TomsHardware reviews Asus Striker II Extreme, MSI P7N2 Diamond , and XFX nFORCE 790i ULTRA motherboards
By staying on top of the graphics market for most of the past few years, Nvidia has been able to force its SLI chipsets into the systems of high-end gamers. Reserving SLI for itself ensured that the brand's chipsets didn't need to be great, as even basic functionality would allow gamers to excuse minor platform shortcomings as they eyed the added gaming performance of SLI.
And thus began the legacy of the mediocre nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition, the nForce 500 series that was so problematic most motherboard designs never reached production, and finally, the nForce 680i, which brought Nvidia back up to its previous mediocre standards. A bit of information that Intel had held back from Nvidia prevented original 680i motherboards from supporting 45 nm Core 2 Quad processors, so Nvidia added the 780i to its product line, which was nothing more than a 680i with a separate PCI Express 2.0 bridge added... [read more]
