Why so few 780I SLI mb's?

[Puffnstuff]

I'm just curious as I look at the selection of 780i mb's or rather the lack of selection. Why so few to choose from? Why the lack of support for this chipset?

 

[krnmastersgt]

It is rather new, also it's markedly similar to the 680i so there isn't too much a reason for people to produce slightly upgraded boards. Also only reference designs and Asus' boards are out now so just give it time if you're in the market for one.

 

[Aenslead]

Agreed.

Besides, its also a transitory product, basicly to have a competitor to x38; the real stuff, supposedly, comes with 790i.

Performance wise, there are minor differences regarding 680i, too.

 

[Zap]

Maybe it's because only a tiny fraction of users have SLI? I do agree with Aenslead in that it seems more like a transitory product. Heck, it isn't even native PCI-E 2.0, but just uses some kind of bridge chip or something.

 

[Blazer7]

Zap and Aenslead are both right. The 780 is a transitory chipset without native pci-e v2 support, basically, it?s something to fill the gap between the 680 and the 790. The 780 is actually a 680 plus a pci v2 bridge chip. The latencies between the pci-e slots are horrible. 2 of the 3 pci-e x16 come from the northbridge via the bridge chip and are v2 while the 3rd comes from the Southbridge and is v1. The performance is similar to that of the 680 and the only new thing is that the 780 brings support for the new penryn cpus and that?s about it. The 780 is running hotter than the 680 and with all the problems its predecessor had it?s no wonder that most mobo makers are skipping it.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I'm really looking for a 790i with ddr2 on it however I was just wondering about the lack of models for this chipset. I don't recall such a low product volume with any other recent chipset which is why it caught my attention.

 

[Scottae]

Seems to be upholding that All the Nforce even chipsets, 2/4/6 are damn good while 1/3/5/7 arent really too impressive Just what I have always heard. But, really i dont know. I really dont think there is a demand for it.. It doesnt differentiate itself from the 680i seeing that they are almost the same thing.. and price is pretty high...

 

[Puffnstuff]

I was also noticing that pricing between the 680i and 780i is very similar. If I were to bite I'd go with the 780i but I'd still like to see what the improved version offers. I also want a mb that has all hard caps and not the old school electrolytic stuff. I need usable pci slots and only the asus striker II offers me one usable slot with dual sli enabled. The msi board looses the use of its pci slot in 2 card sli. As always I appreciate your thoughts.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well as my luck would have it my last 939 system started dropping drive controllers so I moved to a spare am2/5000+ I had laying around. Well it took a dump on me as well, my son was having problems with it which is why we replaced it with an x38 mb. I ordered the striker 2 formula to put in mysystem and am moving my p6n to my sons machine along with a new e6550. I hope it works out as well. I'd just ordered vista ultimate retail for him so it doesn't matter how much swapping we do until we get it right.:disgust:

 

[theYipster]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
I was also noticing that pricing between the 680i and 780i is very similar. If I were to bite I'd go with the 780i but I'd still like to see what the improved version offers. I also want a mb that has all hard caps and not the old school electrolytic stuff. I need usable pci slots and only the asus striker II offers me one usable slot with dual sli enabled. The msi board looses the use of its pci slot in 2 card sli. As always I appreciate your thoughts.

Despite what the product material says, you do not need to use the two top slots for 2 card SLI in the MSI board. I have a P7N Diamond fully supporting 2-card 8800 GTX SLI without issue with one card in the top blue slot and one card in the third / white PCI-E x16 1 slot. This left ample room for a PCI Creative X-Fi Platinum sound card, which also works perfectly.

I've posted a lengthy first impression about this board in XS under the Intel forum, and I plan to post extensive benchmark and stability results once I collect them this weekend. Many people look at the 780i lineup and see the Striker II with its quirky overclocking and the reference boards with their unpredictable reliability and become discouraged. While hard solid data at a 400+ FSB is pending, so far things look very good for the MSI board. It may be the third option worth considering.

As for the 790i, I feel that it's appeal will be limited to even most high end buyers due to the forced use of DDR-3 RAM. With Nehelem just around the corner, what point is there investing in such a pricey solution, even if it proves to clock a bit higher than 680i/780i? The best SLI board is not the one that hits the most extreme FSB, but one that provides good, solid support for high yet sensible OCs and at the same time proves stable and reliable over the long run. The reference boards, due to their cheap capacitors and PWM design, flake out in reliability despite being mostly capable OCers. On the other hand, the ASUS boards have proven difficult to work with and OC, despite not sharing the reference design NB burnout and RAM frying issues. The best board is one that can nail both sides well.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Tis a shame as the p7n diamond is pretty cheap at newegg right now but I'm not hip on the slot layout or the lack of the d-bracket for diagnostics. I really wish that the evga 780i SLI FTW was out because it would've been my first choice.

Asus has been good to me in the past and I've still got slot a and socket a asus mb's laying around. I also like the asus lcd information display giving instant system status. I didn't want to spend that much money but at the same time I wasn't going to get another amd solution to replace it. This way all of kids are running current intel cpu's that should perform well for sometime to come.

My oldest son was running an asus am2 mb first that croaked and it's possible that it damaged the cpu which is why the dfi am2 mb we have is not able to run correctly even though the bios doesn't give any errors during bootup. I hope that the striker 2 does well for me however if it doesn't I'll rma it back to newegg and get the evga if available.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well the striker 2 is doing just fine for me. My p6n got toasted when his ps, enermax liberty 620 let go upon initial bootup plus it took his dvd-rw out as well. I replaced it with an evga 780i sli a1 which also works very well and is being fed by a new ocz gamexstream 700w ps. So now I can say that I now have two of those handful of 780i mb's and both are good.