Tatty_Two
Gone Fishing
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2006
- Messages
- 25,801 (3.87/day)
- Location
- Worcestershire, UK
Processor | Rocket Lake Core i5 11600K @ 5 Ghz with PL tweaks |
---|---|
Motherboard | MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK |
Cooling | Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120SE + 4 Phanteks 140mm case fans |
Memory | 32GB (4 x 8GB SR) Patriot Viper Steel 4133Mhz DDR4 @ 3600Mhz CL14@1.45v Gear 1 |
Video Card(s) | Asus Dual RTX 4070 OC |
Storage | WD Blue SN550 1TB M.2 NVME//Crucial MX500 500GB SSD (OS) |
Display(s) | AOC Q2781PQ 27 inch Ultra Slim 2560 x 1440 IPS |
Case | Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Windowed - Gunmetal |
Audio Device(s) | Onboard Realtek ALC1200/SPDIF to Sony AVR @ 5.1 |
Power Supply | Seasonic CORE GM650w Gold Semi modular |
Mouse | Coolermaster Storm Octane wired |
Keyboard | Element Gaming Carbon Mk2 Tournament Mech |
Software | Win 10 Home x64 |
XFX 790i Ultra - FIRST LOOK
I have just received my spanking new XFX 790i board although sadly I cannot set it up yet as I am still waiting for my DDR3 memory and a Q6600 with a 1.150v ViD from Malaysia. So in any case, as a couple of TPU members have now got this fledgling chipset I though it might be a good idea to do a mini "Amateur" review.
So this will be Part 1 which is the spec and cosmetics, my intention being to run many benches once I get it setup probably next weekend. Some of the exciting things about this boards BIOS is that I can disable as many of the cores on the Quad as I want (although it's not advisable to disable all 4 ). This way I can do some benches on 1, 2, 3 and 4 cores on popular games and apps to perhaps finally add a little sceince to all those flambait threads matching Wolfdales against quads and the value of multithredded games blah blah.
You will be aware that the 790i chipset was only released last month and is heralded as "NVidia's saviour" in the S775 chipset wars, a war that has seen it lag behind Intels P35, x38 and more recently x48 chipsets. Until a few weeks ago, if you wanted to run SLi with an Intel CPU you had only the now ageing 680i/650i chipset, more recently the 780i/750i has been released, some would say as a "stopgap" for the 790i. General opinion of the 780i was that it was just a stutter forward from the 680i with the same age old issues that it had but it was the only real option if you wanted to run a 45nm quad. The 750i was actually seen as the better option from the reviews I read, much cheaper, slightly better at overclocking (especially the MSI Platinum derivative) but no Tri SLi.
So here we finally have the 790i, one thing that is for sure with recent NVidia chipsets is that they are damn expensive! too expensive in my opinion, this board cost me £222 in the UK or around $440 US and is the most expensive board I have ever bought Initially the only 790i boards available to the retail market are variations from Anus, EVGA and of course XFX. The EVGA and XFX boards are NVidia Reference designs where the Anus is their own design. There are a number of reviews already out on the net for the chipset and XFX specifically, for a fledgling board they suggest a lot of promise where across the board they can easily compete against the x38 and x48 and some of the boards have shown overclocking to FSB's of upto 570mhz......we will see later! When I do test them for overclockability I intend to use the Q6600 of course,by disabling two of it's cores I will turn it into an E6600 plus a friend has promised to lend me his E8400 Wolfdale for a day to give that a few runs.
Links to a couple of reviews are here:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3NiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=538
I have just received my spanking new XFX 790i board although sadly I cannot set it up yet as I am still waiting for my DDR3 memory and a Q6600 with a 1.150v ViD from Malaysia. So in any case, as a couple of TPU members have now got this fledgling chipset I though it might be a good idea to do a mini "Amateur" review.
So this will be Part 1 which is the spec and cosmetics, my intention being to run many benches once I get it setup probably next weekend. Some of the exciting things about this boards BIOS is that I can disable as many of the cores on the Quad as I want (although it's not advisable to disable all 4 ). This way I can do some benches on 1, 2, 3 and 4 cores on popular games and apps to perhaps finally add a little sceince to all those flambait threads matching Wolfdales against quads and the value of multithredded games blah blah.
You will be aware that the 790i chipset was only released last month and is heralded as "NVidia's saviour" in the S775 chipset wars, a war that has seen it lag behind Intels P35, x38 and more recently x48 chipsets. Until a few weeks ago, if you wanted to run SLi with an Intel CPU you had only the now ageing 680i/650i chipset, more recently the 780i/750i has been released, some would say as a "stopgap" for the 790i. General opinion of the 780i was that it was just a stutter forward from the 680i with the same age old issues that it had but it was the only real option if you wanted to run a 45nm quad. The 750i was actually seen as the better option from the reviews I read, much cheaper, slightly better at overclocking (especially the MSI Platinum derivative) but no Tri SLi.
So here we finally have the 790i, one thing that is for sure with recent NVidia chipsets is that they are damn expensive! too expensive in my opinion, this board cost me £222 in the UK or around $440 US and is the most expensive board I have ever bought Initially the only 790i boards available to the retail market are variations from Anus, EVGA and of course XFX. The EVGA and XFX boards are NVidia Reference designs where the Anus is their own design. There are a number of reviews already out on the net for the chipset and XFX specifically, for a fledgling board they suggest a lot of promise where across the board they can easily compete against the x38 and x48 and some of the boards have shown overclocking to FSB's of upto 570mhz......we will see later! When I do test them for overclockability I intend to use the Q6600 of course,by disabling two of it's cores I will turn it into an E6600 plus a friend has promised to lend me his E8400 Wolfdale for a day to give that a few runs.
Links to a couple of reviews are here:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3NiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=538
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