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790i Ultra NVIDIA chipset - Still rockin' in 2015 / 2016 / 2017.. will it ever die?

92K views 1K replies 92 participants last post by  schuck6566 
#1 · (Edited)
¯\(°_o)/¯ - 790i Ultra chipset?
I know what you are thinking...

"Umm... a 790i Ultra chipset? You mean the same one from 2008?
This chipset is dead and out of production, why on earth would you start a thread for this chipset in 2015?"


Φ A bit of background first, from a GAMER's perspective...let's have some fun


If you are someone that knows the history of CPU chipsets and their capabilities and restrictions you may have noticed a trend the past 10 years or so...This trend has EVERYTHING to do with Moore's Law. I'm not going to cover Moore's law itself, it is a whole separate topic. This was just the core reason Intel and Amd needed to get crafty to sell processors at the same rate.

To make a very very long drawn out explanation shorter, when processors started to basically run out of headroom to go faster in clock speed, they were forced to just add more cores instead. Dual core, triple core (yup there were), Quad core, 6 core and now we are seeing 8 core pretty much mainstream.
Top Xeons have even more cores, like a crazy amount...

Consumers instantly went from a guaranteed performance increase with a 'CPU UPGRADE' to more of a "well depends" situation.

We saw how older single core CPUs were running at HIGHER clock speeds.
They were faster than newer dual core CPUs were, and winning at just about every "real world" test...
Software AT THE TIME that most consumers ran couldn't really take advantage of the extra core.

This meant many of us spend thousands of dollars on an upgrade, because of COURSE we needed a new chipset, new socket, new memory type, etc. etc. only to find out we may have not actually see much of a performance increase (if you are one of those that always wants the latest and greatest).

Fast forward to Quad cores, same deal.. it happened all over again..
Software is JUST NOW getting to the point where most of it will fully utilize 4 cores.
Intel adds hyperthreading back... everyone loves to look at all the CPU graphs in task manager

But we really couldn't use the extra 4 hyper-threading cores much and still can't today.
A quad with hyper-threading is 8 cores... what games are programmed to take advantage of 8 cores?
How many people went out an bought a Core i7 for that specific reason?

Ever see a minimum requirement on ANY game for 6 cores? Nope...

Six cores, yup same thing happened all over again to consumers...(12 cores looks cool in task manager..
)
Eight core CPUs are more common now. A whopping 16 cores in task manager.!
..
12 of which are not specifically programmed for in games (I didn't say they wouldn't be used).

PCI-E lane limitations!

P35, P45, Z series, etc etc how many chipsets do we need when almost nothing really changes!??
How many of these chipsets have HORRIBLY LOW PCI-E lanes?? (MOST)

So back to the purpose of this thread


So what IS the purpose of this thread? - 2 reasons

(1) I want to give credit where it is due! The NVIDIA 790i Ultra chipset wasn't perfect, and had some quirks of its own but should be considered a bit of a "going out on top" thing for NVIDIA. This was the last consumer chipset NVIDIA ever produced. This platform in 2008 was ahead of its time and with thanks MOSTLY to the issue following Moore's law lately, is actually still (barely) holding its own today in 2015. People were stuffing GTX 8800's in their systems in 2008 and today people are stuffing GTX 980's in them! They perform VERY well when tweaked just the right way for games and handle large PCI-E demands. Unfortunately they are limited to 8GB of ram because I think if they weren't the legacy might even have lasted longer.

I want to be clear, this is a VERY OLD chipset, and EVERYTHING NEW beats it.. There is no doubt, the newer boards are better, faster, more bling, features like M.2, SATA6, USB3 *BUT* take a look at what was brought to us in 2008... Not as a sales pitch or to suggest that everyone run out and pick one up used, but when you consider it is 2015 and we actually don't have MUCH BETTER than what we got back in 2008...

