ECS P55H-AK: P55/NF200 Versus X58 In 3-Way SLI

[ta152h]

I think a lot of people are missing some of the important "facts" about this.

The performance was similar, but kind of bizarre in some of the tests. But, for two cards, which is much more likely, the x58 did slightly better. Also, the P55 is a dead-end with limited upgrade potential. He also used an older i7 920, so you'd expect the newer processors to have better power characteristics. On top of this, the P55 had higher numbers where performance mattered less, the x58 where they mattered more (i.e. where frames per second were lower).

None of this would matter if the P55 costed a lot less. But, that's the whole thing. What does the P55 get you? It costs as much, or more, in this configuration, and overall is slightly inferior when you factor everything in. What's the point?

Thomas, it might be interesting on those benchmarks where you had a big difference (both ways), to pull a memory chip out, and test it then. x58 does run with two channels, and with lower latency, and bandwidth. It would be interesting to see if that has much to do with any of it. I really doubt it, but, you never know until you try.

 

[mikem_90]

I'm as surprised as anyone. Both at work and with friends getting those Special Motherboard Combos, I've seen quite my share of ECS motherboards of semi-suspect quality.

ECS used to stand for "Extremely Crappy Systems". Maybe they shaped up? Or many most of those specials were using cast off RMA boards like Certain local retailers have gotten in trouble for with other products.

I can't be the only one who has seen a lot of bad boards from ECS?

 

[reprotected]

[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]... but the X58 also run crossfire[/citation]
Yes it does, but SLI is slightly more efficient than Crossfire.

 

[User69]

You have to take into account all the extra lanes, or lack there of share the same bandwidth of USB 3.0/Sata 3. If you installed a SSD or USB 3.0 hard drive/flash drive you will get throttled performance (limited bandwidth) using the new P55 chipset vs. the X58 running a high performance system! Correct me if I'm wrong.

One more thing the P55 systems were using an SLI configuration. Does that mean the X58 system was not setup for SLI or did not have SLI bridges as indicated in the performance charts?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]... but the X58 also run crossfire[/citation]And so does P55...

 

[dEAne]

Thanks for this article.

 

[doogansquest]

I've got an ll56 board (with an i7-870) and it absolutely circles my buddies i7-975Xtreme in gaming. We both run GTX470's. I guess this article comes as no surprise to me.

BTW, I run my CPU at stock speeds, since overclocking does NOTHING noticeable for gaming.

 

[Travis Beane]

[citation][nom]lkalbert[/nom]Yes, I agree with the article that it will be hard to change minds about brands. My Asus P6x58D Premium has been so darn reliable, stable, fast, and overclockable, more so than any other motherboard I have tried (and I have had many over the years), that it will take an earthquake to make me change it.[/citation]
Well, I bought a X58 Foxconn Bloodrage. Won't take much to change my mind.
[citation][nom]doogansquest[/nom]I've got an ll56 board (with an i7-870) and it absolutely circles my buddies i7-975Xtreme in gaming. We both run GTX470's. I guess this article comes as no surprise to me.BTW, I run my CPU at stock speeds, since overclocking does NOTHING noticeable for gaming.[/citation]
Oh really now? Going form 2.8GHz to 3.5GHz helped me go from 25 to 21 second load speeds on my favorite Warcraft 3 map!
Then again, maybe my i7 920 may, just maybe, be overkill for WC3.

 

[rubberjohnson]

[citation][nom]User69[/nom]You have to take into account all the extra lanes, or lack there of share the same bandwidth of USB 3.0/Sata 3. If you installed a SSD or USB 3.0 hard drive/flash drive you will get throttled performance (limited bandwidth) using the new P55 chipset vs. the X58 running a high performance system! Correct me if I'm wrong.One more thing the P55 systems were using an SLI configuration. Does that mean the X58 system was not setup for SLI or did not have SLI bridges as indicated in the performance charts?[/citation]

Inclusion of a second PCIe 2.0 bridge allows the P55H-AK to support several high-speed devices, including two SATA 6Gb/s and two USB 3.0 controllers over a 20 Gb shared connection, and the board even comes with a USB 3.0 front panel adapter bay...

 

[CptTripps]

New socket may be coming out but... X58 is still rocking imo. My computer is still fast as hell and I picked it up late 08 early 09 (right around release time) and I have not felt the need to upgrade anything other than the graphics card. It's nice to have the latest and greatest but for almost 2yo chipset and processor (920) I am amazed at how well it keeps pace today.

 

[mapesdhs]

Like doogansquest, none of this is a surprise to me. A while
ago I started doing lots of 2-way SLI tests using my P55
system (Asrock P55 Deluxe), comparing to my friend's X58
P6X58D (i7 930); two different brands of 8800GT in mine,
2 x Radeon 4890s in his (faster in theory), and he also
then later bought two GTX 460s (so will I fairly soon).
The results were clear: P55 is more than capable of running
2-way SLI very nicely indeed. This is with my CPU at
4018MHz (RAM at 1900MHz) while his was at 4136MHz (RAM at
1507MHz; note that I tested with my RAM artifically lowered
to match, but it only reduced scores by 1%). See:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/pctests.html

Closely examine the individual test results. The differences
are fascinating (basically shows newer cards don't help for
older games unless one also switches to high-res/detail).

And for more of a 'real-world' test:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/stalkercopbench.txt

NB: re the comments about the advtantage of the triple-
channel RAM of X58, my friend keeps finding that when the
CPU is oc'd, one of the RAM modules is no longer recognised,
which is really bizarre. Apparently this is a common problem.

