On the SATA performance graph, the last item says 780i which I think was supposed to be the eSATA port on the 790i. In that regard, the 790i wasn't much worse than the X48 that used the same controller.

I wish the 790i came in a DDR2 flavor as I need 8 GB and at these prices, both MB and memory, forget it!

When I compare 790i to X48, I don't know, still there's that darned SLI thing that no one else seems to have. But then I find myself thinking, "Do I really need it?" and the answer keeps ringing: "Why?" I just don't know that it adds that much.

DDR2 is analog? News to me. PCI data analog? Also news to me. High speed digital that looks like analog; maybe. Just hard for me to imagine analog signals on a digital computer board, but then...

Have to admit, that first photo with the shiny towering heatsinks on the black motherboard like a vision of a dystopian future city, is awesome.

I have bought a lot of motherboards, and this thing costs nearly as much as all of them combined. Granted, one of them failed due to the incompetent Taiwanese industrial espionage industry (if you can't engineer things yourself, and don't want to pay for them, at least steal them correctly before passing them off to customers as genuine!), but at the time even the expensive MBs were failing due to the same faulty capacitors as the cheap ones.

But the point is... it doesn't really seem better than a $60 motherboard. Especially considering the Realtek audio chip, when there are even $60 boards with Analog Devices audio. And even SLI, which has always been irrelevant in my opinion, is even more irrelevant now with dual-chip graphics cards coming out, since SLI really doesn't scale very well to really high numbers of chips.

Rather than paying $350 for inferior ethernet performance the the privilege of being forced to buy DDR3, I'd rather have one of these for $90:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

After you subtract another $370:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220278
...and add $80
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211188
or $130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220299

...you end up saving at least $500 for similar or better performance.

Maybe, if nVidia had managed to make their 790i SLI better than the 570a SLI all around, it would be worth considering for some people. But I certainly would not give it a good review as it is, despite the seemingly very nice memory controller that still mysteriously lets it lose in some game benchmarks.

ATA ports are useless if they don't work. My nForce4 motherboard forced me to junk my PATA drives because Windows XP continually reported errors on them.

nevermind, wrong article.

a $350 MB without all solid-state capacitors? pass.
... plus, i havent been real fond of nvidia chipsets since my last attempt with them.

i care more about stablility than speed.

Strange that the chipsets are at the 90nm process. Perhaps that's the price of being fabless?

About damn time Nvidia dropped the lousey 780i heatsink and heatpiped some VRM coolers!

I am most disappointed by two things on this board: the first is the third-party SATA controller chip, and the second is the all-too 780i-like design for three-way SLI. I am glad that the features of the nForce 200 made it into the new 790i north bridge, but you would think they could have thrown another 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes in. Not that it will make a practical difference, but I'd really like to see a better design.The nForce 200 was fascinating, but its features are not being integrated as nicely as I envisioned.

As for the SATA chip, I am vastly disappointed. I would love to see an nForce board with no third-party controller chips for either Firewire or SATA. eSATA ports on the back panal aren't really that important to me, since the nForce boards can use a bracket and the BIOS can be configured for eSATA voltage standards; still, it can't be that hard to make another goddamn south bridge with more ports and Firewire support.

And audio? Yikes.

From the article, re: the design of this reference board:

Motherboards in this price range essentially need to be perfect

You know, it IS a really nice motherboard. But they went and screwed the whole thing up by putting Realtek chips on there. For $350 the least they could do is include an onboard audio solution from a company that respects its customers enough to provide proper support of advertised features (EAX), like maybe IDT or Analog Devices.

I find myself agreeing with most of the article, especially this at the end:

These little flaws are hardly show-stoppers, but for a premium product like the nForce 790i SLI Ultra, they're a little tough to swallow. $350 and up for a motherboard is a big ask, even for a high-end platform like the Ultra, making it tough to forgive even a small collection of imperfections.

Dunno if I'd say it leads the intel chipset race, though. Tied for first, that I could agree with.

Excellent review, but I disagree that 790i is #1 Intel chipset. That still belongs to X38 or its *cough*revision*cough* X48.

SLI is the only thing that makes 790i different from the competition. ESA is an interesting gimmick, but enthusiast worth their weight in salt already use third-party tools for hardware-level analysis. Nvidia chipsets are known to be plagued by stupid problems (680i fiasco, broken firewall on NF3/NF4, immature ATA/RAID drivers etc). I would be weary of 790i especially with $300+ price tag for a board.

so what are legacy connectors doing on a $350 board? did they think that the buyer would skimp out on older hardware? also, how is the driver base on this new board? any stability issues?