» 60 PCI-E Lanes
   ↑ Umm.. yeah... can't touch it..
» PCI Express 2.0 (GPUs still do not really exceed this limit today [16Gbps])
» DDR3 @ 2000Mhz (max) (We are just now seeing DDR4)
» SLI 16x16x16 (2.0/1.0/2.0)
» 1600 FSB and 45nm CPU support

and here it is 2015 and we are still playing the multiple socket, PCI-E lane limitation games..
INTEL IS EVEN LIMITING LANES IN THE PROCESSOR ITSELF!?! WTH

Despite what many might say, the 790i Ultra chipset was ahead of its time and a solid, quality platform. Unfortunately there were a lot of issues with the 780i chipset that gave the 790i a bad name, but were actually not applicable to the 790i at all...


(2) One of my computers I have is actually a 790i Ultra. In fact, I still have 2 running with this chipset. I have had a REALLY FUN TIME OVERCLOCKING this platform. Again, I wouldn't suggest that anyone go out any BUY ONE (lol), but IF you happen to have a 790i Ultra chipset you can simply throw a decent cooler on it and get ~4 Ghz relatively easily with a quad core. That's a frequency any game will thank you for.

If you've got one hanging around, it make a good overclocking project and since I may be one of the last ones around still familiar with the 790i Ultra with regard to overclocking, I figured I would offer my assistance so I'm throwing this out there and including a bit of my perspective and recognition for a piece of hardware that still compares today.







EDIT: GREAT post on 16GB with 790i Ultra!
https://www.overclock.net/t/1547699...16-2017-overclocking-gaming/300#post_25812137
and
https://www.overclock.net/t/1547699...16-2017-overclocking-gaming/300#post_25812178


UPDATE! 4-21-19
Looks like there are confirmed reports of compatibility issues with Turing based GPUs.
The most modern NVIDIA GPUs confirmed to work will be PASCAL based. 1060/1070/1080/1080Ti or ANYTHING older should work fine.
20xx and 16xx do NOT work.
 
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#2 ·
I think it is fair to show what the platform can do, and what overclocking it will do.
This is with a QX9770 but to be honest, I was able to clock my Q9550 to 4.4Ghz so you definitely don't need an extreme proc to do this.

Pictures speak louder than words.
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░▒▓│CPU-Z │▓▒░



On this particular PC this is my "24x7" overclock. It is completely stable even with the high bus speed.
If you are wondering about the voltage, the whole PC is on water but this could be done on good air cooling also.



░▒▓│AIDA64 │▓▒░




The QX9650 is approximately the same performance as a stock QX9770 (QX9770 scores slightly better) to give you an idea where the QX9770 would normally score when not overclocked. Not a bad read performance gain from this overclock!


You have to admit, that's pretty impressive isn't it, especially considering the AMD just above it has an integrated memory controller!
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Beating an i7 proc, interesting!


and I do have an LSI PCI-E x8 in the x16 1.0 slot.

I know there are newer versions of AIDA64 and newer processors can destroy these synthetic benchmarks. For me anyway, as primarily a gamer, an overclocked Quad core CPU and (2) GTX 980's in SLI (water cooled and also overclocked) allows me to play any game at max settings and I also game @4K. Even though there are SO MANY newer and faster processors, they really don't matter for games it is all about the GPUs.

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The last time I got this much value from a piece of computer hardware was when I bought my USRobotics Courier 28.8Kbps modem, and throughout all the years of modem technology just kept flashing it (for free) all the way up to 56K v.90!
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#3 ·
I thought I'd at least get one troll reply
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I'd post about DX12 but I'd be accused of talking to myself and they might come take me away
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#4 ·
I'm still talking to myself, which is ok because I always ignore myself anyway... lol

Check this out though, everyone knows GTAV is going to be huge for PC. I find it VERY interesting that this was said regarding 4K specs:

"To run the game on a 4K display at 30fps," says Hoare, "you'll need at minimum an AMD HD 7870 or Nvidia GTX 760 with 2GB of VRAM." As for the 4K at 60 frames-per-second, that'll require a "high-end SLI or Crossfire setup."

No mention of CPU or cores or memory...
I pre-ordered so it will be interesting to see how well GTA V plays on such an old PC. I'll do some benchies
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I am itching to upgrade, and maybe this will be the game that gives me the motivation through "chug" ... We shall see
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#5 ·
Nice post. Yes for single tasks these older systems still hold up shockingly well actually.
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Where you will start to find large differences between a C2Q setup and a newer i7 Sandy/Ivy/Haswell is in multi-tasking.
Now how much of that you do when you just game is variable.

