Red vs Green vs Blue V2 - The Test Rigs

For Version 2 of this article, the same test rigs were used as Version 1 in Feb 2012.

To make the test as fair as possible, I bought exactly the same CPU (Intel i5-2500K) and RAM (G-Skill 8GB Dual channel DDR3-1600 RipjawsX) for each rig. At the time I built my Eyefinity rig, I was not planning on doing this, so I did not consider SLI compatibility. So for my Nvidia rig, I tried to spec the motherboard as close as possible with what was available to me (ASUS P8P67 Pro V3 B3 Stepping vs ASUS P8Z68-V-GEN3). I just wanted to make sure I had dual channel 8x PCI for SLI support.

Both i5-2500Ks were overclocked using the ASUS advanced graphical BIOS from the stock speed of 3.3GHz up to 4.0GHz on the stock cooler. Both rigs have 850W power supplies and Windows 7 Home 64-bit installed. All background programs were turned off (as far as I could tell) to reduce variables. Both rigs were connected to my 3 x 1680x1050 16:10 DVI monitors, Logitech G15 Keyboard and G5 mouse. Both rigs benchmarked the same so I was satisfied that I had parity for this exercise.

So now I had my two test rig base setups sorted, it was time to look at graphical hardware.