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- Date:
- Thursday , May 15, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
XFX 790i 3-Way SLI Motherboard Review
NVIDIA has released their highly anticipated DDR3 chipset, the 790i Ultra SLI and we take a look at this new piece of silicon from the green team in the form of the XFX 790i Ultra SLI.
BIOS
The XFX 790i Ultra SLI uses the Phoenix Award BIOS. Version P03 was used for testing.
Like their predecessors the 790i Ultra SLI uses the familiar Phoenix Award BIOS. It uses a standard keyboard navigated menu system organized by category.
The BIOS is largely identical to previous 680i SLI and 780i SLI reference boards but there are a few minor differences most of which are in the voltages section of the BIOS. There are a couple other settings added as well.
The Standard CMOS Features menu contains the time and date settings, drive detection settings and floppy drive settings. At the bottom of this screen is information on the installed memory. Advanced BIOS features has your hard disk boot priority settings and priority settings for the optical drives and network interfaces. This menu also contains CPU Internal cache settings, Quick Power on Self-Test, boot device ordering, APIC and MPS Version Control for OS settings and more.
The Advanced Chipset Features is where you will find all your overclocking options and tuning options to maximize system performance. Here you will find several categories to choose from to alter performance options. First is System Clocks, followed by FSB & Memory Config, CPU Configuration, System Voltages and more. Starting with System Clocks, you will see the CPU clock speed values and FSB reference clock. The CPU multiplier can be adjusted down on all Core 2 CPUs and up or down on the Extreme Edition CPUs. Below the CPU clock speed settings you’ll find the PCI-Express slot settings and SPP to MCP clock speed settings. At the bottom of the page are all the Spread Spectrum Settings. Next are the FSB & Memory Configuration settings. This page allows you to enable or disable EPP 2.0 Memory support if your modules have it. You can also see the CPU clock and CPU multiplier here are a point of reference. Below that information is the FSB Memory Clock Mode settings. You can set this to Linked, Unlinked, or Auto. Below that setting you’ll find the FSB (QDR) MHz setting. This is your actual FSB setting to increase the processors clock speed. Below that are the memory bus speed adjustment settings. They are independently adjustable when the FSB Memory Clock Mode is set to Unlinked. Above memory timings there are P1 and P2 settings.
The memory timings are the last setting on the FSB & Memory configuration page. They can be set to automatic or expert mode. In expert mode all the settings shown are adjustable. Next is the CPU configuration page. There are a multitude of settings here relating to the CPU. First is the Limit CPUUD MaxVal and the Intel Speedstep setting. CPU thermal controller, C1E Enhanced Halt State, Execute Disable bit and Virtualization Technology enable/disable are also here. Below those settings you can enable or disable CPU cores if you wish. Next are the System Voltages. This page is a bit different than the one found on earlier nForce 680i SLI and 780i SLI reference boards. Here you’ll find the usual CPU Core and CPU FSB voltage settings, memory settings, and MCP/SPP voltage settings. Displayed in a column on the right is their current value. Below that are the GTLVREF Lane 0-3 settings.
You can see the Integrated Peripherals menu has IDE Function control, RAID configuration, USB, MAC, MCP -> eSATA Configuration settings, IEE1394a settings and more. You can use this section to enable or disable integrated devices or to alter their configuration settings. Next is the System Monitor. This displays temperatures for your board and processor as well as voltages for the CPU, memory and monitor voltages from the power supply as well. CPU fan speeds are also displayed here. Dynamic Fan Control can be accessed through this screen as well. Here you can define rules to control fan speed behavior. You can define the behavior for all the fans but the chipset fan. That fan you can only set the throttle on it.