nForce 790i SLI/Ultra chipset mobos - Reviews/OC/Guides

[RADCOM]

$469 - Ouch! And I'm a spend-thrift and price usually isn't an issue for me.

Thats not bad for us here in the UK as the £ is strong against the dollar. The board is selling for £280/$560 in the UK. The Striker was about £220 when it first came out and this one seems to be a lot better. I just bought the full EK watercooling kit for the Striker too....Damn!!
I might order from the States, what DDR3 are people recommending. I'm to lazy to re read this whole post lol

[andymg350]

sorry if this has already been answered but i couldn't see it anywhere. i was just wondering if anyones done any testing with the fuzion block in a watercooling loop, im looking to buy one of these boards but ive heard from someone i know that the fuzion blocks arent very good and that the thermal paste used is a waste of time. i really would prefer to save some money buying this board instead of buying loads of waterblocks to cover everything. would the fuzion be capable of handling heavy overclocking?

[jugeen]

Will this be a problem with all memory (not just cell shock) that need more than 1.5v on the initial post? I have ocz ddr3-1800 that has 1.95 volts. Will I and others have a problem with the board since it is set at 1.5v on auto?

i don't think its memory related, we need a newer bios.

[eternal_fantasy]

http://www.techpowerup.com/spdtool/ says: SPDTool works on all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

Thanks! was using an older version from google link..

edit: oh by the way how does the SPD you linked differ from the original ones on the CellShock?

[canislupy]

Having gotten the Crucial crap DDR3 kit yesterday, I was finally able to adjust the DDR volts to allow the Cellshock to post. After that, everything was cake.

EVGA 790i
E3110 Xeon @ (450x9) 4050MHz w/ auto volts
Cellshock DDR3 1800 @ 1800 8-7-6-21-1t 1.8v

Ran Orthos overnight after hours of WoW play.

Am going to play more tonight w/ higher FSB and see if the wall really resides at 1800MHz for 4 DIMMs.

Anyone try the SPD tool on these Cellshock's? SPD tool runs in 64bit Vista for me, but I am confused as all hell as to what I am looking at.

[eternal_fantasy]

Having gotten the Crucial crap DDR3 kit yesterday, I was finally able to adjust the DDR volts to allow the Cellshock to post. After that, everything was cake.

EVGA 790i
E3110 Xeon @ (450x9) 4050MHz w/ auto volts
Cellshock DDR3 1800 @ 1800 8-7-6-21-1t 1.8v

Ran Orthos overnight after hours of WoW play.

Am going to play more tonight w/ higher FSB and see if the wall really resides at 1800MHz for 4 DIMMs.

Anyone try the SPD tool on these Cellshock's? SPD tool runs in 64bit Vista for me, but I am confused as all hell as to what I am looking at.

Yeah I have used the SPD jugeen linked. From the SPD Tool just open the linked SPD reference file, then individually write to each memory module.

[canislupy]

Were you then able to set the memory settings to "auto" and post?

[Big Myke]

Why doesn't the cell shock ddr3-1800 boot up with 1.5 at 1066 and then you can manually set the voltages to 1.9, set the correct timings and set it to 1800? What would fix this issue? Does this issue include all other 1800 modules such as the ocz or corsair?

[eternal_fantasy]

Were you then able to set the memory settings to "auto" and post?

Haven't tried it yet, we will know the next time I reset CMOS.

Why doesn't the cell shock ddr3-1800 boot up with 1.5 at 1066 and then you can manually set the voltages to 1.9, set the correct timings and set it to 1800? What would fix this issue? Does this issue include all other 1800 modules such as the ocz or corsair?

The problem is that the CellShock modules only have one SPD setting, 1800/8-7-6-21/1.5V. don't know about other brands, but I'd guess they have more relaxed timings in their SPD too.

[Big Myke]

Thank you eternal, that was very informative. OCZ just got done letting me and others know that their pc-1800 modules will underclock to 1066 at 1.5v. That way others can beable to set the correct volts, timings, and speed.

[Lu(ky]

[QUOTE=canislupy;2869857]Having gotten the Crucial crap DDR3 kit yesterday, I was finally able to adjust the DDR volts to allow the Cellshock to post. After that, everything was cake.

