NFORCE 780a SLI Motherboards Compared

[Crashman]

Last week we took a quick look at NVidia’s newest feature, Hybrid SLI. Today we’ll see how motherboard’s using the firm’s first integrated enthusiast chipset compares to one of its closest competitors.

NFORCE 780a SLI Motherboards Compared : Read more

 

[nukemaster]

K10N780SLIX3-WiFi, thats Asrock naming all the way.

 

[a 6pack in]

so after reading all this.. i think im stickin with my 790FX. i was waiting for a quite a while for nvidia to pull something here with the 780a chipset. In my eyes its a fail.

AMD's 790FX chipset provides significantly more lanes than nvidia. 3-way SLI is a novel idea but at x8 lanes for 3 slots.. not so much. while amd is providing full x16 support.

good info tho. if anything i would recommend the ASRock board also for nvidia's SLI path.

 

[johnbilicki]

I wan to see boards with two 16x slots and one 4x slot. Honestly I'm not interested in 100+ FPS at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 which is what you'll get in most games with triple SLI. The MSI board looks like they could have fit a couple more USB ports next to the useless firewire port. It's 2008 and I have yet to even see a product require a firewire port on products I'm only browsing on sales sites like Newegg or even just review sites. I liked Gigabyte's new quad gigabit port motherboard, finally 8 USB ports on the back! Also if no one shows up with a router at your LAN party three of your buddies can merely connect to your system any way (and who doesn't have dual LAN ports these days besides your cheap who cheaps out by five bucks on a north bridge).

What is with the waste of brackets? Give us four USB ports on a bracket. If you upgrade even only once every four or five years you probably still have about five or six brackets laying around somewhere with all the firewire ports you could ever want...and if not your buddies do.

The dual-slot coolers on single slot cards, what a waste! If you're going to use a second slot don't waste the opportunity to move that hot air the heck out of the case!

My last criticism is the i-ram...DDR-1?! I love Gigabyte when it actually bothers to make boards using chipsets I'd want (they skipped the true 16X SLI and jumped on the then useless AM2 bandwagon however). So why aren't we seeing DDR2 RAM-drives? 4x4GB/32GB would be far out of most people's budgets but a 4x2GB/16GB RAM drive at $40/$160 dimm/total would *own* a raptor raid 0 any day in price/performance.

The manufacturers need to seriously start bringing some people in to the design rooms to question WTF they're thinking with their product designs because I see no reason to bother spending any money right now.

...and to clarify I enjoyed the article itself, it's just the products I hold disappointment in. The new chipset is great overall though.

 

[nukemaster]

DDR is still faster then any hard drive interface anyway(DDR 266 @ 2128MB/s), so why not? its actually limited by its sata 150 interface not the ram(it would also max sata 300).

I agree DDR2 is the way to go, but only because the price is much lower and better capacities. When gigabyte designed the I-ram ddr was cheaper and ddr2 was new and expensive.

I think there is a DDR2 I-ram in the making

 

[geralt]

I would like to see how 780a compares to boards with 780G chipset.

 

[Guest]

I own an evga 780i and I am plagued with the video corruption problem like many other nvidia 7 series owners. BEWARE before you invest on these boards. Nvidia hasn't released a fix in 3 months. Many people can't watch video or play games without encountering a hard lock-up.
Video of problem: http: //www. youtube. com/watch?v=TYHuzJSpORw


http: //www.evga. com/forums/tm.asp?m=253891&mpage=1&key=
http: //nvidia.custhelp. com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2190
http: //vip.asus. com/forum/view.aspx?id=20080407161030625&board_id=1&model=Striker+II+Formula&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
http: //forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=2178960&FTVAR_STKEYWORDFRM=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear
http: //digg. com/hardware/780i_nvidia_motherboard_graphics_corruption

 

[jabliese]

No comparison of just the integrated graphics? One of the selling points for the 790 is it's DX10 support, would like to see some kind of comparison between just the integrated graphics, say, maybe on HDTV playback.

 

[ComputerCustomizer]

When's an ASUS variant coming out?

