Asus P5W64-WS Professional Motherboard
High Res Game Tests With F.E.A.R.
Special note on testing methodology: We performed our high resolution gamings test with F.E.A.R. and a pair of Radeon X1900 XTs graphics cards in CrossFire mode, just to show you the performance profile of the P5W64 WS in this type of setup. Our two graphics cards were plugged into the first and forth X16 PCI Express slots which enables split X8 connections in each slot and in fact does invoke the IDT PCI Express switch that is on the board. Theoretically this should tell us whether or not any inherent latency characteristics existing in the switch will affect dual GPU performance.
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One of the most highly anticipated titles of 2005 was Monolith's paranormal thriller F.E.A.R. Taking a look at the minimum system requirements, we see that you will need at least a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of system memory and a 64MB graphics card, that is a Radeon 9000 or GeForce4 Ti-class or better, to adequately run the game. Using the full retail release of the game patched to v1.04, we put the graphics cards in this review through their paces to see how they fared with a popular title. Here, all graphics settings within the game were set to the maximum values, but with soft shadows disabled (Soft shadows and anti-aliasing do not work together currently). Benchmark runs were then completed at a resolution of 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. |
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Once again, especially in this largely GPU-limited test, the P5W64 WS's performance is identical to the P5W DH, which is built on a standard 975X chipset configuration and without a PCI Express switch. Thus not only is the IDT PCI Express switch that is on the P5W64 WS compatible with ATI's CrossFire configuration and drivers (as well it should be if it is PCI Express compliant of course), but its performance in a dual graphics setup is not a bottleneck in any measurable way for the end user.
