790i - Worth it?

[Synh]

Hey,

As I'm readying for the purchase of my new rig, I was wondering which MB to go for. Really I have two questions:

The system would look something like this:

Q9450
GTX9800
XFX MotherBoard - N790i-UL or N790i

1) Is it worth paying the extra price for a 790i ultra? Does it actually support only DDR3? I'll doubtlessly add a GTX9800 in time, if not 2. However, will a 790i ultra really reach its full potential if used only with a Q9450? I'm not necessarily looking at crazy OCing.

2) Having not purchased an XFX MB beforehand, I'm wondering if its a good move? :X

 

[tjoepie]

Hi Synh,

I've been waiting for some time now for the 790i and I've done some homework. Here are my conclusions.

First decide if you want to SLI Nvidia cards or else go with the cheaper X38/X48 boards.

I don't think the ultra is worth it for medium OC'ers unless the price difference is low. You can only use 2 memory banks for the very high speeds.

+ :
Enhanced SLI and 3way SLI.
Good OC according to the few reviews already out.

- :
DDR3 makes this already expensive board even more expensive.
If it resembles the 780i it will need very good cooling.

1 / If it had DDR2 support I would buy it without any doubt but I guess Nvidia want those poeple to get the 780i.

According to this review the 790i is much faster for SLI so I guess it is worth it if you can afford the DDR3. I'm getting 2x2Gb now so that I can go 8gb some day.

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=728

2/ I was thinking of getting the EVGA MB, they will have two versions.
One is full of watercooling and an aircooled basic one with a fan on the northbridge. But I might get the Asus I that's the only one I can find.

 

[tjoepie]

I forgot to ad that it also seems to use a lot less power than the 780i according to the legionhardware review...

But I guess it will be best to read a few more reviews before buying, quite a few will pop up before the end of the month.

 

[Synh]

Thanks Tjoepie, outstanding input here! I see you have indeed done your hw

The review by legionhw is quite complete, and it does seem that although the performance gain compared to the 780i isn't immense, especially when in 1920*1200 with 4*AA/16*AF turned on, it does seem to be a very worthwhile product.

Power consumption clearly looks a lot lower, and this might entail a little cooler board. On top of that I read that both north & southbridge are being cooled. (Lack of this caused problems in the skulltrail I believe).

The one thing I'm still not clear on is whether DDR2 is supported at all, or if DDR3 is compulsory. I personally don't really mind, although as I also want to go for 4G, I'd probably have no other choice than to get 2*2G straight away, rather than 2*1G in two times.
8G is the shizzle hey Many people consider 4G to be too much already, however I'm sure that in time Vista will warrant a solid 8G of RAM.

Also I heard something about the N790i supporting up to 1333 Mhz memory bandwidth whilst the N790i ultra supports up to 2000 Mhz. With DDR3 going up to 1600 already, it does pose a dilemma.

In any case, an N790i definitely warrants an SLI system, although I hear we're still limited to three-way, with only two PCI 16ports and one PCI 1x. But to be honest, does one need 4*9800GTX ?... Didn't think so.

All in all, I'm probably going for a N790i, the ultra being 100$ more expensive for too little.

This is my humble input however, and more opinions are more than welcome.

 

[tjoepie]

4Gb is more than enough now unless you use Vista 64 and want to put paging in your memory.
But the way I look at it is that 5 years ago mainstream PC's where sold with 256Mb Ram, now mainstream is 2Gb. Do I need to say any more?

About 2 months ago there was a small mention on fudzilla that Nvidia was considering DDR2 on the 790i, but I haven't heard anything since.

I think the quad SLI will only be for uber geeks and their bragging because scaling of the 4th GPU is usually bad or even useless.
Especially since the future real DX10 games will scale even worse.

I think the real ultra performance will be in 3way SLI for a steep price.

 

[Synh]

Yeah the 64 bit version is necessary if you want to go over 3G. Actually Tom's did a review on the performance benefits of 8G about a month ago, and although not mind blowing, there definitely were increases. Course for now the only machines that need that much are servers really.

I see. Does Crucial do DDR3 these days? I take it as your going to replace your MB your going to have to get new RAM too, which model are you considering?

 

[tjoepie]

I don't think I'll have much choice since DDR3 is very expensive and 4 Gb kits are rare in europe.
If I can find it and its not too much more expensive I'll get one with EPP 2 since it seems to work well.

Go to :

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/19/daily-wibble-18mar2008

At the end you'll find links to lots of reviews, most of the GX2 but alot of them have the 790i also.