect monitoring issue in the upcoming BIOS versions. As for us, we decided to perform additional system power consumption tests with VDroop enabled in the mainboard BIOS.
The results of these tests are more than illustrative. In idle mode and under relatively high loads the power consumption of both systems is practically the same, no matter if protection against VDroop is enabled or not. However, under heavy loads the difference becomes much more significant and reaches up to 40 W, when we are trying to oppose VDroop. Increased voltage is the only explanation to this phenomenon. Moreover, these results are also confirmed by a significant difference in processor core temperatures, which grows substantially with increased core voltage. Looks like the monitoring does work fine on EVGA X58 SLI LE, however, the extreme increase in the CPU Vcore as well as other pointed out BIOS issues need to be fixed in the new BIOS versions.
EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard left a highly favorable impression first time we saw it. While we were subconsciously prepared to see a simpler lower-end solution, we were positively surprised to see that the board hasn’t lost any of its extensive functionality, its features correspond to the highest contemporary standards, and the production quality is extremely high. The functionality of the BIOS strengthened this positive effect even more, because it turned out just as extensive as that of the flagship EVGA X58 SLI Classified solution. Unfortunately, the BIOS only looks so great at first. Our practical experiments revealed a number of issues that has spoilt the first superb impression from the board. Some of the uncovered issues are minor and will hopefully be fixed soon, since at this point there is only one BIOS version available. On the other hand, this version dates back to May 22, but it is the end of August already and there haven’t been any updates yet, which is a little sad.
Despite the issues, and partially thanks to them, we managed to successfully overclock the CPU and the memory. We didn’t have any problems with the mainboard working in nominal mode. We were extremely pleased with low power consumption during overclocking, which is about the same as by the most energy-efficient solutions for LGA1366 processors. So, if we disregard several frustrating issues and overall low performance, EVGA X58 SLI LE will get a good score. Don’t expect too much from it, but at the same time don’t underestimate its abilities. It is a worthy mainstream solution.