The nForce 790i chipset is due soon. It will bring single-chip PCIe 2.0 support for SLI machines, along with DDR3 and proper Intel 45nm quad-core support. Partners have been fleeing the nForce 780i chipset for several reasons, the most obvious being the short lifespan of the chipset, which is being replaced by the 790i any day now. nForce 790i will most likely make an appearance or two at CeBIT, but already the first benchmarks and overclocking results have been posted. Overclockers Kingpin and Fugger have been granted to post some information on the new flagship chipset from NVIDIA.
Kingpin has focused on 3DMark and posted a score with a machine using two GeForce 8800GTS cards at stock speeds and an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 at 4.6GHz, air-cooled. This resulted in a 3DMark 06 score of 24,932 points. He boldly asks if perhaps 32,000 will fall with current generation graphics cards, maybe, but first we would like to see 31,000. Unofficially, 31,000 has been broken though, but we can't tell you much more about that for now.
Kingpin has focused on FSB overclocking by dropping an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 into the socket. The best result shown is 615MHz FSB with his cascade phase change cooler. However, he does add that the nForce 790i is more than adequate for FSB overclocking and that it can compete with the best of Intel boards. The only downfall would be the expected high price, from what we're hearing you should be able to afford two or even three P5K on a single 790i board.
So far the nForce 790i chipset seems to play well and we certainly hope that we have an nForce chipset worthy of the name.
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nForce 790i benchmarks
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