There’s no arguing against the superior performance of Intel’s current crop of high-end desktop processors, but experienced builders often prefer a high-end Intel chipset to go with them. Yet for several years graphics giant Nvidia has held support for SLI technology as its one competitive advantage over Intel in the chipset market. It’s not that Intel chipsets aren’t capable of supporting SLI technology — it’s just that Nvidia has chosen to reserve this feature for its own platform products, by artificially restricting platform support in its graphics drivers.
By staying on top of the graphics market for most of the past few years, Nvidia has been able to force its SLI chipsets into the systems of high-end gamers. Reserving SLI for itself ensured that the brand’s chipsets didn’t need to be great, as even basic functionality would allow gamers to excuse minor platform shortcomings as they eyed the added gaming performance of SLI.
And thus began the legacy of the mediocre nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition, the nForce 500 series that was so problematic most motherboard designs never reached production, and finally, the nForce 680i, which brought Nvidia back up to its previous mediocre standards. A bit of information that Intel had held back from Nvidia prevented original 680i motherboards from supporting 45 nm Core 2 Quad processors, so Nvidia added the 780i to its product line, which was nothing more than a 680i with a separate PCI Express 2.0 bridge added.
Nvidia’s history left us expecting little in the way of improvements from its 790i series chipsets. But we were in for a surprise. In spite of its antiquated 90 nm production process, the new northbridge features a fully modernized design.

The 790i series northbridge includes support for 32 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, 1600 MHz FSB processors, and high-speed DDR3 memory. The southbridge technology is a bit more dated, providing one x16, one x8 and four x1 PCI Express pathways, along with all the traditional I/O trappings. The southbridge is likely none other than the firm’s two-year-old nForce 570 SLI one-piece chipset for AMD processors, as both AMD and Nvidia use the same HyperTransport technology.
Officially supporting memory speeds up to DDR3-2000, the 790i Ultra SLI appears to be identical in every other way to the DDR3-1600-supporting 790i SLI. Both versions can be clocked upwards or downwards to support all speeds of DDR3 desktop memory, but the possibility that the better-rated parts are “speed binned” will keep the wealthiest enthusiasts buying whatever Nvidia says is best.
Today’s comparison includes every 790i Ultra SLI motherboard on the market, and we went still further by gaining access to one motherboard that isn’t even available to consumers. So how many motherboards exist, and how well does Nvidia’s latest technology compare to Intel’s popular X48 Express? Let’s take a closer look.
- Nvidia Makes Chipsets?
- Asus Striker II Extreme
- Onboard Devices
- BIOS and Overclocking
- Software and Accessories
- 790i Ultra SLI “Mystery Motherboard”
- Onboard Devices
- BIOS and Overclocking
- Software and Accessories
- MSI P7N2 Diamond
- Onboard Devices
- BIOS and Overclocking
- Software and Accessories
- XFX nFORCE 790i ULTRA
- Onboard Devices
- BIOS and Overclocking
- Software and Accessories
- Test Hardware
- Benchmark Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3D Games
- Applications
- Video Conversion and Synthetics
- Hard Drive Performance: H2benchw
- Hard Drive Performance: IOMeter
- Audio Quality
- Power Consumption and Temperature
- Overclocking
- Performance Analysis
- Conclusion
Nah,I'd rather buy better and more reliable parts-such as power supply,processor,GRAPHICS CARD,and maybe go buy a rifle
If you want SLI you're going to need an SLI motherboard. The article specifically stated that the reference design motherboard was almost as good in many ways as the winning board, but far cheaper.
The site only has two awards, one is for top value and the other is for "best of the best". It's hard to award a $350 motherboard for top value, but it's not so difficult awarding the "best of the best" even if the price is outrageous
It does! Well, sorta. If you want the absolute fastest rig on the planet, you're going to need at least two, possibly three, GTX280's. But if you can wait a few days or maybe a couple weeks, you might be surprised at how well a Crossfire set of HD4870X2's can perform using an X48 motherboard.
I wanna see how my motherboard performs against these.
The EVGA motherboard WAS tested. It's the same motherboard as XFX sells. EVGA has never made a motherboard, it buys them from other companies, and in this case XFX and EVGA buy the SAME motherboard from the SAME company. Even the BIOS is the same, which you'd probably know if you read a little more of the article.
XFX wants your business more than EVGA, which is why XFX sent a motherboard when EVGA did not. In fact, EVGA wouldn't even respond to the request.
X58 DOES NOT support SLI any more than the X48 did. Either motherboard could use the nForce 200 bridge to let NVIDIA's graphics driver SEE the "Compatibility". It's all driver tricks, as Intel chipsets supported SLI until NVIDIA locked Intel out in the graphics driver.
So, we might see some X58 motherboards with an nForce 200, and we might also see some that don't have it. All that is well and fine if you're interested in waiting for the "next big thing". But if you want to buy now and instead wait for the next big thing...perhaps you'll see something else on the horizon by then, and never buy anything.
Both moves are monopolistic, but you could say NVIDIA delivered the first shot in this war since SLI has been restricted for so long.
I was surprised about the news that Intel had traded "permission to use the nForce 200 on Intel chipsets" for its new CPU interface: That would mean Intel gets nothing (still has to buy an nVidia chipset component) while NVIDIA keeps on rolling.