I have finally decided upon a new SLI board!

Asus' P5N72-T

Supposedly its their maximus formula/strikerII combo with the bugs worked out.
Guess when you taint a name of a board with 10 bios revisions in a few months, it scares people off, so just re name the whole thing! That will get them back!

Anywho, its sporting alot of features, and since its the formula, I assume the Load Line Calibration will work! Trip sli, or Dual 2.0 SLI also helps, and of course, since its their formula cross breed, you get the un official support for 400 FSB.

Oh, and the fact that new Egg went back to the 30 day no hassle return policy on MoBos helped. Those of us who somewhat maybe kinda sorta know what they are supposedly doing when trying to overclock appreciate the no hassle returns, because I will know in 24 hours if I wanna keep this board.

At least they didnt make it a Striker II price, I can deal with 250$ as long as it works, so expect a review of this board by the end of the week! I dont exactly know how new it is... anyone else plan on getting one? The fact that it has LLC makes it a step beyond other 780i boards, if it works! .08-.09 VDrop and droop combo blows big time. Just what I need, 1.5850 to get 1.50 loaded, yeah, thats a whole lot of over clocking wasted! Hell, if its gonna get 1.5850 anyways, I want it to have zero droop and drop! That way you get every Mhz for that high voltage cost!

CPU COOLER XIGMATEK|HDT-S1283 R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$36.99)
(Shipped from City of Industry, CA)
MB ASUS P5N72-T PREMIUM NF780I SLI - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$259.99)
(Shipped from City of Industry, CA)
CPU CLEAN|ARCTIC CLEAN ACN-60ML % - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$5.99)
(Shipped from City of Industry, CA)

Extended Warranty Fee: 0
Subtotal: 302.97
TAX: 0.00
Shipping and Handling Charge**: 14.57
Total: 317.54

Feel free to ask questions, if you too are interested in this board. Should arrive on thursday, but i know I will have it by Friday! Yippie! GT, GTS and Ultra SLI's, Oh, My!

--Lupi

let us know what the 780i is truly capable of Lupi!!!

but to be honest i still no confidence in Nforce mobo with intel Quadies.PROVE ME WRONG!

Hehe, got a 750i today as well, that one I found at a store local, so why not, 150 bucks and all that. The other is on order...

--Lupi

So what's the verdict?

Man, its a tough board to crack! Been working on it for 2 days! It has the usual FSB to memory divider problems, that causes No posts, or freezes while loading vista... At 1333 or higher it appeared totally unstable and had the random re boots, bsods and freezes. I have seen it all before on my 680i chipset board.

However... I appear to have found an interesting stable area. 425 FSB or 1700 QDR appears to be fine, and after a little VTT and a VRef adjustment for the noise level of these NVidia chipsets, and its been Prime 95 small ffts for hours already. That is usable...

You'll have to figure out the memory divider junk yourself, it appears to like only certain areas. This prolly only applies to the q6x00 series chips. The boards have never liked them.

Load Line Calibration only offsets VDroop. The VDrop is rather large, near .0750, but thats all you will see. So thats a bit better than the other boards. I expect a Bios fix will help later on, because their Maximus formula, the basic layout of this board, has a fully functional load line calibration that makes you only receive a .0250 Vdrop and no VDroop.

As long as it hits a good FSB, I havent tested over 425 yet, because I needed a stable starting ground!

You may manually need to enter Trd, because there is no strap selection. Because there is no strap selection, and I had TRD problems, that shows that the board tries to default to the lowest strap to NB that offers your selected speed.

I expect that to also get fixed.. the memory strap issues. I didn't even know you can apply a lesser than FSB speed rating to your RAM, and it sure the hell didnt like running in 16:15 mode, lol! Ram was like 778 and FSB was more!! BSODs and no posts Oh, my!

Its priming away for hours...

After you clear up the memory related and strap related problems. First copule times, I could small FFT, but the instant I started a Blend, re start! Thats a good sign right there that something is up, especially when the RAM was at stock. Now its OC'd and appears fine!

if you'd like a specific test or info, let me know!!

--Lupi

Okay, I think I found a stable starting ground now, and stole a beta bios from some chinese web site that helped!! Could't read a thing at the site, but when I saw a file name P5N72T401.rom I knew what it was, and it linked to a asus ftp site, then flashed like a charm!

Priming 3.6 @ the usual 400 FSB Q6600 with a loaded vcore of 1.312. (Thats Fing 1.4000 in the bios, how lame is that?) However, the Load Line calibration does stem off vdroop! The reduced VCore to 1.312 is solely the fault of VDrop only.

@ 3.6 with stock 8800 GT factory OC it did get a 17442 3dmark 06 score. I dunno if thats good or bad. Sounded decent to me. I will have to work on her some more, but I am happy!

--Lupi

yeah thats some very nice score.is that 3dmark score SLI or just single card?

Amazing, I believe its stable!

Prime Loaded over 8 hours in!


Prime Idle afterwards.


Saundra P.A.


Saundra M.M.


Basic 3d mark score @ 3.6 with stock GT's.


Of course I will be tinkering with it a bit more, and fine tuning it, if I can!
It's one hell of a chore to OC on these things.

--Lupi

2.4V vcore?it must be burning!!!

thats some pretty amazing result had to say.

(hate it everytime i see your VID 1.2V Q6600!!!)jealousy takes over!!!!

sorry i only saw the second sensor.its 1.3V.lol

Yeah, thats some weird other rating, and it has an impact as well! I need to figure out what its doing to know how to use it!

I had to use the 1.2000 VID, it's the only one that can handle the voltage well! 1.312 for 9 hours!!! Hows that for a q6600 Loaded 3.6 Ghz speed?

I Love seeing others @ 1.55000+ VCore to get 3.6 with NVidia chipsets! Makes me appreciate the 1.2000 all the more. Just raised my 3d mark to 17448...

It appears that high though stable NB voltage can effect the over all speed you get from yer comp. I need to do more tests! Went from 1.50 to 1.42 and gained 100+ points for free.

That's a handy piece of info for everyone always using 1.45 volts for 400 FSB. (Like me) Hmmm... more tests are needed!!

--Lupi

1.2000 VID also makes me feel for everyone who has paid for a retail box q6600 in the past 6 months. All have been 1.3000 or 1.3250 chips. (Dunno about the middle of those two, 1.3125, dont see it much, though I had a B3 chip that had the same VID.)

1.2000!!!

--Lupi

you went from 1.50 to 1.42v and its mroe stable?was it overheating??