ECS KN1 SLI Extreme

General Performance:

With just HD WMV9 playback, using SLI mode appears to increase the Foxconn NF4SK8AA's CPU overhead. However, SLI doesn't appear to affect the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme, as it performs similarly when operating in single card and SLI modes.

MP3 encoding is only slightly faster than the Foxconn NF4SK8AA SLI board when it is operating with just a single card. When comparing SLI to non-SLI mode on the ECS KN1 SLI, the dual video card mode is actually a second faster than the single video card mode. We believe this is within tolerable experimental error, and both single and SLI modes on the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme are the same speed as the Foxconn NF4SK8AA when operating in single card mode. SLI mode on the Foxconn board appears to increase overhead in the same way that we experienced in the HD WMV9 playback test.

We found that the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme was around 3 minutes faster than the Foxconn NF4SK8AA, whilst SLI mode meant a 30 to 40 second overhead on the ECS KN1 SLI. The overhead on Foxconn's SLI board was slightly better in this instance.

The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme appears to handle Multitasking very well - even in SLI mode. The Foxconn NF4SK8AA is as fast as the KN1 SLI when operating in single card mode, but the overhead in SLI mode is massive. When operating in SLI mode, it delivers similar performance to the AOpen i915GMm-HFS Pentium-M based board.