Water-based Testing Configuration and Benchmarks Used
To verify that the water block works as advertised, the video cards were run through our standard benchmark suite at both stock and overclocked speeds. The results are presented for at both speeds for performance comparison purposes. The benchmark tests used should give you a good understanding of the water block's capabilities while using the card for gaming so that you, the reader, can make a more informed purchasing decision.
| Test System Setup | |
| Motherboards | ASUS Rampage V Extreme |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-5960X Stock – 3.0GHz, 30 x 100MHz Base Clock Overclocked – 4.375GHz, 35 x 125MHz Base Clock |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 modules Stock – 2133MHz, 15-17-17-35-1T, 1.225V Overclocked – 2666MHz, 15-17-17-35-2T, 1.25V |
| Hard Drive | Intel 730 EVO 240GB SSD Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III HD |
| Sound Card | On-board sound |
| Video Card | EVGA GTX 970 SC 4GB Stock – 1354MHz GPU, 1752MHz Memory Overclocked – 1468MHz GPU, 1977MHz Memory |
| Cooling | XSPC Raystorm D5 Photon RX480 V3 WaterCooling Kit with Raystorm CPU water block and HeatKiller GPU-X3 GPU water blocks |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA 352.86 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX750 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate x64 |
| Coolant | Koolance LIQ-702 High Performance Liquid Coolant |
Test Setup Explanation
The 64-bit Windows 7 based test bench used for Intel X99 LGA2011-V3 board testing includes an Intel Core i7-5960X CPU, 32GB of DDR4-2666 memory, dual EVGA GTX 970 SC 4GB video cards, and an Intel 730 240GB SSD drive. Using the selected components gives us the ability to demonstrate the integrated water block's capabilities without interference from components. For all tests, the cooling systems pump was set to run at maximum speed for best performance with six fans attached to the 480mm radiator running at approximately 1200 RPM because of noise concerns.
Benchmark Tests used for evaluation:
- Batman: Arkham Origins Benchmark
- Metro: Last Light Benchmark
- Grid 2 Benchmark
- Unigine Heaven v4.0
- FutureMark 3DMark
- EVGA's OC Scanner X Graphical Stress Tool
Is this native advertising or
Is this native advertising or why did you test an SLI bridge?? It’s like testing a USB cable.. You only notice if it’s completely broken.
The SLI bridge was not the
The SLI bridge was not the only thing tested. If you read through the entire article, you would see that a good portion of the article is testing the performance of the GTX 970 cards in SLI.
Thanks…
Little touchy there Morry
Little touchy there Morry
What are you talking about,
What are you talking about, if anybody is touchy it’s you.
Does anyone know when the SLI
Does anyone know when the SLI bridges will actually be available to purchase at normal retail prices? All I’ve been able to find is random units popping up from shady vendors on Ebay or Amazon that mark them up +$100.
Does anyone know when the SLI
Does anyone know when the SLI bridges will actually be available to purchase at normal retail prices? All I’ve been able to find is random units popping up from shady vendors on Ebay or Amazon that mark them up +$100.
I like the sleek and
I like the sleek and simplicity over EVGA ugly ass SLI bridges
I recently got the EVGA 2.0
I recently got the EVGA 2.0 3-way SLI bridge, and though it looks great, it didn’t fit on my triple XS-PC watercooled cards without a bit of modification. The metal plate over the top was hitting the card inlet/outlet ports. It was rather unfortunate. I should probably return it for an ASUS one that would fit a lot easier.
Matter of taste and personal
Matter of taste and personal preferences. I would never, out of my free will, put anything red in my rig. That’s why if I need SLI bridge I will get EVGA not the ASUS.
And I find EVGA bridges more interesting to look at that ASUS. But we are back at the beginning. A matter of taste and personal preferences.
EVGA is obnoxious when it
EVGA is obnoxious when it comes to branding on every piece of EVGA hardware from every direction even more so when lit up.
http://static.evga.com/articles/00919/images/features_slider/SLI_bridge_slides_action_shot.jpg
Asus is just a symbol and you can mod the light to any color
With a 780 sli setup and
With a 780 sli setup and windows 10 with all drivers past 350.12 has a directX error “out of memory” playing battlefield 4. No error with sli disabled. 200 fps with 350.12, compared to 120fps with any driver past 350.12. But windows 10 keeps auto updating me to the newest driver that doesn’t work. 353.30 works great with single card but sli has to be disabled in order for me to play battlefield 4.
Terrible drivers with directX 12 in it.
Morry should try 350.12
Morry should try 350.12 drivers and see if the difference is large.
Morry Thanks for the
Morry Thanks for the article.I have a water cooled 5960x with 2 Sapphire Tri-X R9 290s with EK blocks. My cpu is at 4.4Ghz (44×10) using the Asus Suite III OCing software that sets the bios parameters. With both GPUs stock (1000/1300) my Firestrike scores are Overall: 17042;Graphic 21683;Physics 20,391 and Combined 5986
Overclocking the GPUS to 1125core/1425 mem yields the following: Overall 19099;Graphics 24317; Physics 20938 and combined 6968
Is it me or is multi gpu
Is it me or is multi gpu scaling getting worse i could have sworn that dual sli scaling with Kepler was much higher across the board
SLI bridges are so retro.
SLI bridges are so retro. When will Nvidia follow AMDs lead and eliminate them? Oh wait just one more thing to nickle and dime gamers.
What would suggest?
What would suggest?
Is this a big joke? Who in
Is this a big joke? Who in their right minds would pay 70$ for a little 3$ connector? LOL
Buy a better GPU instead, idiots.
who? they are called
who? they are called ‘enthusiasts’ L:)