Nvidia 780i spotted

[A.Rafay]

Nvidia's upcoming 780i board has appeared online on Chinese language site Expreview and it has one seriously big heatsink on the chipset.

It looks quite similar to the past "designed by Nvidia" boards and it retains the dark brown PCB colour and the fan cooled heatsink on the MCP.

One of the x1 PCI express slots are missing and so is the blue x16 slot which has been replaced by a black full x16 bandwidth slot.

You can check out the original post here in Chinese

 

[iNF3RN0]

what are features? is it officially out or just a leaked picture?

 

[superlative56]

No built in 8800 GTX ultra

 

[A.Rafay]

it turns out that the "new" Nvidia 780i chipset might not be all that it's cracked up to be and it looks like Nvidia has once again "recycled" and old chipset by adding a PCI Express controller to the mix.

This is something Nvidia has already done in the past and not an unfamiliar path for the company to take. The source is yet again Expreview and they've got a picture of the board without a heatsink on it and you can clearly see the two parts that makes up the 780i chipset.

So it turns out that the BR04 chipset we reported about earlier isn't the actual 780i chipset at all, but rather a PCI Express controller that adds additional lanes to the ones in the 680i to make three-way SLI possible with three x16 PCIe slots.

The BR04 chip is meant to have PCI Express 2.0 support and it might replace the PCI Express controller part entierly inside the 680i. Make what you want of it, but don't expect to gain any real benefits from the "new" 780i chipset, you'll have to wait for the next generation product from Nvidia before this happens.

 

[Stuge]

it will definitely costs a bomb lol

 

[Atif]

I think this mobo features PCiE 2.0....

 

[Fahad007]

Nothing much Intresting then PCIe 2.0

 

[A.Rafay]

3 full bandwidth 16X PCIe slots!!!

 

[superlative56]

wat does Full bandwidth 16X PCIe means

 

[A.Rafay]

it hasn't been done ever!!!

boards existing today can deliver 16x2 or split a 16x lane into 8x2 in sli, but this board does 16x3

 

[Atif]

So they are featuring "triple SLI" in that mobo. Why should one go for that mobo only for that waste of money???

 

[A.Rafay]

^ its called enthusiasm

 

[dejavu87]

woah triple sli 8| i knew the world was ready 4 that its gonna cost a fortune

 

[A.Rafay]

A few sources have confirmed that Nvidia plans to launch its newest addition to the motherboard world on the 12th of November.

The main new feature of Nforce 780i is triple SLI support and Nvidia is working hard to finish the chipset and drivers for this date. Nvidia wants to show who is the performance boss in this catching up game.

The new chipset supports old and new socket 775 Intel CPUs and it will be just in time to accommodate the Penryn generation of QX6950 that will be launched at the same time. Nvidia will want to tell the world that 780i motherboard with TripleSLI will be the best gaming platform powered by a QX6950 at 3000MHz and 12MB cache.

 

[A.Rafay]

Express view got its hands on a reference nForce 780i board from Nvidia and they've put it through its paces. It is written about the differences between this and the 680i board in the past, but there are a few interesting things that weren't revealed at that time.

First of all, the 780i is only an interim solution until Nvidia launches the C73 next year. This new chipset will add support for DDR3 and 1,600MHz FSB, while the C72 or the 680i/780i is limited to 1,333MHz FSB and DDR2 memory.

But back to the 780i, which is as we told you, is not a new chipset and it's actually detected as the 680i by CPU-Z. The addition of the NF200 chipset adds two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots and 32 PCI Express lanes. The old 680i SPP provides a further two PCIe x1 lanes, while the MCP adds a further x16 PCIe slot, the possibility of a x8 slot and support for four x1 slots or devices.

This means that you can only use two PCIe 2.0 cards with the 780i chipset, at least in terms of power draw and extra performance that you might get from the new interface.

The benchmark numbers are less than thrilling and the 780i chipset is at least not a performance leader at this stage, but some further tuning from Nvidia's side or possibly the board partners might change this.

We'd recommend that you wait for the C73, especially if you already own a 680i based board.

You can find the full review in Chinese here, although the conclusion and all the graphs are in English

 

[zaitron]

perhaps it is time that someone designed a board with tri channel or quad channel DDR.

 

[Adnan959]

Express view got its hands on a reference nForce 780i board from Nvidia and they've put it through its paces. It is written about the differences between this and the 680i board in the past, but there are a few interesting things that weren't revealed at that time.

First of all, the 780i is only an interim solution until Nvidia launches the C73 next year. This new chipset will add support for DDR3 and 1,600MHz FSB, while the C72 or the 680i/780i is limited to 1,333MHz FSB and DDR2 memory.

But back to the 780i, which is as we told you, is not a new chipset and it's actually detected as the 680i by CPU-Z. The addition of the NF200 chipset adds two x16 PCIe 2.0 slots and 32 PCI Express lanes. The old 680i SPP provides a further two PCIe x1 lanes, while the MCP adds a further x16 PCIe slot, the possibility of a x8 slot and support for four x1 slots or devices.

This means that you can only use two PCIe 2.0 cards with the 780i chipset, at least in terms of power draw and extra performance that you might get from the new interface.

The benchmark numbers are less than thrilling and the 780i chipset is at least not a performance leader at this stage, but some further tuning from Nvidia's side or possibly the board partners might change this.

We'd recommend that you wait for the C73, especially if you already own a 680i based board.

You can find the full review in Chinese here, although the conclusion and all the graphs are in English

Well that sells it then...Nothing much to be expected from 780i. Other than penryn support (which even cheaper mobos do atm).