Now how much juice is that beast pulling from the wall??
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#6 ·
I have one of those power meter thingies (highly technical term) in-line with my PS and at max load I can draw close to 800 watts. It is mostly my GPUs also (running a custom water BIOS) so I guess I would assume that may be high compared to newer i7's but not like 70's electric heater bad
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#7 ·
Looks like that board is going to last you even longer with dx12. I can see how bad those gpus are choked at 1080 firestrike, but that ultra smashes what my 780tis can do! I also game 4k so ultra is all that really matters to me as well. It's not like you will have to reduce the resolution with those 980s.
Is that thing still in a 2008 case? If so, great theft deterrence.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by rluker5 View Post

Looks like that board is going to last you even longer with dx12. I can see how bad those gpus are choked at 1080 firestrike, but that ultra smashes what my 780tis can do! I also game 4k so ultra is all that really matters to me as well. It's not like you will have to reduce the resolution with those 980s.
Is that thing still in a 2008 case? If so, great theft deterrence.
I actually just bought a new case and a bunch of other stuff (well over a grand), and just put my same board/cpu/memory back in
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I agree with DX12, it will make graphics even less CPU dependent. My only question is whether or not I will have any chipset drivers for Windows 10
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#9 ·
Only one way to find out!
If it means anything I took an asus M2N61-AR - Nvidia geforce6150le/nforce430 chipset board on my hp slimline s3220n to windows 8.1 and the improvement over vista was unbelievable. That old Nvidia oc software with that speeding up gnome even worked in 8.1, although the results were limited by my bios.

Jamming a decent watercooling setup in an old tower does seem kind of silly. Most of them were pretty skinny and didn't have too many options.

I spent around 900 on my cpu/mb/mem and after seeing your ultra scores, I think I'll save the money from upgrading that for gpu upgrades for as long as I can.
 
#10 ·
Ok, GTA V PC launch day!
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How does grandpa hold up?

Display: 3840x2160 (FullScreen) @ 59Hz VSync OFF

This is basically all display settings maxxed except AA is off (but FXAA on, and reflection AA on) because I'm @ 4K. Advanced graphics left untouched.


=== SYSTEM ===
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1 Build 7601)
DX Feature Level: 11.0
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9770 @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs) ~4.2GHz
8192MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4153MB Driver Version 350.12
Graphics Card Vendor Id 0x10de with Device ID 0x13c0

=== SETTINGS ===
Display: 3840x2160 (FullScreen) @ 59Hz VSync OFF
Tessellation: 3
LodScale: 1.000000
PedLodBias: 0.200000
VehicleLodBias: 0.000000
ShadowQuality: 3
ReflectionQuality: 2
ReflectionMSAA: 2
SSAO: 2
AnisotropicFiltering: 16
MSAA: 0
MSAAFragments: 0
MSAAQuality: 0
TextureQuality: 2
ParticleQuality: 2
WaterQuality: 2
GrassQuality: 2
ShaderQuality: 2
Shadow_SoftShadows: 5
UltraShadows_Enabled: false
Shadow_ParticleShadows: true
Shadow_Distance: 1.000000
Shadow_LongShadows: false
Shadow_SplitZStart: 0.930000
Shadow_SplitZEnd: 0.890000
Shadow_aircraftExpWeight: 0.990000
Shadow_DisableScreenSizeCheck: false
Reflection_MipBlur: true
FXAA_Enabled: true
TXAA_Enabled: false
Lighting_FogVolumes: true
Shader_SSA: true
DX_Version: 2
CityDensity: 1.000000
PedVarietyMultiplier: 1.000000
VehicleVarietyMultiplier: 1.000000
PostFX: 2
DoF: true
HdStreamingInFlight: false
MaxLodScale: 0.000000
MotionBlurStrength: 0.000000

Who woulda thunk...
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#11 ·
Ehh Striker II Extreme...I had massive problems running that board higher than stock. It seemed it's like a mine field or a maze puzzle...
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My EVGA 790i was much easier to overclock. I remember 790i being much faster than 780i in terms of SLI performance.

