ASUS Striker II Extreme - a quick view of the 790i
by Gary Key on February 23, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
ASUS just dropped off their new Striker II Extreme board based on NVIDIA's upcoming 790i chipset featuring official support for the soon to be released 1600FSB processors and DDR3. Of note, ASUS is utilizing a slightly updated water block design, backplates on the MOSFET heatsinks and other critical areas, along with screw-down mounting for the SPP and MCP cooling blocks. The board features an 8-phase power delivery system with a 2-phase design for the memory. ASUS will have a full accessory package that will include a 3-way SLI connector among other things.
Overall, the board has a subdued appearance thanks to a minimalist color palette but the board still gives the impression it means business. However, those who decide to use 3-way SLI (standard cooling solutions) will lose the ability to physically install cards in the single PCI Express x1 slot and the two PCI slots. Our first look at the BIOS indicates similar configurability and options that the X48 based Rampage Formula board has at this time. Early testing is already showing performance gains (at like memory performance/cpu settings) over the 780i in SLI testing. The 790i chipset does away with the bridge chipset utilized on the 780i to provide PCI Express 2.0 capability. Overclocking with an early BIOS spin is also showing improvements over the 780i, especially with Yorkfield and Wolfdale processors.
Here are the first screen shots, we will have additional information regarding the chipset and extensive test results when the product launches in March.
ASUS Striker II Extreme - 3DMark06
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ASUS Striker II Extreme - 3DMark05
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xkon - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
hopefully these things can get 500+ fsb consistently...Fusion2002 - Sunday, March 2, 2008 - link
AMG more info plz :) hows the review coming?unatommer - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
I used to be a big fan of Asus until they burned me recently on a nvidia 650 board. Original board went south, sent in for replacement, they sent me new one with overheating northbridge. Sent that in for replacement they sent me a board that doesn't post. I got sick of wasting money and time so I bought a new Gigabyte board and haven't looked back. Until Asus can straiten things out, I would stay away.(however in Asus's defense, I haven't tested out Gigabytes tech support yet - it could be crap too as far as I know. Maybe I just got a sh1tty $130 board.)
mbm2116 - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
I'm a noob first of all and want to build a really kickass machine. Would a PCI expansion bay used for Sound and NIC card attached to this motherboard mess up performance? I guess 2 of the graphics cards would be dual slot and one would be a single slot solution. Does this make sense for a build?Cykoth - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
And I think I know why. I stupidly bought this board after seeing one of these "quickviews" back in Jan....there still isn't a review out for it. I had nothing but problems with this board and RMA'ed it back. I've instead purchased an intermediary board that would be stable...the Gigabyte P35-DS3R. I'm very hopeful to have a stable SLI capable board that has a nice feature set. I don't necessarily want to O/C. Will this board be it?Gary Key - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
Raja is finishing up the review now. What problems did you have? The BIOS spins from 0701 to 0902 seemed to get worse as far as FSB holes and voltage requirements, but 1001 seems to have fixed several problems now.Fusion2002 - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
Those screen shots look pretty promising IMO. Any more updates? Can't wait for more of your benchmark results!!faster - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
You would think for a $300+ motherboard they would make it a little more aethetically pleasing to the eye. I hope anandtech really gives the thing the once over looking for new release irregularities. As bad as I want this board, I am a little tired of beta testing defective hardawre (Uh, evga 680i - c1 memory error anyone?). Asus has great engineering and great products. I hope this board lives up to the hype!FXi - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
If it were turning out to be that stable, Anand would have at least told us that much.780's are having "issues", just not as many as the 680. X48 is really the cat's meow unless you "need" SLI.
kjboughton - Saturday, February 23, 2008 - link
Testing is in progress as I type this...last night's pictures were simply an early first look. Hold tight, we will be bring preliminary SLI results as well as stability testing with dual-core/quad-core overclocks as soon as possible.