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FRONTPAGE EVGA X99 FTW Motherboard Review
- Thread starter Overclockers.com
- Start date
How high can you set uncore/cache clock on this board ? This is actually crucial clock for memory bandwidth as you see in OC results ( mainly AIDA64 ) when board bumped it above 3000MHz.
Each board is setting it slightly different so for direct comparison better is to set it manually. This is weird but on every motherboard cache clock is slightly different. My MSI on older BIOS was setting it at about ~3000 MHz before and after OC. I see that depends from board or BIOS version it's somewhere between 2400-3300. It's not an issue for me as I'm setting it manually anyway but I thought it's one default value which should be the same on every board. I think that's why you had bad results with Kingston memory on other boards with early BIOSes.
I wish I had one of EVGA boards to play with. I don't remember when I was testing their boards last time.
Each board is setting it slightly different so for direct comparison better is to set it manually. This is weird but on every motherboard cache clock is slightly different. My MSI on older BIOS was setting it at about ~3000 MHz before and after OC. I see that depends from board or BIOS version it's somewhere between 2400-3300. It's not an issue for me as I'm setting it manually anyway but I thought it's one default value which should be the same on every board. I think that's why you had bad results with Kingston memory on other boards with early BIOSes.
I wish I had one of EVGA boards to play with. I don't remember when I was testing their boards last time.
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2002
The review left me with a few unexplained questions in regards to the PCIe layout.
-How does the lane distribution on the motherboard change with a 40-lane vs a 28-lane CPU? 5820k is by far the most popular CPU to go with x99, so this is very relevant. Many boards have their lanes setup in such a way that you CANNOT do 3-way SLI with a 28-lane CPU, but some do allow 8x/8x/8x. For a gaming board, knowing if you can do 3-way SLI or are limited to 2-way SLI is pretty important.
-Which PCIe slot (if any, and aside from the 1x slot) comes off the PCH?
-Are any slots disabled in certain configurations? This question relates to the previous two. Out of the boards that can do 3-way SLI with a 28-lane CPU, many will disable the 4th CPU-based slot in an 8x/8x/8x configuration. Only problem is that in a 3-way SLI config, that can mean your only available slot gets disabled, preventing the use of an addon PCIe card (soundcard, PCIe SSD, etc). It is important to know if that last slot is coming off the CPU or PCH, and if it is coming off the CPU, is it enabled or disabled in an 8x/8x/8x config? This is particularly important for this board, since it lacks an M.2 slot, a PCIe based SSD would be your only equivalent alternative.
-How does the lane distribution on the motherboard change with a 40-lane vs a 28-lane CPU? 5820k is by far the most popular CPU to go with x99, so this is very relevant. Many boards have their lanes setup in such a way that you CANNOT do 3-way SLI with a 28-lane CPU, but some do allow 8x/8x/8x. For a gaming board, knowing if you can do 3-way SLI or are limited to 2-way SLI is pretty important.
-Which PCIe slot (if any, and aside from the 1x slot) comes off the PCH?
-Are any slots disabled in certain configurations? This question relates to the previous two. Out of the boards that can do 3-way SLI with a 28-lane CPU, many will disable the 4th CPU-based slot in an 8x/8x/8x configuration. Only problem is that in a 3-way SLI config, that can mean your only available slot gets disabled, preventing the use of an addon PCIe card (soundcard, PCIe SSD, etc). It is important to know if that last slot is coming off the CPU or PCH, and if it is coming off the CPU, is it enabled or disabled in an 8x/8x/8x config? This is particularly important for this board, since it lacks an M.2 slot, a PCIe based SSD would be your only equivalent alternative.
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