I gave the S2E it to my brother and he's got a QX6850 running with it at stock. Been good for 3 years or so now. Looking forward to getting it back sooner or later to play with it again.
 
#12 ·
They can be tricky, but IMHO the Striker II Extreme is heavenly for overclocking. My XFX 790i on the other hand, now that's a picky board (and I managed to get a Q9550 @ 4.5Ghz on that board). Once you get the right base settings in the BIOS tweaked the ability to narrow down stable settings are sometimes tedious but you can get there.

I actually just UPGRADED my CPU in this same board
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Went with the 771 MOD Xeon x5470 @ 4.5+ (still tweaking and finding the max overclock). You can't beat the price, has a 10x multiplier, plus it is definitely an extreme mod so it was FUN! I installed the adapter, cut out the slots in my socket and even had to upgrade the microcode in my BIOS but in the end, it is ALIVE!
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4563 is Prime95 stable too.. Still going higher
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PS. Under load voltage droops to 1.504v


Temps are decent considering how much voltage it is getting.


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#13 ·
Well, im not rocking a 790i, but still pushing along with 775.
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. About to get a new GPU to help keep me going this year. Hopefully a new rig next year.

Id have probably gotten into SLI if i had a 790i board though... :/

Im starting to feel like a dying/rare breed, still gaming with a 775 setup.
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What kind if GPU usage do you get with these Core 2 Quads on 980 SLI?! Lol
 
#14 ·
Nice modding! Second best part is your 4k performance is top of the line.
My delidding feels so vanilla now.
I had bad voltage droop in my gpus and upgraded the power supply. The new one had more "bite" than I expected. I was putting up to 1.3v into my 780tis benching with the old one (input went from 12.36 to 11.86v under load)
to having the cards only able to handle about 1.15v (input from ~12.2 to ~12.05) under the new one.
The cards performance increase was nearly negligible but they do run cooler.
I think it is a lot easier to toast my rig with that new ps.
Just thought I'd put that out there.
New and old ps are in my pics.
 
#15 ·
Thanks guys!

I've been a bit busy since my last post
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I can't speak much yet.. Jaw won't close
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I am not even done yet! LMAO (Although I don't expect to get much more)
 
#16 ·
The devil made me do it!
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(5666 score)





Holy Cow!
This architecture is 7 years old. Not all that long ago 7 years was the difference between the original Pentium and the Pentium 4
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I am just amazed at the value here.. ...and I can't brag because everyone else's rig would best this one (lol
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) but this architecture doesn't owe me ANYTHING
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.

I just have to share because this really is something special.

EDIT: RAM is stable. Passes MemTestx86 also. This is REALLY fast for 8GB. The chipset only officially supports this speed with 4GB (2 sticks). Test took 2.5 hours to complete.



I just smashed my previous record!
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http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4707590
 
#17 ·
It's been a while, still beating the crap out of this x5470. GTA V has consumed me and I may legally change my name to Trevor
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I'm seriously thinking of putting a couple GTX 980Ti's in! I'm helping MOD a BIOS for one and I'm getting jelly. I don't believe I will be reaching my PCI-e bandwidth limit either.
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Haha!
Intel probably hates me but it is what it is..
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaldMan View Post

Dang man, this is pretty impressive!

I love the fact you are jamming 1.55v into that thing, and its still running that low.

Got any pics / build log of your PC?

I assume you are on water?
When @ load it droops down to roughly 1.5ish. I never tried more than that. I assume I could squeeze a little more out of the CPU but at this point the returns have diminished and its not worth the extra heat/risk. I have to tell you, the Xeon X5470's overclock like a dream.. I've got over 4.7Ghz at that voltage. I've never experienced a CPU O/C like this before. It seems they are all just better silicon unless I'm just lucky. Others with this mod seem to have similar success.

