Refaire à Nouveau - NVIDIA 780a...

Our recent NVIDIA 780a launch article generated a lot of reader responses, especially in the email category.  As of today, we have received a few 780a/750a samples for analysis and will go into specific details such as SLI scaling, power management, and overclocking in the individual board reviews.  In the meantime, we have a couple of updates for points raised in our launch article.

1. ASUS provided a new BIOS that greatly improves memory compatibility, especially with 2GB modules.  The problem we incurred with not being able to change the on-board video memory and POST with a 4x1GB or 2x2GB memory configuration is solved now.   In fact, the ability to run at DDR2-1066 with a 2x2GB setup is perfectly stable and performance is decent based on our results listed below.

2.  Using the 175.16 release drivers, we still could not discern a difference a measurable performance difference between the 8500GT in a standalone configuration or in Hybrid SLI operation.   We are continuing to work with NVIDIA and ASUS on this problem.

3.  Quad SLI operates correctly on the 780a platform; however, our initial results with a 9850BE processor are somewhat disappointing as several titles actually experienced reduced performance compared to a single 9800GX2 card.  We will provide results and a SLI scaling comparison to an Intel processor based 780i system shortly. For those who have generated 3DMark Vantage scores utilizing the High setting with a Quad SLI system, we are providing our results shown below with the 9850BE processor.

4.  The ability to overclock our 9850BE has improved from 2.8GHz to right over 3.02GHz with the latest 0802 BIOS release from ASUS.  MSI has provided an updated BIOS release for their 780a board that is reaching 3GHz at this moment also.  We are continuing to work with the suppliers and will have final overclock capabilities shortly.