First Look: Nvidia nForce 780i SLI

First Look: XFX nForce 780i SLI

As one of Nvidia's key partners, XFX is also one of the first off the mark with a Designed by Nvidia motherboard. We looked at the XFX nForce 680i SLI motherboard earlier in the year and (as expected) found it to be identical, bar the box and package, to the offerings from EVGA and Inno3D.

We expect the same situation with the nForce 780i SLI where the only difference is again, box and its contents – the fundamental boards will very likely stay the same. With that in mind, a consumer, your bargain hunting skills will be your best friend in this respect.

Feature List

• Support for Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo (including 45nm Penryn), Pentium 4 EE, Penitum D and Pentium 4 CPUs.
  
• Nvidia nForce 780i SLI SPP (north bridge)
  
• Nvidia nForce 570 MCP (south bridge)
  
• Support for dual channel DDR2 533, 667, 800MHz DDR2 memory and SLI-Ready memory to 1,200MHz
  
• 10 USB 2.0 ports
  
• Six SATA 3Gbps and one IDE port with Nvidia MediaShield (including RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD support)
  
• Two Physical Layer Gigabit Ethernet ports with teaming function
  
• Realtek ALC885 High-Definition audio codec supporting 7.1 channel surround sound
  
• Two IEEE1394a Firewire ports
  
• Two PCI-Express x16 2.0 slots
  
• One PCI-Express x16 1.0 slot
  
• One PCI-Express x1 1.0 slot
  
• Two PCI slots

Box Contents

• Six black SATA cables with dust caps
  
• A single ended floppy cable
  
• One IDE cable
  
• Six SATA power cables
  
• One PCI bracket with four USB 2.0 ports
  
• One PCI bracket with 6-pin Firewire port
  
• SLI and 3-way SLI brackets
  
• Metal rear I/O shield
  
• XFX manual, driver CD and quick reference guide

All in all a very complete package from XFX – there's full support for the extra Firewire and USB 2.0 pin-outs, with the four USB ports confined to a single PCI bracket to save space. There's also a complete complement of SATA cables and even rounded IDE and floppy cables too, however I don't really see the point in supplied all those extra SATA power adapters any more. It's not a complaint that XFX has provided more than what's possibly needed, that's for certain, but I hope it's not at the expense of making the whole package cost more.