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EVGA 750i SLI FTW

This budget SLI motherboard provides high end performance and deep features for a much smaller cost. As EVGA puts it, the 750i SLI FTW is engineered For The Win. Now let’s get to is and see what For The Win is all about.

Introduction

Normally known for their NVIDIA GPU based graphics cards, EVGA has been selling EVGA branded motherboards for some time now. Their boards’ up to this point have all been NVIDIA reference designs created by NVIDIA’s design teams and built by other contractors. The 750i SLI FTW is a milestone for EVGA as it is the first board released to the public that was designed by EVGA themselves. The board looks largely like one of NVIDIA’s reference designs so I am not sure if this is a modification of a reference design or a ground up design that just happens to look similar to one of NVIDIA’s reference designs. In any case the board looks similar aside from the fact that EVGA chose to use all solid capacitors in the construction of the 750i SLI FTW. This is a welcome change as I’ve always wondered why the reference designs continue to use traditional capacitors even when most motherboard makers are using more and more solid caps.

The EVGA 750i SLI FTW uses NVIDIA’s 750i SLI chipset. It is a DDR2 compatible chipset and the board is compatible with NVIDIA’s SLI technology. Due to the fact that this particular board only has dual PCI-Express x16 slots it is incapable of 3-Way SLI. So people looking for 3-Way SLI compatibility for their 8800GTX or 9800GTX’s should look elsewhere. However since this board has two full speed PCI-Express x16 slots it is more than capable of running Quad SLI with either dual 7950GX2 or newer 9800GX2 graphics cards. The 750i SLI FTW supports the latest Intel ® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. As with most motherboards made today, few components are required to complete a working system. All that is needed are an LGA775 processor, DDR2 memory modules, power supply, video card, and drives.

Main Specifications Overview:

DDR2 not DDR3 as stated - will be corrected.

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging for the 750i SLI FTW is basically the same as it is for all other EVGA motherboards. The board is placed in a plastic shell and on top of the plastic EVGA has laid out all the accessories that come with the board. There is a manual, floppy cable, USB and FireWire brackets, driver disks, IDE, SATA cables and an SLI bridge.

Board Layout

The layout of the 750i SLI is excellent. The position of all the expansion slots, the CPU area, memory slot locations and the location of all the plugs makes absolute sense. I can normally find at least one thing to complain about in regard to a motherboard layout on most boards so this is quite refreshing.

The CPU area is nice and clear of obstructions. I had no trouble fitting my Apogee waterblock to the board. Usage of larger air coolers should be unhindered as well.

The boards’ 4 DDR2 DIMM slots are well placed. You can easily install or remove memory with a video card installed in the system.

The north bridge is located in the usual place. It is next to the CPU area and is cooled by a heatpipe system and a 60mm fan. Unfortunately the cooling fan was absurdly loud during testing.

Linked from the north bridge cooling system is a heat pipe that connects to the south bridge. On the south bridge is a low profile heat pipe cooler. As with the north bridge, the 60mm fan provides cooling for this as well. This heat sink is flat and will not interfere with the installation of any peripheral cards. Additionally the SATA ports are split in such a way as to prevent them from being placed underneath or in front of the spot where you’re video card or video cards would be installed.

The EVGA 750i SLI FTW has two PCI-Express x16 (PCIe 2.0) slots. These both operate with 16 lanes of bandwidth each for maximum performance. There is a single PCI-Express x1 slot and three legacy PCI slots.

The is a single RJ-45 port, 2 PS/2 ports, 1 IEEE1394a port, 6 mini-headphone jacks, 4 USB ports, and a optical out port for digital audio.