I am thinking about getting an EVGA 790i chipset board.

Anyone who has one, especially with a q6x00 series processor, I would be interested in hearing about your results. I belive this is an actual real new chipset, correct? As opposed to a 750I being a 650i with a new IO chip?

Thanks!

DDR3! Any good?

--Lupi

Bumpity!

Get yourself a p45 and save yourself a headache. Nvidia chipsets just plain suck!

stay away from nvidia chipsets.

LOL, yeah, I know that already! But, lets just say I had to get one! And I happen to want one that works the "most" of the choices! I have been playing with both a P5N72T and a P5Nd, and wow, very weird boards! Wont boot at all much over stock, until you hit at least a 413 FSB, then it boots and does most stuff well, just cant run Prime small ffts because it freezes, as opposed to BSODs... maybe its a bus problem!!

The 790i's seem to do better, because its not just a 650/680i with a new IO chip...

NVidia blows!

--Lupi

No many people with 790i I suppose. Figures, since DDR3 costs a lot. Or it did. And the mobo itself isn't the best.

I'm running a q6600 and an EVGA 790i Board.

Heres a list of somethings you need to know>

Board has major FSB hole issues, it will run great from 1550-1600 mhz FSB
But wont run good below or above this range as most people are finding out.

I have to run my q6600 @ 3.50-3.60 GHZ just to remain stable. Anything below this blue screens. I know very fishy, but I set everything at defaults and it blue screens immediately upon windows load up.

The board is very picky about timings and voltages and must be running very high voltages to remain stable. My FSB is set to 1.40v and my Proc is set at 1.40v, my memory is DDR3 running at 1333 @ 1.8v, (Corsair XMS 3)but amazingly I don't overheat or crash even after 6 straight hours of gaming solid.

This is on AIR cooling. W/ the case open as well.

The Board works flawlessly in all benchmarks W/ my proc and sli'd 8800GT's Except for prime 95 which the 3rd core sends a hardware failure at 100% load at 1 minute but all other cores are stable?? Don't ask me cuz I cant anwser , I've tried everything. It runs less stable at lower voltages and slower speeds...I don't know why, again.. Don't ask.

Here are rated scores for the board and processor combo Currently w/ bios p04. There is a P05 bios currently but It hoses my system entirely upon boot into Windows, so I went back to p04. Some people are saying to wait on the 790i chipset until they get all the kinks out of it with updated bioses but let me tell you they are on the fifth one now and it still ain't all there.

18,900+ :3d mark 06
AquaMark: 200,000+
1m Super Pi time at 13.5 secs
CPU stability Test 6.0: Over 2 hours stable and then I get bored and start gaming.

Sandra Lite: 30 Passes of Burn in Test with no errors and no overheating. then I get bored again and start gaming.

Again I have been gaming on this machine for over a month now and I have never seen it crash once. but the story is different for each 790 owner.

CoreTemp reads highest temperature at 62-65 Deg Cel. with all cores fully loaded. And again this is at 1.40v, I've tried 1.45 volts too, and no it doesnt make a difference, the third core still crahses in Prime for some reason, just got a bum Proc I guess.

Also make sure you purchase your board directly from EVGA, so that you can do the step up program when A new board comes out soon. And also be on the look out for the build version of the board that you receive. Some guys are saying there are three versions, Build 1(which I have) Rev.2 and Rev.3, youll know this by a sticker that is on the motherboard. Anyways people are saying that REV.3 is the best version and that it runs stable compared to the others. Many people are RMAing there boards to EVGA and getting them replaced with these revisions, and they say they work better.

Hope this info helps.

It all helps! And the place that I was gonna get it from has the xxx.xxx.xxx -a1, which is the one I dont want, yes? hehe! of course they have it! Guess they need to ditch the stock, so I will order from someplace that does!

Those FSB holes sounds like the rest of the boards.

The only other one that appears to somewhat OC is the Striker II, but man, its even more money for one! And then to get ddr3 as well... how does that work? Still have sync mode?

Can you tell me your Bios VCore setting, then your CPUz Idle in windows core voltage, then your 1 min loaded small ffts reduced CPUz core voltage as well? Gotta know what I am in for as far as VDrop and droop goes.. I guess there are mods for that, but still..


--Lupi

I am not sure which build I have, but my 790i Ultra has been running very stable. I'm running an E8400 though and last night I decided to go ahead and give OCing a try.

My FSB is set for 1600 and I have my memory linked and synced with the CPU and that puts it at 3.6GHz so far it's been running smoothly. You can check my other components in the sig. I haven't run anything heavy yet. I plan on giving COD4 a go tonight and checking the temps I saw a spike of about 55 C last night but the cores seem to be hanging in the high 40's mostly. I'm using the Cooler Master Hyper TX2 on my E8400.

I've only had one issue so far with my board and that was my fault because I trusted the nForce to clear my BIOS when I flashed it instead of clearing it manually, because there is a box that you can check that says it will clear it for you. Of course now I'm not going to use the nForce tool to flash my BIOS again....I guess I was extremely lucky from some of the things I've read about flashing the BIOS through windows.

Hehe, Yeah, the win flash is tricky. I did 5 straight without a problem, then when win flashing my maximus it toasted the Bios and I had to send it in, piece of junk!

I fried my Bios on my comp, this one I use the most, my p5k-e wifi, a way cheaper board and it managed to do the No Bios searching for P5Ke.ROM, and then proceeded to look on all drives over and over till I made a flash drive with the 1006 bios I had and named it p5ke.rom, and like clockwork, it recovered, and then I restored a saved profile, all was well.

The formula took 45 days to get to Asus and get back. Very Lame!

If my 780i works out, I won't need to venture into ddr3 territory any time soon! I finally got it Prime stable for 9 hours till i stopped it at 3.6.

Tweaking that up 10 FSB points or so will put it at 3.7ish, which is perfect.

--Lupi