Seven 650i SLI Motherboards Compared

Performance Summary, Continued

Synthetic benchmarks may offer nothing more than bragging rights to most enthusiasts, but these do help a buyer estimate the difference in untested applications. Once again, correcting for the P5N32-E SLI Plus' extra clock speed reduces its lead to 100.3% compared to the slowest board, and on par with the P5N-E.

Correcting for the P5N32-E SLI Plus' extra clock speed puts it at 102.9% faster than the slowest board when all benchmarks are considered. That's again on par with the P5N-E SLI and faster than the remaining boards, so Asus is probably expecting an award. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, as there are a few other things to consider first.

The MSI P6N SLI Platinum is the clear overclocking leader, followed by the Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI and Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4 and MSI P6N SLI. The remaining boards may have reached a higher bus speed at a reduced CPU multiplier, but the multiplier settings for these didn't work with the tested Core 2 Duo E6700.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.