| ASUS P6X58D-Premium SATA6G Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Thursday, 18 February 2010 | |
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Page 14 of 17
Far Cry 2 BenchmarkUbisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline. The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions. The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis. However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects. Included within the PC version of Far Cry 2 is an advanced benchmark tool, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. For CPU-dependant testing, Far Cry 2 was configured to run at the ultra-low resolution of 640x480 with settings turned to their lowest possible options. With no strain on the GPU, frame rates were bound by CPU performance. Oddly enough, it was the older Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard that has been designated as our reference point for benchmarks that performed the best when FarCry-2 was made to be CPU-bound. The other motherboards trailed behind the 102 FPS lead with 98.8 FPS each.
Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for Far Cry 2 DirectX-10 tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. Render Quality and Performance settings were all set to 'Ultra High', and HDR and Bloom were enabled. At this resolution, the X58 systems all became GPU-bound. The Gigabyte EX58-UD4P motherboard leads with 60.8 FPS, with the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 producing 59.8 FPS on average and trailed by the ASUS P6X58D-Premium which rendered 59.5 FPS. After comparing the results, it appears that the original X58-Express motherboard may have a very slight edge over the newer versions with shared PCI-Express 2.0 link lanes.
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Comments
Why is this a con when this is not the fault of the motherboard but of the OS?
It's a con.
I don't see how it is different to have 4GB RAM + 1GB GPU or 3GB RAM + 1GB GPU. In the end your CPU will only address 4GB memory so in the dual channel config you are wasting 1GB. Assuming a 2GB GPU in dual channel configs you will get 4GB RAM + 2GB GPU= 2GB RAM + 2GB GPU which means you will waste 2Gb of RAM (assuming the OS will keep favouring GPU memory over RAM). In triple channel you would get 3GB RAM + 2GB GPU = 2GB RAM + 2GB GPU.
If the OS decides to cut off the extra 1GB from the GPU then you still end up with 3GB RAM and 1GB GPU in both configs.
Not a con.
My rating is subjective, and it is my own. As I say at the beginning of the Conclusion page: Please do not base your purchases solely on our conclusion.
You stated that 6 of 32 PCIe lanes are borrowed from graphics for USB 3.0/SATA-6G support. However, Intel?s X58 IOH supports 36 PCIe lanes, of which 32 are required for 16x/8x/8x triple-SLI/CFX. I?m not sure why the motherboard would reserve six lanes, since only four are used by the ASUS U3S6 PCI-E 4x expansion card. It appears that the graphics performance of this motherboard may not be crippled after all. Although I?m still not sure what happens in the 16x/16x/1x configuration, since an extra lane is required.
If it is an enthusiast board as you say, you'd expect rookies to buy a simpler solution, no? Complication not really a con here!
The X58 IOH has: 36 PCIe lanes, 4 PCIe lanes linking to the ICH10 southbridge, and a QPI link to the CPU. Unless ASUS are insane, the SATA3 and USB3 controllers would use 4 PCIe lanes from the IOH, leaving a full 32 PCIe lanes for graphics (16 + 16, or 16 + 8 + 8). The PCIe 1X slot, the 1X lane for 16 + 16 + 1 mode, and PCIe lanes for the gigabit LAN would be provided by the ICH10.
#2. Windows client(Non server variants), use to support PAE for memory reasons, but drivers ALSO need to correctly support the feature otherwise memory/data corruption can happen. MS decided too many companies couldn't make decent drivers and disabled extended memory for non-server versions.
#3. Who uses 32bit OS's anymore? That's like using dial up when you have access to FIOS.
(2) Am I correct to assume that the ASUS motherboard will not support SATA-III Raid 0 ?
(3) Which gives the most bang-for-the-buck: the Crucial RealSSD-C300 with a SATA-III controller (the Marvell SE128 on the Gigabyte motherboard), or the Intel SSD 80GB with a SATA-II controller (the Marvell SE123 on the ASUS motherboard) ?
(4) And finally, if I go with the Gigabyte board, I am thinking about going with the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 as opposed to the ?UD7... as I am an architect using CAD and GIS and not a gamer and thus don?t see the need for advanced cooling. Any problems with this decision ?
2) You are correct.
3) Crucial is faster for sure, but I think the OCZ Agility or Corsair Nova are the best bang for the buck.
4) I would use P55 and not X58. My company has built many CAD/CAM systems, and you want to spend your money on a very fast HDD or SSD, decent video card, and plenty of RAM. P55 does a better job with memory and CPU performance than X58... clock for clock.