Testing (continued):
HD Tach:
HD Tach is dedicated to testing hard drive performance, and provides a variety of information (higher is better for all but access time). This benchmark did not look at overclocking, but instead looked at the performance of a 1.5 Gbps SATA drive (the Seagate 7200.8) as compared to a SATA 3 Gbps drive (the Seagate 7200.9). The R410L/800-M only supports SATA 1.5 Gbps, so the extra step of testing the 3 Gbps drive was included (although it was tested and confirmed to be no better than the 1.5 Gbps drive). From the chart we see that the SATA controller on the C19-A SLI offers excellent performance for drives of either speed.
3DMark05:
On to video performance as it relates to gaming. 3DMark is the baseline for video performance testing, and we'll start off with the 2005 version of the program. The results are in unitless Marks, and higher is better. Here we see exactly what a SLI configuration can do for you, as it nearly doubles the performance of a stand alone video card.
3DMark06:
The 2006 edition of 3DMark offers a similar interface and the same unitless Marks (higher is better). This time, the ATI based board does slightly better with the nVidia graphics card in single card mode, but putting the C19-A SLI shows off the true power of the system.
Real World 3D Gaming:
Finally, we try out a few 3D games on the test systems. At 1280x1024 resolution, I ran through a few rounds of Battlefield 2, Far Cry, and Unreal Tournament 2004. The results below are the average frames per second values as recorded over 5 minute periods where I tried to duplicate my actions as best possible (higher is better). As you can see, the high frames in SLI mode at this resolution indicate that you could easily play at much higher resolutions, if you were so inclined. The results don't come close to doubling in SLI mode, but you do get a performance boost!
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