XFX 790i - FIRST LOOK

[Exavier]

woah, tatty- if I had any real cash I'd be pursuing this route myself
What's the deal with the "Q6600 with a 1.150v ViD from Malaysia"? That's all that confused me
Can't wait to hear more.

 

[DaMulta]

I have the ASUS one specs in the side.


I have not found a program that will read - temps in windows yet.

In bios I was down to -29c, which is cool that it will even read it.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I like the COLOR!!!! of that board too. Cant wait to see what you can achieve with the OC there Tatty.

 

[tkpenalty]

woah, tatty- if I had any real cash I'd be pursuing this route myself
What's the deal with the "Q6600 with a 1.150v ViD from Malaysia"? That's all that confused me
Can't wait to hear more.

A higher quality fab Q6600 that runs at a default vcore of 1.150v.

 

[DaMulta]

Total stock on everything

 

[DaMulta]

Tatty_One can you use Ntune for your motherboard?

It won't let me change any settings on my board.

 

[tzitzibp]

DaMulta.... I know for sure that ntune is very picky.... to some boards it gives full access and to some boards it gives access only to some features.... I gave up using it.

 

[Tatty_Two]

woah, tatty- if I had any real cash I'd be pursuing this route myself
What's the deal with the "Q6600 with a 1.150v ViD from Malaysia"? That's all that confused me
Can't wait to hear more.

Yeah, as TK said, I have a contact in the US who does a little business with someone in Malaysia who is linked to the Company, usually I can get CPU's (desktop not server)a bit cheaper than competative retail prices and thats including shipping, I was looking at the Q9450 as this board supposidly will clock a 45nm quad beyond 550mhz FSB, he put me on to this Q6600 with an extremely low Vid so I grabbed it, I had to pay a little more for it than I normally would (but still less than UK retail) because in his words "it's so special, almost 1 in 5000"....we will see, low Vid does not always guarentee huge overclocks but normally it gives you much more headroom, a Q6600 with a Vid of 1.3V (about average for a Q6600) will default to 1.3V in BIOS for stock speed of 2.4gig, this one I am getting will default at 1.150V at 2.4gig.....hence more headroom.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Tatty_One can you use Ntune for your motherboard?
It won't let me change any settings on my board.

Dont know yet m8 as it's not installed but I will let you know once it is, still waiting for the quad to arrive from Malaysia, I might have more luck with it than you as my board is NVidia reference......hopefully!

 

[Tatty_Two]

Reading up a litle more on this board it has tons of overclocking friendly options, such as, when you set an FSB speed in BIOS you can let the BIOS select automatically the required voltage for that speed, if it gets it wrong it reboots and increases it automatically! of course you can turn that feature off but it does seem to work!

 

[trt740]

Yeah, as TK said, I have a contact in the US who does a little business with someone in Malaysia who is linked to the Company, usually I can get CPU's (desktop not server)a bit cheaper than competative retail prices and thats including shipping, I was looking at the Q9450 as this board supposidly will clock a 45nm quad beyond 550mhz FSB, he put me on to this Q6600 with an extremely low Vid so I grabbed it, I had to pay a little more for it than I normally would (but still less than UK retail) because in his words "it's so special, almost 1 in 5000"....we will see, low Vid does not always guarentee huge overclocks but normally it gives you much more headroom, a Q6600 with a Vid of 1.3V (about average for a Q6600) will default to 1.3V in BIOS for stock speed of 2.4gig, this one I am getting will default at 1.150V at 2.4gig.....hence more headroom.

Old Army buddy I bet. Hey tatty I love the 790 boards. I cannot believe no one has made one a little cheaper. I was looking at the MSI 780 board which physically should be great but it have all kinds of bios issue. I wanted the same 790 you bought but even after a freaking 30.00 rebate it's 408.00 shipped and it's the cheapest one made. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813141009 XFX makes great stuff. Has 2 year warranty I thought it had this warranty but thats only video cards still two years is good.



Here’s the deal: We will repair and service your 6, 7, 8 and 9 Series Graphics Card for as long
as you live. Even for those of you who know how to push our cards to the limits, if anything goes wrong, we’ll service it free of charge. All you have to do is register the card with us online. If you ever decide to sell or give the card away to someone, we’ll still honor the protection plan for the second owner as well. They just need to register the card with us. You get the protection AND the added value of being able to pass along a full warranty.

Warranty Details

 

[Tatty_Two]

Old Army buddy I bet. Hey tatty I love the 790 boards. I cannot believe no one has made one a little cheaper. I was looking at the MSI 780 board which physically should be great but it have all kinds of bios issue. I wanted the same 790 you bought but even after a freaking 30.00 rebate it's 408.00 shipped and it's the cheapest one made. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813141009 XFX makes great stuff. Has 2 year warranty I thought it had this warranty but thats only video cards still two years is good.



Here’s the deal: We will repair and service your 6, 7, 8 and 9 Series Graphics Card for as long
as you live. Even for those of you who know how to push our cards to the limits, if anything goes wrong, we’ll service it free of charge. All you have to do is register the card with us online. If you ever decide to sell or give the card away to someone, we’ll still honor the protection plan for the second owner as well. They just need to register the card with us. You get the protection AND the added value of being able to pass along a full warranty.

