Setup was essentially just adding in another 74GB Raptor drive and making the system have a RAID 0 array instead of the single drive setup they sent with the kit. NVIDIA was very kind in providing the entire system for review as this does make the setup process a much shorter time investment than starting from scratch. We had to obviously reformat and reprogram the system along with installing all the test software before we could start testing and that alone takes considerable time. Make sure to configure the drives in the RAID setup screen that shows after the initial posting if you are planning to run your system in a RAID array.
I mean just installing Sysmark 2004 takes over an hour and a half to install and then another two hours to run, and that is just one test that ran in both a single slot and then SLI configuration is almost a full eight hours or essentially a whole workday of time investment. We had no problems whatsoever in reprogramming and getting the system ready for testing and it is nice to see a reference board run so smooth and clean right out of the gate. One thing many of the reference boards I have reviewed lacked is a functioning LAN port, and this can be a nuisance when you need to go online for drivers, or to the 3Dmark comparisons that are only available online. Gladly, the LAN post worked fine on the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition and we avoided that little snag in the ointment. We used the reference cards sent to us by NVIDIA for this round of tests and we appreciate the support of the 6800GT cards.
