NVIDIA 780i: Evolution Plus Triple SLI
by Wesley Fink on December 17, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
NVIDIA brought editors together at their corporate headquarters in late October to discuss the launch of nForce 780i, 8800GT, 8800M, 3-Way SLI, and ESA. It certainly appeared at that time that all those new technologies would launch in early November. Unfortunately, there were early problems with 780i and the Intel Penryn processor, and NVIDIA delayed 780i until the Penryn compatibility issues could be resolved.
Since 780i is 680i with an added chip to support PCI 2.0 and two more x16 PCIe ports, it looked for a while as if NVIDIA might actually skip the 780i launch and wait until the DDR3 generation for a new chipset launch. Refinements for Penryn compatibility were completed and NVIDIA worked with Intel for Penryn family (Yorkfield quad-core and Wolfdale dual-core) compatibility certification.
Now, almost two months later, today is the official launch day of the 780i and 750i chipset. This is not just a paper launch, since 780i motherboards are available, or will be very soon, from NVIDIA launch partners XFX and EVGA. NVIDIA calls this the launch of the NVIDIA nForce 700i Series.
From a launch perspective, it is important to understand that 780i is not a new chipset. NVIDIA has said in their press releases, "The NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI MCP is built on TSMC's 90nm process technology, and contains the same micro-architecture as the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP. However, 780i SLI was designed with a high performance interface to be paired with nForce 200 to provide next-generation PCI Express 2.0 bus capabilities."
NVIDIA added 1333MHz bus support to the 680i chipset in June, as you saw in our review NVIDIA 680i SLI: Official 1333MHz FSB CPU Support Arrives. Other features are refinements to the 680i chipset that have been added as the 680i evolved in the marketplace. The only truly new specifications are features related to the added NVIDIA nForce 200. Compared to the 680i/650i chipset, the nForce 200 adds 32 lanes that are PCI Express 2.0 compatible.
With the addition of the nForce 200, this NVIDIA chipset can now provide the new feature of 3-way SLI. We will take a closer look at Triple SLI in another review today. If you are interested in the additional performance, a third NVIDIA graphics card can add to gaming performance in certain situations, and you will be interested in those test results.
The other new feature announced with the 700i series is ESA, which allows the NVIDIA chipset and software to control many system components. This technology is discussed in NVIDIA Introduces ESA - Enthusiast System Architecture. Testing has just begun on a system with a full complement of ESA devices. A review will be posted as soon as testing is complete on how ESA actually works in a system, and the potential benefit of ESA as a system control center for the computer enthusiast. In good news for 680i owners, NVIDIA now tells us that ESA will be backwards compatible with 680i after all. We will provide updated information on how that actually works in the upcoming ESA system review.
Since the 780i is the same chipset as 680i with the added nForce 200 for PCIe 2.0 and Triple SLI, we do not really expect any performance advantage for the 780i compared to the 680i under the same test conditions. We did a couple of quick general performance benchmarks just as a sanity check. The real performance advantage should be in with the new 3-Way SLI feature. We will cover this in our Triple SLI review, which examines the potential added gaming performance available with 3-way SLI. We will discuss the architecture and motherboards available at launch in this article.
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Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
As mentioned in the article we also have a 780i overclocking review coming to answer your questions in more detail. This was a chipset launch, and there was little point of doing game tests when performance is the same as the well-tested 680i. The benchmarks we did run were just a sanity test to determine if 680i/780i really did perform the same, and they did.Anand is delving into Triple SLI performance and Gary Key will be doing an article on overclocking the 780i with Penryn. I will be following up later with an ESA system review, although the ESA test platform is actually is powered by a 680i.
All of these reviews were planned to work together, but got sidetracked in our server crisis and image meltdown. You should see Anand's Gaming/Triple SLI review tomorrow.
Frumious1 - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Since I don't have behind the scenes info, I'm left to conjecture. Maybe nVidia sent the hardware on Friday and you didn't have time, or maybe there were a bunch of testing issues. HardOCP seemed to be pretty unimpressed, but then what's new? Since this is a chipset launch article, with a few new features, I just felt we should see testing to check out how those features impact performance.SLI support, you've got SLI/Tri-SLI testing from Anand but that's with 8800 Ultra cards. It was a nice article, covering that area, but what about PCIe 2.0? Seems to be a part of the chipset, and some sanity checks with 8800GT SLI on both 680i and 780i would have been able to say if there was any actual difference. That wasn't done anywhere yet. That is not a motherboard review, or a Penryn overclocking article - that is a part of the chipset.
ESA is a system thing as I understand it, so it makes sense to wait for a complete system review. Overclocking is also somewhat part of a chipset review, but as demonstrated in teh past it's also very motherboard specific. Otherwise why is it that Asus, DFI, etc. do better than some others?