I hope you are not saying the Crucial DDR3 PC1600 set is crappy. Because this memory can be stretched very nice for the price. Unless it was the Crucial DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) set

DDR3 REVIEW

[canislupy]

Having already bought 2x Cellshock 1800 kits, I was not about to spend that kind of cash on the Crucial kit... when I could get these for cheap and fast in order to get my Cellshock running using the now infamous workaround.

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspe...2KIT6464BA1067

So that's only about $1k spent on DDR3 alone... but better than $1200... I guess...

[pmp]

Ladies and gents - here's nothing you really haven't seen before. Just a little bit cheaper S2E - S2NSE.
Whilst the first one is based on nVidia nForce 790i Ultra chipset, the latter one is using plain non-ultra versions.
Just to remind you, the only difference, is lack of DDR3-PC14400 official support from nVidia for non-Ultra version.



Time to tear off NSE label





screens:









What's worth to mention - BIOS seems to not have latest NVMM version, so performance may not be as good as it should be.
Although nVidia does not claim that this NB will clock memory at 1800, but still it works.

[sonofander]

Having gotten the Crucial crap DDR3 kit yesterday, I was finally able to adjust the DDR volts to allow the Cellshock to post. After that, everything was cake.

EVGA 790i
E3110 Xeon @ (450x9) 4050MHz w/ auto volts
Cellshock DDR3 1800 @ 1800 8-7-6-21-1t 1.8v

Ran Orthos overnight after hours of WoW play.

Am going to play more tonight w/ higher FSB and see if the wall really resides at 1800MHz for 4 DIMMs.

Anyone try the SPD tool on these Cellshock's? SPD tool runs in 64bit Vista for me, but I am confused as all hell as to what I am looking at.

You're running 4x1 gigs of cellshock? How's that going? How high can you of with 4 dimms???

[zakelwe]

Apologies, not had chance to read the whole thread and FSB limits are higher but what are people finding with the other two big bugbears of the 680/780 -

memory holes and high temps on the nvidia chip?

Have they been consigned to history?

Thanks and good luck with your boards of course !

Regards

Andy ( jealous 780i owner )

[slim142]

Thanks PMP for the pictures of the NSE version.

BTW, is nice to see the Striker II Extreme finally on newegg, but unfortunately this time Im not going to be ASUS customer since they think I have dollar trees on my backyard...

Also, is there any US store that sells cellshock?

[canislupy]

For Cellshock, Tank Guys are in US. http://www.tankguys.biz/

Sonofander: I just got the other two sticks this morning, I will be testing tonight.

[sonofander]

canislupy

Are you running 4x1 cellshock? I'd be interested to know how that's working for you...

[Razor_Blade]

Tankguys sell cellshock. http://www.tankguys.com/index.php

NINJA EDIT: Wow, responded WAY to slow for that! LOL

[nikolas61]

if anyone find bios 0507 or 0504 please contact me.

[canislupy]

Popped in the second 2 sticks w/o making any changes, seems solid so far. Only ran a 32m Super PI though. I'll hit it again tonight with Orthos.

Seems a no-go over 1800 though, some settings would boot, but not load windows, others would just bring back that lovely beeping I know so well.

[canislupy]

Hmm... playing some WoW, now had 1 blue screen due to nVidia display driver and sound static.

[eternal_fantasy]

if anyone find bios 0507 or 0504 please contact me.

There were a link in the Review section under Striker II Extreme.

[slim142]

Thanks guys for the link to TankGuys

What do you guys think of this memory?
http://www.tankguys.com/product_info...oducts_id=1793

Is it good for a first timer DDR3 user? I want something cheap but good until the high-end comes down in price. What ya think?

Also, this guys seem to have Q9450 OEM in stock, do you think is it worth getting the OEM versions? Do they mean they were used before in any way?

[Lu(ky]

Thanks guys for the link to TankGuys

What do you guys think of this memory?
http://www.tankguys.com/product_info...oducts_id=1793

Is it good for a first timer DDR3 user? I want something cheap but good until the high-end comes down in price. What ya think?

Also, this guys seem to have Q9450 OEM in stock, do you think is it worth getting the OEM versions? Do they mean they were used before in any way?

For that price on that memory I would go with the Crucial DDR3 PC1600 2gb for $299.99 at Clubit or the G SKILL ones for $229.99 at Newegg
And on the CPU go for a e8400 or a QX6700 for around $399.00 on ebay. Higher multi would be better then the Q9450 I would think.