Warranty Details

Very nice, I might just register this board on-line now! yes they are far too expensice IMO, if you were looking at the MSI, I would still try the MSI 750i platinum, it overclocks better, you just wont get tri sli with it.

 

[warhammer]

Welcome to the XFX club I have had mine about 2 weeks now there are a lot of good thing's about the MOBO and then theres the bad regarding Q6600.( I have a ticket with XFX support day6 now still waiting)
I have updated the bios and even using a beta bios that was supplied to reviewers.

I can not OC my Q6600 QDR1600 refuses to boot its a hit and miss some people can hit 3.6 and theres a lot who strugle past 3.2Ghz.

If dinamic bios does not work in ntune try 6.10 download --> nForce nTune System Tools ESA version 6.10 http://downloads.guru3d.com/nForce-nTune-System-Tools-ESA-version-6.10-download-1869.html

Good source of info regarding this issue is EVGA forums.
read the following..

790i will not OC past 1600 QDR with Q6600 http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=300437

Q6600 FSB above 1630 issue (JacobF) http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=316620

We are still working on correcting this, I do not believe that it is a hardware issue.

Thanks,

 

[Tatty_Two]

Welcome to the XFX club I have had mine about 2 weeks now there are a lot of good thing's about the MOBO and then theres the bad regarding Q6600.( I have a ticket with XFX support day6 now still waiting)
I have updated the bios and even using a beta bios that was supplied to reviewers.

I can not OC my Q6600 QDR1600 refuses to boot its a hit and miss some people can hit 3.6 and theres a lot who strugle past 3.2Ghz.

If dinamic bios does not work in ntune try 6.10 download --> nForce nTune System Tools ESA version 6.10 http://downloads.guru3d.com/nForce-nTune-System-Tools-ESA-version-6.10-download-1869.html

Good source of info regarding this issue is EVGA forums.
read the following..

790i will not OC past 1600 QDR with Q6600 http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=300437

Q6600 FSB above 1630 issue (JacobF) http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=316620

Thanks for that, very strange though, I have an ex army friend who like you got the board a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to him on the phone last night, I am not sure what BIOS he is using but he has a Q6600 running at 3.8Gig???? He did mention he couldnt overclock it very well on a 9 multi but dropped it to 8x and got the 475mhz FSB. Very strange, also in the reviews I posted in an early post with retail boards they got Q6600's beyond 400mhz FSB.

I am wondering now if there are already a couple of different board revisions that may account for this, I'll check out the links you provided thanks.

 

[Judas]

Well this is midranged stuff, pretty fast....Judas has some, it will do 1800mhz but on very loose timings, 1600mhz on pretty tight timings (for DDR3), they cost me £105 but to relate to DDR2 AxeRam, the DDR3 was only £15 more so not too bad. The really cheap stuff for 1333mhz and lower speeds quite often comes CL9.....not good!

Lol ....tatty seem our little talk on the OCZ ddr3 memory has been delete

 

[warhammer]

The thing is I have tried 9,8,7 and 6 multi, and I know from my 680i mobo my CPU can sit on 3.6 and 3.8 24/7. theres is a VDROPof about .5v I suspect it may goes as high as 1v.

I will send off an email to CORSAIR see what they say I am running 2x2Gig sticks.
Also if you plan to run raid repage 15 in the XFX book its wrong sata ports are in this order sata1 2 3 4 5 and 6.

As far as ram goes use the black slots for OC, I have found them to be more stable than the blue. need to know anything else just ask.

Not being able to OC the Q6600 is very frustrating, theres a shortage of QX9650 at the moment

 

[Tatty_Two]

Lol ....tatty seem our little talk on the OCZ ddr3 memory has been delete

deleted? that talk was in my for sale thread wasent it?

@ Warhammer......VDroop @ 1V!!! that would mean that the chip was only getting 0.150V at stock with the one I have coming when at load??

 

[Judas]

deleted? that talk was in my for sale thread wasent it?

@ Warhammer......VDroop @ 1V!!! that would mean that the chip was only getting 0.150V at stock with the one I have coming when at load??

Ahh so it was. Must getting blooming old lol!

 

[tzitzibp]

hi, Tatty....
how are things coming along?

 

[Tatty_Two]

hi, Tatty....
how are things coming along?

Still no quad from malaysia yet so not up and running, shipping is 7-10 days so hopefully before the end of the week.

 

[tzitzibp]

I can imagine how anxious you must be feeling....
I just hope you get the best chip available... and it will be worth waiting for

 

[warhammer]

VDROOP Mod EVGA and XFX
http://www.411overkill.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=1146

 

[Judas]

Any new updates Tatty? my XFX is on order 2-3 weeks my OcZ ddr3 1600 mhz has been RMA'd and on its way back

 

[Jikiri]

Im also going with a 790 board I'm curious about the low Vcpu could anyone get one if they knew where to look? or is this a total inside thing? Lookin for a e8500
Im a noob so pour knowledge on me please

 

[warhammer]

I have a installed QX9650 now at 3Ghz 1.125v OC to 3.5 @1.24v ram at stock voltage of 1.5
all setting left on auto.

EVGA forums are saying new bios come out this week.