I just sold the QX9770 (to pay for the Xeon.. plus $150 in my pocket and it blows the QX9770 away. The x5470 has a 10x multiplier which means it is ALMOST an unlocked CPU. I've never needed to use anything higher than 10x on an overclock anyway because I like pushing the bus speed
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)

Yup water cooled (2015 gear), 2 loops. One for CPU one for GPU and chipset. I have a couple pics posted in my profile here. I should take some good ones, I think there's only 2 pics I posted (with/without flash) so you can check them out if you'd like. The Swiftech H240-X/H140-X (and others) have a socket 775 option. You have to order it seperately it doesn't come in the box.

If you 775 folks out there thought you couldn't use that cooler, YES YOU CAN
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#20 ·
If I may quote this article:

"The new enthusiast chipset for SKylake is dubbed Z170. It maintains dual channel memory support with up to four dims in total. Z170 will also support a whopping number of USB ports. 14 in total, 10 of which are USB 3.0 and 4 are USB 2.0. USB 3.1 support is still missing unfortunately, so board makers will have to resort to using their own controllers if they want to enable it.

The Z170 chipset will also support six SATA 6Gbps ports and 20 lanes of PCI express connectivity. Z170 boards will also feature three SATA Express x2 interfaces in addition to four M.2 interfaces. mSATA will not make a return in Z170.

All in all Skylake seems to be more of an evolutionary step rather than a revolutionary one. Both in terms feature-set and performance. I can't believe that it's been almost eight years since quad cores were introduced, 9 years since dual core CPUs were introduced. And we're still limited to quad core/module eight thread offerings at the mainstream level from both Intel and AMD. Intel doesn't seem keen on changing that with Skylake, let's hope AMD has different plans for Zen."


---

Look at all these CPUs and all the different chipsets we've been through.
Sandy Bridge
Ivy Bridge
Ivy Bridge-E
Haswell
Haswell-E
Broadwell

Broadwell-E and Skylake now

Skylake is next - and you'll NEED A NEW SOCKET YET AGAIN!

Releasing a new CPU with a new chipset making everyone buy a new motherboard and probably new CPU coolers too.. WHY?!? What's so special? It certainly isn't more USB ports (whoopie do) and they are not even USB 3.1.. 20 PCI-e lanes?!? ARE YOU KIDDING US INTEL?!?!
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What's the selling point here? This smell of another Devil's Canyon trick..
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This is in-line with what I've been saying in this thread. Wasting our time and money with "new technology" that we don't want, don't need, didn't ask for.
Intel is DOING IT OVER AGAIN. Selling us a 20 lane PCI-e chipset, just so they can sell us ANOTHER new socket and chipset that has more next year. How many times are we going to play this same PCI-e lane game Intel?1

I need an upgrade, I'm ready for an upgrade.. I am willing to spend money on an upgrade and get new technology.. Where is it?

As I said at the beginning of this thread, Moore's law...
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaldMan View Post

Yeah i was going to go skylake, its hard to justify with my x58, so i just ordered a x5680. Will overclock the crap out of it
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Oh I see another Xeon
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I am curious how much you were able to get out of it.
Do you have to do any hard-mods to get that to work in an x58?

I had to cut out a couple notches on my CPU socket and attach a bridge adapter to swap 2 of the pins.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Laithan View Post

Oh I see another Xeon
wink.gif
I am curious how much you were able to get out of it.
Do you have to do any hard-mods to get that to work in an x58?

I had to cut out a couple notches on my CPU socket and attach a bridge adapter to swap 2 of the pins.
As far as i am aware, it will drop straight in. Will find out next week when it gets here to Aus.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaldMan View Post

As far as i am aware, it will drop straight in. Will find out next week when it gets here to Aus.
How did you make out? Hoping you're rocking some new clocks
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I am going to be throwing (2) Gigabyte GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming cards in SLI into this 2008 rig and do some benchies. We will see how the performance compares to my 980's in SLI. This is a considerable boost in performance considering I will be getting all the improvements from a 980 to a 980Ti x2.

Will we see bottlenecks?
Will PCI-e 2.0 be saturated?
Will synthetic benchmarks scale?

I'm also going to MOD the BIOS of both cards so stay tuned for some results.
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PS.
 
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