As for cost, my board was half the price, the RAM was cheaper
(only 100 UKP for a 4GB DDR3/2000 kit), the CPU was much
less aswell (my i7 860 was only 205 UKP), and this week I
was able to find a seller (mrtronics) offering the P55
Deluxe for just 75 UKP, so I bought two more (one for me,
2nd system for video encoding, another for my brother's
gaming PC xmas present). The slot spacing on the Asrock
board is excellent:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/Asrock_P55_Deluxe.jpg

Means that with 2 cards installed, there's still an entire
empty slot space between them, so the fan of the primary
GPU isn't right up against the other card. Most X58 boards
I examined had their slots only 2 apart. The ECS board
looks very similar to the P55 Deluxe though, so kudos to
them for using such a setup.

I use the 3rd PCIe slot for a SAS/SATA RAID card (LSI SAS3041E-R)
with two 450GB 15K Seagate SAS 15K.7s in RAID0 for the
system disk (327MB/sec). Works great!

This mbd doesn't support 3-way SLI, but it does support
4-way SLI (presumably via two dual-GPU cards like the 295),
and numerous CF modes. See:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P55%20Deluxe

And it has SATA3 included via a free PCIe card (the newer
Deluxe3 revision has this, aswell as USB3, on the mbd instead).

Anyway, point being, one doesn't need to spend a fortune
on an X58 setup to get really good performance. And btw,
Kikatek is selling the P55 Deluxe for 88 UKP. Definitely
recommended.

Having said all that, if my goal was maximum overclocks, I
would use X58 for sure, but my choice was decided in the
end based on the overall power consumption involved and the
better slot spacing. Also, except for the ECS board, X58
makes more sense for setups with 3 gfx cards, assuming one
is playing at high-res/detail.

So, well done ECS I say, but the results are exactly what
I would have expected.

Ian.

PS. My full PC spec:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/mysystemsummary3.txt
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1295195

 

[Guest]

I can't believe ECS is still around. Gotta be the worst MB manufacturer of all time. Anyone remember back in the P2 days when the ECS boards with SIS chipset were everywhere ? Almost all the computer stores in my area had them (including the one i worked at). Must of had a 90% failure rate on those boards.

 

[youssef 2010]

anybody else noticed that the scaling of the 480s isn't as good as the 460s?

 

[Guest]

Somebody help me understand this. This excerpt is from the review on the MSI Big Bang XPower.

However, being all things to all people is an impossible task. Maintaining a lower price meant leaving out any of the PCIe bridges used by Gigabyte to multiply its PCIe lanes, forcing MSI to instead divide the Big Bang-XPower’s pathways in a similar manner compared to Asus' design. Yet Asus has only four slots, making lane division a simple matter of going from dual-x16 to quad-x8 transfers whenever the second and fourth slots are filled. MSI splits slot connectivity first to x8 mode and then to x4 mode to accomplish lane division across six slots.

It’s at this point where MSI had to decide whether to optimize its slot layout for dual- or triple-card graphics arrays, since performance graphics cards are usually dual-slot designs. MSI put the XPower motherboard’s true x16 slots in positions one and four, a design that leaves extra space beneath double-slot cards for added airflow and even allows the use of triple-slot cards like the Asus ARES. Slots three and five take eight lanes each from slots one and four, while slots two and six take four lanes from slots three and five. The end result is that fitting a three-way graphics array into long slots one, three, and five produces an x8-x8-x8 configuration with eight-lanes wasted. Oops!

How is it that a configuration of x16 x8 x8 was able to be achieved in this review/comparison?

Which review is correct?
Thanks

 

[dave@digiland]

I can't help but wonder if there is more to the benchmarking from a system perspective. How is the network affected a) online or b) in a LAN party with 10 machines over a Gigabit switch? Does booting or launching the game from an SSD change the result? What about periodic "choppy" playback were once in a while you see stuttering? Will one platform differ from another due to the 20Gb shared pipe in this P55 board?

 

[stasdm]

Do not quite understand the Idea behind this test

Yes, Craphics cards do need x16/x8 connectora, but they do not need PCIe x2 x16 bandwidth. 1GB/s is more than enough for eni SLI/CrossFire configuration. So, LGA1156/1155 PCIe x16 link may nicely support (all working at the same time):
- up to 4 GPUs (in SLI/CrossFire (1GB/s)
- LSI 2008-based RAID controller (3GB/s)
- up to four SATA 6G / USB 3.0 controllers (1GB/s each)

And the outdated PCIe 1.1 NF200 is the worst switch that may be used with the board.

Only massive lies and pressure from NVIDIA (well, think from Intel too - who will need x58 systems then) may explain why this possibilities are not used (southbridge-based SATA 6G / USB 3.0 is a palliative solution)

 

[kelemvor4]

[citation][nom]martel80[/nom]IIRC they didn't just take out one pin but they also redesigned how clocking of the CPU works. 1155 CPUs will have their own clock generator (as opposed to 1156's board-generated clock) and the board needs to support this. They could possibly hack-around this but why would they bother? Sheep will always buy the latest Intel stuff no matter what.[/citation]
Unless Intel just decides to allow the clock to be configurable, it will likely be a required "hack-around" if boards are to offer any overclocking features being that multipliers are already locked. My guess is that if a mobo manufacturer can pull it off, it will sell well to enthusiasts.