First Look: Nvidia nForce 780i SLI

Rear I/O

There's not a lot to write home about in regard to the rear I/O, but it covers all the necessary connectivity options:

• Six USB 2.0 ports
  
• One 6-pin Firewire socket
  
• Two RJ45 sockets for both the Gigabit Ethernet
  
• PS/2 keyboard and mouse
  
• Six 3.5mm jacks providing the eight channels of analogue audio, plus microphone and line-in
  
• Optical S/PDIF out

The large gap in the rear I/O would provide space for the hot air from the power regulation heatsink to escape to, however XFX has entirely closed off that area on the metal rear I/O shield provided in the box.

There are also no niche extras for enthusiasts like a clear CMOS button, perhaps. It all feels a little bit average.

BIOS

I have to admit, I was a fan of the nForce 680i SLI BIOS – it was well laid out with everything where you'd expect it to be. Thankfully the nForce 780i SLI BIOS on our XFX board has taken this and improved on it slightly as it includes a few more options to play with.


The memory timings, frequency adjustment and voltage sections all look very familiar, but now there are the MCP Auxiliary voltage and core independent GTLReference voltages to play with as well. By the looks of things, the NF200 chip actually stops any PCI-Express frequency adjustment as now only the third x16 slot’s frequency can be adjusted.

Having said that, it's hardly surprising when you consider that Nvidia dropped the LinkBoost feature (which auto-overclocked the PCI-Express x16 lanes) earlier in the year with an nForce 680i SLI BIOS update. Why? Because it claimed there was little performance benefit to the 25 percent overclock for the potential stability issues it brought about.


The system monitor page is almost identical, despite the nForce 780i SLI now wired with ESA support. Everything is just as sectionalised before, with every part clearly marked making it easy to find what you're looking for.