Unfortunelty slim142 our Strikers are really only a 4-phase system, despite looks! Granted there are definately 8-inductors but because of the PWM controller there are actually only 4-phases "working" at any given time depending on the load. So under sudden load the system will only pull current from half the phase while other other 4 sit idle (thanks Anandtech for information). With that said the reference design 6-phase system might actually be a better choice? Please correct me guys if I'm spewing BS here!
I also heard something related to the power phases been actually a lower number than what was offered. Like Gigabytes 10 phase power was really 4 or something like that and ASUS upcoming 16 phase power wasnt really gonna be 16 phase power. I would like to know more info about this since this 8 phase power has been around for a long time, but people still bought them and havent complain.
I dont know if the eVGA is a better choice, but probably is because of the support. Also, remember it doesnt use solid caps so that might be a disavantage.

By the way great job getting that Q9450 running stable at 450Mhz FSB (Make sure to share your settings with us in the near future)!
Thanks
I will share my settings for sure, just give me some time. Right now im in the process of lowering the voltages as much as I can, but right now I must say my voltages are pretty safe and Im pretty happy with what I have accomplished. However, my RAM had to be lowered (1333) for me to achieve this so after I finish tunning my voltages, I will mess with the RAM and if I have no luck, I still have 0702 and 703 to try out (and I heard they act much better and allow more memory oc) and I can always tight the timings if clock speeds dont work well... we will see.

But I promise to post my settings w/ screenshoots and everything.

Quote Originally Posted by gcardinal View Post
Yeah reference is 6-phase system as far as I remmber.

I just think its simply sick to ask 1000$ for MB without releasing ANY information about what is so special about it?
EVGA forums are full with comments like "Fix the errors before asking for more money (corruption)".

Black Pearl suppose to be a cherry picked board, but how and who decide what is a "cherry" ?
Is it the board wich can do 550-600 on bus speed ?
I dont think they are hand picked. Remember that eVGA always charges a premium price for the Black Pearl products (same with VGA cards). With all this problems around, I doubt they get good sales.

Quote Originally Posted by Roger_D25 View Post
I highly doubt that eVGA does any in-house speed binning of these boards before throwing a few waterblocks on them (of course I could be wrong however, wouldn't be the first time). With that said I guess eVGA might specifically ask for better binned chipsets from Nvidia, then they specifically use them in these "Black Pearl" boards, but again I highly doubt it!
I think eVGA will wait for a couple more BIOS revisions before they release the black pearl to see if this fixes peoples problems.