MSI Eclipse Plus: Does nForce 200 Boost 3-Way SLI?

[silicondoc]

[citation][nom]Curnel_D[/nom]By the data presented, we can pretty much gather that it'd be very close to the same. It's the same chipset controling the first slot on both boards, while the Nforce controler takes over the second and third on the msi. So there's really no point in benching a motherboard for something it wasnt designed for.[/citation]

I have to agree with Proximon. I think what he was getting at is what is the base for all 3 boards running just 1 GTX285 - do any of the boards have an advantageous bios setting ? (so many settings being present it certainly seems possible).
If the Asus makes frames on the MSI with just 1 card each, that would be an indication of general speed or some bios difference (setting).
Perhaps the Asus is faster with one card, hence the possibility of skewed results.
So Proximon was correct in my estimation - an initial test run with one card in each board would allow for setting an identical base - agreeing with you in the sense that all 3 would then be running on the northbridge 16x pci-e.
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Granted, I assume Tom's has some procedure for bios settings to attempt to equalize them across the board, but with different names for bios features and differing bios patterns, it certainly cannot be a simple task.
In any case I would also have liked a single card run for establishing where each board is originally.

 

[tradestead]

This is a good review. I think I am going to buy one and try 3 way SLI out with nForce 200. Anyone knows where to have one?

 

[KyleSTL]

This is a good review. I think I am going to buy one and try 3 way SLI out with nForce 200. Anyone knows where to have one?

Did you not read the article? The conclusion in the end is that 16x/16x/16x gives no real advantage in 3-way SLI (using nForce 200 chips specifically). Just get an X58 board with three slots and 16x/8x/8x linking and you'll be better off (and not ripped off).

 

[davidm671]

Seems like this review is cpu limited. You really do not get the full 3 way sli experience probably until you over 5ghz. At around 3.6ghz at which these benchmarks were done, below 2560x1600 for some games, the "2-way" and "3-way" scores are almost identical. Even at 2560x1600 there is only a 20% improvement. In some cases tri-sli hurts performance when below 4ghz and 1920x1200 res vs dual-sli which does better. Check out this link for proof: "http://www.benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/I7%20920%20Bottleneck%20Analysis/P6.html". This all makes me wonder what the scores would be if you take the gloves off the cpu and allow all three video cards to max out the pci-e lanes???