Review: EVGA nForce 790i SLI FTW: making the most of NVIDIA's multi-GPU chipset

Test: 3D performance

Our single-GPU tests - which if you remember use a GeForce 8880 GTX - continue a familiar tale; the nForce 790i SLI FTW trails behind the all-conquering nForce 790i Ultra SLI, albeit marginally.

What's interesting for the budget-conscious enthusiast is that the sole DDR2 option - DFI's LANPARTY LT X48-TR2 - can keep up with the pricey DDR3 alternatives, and in some cases overtake them.

To get a sense of multi-GPU scaling - which, for most, is these board's primary reasoning - we ran Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces at both 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600 resolutions with one, two and three graphics cards installed.

For the Intel chipsets we tested using Radeon HD 3870s in CrossFireX, and for the NVIDIA chipsets we used GeForce 9800 GTXs in SLI. The levels of scaling, therefore, can only be directly compared between the boards running the same GPU setup. The results, however, will indicate just how well each board can scale multiple GPUs.

As the graphs show, both Intel boards scale well with two GPUs but adding a third provides little additional benefit - a result of the third PCIe interface being limited to x4, no doubt.

The NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI boards on the other hand, with three PCIe x16 slots, scale far better when three GPUs are called upon.