Hardware XFX Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...0i_ultra_sli/1

We look at XFX's Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard to find out if it offers that much more than Intel's X48 or even its own nForce 780i SLI. Do higher prices automatically get you more performance? The answers are inside.

[Hg]

Had one of these boards for over a month now with a Q9450 and 4gb DDR3 1333mhz. Overclocked to 3.2ghz and FSB 1600mhz and its very stable I could push it further but don’t need to.
The nbridge cooler is larger then that of the 780i and as such u don’t need the noisy chipset cooler to be running as fast , this cuts the noise down a lot, making it ideal for watch films late at night without the sound of a f16 flying around in your room.

[3rr0r]

The graphs on page 7-10 should say Frames-per-second (higher is better) not time in seconds lower is better right?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by Hg80

Had one of these boards for over a month now with a Q9450 and 4gb DDR3 1333mhz. Overclocked to 3.2ghz and FSB 1600mhz and its very stable I could push it further but don’t need to.
The nbridge cooler is larger then that of the 780i and as such u don’t need the noisy chipset cooler to be running as fast , this cuts the noise down a lot, making it ideal for watch films late at night without the sound of a f16 flying around in your room.

We've heard that from several people - the problem is that, like nForce 680i SLI, not everyone's experience is the same. Some had great experiences, we had five 680i boards before we got one that would work in normal applications (all five ran 3DMark great).

It's not like we've not tried many different configurations though (that's why we're as late as we are with this review) - we've had two E8500s, two QX9770s, four DDR3 memory kits, several hard drives pass through the board. It's just an incredibly finicky platform at present. If you get a good one, you've done well.

[Krikkit]

Great review - very in-depth and interesting to see a comparison across a spectrum of hardware and memory chipsets.

[genesisofthesith]

Thanks, Fixed.

[[USRF]Obiwan]

excellent review BT people, enjoyed reading it. Makes a good excuse not to fall into the expensive DDR3 dead trap and the ridiculous triple/quad SLI card setups .

You see, we don't need all this stuff now. But only when there are actually games that make these configurations put to their knees. And looking at all those morons called developers switching to consoles, it makes it even more useless to invest so much money into such extreme systems.

Enthusiasts or not. You would be a real fool to buy 4GB of DDR3 a very expensive motherboard, a very expensive processor, 3 High end SLI cards and a big PSU. And then waiting with your running system until some game comes out someday that makes your 1337 game rig take some heat.

[oasked]

This isn't an enthusiast's motherboard, its a motherboard who have more money than sense IMO. A real enthusiasts board is one that allows you to spend as little money as possible and still get good performance - for which the P35 chipset is still king. I really wonder how many people actually have the cash to blow on this kind of stuff.

[Daza]

The reason I hope for the uge v-droop in the E8500 is if you take a 45nm chip (dual or Quad) over 1.40~1.45v you run a HUGE chance of it not working at stock or overclocked as many people still treat these chips as the 65nm ones and put huge volts through them.

THere designed to run at low voltage not high voltage.

[mrb_no1]

nice article dude, although sli still just doesnt present an economical solution, if the technology peformed more as everyone hoped, then i think for the money it is at, it would see a higher adoption...as it is, i think people are happy to 'suffer' with single card setups before going sli.

I much prefer the nb cooling on the x48, no noise and an option for watercooling, i've never like having a fan on the nb as it'll be such a small fan it'll make more noise than everything else in the case, so asus' larger heatsink design is much more suitable imo.

peace

fatman

[morbias]

I'm a bit taken aback by the comments on the difference between the voltage in the bios and voltage displayed in Windows; I thought it was widely known by now that the voltage set in bios is the maximum limit across the processor when switching from load to idle states, not the constant voltage. Without vdrop (not vdroop which is completely different) you would get massive overshoot and ringback, and you could even damage the CPU as the upper limit is no longer defined. vdroop is the next voltage state when the cpu is loaded, so in actuality the processor has three voltages which it can sit at, not two as implied by the review (before and after vdroop).

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by morbias

I'm a bit taken aback by the comments on the difference between the voltage in the bios and voltage displayed in Windows; I thought it was widely known by now that the voltage set in bios is the maximum limit across the processor when switching from load to idle states, not the constant voltage. Without vdrop (not vdroop which is completely different) you would get massive overshoot and ringback, and you could even damage the CPU as the upper limit is no longer defined. vdroop is the next voltage state when the cpu is loaded, so in actuality the processor has three voltages which it can sit at, not two as implied by the review (before and after vdroop).