This overclocking is a joke. On my "ancient" P35 motherboard I am running my E6750 at ~3,4 GHz using stock cooling.

Why is there no SLI numbers for an SLI board?

GT's anyway.

Uber numbers Uber numbers.......hoot hoot hoot.

Unless I missed it.

Didn't the Ultra moniker once apply to the midrange, single PCIe line of nvidia motherboards?

The 790s are going for $350 on newegg O_O

you can get a really good xeon or opteron board for 350, that's just insane for a desktop system.

if amd's 4000 series is compelling, they should be able to make major inroads in the multiple GPU segment (as small as it is) because crossfire will run on almost any board whereas if you want to run SLI you have to use an nvidia chipset.

that was fine back in the days where AMD was the CPU performance leader because nvidia made the best chipsets for the a64, but with intel's dominance most people seem to prefer intel boards where the only multi GPU option is crossfire.

nvidia really should sort out SLI so it works on any board with 2 or more slots.

I'm crestfallen that there is no DDR2 support. I don't see DDR3 ever being truly relevant for Core 2 architecture chips and was hoping 790i would finally provide a viable SLI chipset from Nvidia. It's great, except for that one glaring problem.

Wheee! A new Nvidia chipset!

...

Well, half of one, anyways. I guess it's a testament to the NF570 that it has hung in for so long against newer competition, but it's O-L-D. Shrink that die and add a half dozen more SATA connectors. It's getting to be time! On my 680i, the 570 south cranks out most of the heat, the 680i north doesn't get very hot if the SB isn't dumping in massive watts via the heatpipe. Nvidia can kill their heat and wattage rep and do some respin all at once. 790i v2!

All that said, my 680i is getting long in tooth and I'm looking at P35 and X38/48 more than 780i/790i. Cooler running, same speed or faster, clocks better, and cheaper. The only thing nForce has left to sell is SLI, no wonder Intel was pushing to get it so hard on X38/X48.

Hey if you want SLI, it's not like you have a choice (okay, maybe 1).

I like high end stuff as much as the next guy, but when I can buy high end intel for at least $50 less than nVidia, well, I have to think really hard about it. Additionally, while I understand that DDR3 is the new standard, I just don't think it's going to take off as fast as DDR2 did. I'm certainly not buying DDR3 until the prices come down significantly and the performance gains become readily apparent. At least intel gives us the option to use DDR2 on the P35, X38, and even the X48.

I agree with Krogoth on this. Every nVidia board I've had, right up to the 680i has been plagued with stupid problems, including one that has been around since the nForce2: Their USB implementation does not work well with Logitech mice through a KVM. I could understand that this is a minor issue, but after a half dozen revs, you'd think it's one that they could figure out. Additionally, USB transfers have historically been slow on nVidia boards for me. I'm not sure what it is that I'm doing wrong, but my intel board (P35) transfers at almost double the speed of my 680i. To get around these bugs, I've always relied on putting in a PCI USB card.

SLI is attractive, but at this point, it's just not a big enough deal for me to by another nVidia board. I'd rather put in a single 8800 GTS (512) and make do or put in a 3870X2 and be happy.

Damn... no 1st post... oh well, 2nd is okay.

Wow. I haven't read the review yet, but that picture of the heatsinks around the socket....Wow. Metal really turns me on.

DDR3 only is still a bit early but I suppose it matches the highest of high-end target market. I was never overly impressed with NV chipsets and motherboards anyway given that I don't care about multi-card graphics configurations. Nice review overall, thanks TR!

Nice review, I'll probably stick with my current MSI P7N Diamond 780i chipset until DDR3 comes down in price. MSI did a great job with the cooling system and stepping away from the reference board. I tried an EVGA 780i and the MSI performs better for me.

Wow...............first I see the B3 arrival pic. I refresh for the heck of it before I go do some work and see the review. Now i gotta stay seated to read this.

TR is like crack.

EDIT: Just read the review. Another job well done.
Here is the sentence that sums it up for me:
$350 and up for a motherboard is a big ask, even for a high-end platform like the Ultra, making it tough to forgive even a small collection of imperfections

First, for that price, it really needs to be perfect.
Close is not enough.

However, we know that high end makers (Voodoo, Alienware, etc...) will use this board just be able to say the are using the best of the best components, but man that is a lot of money for the board. I know, I know, for those that have the cash, the board, super high priced DDR3 and tri/quad SLI are no biggie.

But for how much MORE you spend, its just that the return is so little compared to the "sweet spot" offerings.

Cue the usual "for $350, I could have picked up a Q6600, good overclocking board, and 4GB DDR2 and come close to the real world performance of this board/45nm Quad cpu / DDR3"