Intel Desktop Extreme DX58SO2 Motherboard Review

NVIDIA SLI Performance Scaling

Since the release of the Intel P67 chipset, we decided to change a few things up in our testing. The next two pages are all about the scaling of multiple GPU’s in our systems. First off, we are going to test how well the P67 chipset scales multiple NVIDIA cards. In order to do this we contacted our friends over at GALAXY and they were kind enough to send over a pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1Gb graphics cards that are available in a two card SLI kit.

The Intel DX58S02 X58 motherboard had a solid single card performance in Aliens Vs. Predator at both resolutions of 1280×1024 and 1920×1080. With a single card at 1280×1024 the Intel DX58S02 averaged 35.9 frames per second, throwing in the second Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 the Intel DX58S02 jumped to 67 frames per second. That is an increase of 86.6%. At 1920×1080 the Intel DX58S02 started out at 26.2 frames per second and jumped to 49.4 frames per second for an increase of 88.5%.

The Intel DX58S02 saw decent gains in Metro 2033 with NVIDIA’s SLI technology. At 1280×1024 we saw a gain of 73.4% going from 26.38 frames per second up to 47.74 frames per second. Running the resolution of 1920×1080 we saw an average gain of 68.9%. In the single card configuration the Intel DX58S02 averaged 18.25 frames per second, adding the second Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 we saw our average increase to 30.82 frames per second.

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat we didn’t see the gains that we expected to. At 1280×1024 the Intel DX58S02 single card configuration we saw an average of 85.1 frames per second. This is in the ballpark of the other boards in a single card configuration. Tossing in the second Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 we expected gains comparable to what we have seen on our other systems which have pushed into the 145-148 frames per second realms. The Intel DX58S02 only averaged 129.1 frames per second. This is a gain of 51.7% which is a far cry from the average gain of 71.6%. The gains at 1920×1080 were much more inline with what we expected. The single card performance of the Intel DX58S02 was 57.6 frames per second. Throwing in the second card we jumped to 102.1 frames per second for a gain of 77.3%