OK, so Vdrop is what happens between the setting and actual voltage but Vdroop is the drop in voltage due to load. I put in 1-o too many.

The voltage setting in the BIOS may be 1.425V say, but then the BIOS sets this (or at least appears to) to 1.38V - this is then mirrored in Windows as 1.368V. The overall top to bottom droop is very little between idle and load, the design there is very good. I know you don't want it to go over the rated BIOS setting, but a difference of 0.057V between setting and recorded is too far off the mark and much, much greater than any other board I've seen.

It's just inaccurate - if that's the ACTUAL reading after vDrop, why not just re-engineer the BIOS to negate the 0.057V drop, or just 0.05V to be safe? Have the 1.425V setting as 1.375? At the moment you have to reboot to see the actual value post drop.

You'd get people sitting there telling others "I have overvolted a lot" when it's likely you haven't - then they wonder why it's not going as far as expected..

[morbias]

I see what you mean now, it is quite a large drop from bios to Windows. I just thought you were running the processor loaded because you mentioned vdroop

[Bindibadgi]

Sorry I should have mentioned the droop is really very small - XFX did well there

EDIT: Adjusted the article to make it clearer - you were right, that part wasn't well written.

[Cupboard]

It is good that we are actually seeing some speed advantage of DDR3 in some situations. It is actually making sense for really high end computer now. Not that they make much sense.

Interesting to see that though the Asus Striker II Formula has much better sound performance, its still averages out to the same as this XFX board; referring to the high definition one specifically.

And on the subject of vDro(o)p, wasn't there a rather large discussion about it quite a long time ago, and what the difference between them was? I seem to remember, but I am not sure, that the correct word in all situations should be vDrop but had been miss-spelled and then the miss-spelling caught on for use in that context; so now everyone uses vDroop. Don't quote me on that though.

Anyway - a good read, thanks. It is nice to keep in touch with the cutting edge as it were, even if it will only ever be a dream!

[qwertyqweqwe]

"Anyone with more money than sense looking to spend as much as possible will probably get themselves an Asus Striker II Extreme or Foxconn Black Ops because of the brand and more comprehensive BIOSs."

I would seriously advise against getting any foxconn board as the technical support for them is non existant.

http://forum.foxconnchannel.com/Titl...ont+POST+again

I bought one after I read a good review, but wished id checked up on them first. The board has had many problems for me and others and like i say read their tech support forums. Not one has any reply or help from foxconn. I wish i had stuck to asus. Just hope by reading this you dont make the mistake of buying a foxconn like i did. If you do buy one, be very wary.

[qwertyqweqwe]

hahaha

theres my proof

the link to the forum stopped working as once again (at least 5 times a week) the forum is completly dead.

shame i fell for the foxconn hype

[morbias]

Originally Posted by Cupboard

...

And on the subject of vDro(o)p, wasn't there a rather large discussion about it quite a long time ago, and what the difference between them was? I seem to remember, but I am not sure, that the correct word in all situations should be vDrop but had been miss-spelled and then the miss-spelling caught on for use in that context; so now everyone uses vDroop. Don't quote me on that though.

...

vdrop is also known as voffset, and it is a different voltage state than vdroop. I guess it does get misspelled quite a lot :P

[Bazanaius]

Just had a little chuckle to myself about you losing your bowls... I think you mean bowels :-)

B

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by qwertyqweqwe

"Anyone with more money than sense looking to spend as much as possible will probably get themselves an Asus Striker II Extreme or Foxconn Black Ops because of the brand and more comprehensive BIOSs."

I would seriously advise against getting any foxconn board as the technical support for them is non existant.

http://forum.foxconnchannel.com/Titl...ont+POST+again

I bought one after I read a good review, but wished id checked up on them first. The board has had many problems for me and others and like i say read their tech support forums. Not one has any reply or help from foxconn. I wish i had stuck to asus. Just hope by reading this you dont make the mistake of buying a foxconn like i did. If you do buy one, be very wary.

Ah, I haven't checked in ages and I never recommended the original MARS What you've said goes against everything Foxconn is trying to achieve (and has led me to believe) though - I've been continually told about the money and effort they've plowed into the Quantum Force range.

vdrop is also known as voffset, and it is a different voltage state than vdroop. I guess it does get misspelled quite a lot :P

You see I've heard of Voffset before - that makes more sense :P I'll use that in future. Anyone got a link to the three voltage stages and clear explanations to help us all? etcetc