Just wanted to step in here and say this, I have an EVGA 790i Ultra Board, and have performed every test you guys did accept the audio tests (because I use a Creative X-fi Fatality card) and I will say this,
My board currently right now is running on air cooling for both my CPU and MOBO. My system runs stable at 3.6ghz w/ a 9 x multi at 400 mhz FSB all day everyday = 3600 mhz,(Q6600) with 1333 mhz Corsair DDR3. The FSB is set at 1.40v and the Processor is set at 1.45v. My ram is running 1.8v. I am using BIOS P05, which is currently considered amongst Evga owners as the best bios they have used for this board. It's very very stable. A new one is currently being worked on as well according to moderators at the EVGA forums.
Personally I think I would have liked to see the boards run and tested with an 8800GT because I think that is now pretty much the main stream, and definitely a better playing field than the crappy 3850 that you chose to use. Most gamers use something better than that by now. Whats the point of testing crysis with a card that can only push 5 frames a second? Also I would have also recommended testing with a Q6600 processor because that is also the current standard for a gaming processor right now among most readers as far a I can tell from most forums and posts.
Some might disagree with me but as far as I am concerned I read alot more posts about guys trying to overclock Q6600's than E6850's, and now with the Q6600's low price it can't be beat. Most gamers Are using over clocked Q6600's not e6850's as far as I have been reading.
On another front, why wasn't the x48's crossfire capabilities tested versus the Nvidia's SLI capabilities with cards in the same price to performance bracket? It would have also been nice to see if the more expensive ASUS provided any additional performance over the Reference design boards in SLi mode.
It is also interesting to see how well the Nvidia boards did vs. the X48 for Harddrive performance, as the Nvidia boards are being consistently slammed for their IO and raid performance. Depsite this I have yet to see any data corruption that everyone's talking about, and also my Raid configured in "0" performs flawlessly, with three Samsung 32mb cache drives.
All in all, I will tell you guys this if any of you are planning on going to the 790i Ultra, go with the EVGA version. They have excellent support, lifetime warranties, and even replace your boards if you fry it while overclocking. I called and spoke to one of their techs who told me I should be able to hit 3.8 GHZ with my Q6600 when I get water cooling for this board with no problems.. stable.
Also don't worry about whether a large heatsink will fit, I have had 4 different huge heatsinks on my EVGA, with no issues at all as far as mounting problems were concerned. These included the Zalman CNPS9700 mentioned in this report as well as a Big Typhoon from Thermal Take, a VR1 also from Thermal Take and now a huge Ultra Chilltec Thermal Electric Controlled cooler, with no issues.
Make sure that you update to Bios P05 and you will be fine. One thing I will tell you about these boards is that they are picky when it comes to the ram, and sometimes you will need to manually set the correct voltage for some ram as the board will set it to a default 1.5 volts. Most DDR3 uses 1.5v to 2.0v depending on the manufacturer and performance level, make sure you know which to set it too or you will get BSOD's.
Hope this helps anybody out there looking to upgrade or switch to the 790i's.
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