EVGA 790i Ultra Overclocking Guide

[Robilar]

Latest Motherboard drivers:

For Windows XP: 15.23 Release Date: September 12, 2008

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.23.html



CPU Compatibility List:
LINK


Latest Bios: P07

ftp://ftp.evga.com/bios/NF79_P07.iso

(ISO File)

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=552320

P07 Updates:
Improved nTune compatibility
Fixed restoring disabled device states & fan speeds after suspend/resume
CPU Microcode updates for Penryn CPUs
Fixed PCIe compatibility issues
Added tRFC control to Memory Tweaking parameters
Improved Memory Compatibility
Improved overall system stability (including games)


XFX P05 Bios:

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/support/supportCentral.jspa

From Dinos22:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...183119&page=32


"i've just done a load of RAM testing last night into the early hours of the morning

P05 bios officially solves corruption issues on reference boards

look like i was given correct advice yet again despite of some members' reservations"


Given that he is one of the top OC testers in the world (he works with king_pin) and was also one of the first guys to detect the problem (He tests and OC's for hardware makers), I'd say this is a solid endorsement.

Note that this issue only occured when overclocking DDR3 RAM on the 790i boards (all of them, Asus included. No word if the asus board has corrected this with its new 0704 bios release) to 1600mhz and beyond. Anything below that does not trigger issues.

I myself have not encountered it as the highest my ram is stable is 1590mhz (pretty amazing for $140 ram). The XFX 790i bios patch should resolve it for their boards as well.

Further confirmation from Anandtech with respect resolution of data corruption issues:

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=460

"NIVIDIA has worked diligently the past few weeks to solve this problem and just recently released new BIOS code for the suppliers of the 790i SLI product. The updated BIOS code can be located at each suppliers website. We have throughly tested the P05 BIOS for the EVGA board and the 0704 BIOS from ASUS the last several days. We are glad to report that our problems with data corruption while overclocking are solved. The majority of our problems occurred with the FSB bus set around 1600~1800 (QDR) and memory set to Sync. We have tested other combinations in this range along with various voltage settings and so far we have not corrupted our drives again."



Spec PDF SheetLINK

Reviews:

Legion Hardware LINK

When running Crysis in the DX10 mode we saw a 13% performance margin favouring the nForce 790i Ultra SLI at 1440x900 over the nForce 780i SLI chipset. Again an increase of 5fps at this resolution is quite a significant increase.

Legit Reviews XFX 790i Review:

http://legitreviews.com/article/700/1/

477 FSB on a QX6850.


HardwareSecrets ReviewLINK

As its name implies, EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard is based on the latest high-end chipset from nVidia for the Intel platform. What is new on nForce 790i compared to its predecessor, 780i, is the support for DDR3 memories and PCI Express 2.0 support generated by the chipset itself – nForce 780i was in fact an nForce 680i with an additional nForce 200 bridge chip making the conversion between PCI Express 1.0 and PCI Express 2.0. Both chipsets support 3-way SLI mode, which allows three GeForce 8800 GTX’s or three GeForce 8800 Ultras to be connected together, and Quad SLI, allowing two GeForce 9800 GX2’s to be connected together and enjoining four GPU’s, as each GX2 is powered by two GPUs. Two of its three PCI Express x16 slots are PCI Express 2.0 and this motherboard has also two Firewire ports, optical SPDIF output and more.


Other basic features from nForce 790i include support for the latest 1,600 MHz external bus (nForce 780i supports only up to 1,333 MHz) and DDR3 memories (up to 8 GB) up to DDR3-1333 or up to DDR3-2000 if EPP (Enhanced Performance Profile, a.k.a. SLI-ready) memories are used. This motherboard doesn’t accept DDR2 memories.

The Good
• Thanks to the 790i, overclocking is no longer a weakness of the nVidia chipsets.
• 490fsb easily obtainable on a Q6600 - 508fsb on a QX9650
• Insane range of voltage options.
• Performance on par or better than a lot of Intel chipset boards.
• Great layout with tons of innovative features.


The Bad
• If it ends up costing anything near £280 - the price!!!

Note!: The 175.16 Nvidia Video Card Drivers (for Windows XP) cause static feedback in audio (similar to the old 680i boards). The 174.74 beta's work fine. Apparently this is only in conjunction with SLI'd video cards and a Creative Labs X-FI Card.

Asus Striker II Extreme new 0801 bios: http://strony.aster.pl/pmpcfg/PC/ASU...TREME/0801.zip



790i Owners List:

Robilar EVGA

Cognoscenti EVGA

LitlRatt EVGA

GT Hawk

archimedes916 EVGA

Gorf79 EVGA

Inuyasha1771 EVGA

Sergery EVGA

holty EVGA

Scooby-Snack EVGA

Watts XFX

Fuzzdad XFX

Thunderer ASUS

Nuclearjock ASUS

Dan12288 XFX

duckie EVGA

Mhill EVGA

Krenko EVGA

Whitingnick EVGA

[cognoscenti]

Stock setup

[cognoscenti]

A look through the std bios settings

[Litlratt]

What mem cog?

[cognoscenti]

Lol I haven't got the ram yet, still trying to decide what to go for.

[Litlratt]

Step up will only cost me $80. Mem prices are holding me back.

[joemaniaci]

Originally Posted by Litlratt

Step up will only cost me $80. Mem prices are holding me back.

same here.

[rRav3n]

has the 790 got a crappy little fan like the 780, and how does it mount in that huge northbridge cooler ... cheers

[2Luke2]

Originally Posted by Litlratt

Step up will only cost me $80. Mem prices are holding me back.

Same here lol..

[2Luke2]

More pics... lol

Btw anyone else konw if there is a pretty good gain in performance moving to the 790 from the 780?

Edit: Trigger finger is itching... RAM