What it comes down to is that there appears to be one truly new and unique feature for 780i: PCIe 2.0 support. Well, and Penryn support, but that seems to be something that can be addressed on new 680i boards since 680i ~= 780i - nF200. You totally missed that in this "chipset launch review" by not even touching that with any form of benchmark. Show us some games, with PCIe 2.0 graphics cards, and show us whether there's any difference or not. That's what I want from an article looking at a new chipset - a focus on what's actually new.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
We said in the review that the current top PCIe 2.0 cards like the 8800 GT do not even come close to saturating the past PCIe 1.1 bus. Since PCIe 2.0 is just a bandwidth increase, and nothing else, why would you expect it to make any difference at all in the performance of the 8800 GT? That was alreay a known before the chipset review.Anand tested with the 8800 Ultra because the 8800 GT will NOT work in triple SLI. You must have a dual SLI connector for triple SLI, and the 8800GT doesn't have a dual connector. That is very well-explained in Anand's 3-way SLI article, and only the near obsolete 8800GTX and 8800Ultra have the dual connector.
Frankly we're always ready to test new technology, but the best I can figure the 780i SPP is a 680i SPP with the 16 lane PCIe connect overclocked to 4.5 GT/s. nVidia couldn't even quite reach the 5.0 GT/s level that is the PCIe 2.0 spec, but it really doesn't matter since PCIe 2.0 makes no difference today - it might in the future. The MCP is a 2-generations ago 570 MCP.
Changing an ID string and stamping a chip with a new name does not make it new technology. The chipset works well and will fill in for a short period until nVidia introduces their new chipset that will support 1600 FSB and DDR3.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
We said in the review that the current top PCIe 2.0 cards like the 8800 GT do not even come close to saturating the past PCIe 1.1 bus. Since PCIe 2.0 is just a bandwidth increase, and nothing else, why would you expect it to make any difference at all in the performance of the 8800 GT? That was alreay a known before the chipset review.Anand tested with the 8800 Ultra because the 8800 GT will NOT work in triple SLI. You must have a dual SLI connector for triple SLI, and the 8800GT doesn't have a dual connector. That is very well-explained in Anand's 3-way SLI article, and only the near obsolete 8800GTX and 8800Ultra have the dual connector.
Frankly we're always ready to test new technology, but the best I can figure the 780i SPP is a 680i SPP with the 16 lane PCIe connect overclocked to 4.5 GT/s. nVidia couldn't even quite reach the 5.0 GT/s level that is the PCIe 2.0 spec, but it really doesn't matter since PCIe 2.0 makes no differenc today - it might in the future. The MCP is a 2-generations agao 570 MCP.
Changing an ID string and stamping a chip with a new name does not make it new technology. The chipset works well and will fill in for a short period until nVidia introduces their new chipset that will support 1600 FSB and DDR3.
Frumious1 - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
I understand why Anand used 8800 Ultra cards. That was the point of his article: Tri-SLI. Not chipset or anything else. And I'm guessing you're right that PCIe 2.0 is nothing and won't impact performance for probably years - in fact, I bet PCIe x8 is sufficient for everything we currently do, since ATI and nVidia use bridge connections for most card-to-card communications in SLI/CF. I'd still love to see an actual test that proves this is the case.You and I and everyone else can assume all we want, but without a test we don't actually KNOW. Since the only PCIe 2.0 cards are 8800GT (and the new GTS) and 3850/3870, and since this is an nVidia chipset, I just thought it would be good to prove and not guess at what impact PCIe 2.0 has. Maybe nVidia does benefit in some situations on SLI setups. Not likely, but maybe.
Frumious1 - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
PS - if you don't have two 8800 GT cards floating around for PCIe 2.0 tests, you need to slap nVidia! Besides Penryn, that's the only feature worth testing on the new chipset.masteryoda34 - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link
This is probably the most disappointing recent motherboard launch from Nvidia. The only reason I could see buying this over an Intel P35 or X38 is for the SLI support. It's unfortunate they didn't use a new chipset. Basically the same as when they did NF4 to NF5, no new features just processor support.anandtech02148 - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link
with all these bulky graphic card pile up.. why dont' they just make a dongle connector for all the Sata ports.that or i need someone with sausage fingers that can reach all the sata ports.
and i guess the graphic guys realy want to rub out the audio cards.
Wesley Fink - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link
Actually the SATA ports are still accessible even with 3 double width graphics cards in Triple SLI. If you click to blow up the motherboard images on p.6 you will see the SATA ports are located so they fall just to the right of the first PCIe slot.You're right about audio though. Fortunately the on board is hi-def Azalia, but many will want a better audio card for 3-way SLI gaming.
customcoms - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link
Should be 650i, not 750i. Page 3.