Intel
CORE-LOGIC
CagematchWhen all is said and done, which is the right board for you, and why?
The BigBigBigBigBigBigBigBig DDecisionecision
I
t’s pretty clear from the verdicts that the nForce 790i Ultra
SLI chipset is the winner. Yes, our verdicts take into account
a motherboard’s amenities and layout, but performance is a
critical factor. And performance is the result of the chipset—its
design, but more importantly, its memory controller. And sure
enough, the nForce boards excelled in our memory tests, as well
as a majority of the other benchmarks.
Mind you, this was a win by decision, not a clear knockout.
Several benchmarks resulted in a virtual tie, with all the boards
turning in similar scores when the margin of error was factored
in. But still, a win is a win all the same.
It’s just icing on the cake for the nForce crowd that the two
boards featuring the 790i chipset also include other important
features, although to differing degrees. The Asus Striker II
Extreme is jam-packed with bells and whistles and overclocks
like nobody’s business, but it costs $100 more than the already
pricey EVGA 790i SLI Ultra board and had inferior scores in
our gaming benchmarks (however, we suspect that gap willclose when Asus releases a BIOS update). EVGA’s board, on
the other hand, is simply a solid go-to Nvidia reference design
that delivers on all the 790i’s key features. Both are more than
respectable, so choosing between them will come down to
personal preference—and your budget.
Admittedly, an nForce chipset isn’t a practical solution for
everyone, specifically folks who either have dual ATI video-
cards or are planning to run a CrossFire X setup in the future.
We have good news for them. Gigabyte’s X48T-DQ6 is a solid
runner up, with the advantages of a reliable Intel chipset. It’s
also fairly tweakable. There’s certainly no shame in owning
this motherboard. In fact, Intel should model its own board’s
on the X48T-DQ6’s design.
In the end, however, even the best boards here aren’t
perfect. There’s always room for innovation and improvement.
Turn the page to see some of the radical new features we’d like
to see in future mobo designs.Best scores are bolded. We used a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, a standard-clocked GeForce 8800 GTX, 2GB of Crucial DDR3/1333, a
150GB Western Digital Raptor drive, and Windows XP Professional with SP2.BENCHMARKS
EVGA 790i Asus Striker Intel Gigabyte
SLI Ultra II Extreme DX48BT2 X48T-DQ6
PCMark Overall 8,836 8,972 8,432 8,424
PCMark CPU 8,067 8,047 7,787 8,022
PCMark RAM 6,046 6,038 5,511 5,700
PCMark GPU 13,059 13,311 12,947 12,952
PCMark HDD 7,996 7,701 7,035 7,036
Cinebench 10 9,628 9,587 9,434 9588
ProShow (min:sec) 16:10 16:17 15:54 15:40
MainConcept (min:sec) 31:22 31:30 32:07 31:18
3DMark06 Overall 12,499 12,568 12,268 12238
HD Tach Avg. (MB/s) 75.4 75.4 75.0 75.4
ScienceMark 2.0 memory test 7,126.68 7,241.1 6,550.45 6,760.60
Valve Particle Test 87 90 91 85
Unreal Tournament 3 (fps) 110 113 104 112
FEAR (fps) 250 213 247 240
Quake 4 (fps) 180.8 166.0 174.6 180.1
Everest Mem Read (MB/s) 8,884 8,837 7,748 7,842
Everest Mem Write (MB/s) 6,987 7,072 6,962 7,046
Everest Mem Copy (MB/s) 7,034 7,015 7,140 7,146
Everest Mem Latency (ns) 62.6 65.6 70.0 69.1)-| MAXIMUMPC | JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com