NVIDIA NF200 x16/x16 vs. Intel x8/x8 P67 Performance Analysis

What an interesting article, the TweakTown guys are looking at the latest Asus Maximus IV Extreme motherboard (ROG Sandy Bridge mobo) and trying to figure out if running their video cards in the Native 8x / 8x PCI Express layout was better than running them in 16x / 16x mode on the NF200 chip.

The results might surprise you.  (or not)

"Unlike most performance motherboards that by default carry only an x8 / x8 setup when SLI or CrossFire X is used, the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme offers us the NF200 chip to add more PCI-E lanes to the board. Over the last few years we've seen companies implement the chip to boards to help move the default SLI or CrossFire X setup from x8 / x8 which is offered via the Intel chipset, to x16 / x16 via the NF200 chip.

When you move away from a two card setup and into a three card one, boards without the NF200 chip would run x8 / x8 / x4, while with the NF200 we're able to achieve x16 / x8 / x8 which when having so much power on hand, is extremely appreciated. ASUS do it a little differently, though, and they do it in a way that has confused people. On the Maximus IV Extreme and Extreme-Z, their P67 and Z68 boards, by default they offer x8 / x8 via the Intel chipset. It isn't until you add a third card into the mix that the NF200 chip comes in handy, because in that situation we get a x8 / x16 / x16 setup."'

I don't want to ruin the suspense but given the research I have done for the Ninjalane Multi GPU Index  I can already predict the outcome. 

The overclocking community claims there is a latency added when you use a NF200 chip.  Of course if you are running 3D bench after 3D bench looking for that glitch score that will land you a gold cup you will see the latency.  It takes a long time to run a 3D bench so I can understand why most overclockers would request a dual mode motherboard.  However, in regular games or everyday computing it is clearly not a contributing factor to overall performance.

Related Web URL: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4147/nvidia_nf20...