Best 780i board?

ASUS has worked alot of the bugs out of the P5NT Deluxe now,it would be a safe choice,I run one with my E8400,and I love it.

Wait for the 790i like me, its coming in two weeks !

What is 790i? In one sentence: a good reason not to look at the 780i at all. Now, the multiple PCI-E v2 is native within the northbridge, avoiding all the bandwidth and latency roadblocks in the 780i.

It has enhanced SLI. It's mainly two new features called PW Shortcut and Broadcast. PW Shortcut creates a direct path between the GPUs, via the northbridge. This should not only improve performance of SLI systems, but most of all take a load off the CPU, as with a normal SLI systems it has to go GPU#1 > northbridge > CPU > northbridge > GPU#2. Broadcast allows the CPU to send information to all GPUs of a system with a single packet.

It will be expensive, but it seems so much better... :-)

I thought about waiting for 790i but its DDR3 which is stupid expensive and i just bought 2 gigs of hyper x 1066

Plus do you guys think any of the 780i boards will get my e8400 up to 4.0ghz 9x445 or will I have to turn her down some? my p5b-d has no problem at all with it fsb is 1780.

Usually Nividia chipsets don't overclock that well unless you can watercool the northbridge. At least that's what i read...

The new ASUS Striker2 has that ability but I'm still wondering if I'm going to watercool. It seems a bit expensive in combination with that already very price board.

Im starting to think maybe I shrould keep the P5B-D lol....or sell my 8800gt and get two 3870s  

I strongly recommend against the Striker2, especially after seeing the original striker. Issues after issues. Asus are not a bad brand but there "enthusiast" boards, like the names ones, tend to have a hell of a lot of issues as well as a hell of a lot of useless features that "may" improve your overclocking possibility.

You might try the eVGA 780i FTW which has some of the features that you would find on some of the names asus boards, such as solid caps, as well as a different north bridge cooler - so I would definately take that as my choice if in the lookout for a new SLi motherboard.

4.0GHz should be possible but I think that you may be pushing it a little, so you might wanna run the CPU at a slightly lower than max freq.

Cheers

Edit: And if you're thinking of a multi GPU ATI solution, then the 3870X2 is a better option than 2 3870s, slightly better performance and also a space saver  

Thanks for the insight. Yea I myself am a little weary of the striker 2 as I have heard all the horror stories of the original and 339 dollars and no esata ports give me a break, also it doesnt seem to have all of the luxo features of the original.
Im leaning towards the evga 780i which has some solid caps I think for voltage but there not all solid like the asus boards, and the msi p7n. I like the msi board but it looks kind of cheesy I know im not going to be looking at it in the case but still I really dont like the color scheme.
DFI needs to get a 780i board out!!!!
I guess I could get the EVGA and if I have any cap problems I can RMA it as I belive they have a lifetime warranty??? and great service.

So the then new 790 boards will only accept dd3?? Doesn't that mean they should use the ddr2? Thanks

From what ive read all 790i boards will be DDR3, DDR3 is NOT backwards compatible to DDR2 so the 790i boards will be DDR3 only.


Correct me if im wrong lol

look for the cheapest one

With an after market cpu cooler,and up the cpu voltage a little,yes...I have got mine up to 4.2ghzbut I dont run at that often,I just wanted to see if it"could",but honestly,it runs great at stock.

I dunno about getting a poor OC on the Nvidia chipsets. I had an ASUS p5n32e SLI Plus (mouthfull), and I could reach over 500 FSB on my e6400. I'm sure you could go nutz if you had an e8400 on an Nvidia 780i or 790i, but heat is an issue to think heavily about. You MAY see a DDR2 790i board out there, but I doubt it and if they do ever make one w/DDR2 it'll probably way late in the game.

Look at this one. It has everything you want. Only 1 bad review and the rest are all 5 eggs. Good price for all the you get with it too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130158

I've never owned an MSI board so I can't about their quality, but I've built many PC's for people using their boards and all I can say is that I've never had a complaint. ASUS boards on the other hand have always given me trouble after a few months. Initially great and wicked fast and then they poop out on me.

The EVGA one is the cheapest one. score some points for that one lol

I have an Arctic freezer 7 so im not worried about cpu temps as I am NB temps, I do realize it runs great stock but my P5B-D runs 4.0 without breaking a sweat so to go down just for sli makes it seem not as worth it. I had a p5n-e I just sold and could only get it to 3.6.

