Test System And Benchmarks
Our test system is built around Intel's X79 Express chipset, with 8 GT/s transfer rates to each 16-lane PCI Express graphics slot. We're going to measure the performance of native connectivity and the TurboBox using one, two, and three GPUs in each solution. This should tell us whether there's any penalty for externalizing graphics, or for interfacing with the enclosure over a single third-gen PCI Express x16 slot. Part of our testing also involves comparisons between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0, quantifying the benefits of modern technology versus what came before.
As mentioned, we're using three Radeon HD 7970s cards for testing, all of which are set to AMD's reference core and memory clock rates.
A number of games should help us flesh out 3D performance, while LuxMark and GUIMiner stand in as OpenCL-accelerated benchmarks. Although we know that the TurboBox isn't a gaming-oriented product, a few tests at 1920x1080 and 5760x1080 should shed some light on its performance potential.
| Test System | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), 3.3 GHz @ 4.25 GHz , Six Cores, LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled. |
| Motherboard | ASRock X79 Extreme9 (LGA 2011) Chipset: Intel X79 Express |
| Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LP PC3-16000, 4 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s, CL 8-8-8-24-2T |
| Graphics | 3 x Radeon HD 7970 |
| Hard Drive | Samsung 470-series 256 GB (SSD) |
| Power | ePower EP-1200E10-T2 1200 W ATX12V, EPS12V |
| Software and Drivers | |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 8 |
| DirectX | DirectX 11.1 |
| Graphics Drivers | Nvidia 310.70 beta |