 

[Crashman]

An Asus variant is floating around the review sites, this site had a couple.

 

[unifiedonboarddecoder]

They should also do the test using an ATi video card. I would like to see those benchmarks as well.

 

[Brunnen-G]

Hmm, Good 'ol Nvida releasing stuff that dosen't work because of bios and driver issues.... gee and I started to read this review thinking that maybe something would be different! NOT

 

[Vpr]

Too bad you didn't check the EVGA 790i Ultra. over 70% of the users are having Lock-Up problems with it.Check out EVGA's forums to see. It's full of lockup issues.

 

[silverfrog]

Sure, SSD HDDs have a slow SATA-150 interface, but what about the PCI/PCIe interface? That interface is more than capable of speeds necessary for ultra fast drive throughputs. I personally like the idea of modular SSD disk drives that you can add your own SDRAM/DDR/RDRAM sticks to. Hell, I still have like 10 sticks of old RAM laying around that I would love to re-use again. That, and I would also love to have instant-on Windows XP.

 

[rgsaunders]

johnbilicki

Obviously your experience is limited, there are a number of different uses for firewire ports, including external drives, DSLR and videocamera interface, DVR interface, etc. Firewire may not be as fast as e-sata however it does provide a common interface between pc and mac, and is much better than usb for large file transfer.

 

[roofus]

[citation][nom]Vpr[/nom]Too bad you didn't check the EVGA 790i Ultra. over 70% of the users are having Lock-Up problems with it.Check out EVGA's forums to see. It's full of lockup issues. [/citation]
You are making the assumption that every user that bought one is posting on their forums. The forums are specifically for support so of course you will see issues lol. Go check any other manufacturer forums and the same argument can be made. The difference you see there is actual interaction from their support team.

 

[supremelaw]

Dear Serious Investors & Enthusiasts,

We tried to order 2 x Gigabyte i-RAM Box units from PC Club,
their USA distributor, but after 2 months of waiting,
Gigabyte decided NOT to distribute same in the USA.

So ...

We have filed a Provisional Application with the U.S. Patent Office
to patent an enhancement to both versions of Gigabyte's i-RAM,
-- the i-RAM for PCI slots and the i-RAM Box --
which we are calling the LapTopRAMDrive(tm):

2 x 2GB or 2 x 4GB DDR2 SO-DIMMs in a 2.5" HDD form factor
SATA/3G power and signal connectors, backplane compatible
factory default of 300 MB/second
jumper block switches to 600 MB/second (future)
no on-board battery, to keep ASIC simple and costs down
second AT-style PSU + external UPS recommended
designed for 4 x LapTopRAMDrives(tm) in QuadraPack Q14
(or similar 4-in-1 5.25" bay enclosure)

We have a follow-up Provisional Patent Application
in the works, to add further refinements, such as
DDR3, 8GB per SO-DIMM, flashable firmware, etc.


Potential investors and serious enthusiasts ONLY
are encouraged to contact us:

http://www.supremelaw.org/patents/correspondence.2008-01-22.1/

RSVP to: supremelawfirm@gmail.com


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/

 

[UGISTEALTH]

i just bought the ASRock 780a Wifi 3 Way SLI Mobo and hooked it up and it works flawlessy with latest bios update on a 9600 Phenom 500 gb hdd 2.5 gb ram and soon to be 2 evga 8800GTS 512's 700w psu every port works and all only thing to do now and that will be today is run sli and see if it pulls off and holds its turf on 2 feet and not fail me. but as of now its running smooth without any lockups in halo 2 cod 4 gears of war etc.

 

[gilt1234]

I have one of these and coupled with a 9950be and a 9800gx2 and 4gig pc2-8000 it gets a 5.9 vista score and 11800 3dmark and runs all of my games full specs and has no issues of any kind, after I upgraded the bios and video drivers but that is a given for any new BYO system. My only complaint is the spacing of the PCI-E slots I am going to be putting a second 9800gx2 on this and that would make the two cards right on top of each other, to cool them I am going to have to use liquid and I do not know if there will be space. Though all in all I love this board and it is a steal for 159.99 at newegg