EVGA X58 3X SLI Sneak Peek

Should have my EVGA X58 rig soon and I look foward to seeing what you guys will show us with this board. The guys over on the EVGA forums have had some good stable OC's so far so I imagine [H] will as well.
 
Synchronicity! I got my eVGA X58 today and checked the [H] as I sat down to unpack it. Saw the new vid and followed right along with my own personal demo model :)

I went with eVGA because of their support. I've had an eVGA 680i SLI board in my main rig since '06. They offered a free replacement mobo when they improved their quad-core overclocking and that impressed the hell out of me. In my experience, eVGA definitely stands behind their products. With no [H]ardOCP review yet, I took a leap of faith on their X58, but eVGA has earned some goodwill with me.
 
these mobo makers are kind of vague about the lane speeds these boards run with 3 video cards. according to the evga literature their board runs tri cards at 16/8/8. is this right?
 
As always, vids are awesome! I look forward to this review!
 
rennyf77 said:
these mobo makers are kind of vague about the lane speeds these boards run with 3 video cards. according to the evga literature their board runs tri cards at 16/8/8. is this right?
Click to expand...
Correct.
I believe this is due to the limitations of the PCIe 2 spec.
 
rennyf77 said:
these mobo makers are kind of vague about the lane speeds these boards run with 3 video cards. according to the evga literature their board runs tri cards at 16/8/8. is this right?
Click to expand...

From what I understand, the lanes cannot exceed 32. The key word here is exceed. So here is a summary:

16 x 16 (dual SLI...nothing in the third) = 32 lanes
16 x 8 x 8 (tri SLI) = 32 lanes
16 x 8 x 1 (dual SLI with a non-vid card in the third) = 25 lanes (does not exceed 32)

Nvidia's 200 chip is the only one, so far, that will provide real 16 x 16 x 16 and break the 32 lane limit.
 
the biostar board boasts 16/16/4 on their website, and according to newegg some of the gigabyte boards do 16/16/8 (although, i know better than to trust the specs they post).
 
Damn Kyle, you're getting old!

*sigh* So am I... :(

It's been a long time since I've seen a picture of you; I think it was back in the "free" GenMay days.
 
Currently running an Evga X58, with a Core i7 920.

It is running @ 3.6 @1.26v with ram running @ 1600. :D Ran Prime95 for 10 hours hours, load temps are between 60-65c and idle temps are between 25-30c. Overclock was pretty simple. Evga forums has guide to do 4.2 on air which I will try to achieve for fun, but my main goal was the 3.6 which is running stable and fast! I definitely recommend this mobo.
 
Jutsu said:
Currently running an Evga X58, with a Core i7 920.

It is running @ 3.6 @1.26v with ram running @ 1600. :D Ran Prime95 for 10 hours hours, load temps are between 60-65c and idle temps are between 25-30c. Overclock was pretty simple. Evga forums has guide to do 4.2 on air which I will try to achieve for fun, but my main goal was the 3.6 which is running stable and fast! I definitely recommend this mobo.
Click to expand...

are you running prime 95 25.8 or 4 iterations of orthos? the orthos blended runs absorb 100% of system memory and can reveal whether the socket/ram slot skewed x58 boards have stability issues with 6gb of ram at 1600mhz. a single iteration of prime, although running 8 threads, only absorbs about 1.4gb of system memory.
 
theonlybabyface said:
From what I understand, the lanes cannot exceed 32. The key word here is exceed. So here is a summary:

16 x 16 (dual SLI...nothing in the third) = 32 lanes
16 x 8 x 8 (tri SLI) = 32 lanes
16 x 8 x 1 (dual SLI with a non-vid card in the third) = 25 lanes (does not exceed 32)

Nvidia's 200 chip is the only one, so far, that will provide real 16 x 16 x 16 and break the 32 lane limit.
Click to expand...

This board indeed does run with the 16x16 and 16x8x8 configurations.
 