I really like that MSI board and I know people who have had them and there great but that board looks like tyco made it<color scheme> I guess thats trivial but im a picky bastard lol. thanks for the help on this guys.


Or could get P5N-D, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
and a copy of vista 64 instead hmmmmm.. as I will never need tri sli for anything. I would get 680i if i had a extra non wolfdale 775 cpu kicking around, anyone wanna sell me one with the latest bios?

I think once you fill up the slots with the stuff you want, the colors you don't like will go away and you'll end up with a mostly green board. I know that the circu-pipe design is actually a pretty cool design. It's also a kewl design.

I guess that if you're going to keep the board for more than a few years I'd go for the solid caps. If you're gonna change it up in a year or 2 then I'd go for the cheapest deal you could find.

To me that MSI board is a good price even if it's a little more than the EVGA. You just seem to get alot more for the amount you pay. Good sound, solid caps, and a good cooling system. You're only paying $20 for alot better features. However XFX's board is on sale with a MIR so you could get that board for only $230 which is $20 less than EVGA and $40 less than MSI.

I agree that it's a tough choice. Makes me want the XFX board for the price of it.

Please, if you do water cool, DO NOT use that HORRIBLE attempt at a waterblock on the Striker II.

Cut the damn heatpipes and remove the NB part of the cooler, then fit a proper waterblock like a Swiftech MCW30. This is what I did on my old GS-x38-DQ6 (which is no longer in use)

Of course, the southbridge on the nVidia chipsets also gets stupidly hot.... so you may need extra cooling here, especially with Tri-SLI as this supplys the 3rd PCIe slot.

I have a P5N-T and 8800GTX Tri-SLi.... it sucks, get an EVGA or XFX board.

how good is xfxs customer support? or is it worth paying the extra 20 dollars for evgas great support.

XFX isn't the fastest, but they get the job done in a decent amount of time.

I actually read some reviews on the 780i and even though they did not use solid caps on the xfx and eVGA boards it is still a great overclocker (and comes with a 2 year warranty). Reviewers where hitting 3.6ghz on q6600 g0 with the STOCK intel cooler. I actually ordered an xfx 780i a few days ago and a couple of xfx 8800gt's. I normally prefer eVGA but i went with xfx for the sole reason of the black pcb on the 8800gt's and the mobo just to match the brand lol.

lx_flier do you have a source for that? and what were the temps

Yes,
http://www.guru3d.com/article/nforce_780i_sli_review/48...
Temps where "55 C idle up to 73 degrees C 100% utilized" with stock intel cooler and q6600 @3.6ghz. Of course I will be using this with a thermalright ultra 120 but this review really proves what the board is capable of.

I also noticed that eVGA's making their own 780i board called the 780I SLI FTW and idea when this will be released?

I just got my 780i and i love it, It has worked with not one single glitch since out of the box, As far as waiting for the 790i, thats a good thing too, but remember that you can always wait for something better, and when that "better" thing comes out, I assure you, a better think is about to be released soon after that.. or something like that you get what i'm saying.

in short 780i is a new cutting edge hardware, and the 790i will be too. can't go wrong with either really, maybe in your pocket $$.. but that's it.

my 2 cents..

Well said clearevil.

If only Ati could match the Nvidia cards in performance I would get a X48 but since the X2 can hardly beat the old single gpu Nvidia... but I agree it's probably the best price/performance.

On the other hand scaling of multiple gpu's is not so good so better have 2 or 3 faster cards than 2 ATI X2 (4 gpu) I think.
Anandtech has a nice 4 gpu review and the 4th gpu is not worth it.

Also the 790i will have enhanced SLI. It's mainly two new features called PW Shortcut and Broadcast. PW Shortcut creates a direct path between the GPUs, via the northbridge. This should not only improve performance of SLI systems, but most of all take a load off the CPU, as with a normal SLI systems it has to go GPU#1 > northbridge > CPU > northbridge > GPU#2. Broadcast allows the CPU to send information to all GPUs of a system with a single packet.

This might speed things up in SLI vs crossfire... we'l have to wait and see benchmarks. I read the first real GX2 benchmarks are for next week.