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• Calculating average performance per game will help us to see which titles most heavily favor high-bandwidth slots. Left 4 Dead appears to be the most significantly bandwidth-limited game, but we had previously noticed an oddity that almost disqualifies the game from further analysis. A combination of lower-bandwidth (P6T) and added PCIe latency (Eclipse Plus) could be what threw our expectations out-the-window for that title, but there’s no way of knowing the exact cause. World In Conflict appears more appropriate for analyzing the performance penalty of the P6T’s x4-width third slot, while also showing that two slots sharing sixteen pathways (Eclipse Plus) have the same performance as two x8 slots. If bandwidth limitations to the second and third graphics card are the biggest part of today’s story, we’d expect the problem to increase with higher resolutions and details. Is this the case? A performance difference of around 10% between the fastest and slowest PCIe configurations climbs to nearly 16% at the highest tested settings. Conclusion Tom’s Hardware doesn’t do many single-motherboard reviews, simply because it’s impossible to give every company that level of attention when faced with dozens of samples per year. Yet MSI provided an opportunity we couldn’t pass up: to access the gaming performance advantage of two shared x16 slots compared to two dedicated x8 slots. Unfortunately, we found no substantial advantage, though the Eclipse Plus remains a great motherboard in many ways that would only be completely revealed in a full review. The real revelation of today’s article is the level of handicap an x4 slot places on the third graphics card in a 3-way SLI configuration, even with PCIe 2.0 doubling its bandwidth. We knew it would be bad, but not this bad, and the results force us to cross the Asus P6T, the DFI X58-T3eH6, MSI’s previous Eclipse SLI, and several as-yet-untested products off our 3-way SLI list. If MSI’s intent was to show how much better the Eclipse Plus is for 3-way SLI than its x16-x16-x4 predecessor, we can give the company credit for that. What we didn’t see today, however, was whether or not three true x16 slots would provide any advantage at all over an x16-x8-x8 configuration. The reason, of course, is that the only Core i7 chipset doesn’t have the required 48 PCIe lanes, and adding a hub to “make” an x16-x16-x16 configuration leaves us with only as much bandwidth as the 32-lanes serving those three slots. We can imagine some “Home Supercomputer” applications where Nvidia’s CUDA technology might need to access various graphics processors at different times, where the flexibility of sixteen shared pathways might be advantageous compared to two sets of eight pathways especially if three GTX 295s are used. After all, a GTX 295 on a x8 slot would only have four lanes of bandwidth per GPU. But MSI doesn’t target high-end-workstations and above with this particular motherboard, leaving that market to the competing and yet-unexamined Asus P6T6 WS Revolution. Instead it follows the path of the also-yet-unexamined EVGA X58 Classified, marketing to gamers a board that has yet to reveal any gaming advantage. Perhaps a shootout of nForce 200-equipped X58 motherboards should be arranged, but until then, we’ll stick with the chipset-supported x16-x8-x8 configuration for our own 3-way SLI tests.

• The Truth Behind ASRock's X58 SuperComputer

  ASRock was quick to respond to the overclocking issues encountered in our Core i7 Sub-$300 Motherboard Roundup, offering a replacement board and processor within hours of article publication. And how could we pass up the offer, when the replacement Core i7 processor ASRock offered was based on Intel’s improved D0 stepping? Yet, we wanted to make sure we were representing the situation as accurately as possible, so we took time to carefully consider our commitment to you before finally deciding the most balanced approach. We’ll begin today’s review update by presenting ASRock’s explanation, and finish by applying our previous overclocking configuration to a second motherboard we purchased at e-tail to see if a newer board revision and improved BIOS will protect overclocking enthusiasts. The only motherboard we’ve tested to properly support four double-thick graphics cards, ASRock's X58 SuperComputer’s name isn’t too far off from at least one of the product’s intended markets as an Nvidia Tesla Personal Supercomputer platform. Gaming fanatics can also appreciate the flexibility of supporting extra cards, since a 3-way SLI configuration still has space for a fourth card that can be dedicated to in-game physics calculations. We had much praise and few complaints in our full layout description, so our next page will re-examine the product’s overclocking capabilities using the latest BIOS and CPU core stepping.

• Asus showed us its new concept of a true DIY notebook. The C90S is based on conventional desktop hardware such as Intel's 965 chipset, and it uses a desktop socket 775 processor. This may be any Core 2 Duo at up to FSB1066 speeds, and a maximum of 2.93 GHz core clock speed. The system was designed to be overclockable, but the 2.93 GHz limit remains, as the heat generated and power required is the maximum that the thermal solution and power supply support. Since the C90S isn't really quiet (four 40 mm fans) you probably wouldn't want to go much faster anyway. The system takes any 2.5" Serial ATA hard drive and up to two DDR2 SO-DIMMs. You will want to use two modules in order to enable dual-channel memory operation. For the graphics part you have several options, as the C90S supports MXM-1 and MXM2- graphics modules. MXM is Nvidia's Mobile PCI Express Module for graphics boards, and there are three different versions that differ mainly in size. MXM-1 is small and takes entry-level GeForce graphics; MXM-2 is for mainstream graphics such as the new mobile GeForce 8600; and MXM-3 is for high-end solutions. We wanted to know whether this new approach brings true DIY into the notebook space, which is why we asked Asus to disassemble the C90S sample. We took some pictures of the procedure, which took no longer than three minutes. Check out our slide show: How to (dis-)assemble the Asus C90S notebook in three minutes. The Asus C90S is based on a GeForce Go 8600 mobile processor on a MXM-2 module, but it can also take any other Nvidia graphics solution based on MXM-1 or MXM-2. This is the back side of the GeForce Go 8600.