Is 780i worth it?

[terencek]

I have the eVGA CK-122-NF68-680i-A1 mobo and got the email from eVGA about their offer to upgrade my mobo to the 780i for $89.

Now, I am not going to be doing 3-way SLI, so my questions is: Is upgrading to the 780i worth it? Will there be any kind of performance increase? You can see what hardware I have now in my signature.
I have read in a few places and all of the features/specs seem the same as my 680i. Can anyone validate the worth of upgrading?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Upgrading your 680i to a 780i shouldn't yield any improvements worth $89 or even $5.

Link to Anandtech's review of 780i platform.

 

[manimal]

I am waiting for a 780i but dont expect a ton of improvements, one that I thought would be helpful was the addition of grtlf-or however its spelled- since it seems to help in overclocking my IP 35 and helped stability when I bumbed it up a notch in my experiments, at the end of the day of messing I was able to drop Chip voltage by a few ticks after bumping up the Grtlff or w/e it is lol

 

[terencek]

Well, I am just wondering if PCI-E 2.0 is worth it? I have the 8800 Ultra now, but my Step-up expires in March, so hopefully I can get the next GTX by then, which should be PCI-E 2.0.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

NO it is not worth it at all. tri-sli is a joke almost as much as Sli was when it came out (and still now pretty much) and PCi-E 2.0 will not yield you or anyone any performance increase.

wait for something better worth your money

 

[Toadster]

if I could find my receipt I'd do it in a heartbeat... Yorkfield goodness and SLI

YUMMY

 

[NaOH]

A colleague of mine who does certain tests for said company says that the 780i chipset = a slouch. Don't do it, they have something better in the works.

 

[lopri]

I am upgrading mine. It's been about 10 months I've had my 680i and $78 upgrade for a brand new board is a welcome thing. I especially like that now the bottom PEG directly connects to the north bridge. I use my video card in the bottom PCI-E x16 slot to distribute heat evenly, and there is no more performance penalty (although it was tiny) for that. On 680i, the bottom PEG stems from south bridge, which connects to the north bridge via HyperTransport. I do understand that NV is cooking 790i, but who knows how long it'd take for it to mature? 680i is quite mature as of now.

 

[terencek]

Originally posted by: NaOH
A colleague of mine who does certain tests for said company says that the 780i chipset = a slouch. Don't do it, they have something better in the works.

Yeah, but will eVGA offer me to upgrade to the 790i for $89? That's what I keep getting hung up on. It just seems like such a good offer, but again, PCI-E 2.0 is supposed to double the throughput. Since I am looking to upgrade my vid card to the 9xxx, I'd like to take advantage of the extra throughput.

You guys really don't think that I should upgrade?

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Nope. And there is no guarantee or concrete evidence that GF9000 series cards will be able to utilize any extra throughput. If 680i is truly incompatible with Yorkfield and you need a Yorkfield and (regular) SLI, I suppose it's worth the money. If you don't need one or the other you don't need NForce 700 a series board. Your sig makes it look like you're not even using SLI, are you? These boards are costly, if you're not going to use SLI, I'd suggest your look elsewhere for a board.

 

[terencek]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
Nope. And there is no guarantee or concrete evidence that GF9000 series cards will be able to utilize any extra throughput. If 680i is truly incompatible with Yorkfield and you need a Yorkfield and (regular) SLI, I suppose it's worth the money. If you don't need one or the other you don't need NForce 700 a series board. Your sig makes it look like you're not even using SLI, are you? These boards are costly, if you're not going to use SLI, I'd suggest your look elsewhere for a board.

No, I'm not using SLI. So, you are probably right. I think I'll just wait where I am. Thank you, Rhonda.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If I were buying a new mb today I'd get one based on the intel x38 chipset. I installed an abit ix38 quadgt yesterday in my sons machine and put my old e6400 in it and it screams. It runs at 3.2 and all I could get was 2.7 before my mb would begin acting up. I've got a q6600 on this thing now but I know it would perform better if it were running on an intel chipset. I honestly have to say that this will probably be my last nvidia based mb for a long time.