I love the fact that you're keeping on with the videos. Your communication is excellent and you're easy to understand and follow, even to someone who lives on the other side of the world (New Zealand) ;)

The board looks nice and clean. Even though I've ordered an Asus P6T Deluxe, I'm still very interested in how this performs.
 
Do you have a ceiling fan in that room ? I notice alot of flicker off of shinny parts in your vids. Just curious as to what it is.
 
Remember that the X58 boards have PCIe 2.0, which should provide double the bandwidth of 1.0. So PCIe 2.0 x8 = PCIe 1.0 x16.

IIRC the X58 has 36 lanes of PCIe 2.0. 4 lanes are held back for other expansion slots, while the 3 PCIe "x16" slots share the other 32 lanes.

Single card gets x16

Dual cards get 2 x 16

Triple cards get x16, x8, and x8

Even at x8, there is plenty of bandwidth available for a high end video card. The slot is not a bottleneck and most likely won't be until well past the lifetime of the X58 chipset.
 
Nice preview. I'm looking forward to the [H] review. Just by looking at the board it seems like it has a very solid layout and has a very good design overall.
 
Nice preview. The eVGA board seems great. I hope you get a Bloodrage to preview in the near future. That would be sweet.
 
ChiZZad said:
Why would they keep a legacy ps/2 port?
Click to expand...

just in case, you know.... ok, who knows this... It;s just the last of a few legacy things that are on a list that need to die. At least the parallel, and serial ports are gone, and I don't see a floppy drive port either. (unless it is under the IDE, can you confirm this Kyle?:confused:
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
What is that above the first PCIe x16? red sata port?
Click to expand...

Yup, i don't know why he missed it but i was just about to post: "WTH is that bright red Sata port doing ABOVE the first PCI-E Slot!?"

You know what, now i can understand why he missed it, it shouldn't even be there, its a wasted sata port.
 
The board has 6 SATA on the back edge angled at 90 deg, 2 on the bottom edge facing straight up, that red SATA above the first PCIe slot, and one eSATA in the assorted IO ports. I'm kinda stumped on what they intend for that red SATA.
 
Probably doesn't mean anything, but I'm kind of surprised by populating the 'green' slots first. In the past, it seems we always populated the DIMM slot closest to the CPU first (i.e., the black slots here). :confused: Maybe the IMC changes that?

A curiosity, more than anything...
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
just in case, you know.... ok, who knows this... It;s just the last of a few legacy things that are on a list that need to die. At least the parallel, and serial ports are gone, and I don't see a floppy drive port either. (unless it is under the IDE, can you confirm this Kyle?:confused:
Click to expand...

There is no Floppy but only one IDE.

n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
What is that above the first PCIe x16? red sata port?
Click to expand...

SATA. Its there because they had an extra port left over for their SATA controller and thought the best placement would be somewhere central.

Here is a good explanation.

SATA6(e-SATA on the back i/o) and SATA7(that red port you see) are
controlled by the JMicron JMB362 chip.

So its pretty much placed there because its closer to the other port and the Jmicron chip.
 
RussianHAXOR said:
So its pretty much placed there because its closer to the other port and the Jmicron chip.
Click to expand...
imo, its still a useless location... it would of made more since to put a second one on the back. oh well, if the six are not enough, you can always use the one above the gpu... (now that I think about it, it would have better access for a quick hook up and transfer files... those six are not the easiest to get too...)
 
Kyle!!! nice to know that you got rid of the crt monitors. the hanging widescreen looks sexy!!!

also on the topic part, i see a sata port that you didnt acknowledge by the top of the first pci-e x16 slot and wanted to know if there was anything special about that
 
Well BFG has been really doing a lot of great CS stuff lately. You can't blame to like a company that gives away free graphics cards and pays for their own rebates, twice.
 
nice unboxing... wish these mobo markers would make an tri sli board where you could actually use a add on soundcard though.
 
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