VIDIA'S only offerings aren't just the new
range of graphics cards, but also motherboard chipsets. The 790i chipset for Intel processors is one of the top models offered today, and the Zotac nForce 790i Supreme is based on it.

The board design and layout is the same as the stock layout used by NVIDIA. There are no additional cooling enhance¬ments. There are plenty of heat sinks and heat pipes connecting them, but the quality isn't all that great. The big difference in the 790i chipsets is that these are DDR3-only boards. There are four slots for up to 8 GB of memory.

The board supports 3-way SU. The BIOS is clean and is pretty standard with nothing
out of the way. There are sev¬eral over clocking features. The HD audio solution is based on Azalia and there is a dual Gigabit LAN built into the board. In terms of performance, it matches the P35 and X48 chip set motherboards that we tested. Even the hard drive marks matched other motherboards of its class. The drive index for our drive showed 78 MBps but the memory benchmark was a tiny bit higher than the ones on the P35 boards running DDR2 memory. There was a minor 5 to 6 per cent in the memory benchmarks, but it didn't translate to p@rform¬ance in real world bench¬marks such as games.



The entire package doesn't come with anything special, other than the usual cables and back panels. A WiFi kit is also included. DDR3 is still very expen¬sive to consider and the price of this board doesn't help. At Rs 19,899, it is an extremely expensive proposition for a performance rig, especially with no clear benefits of DDR3 visible at the moment. Users thinking of investing a lot in a long term 3-way SU rig running on DDR3 memory should go for this.

specifications
LGA 775 socket,
Chipset: nForce
790i Ultra SU,
upto 1600MHz FSB,
Supports 3-way and Quad SU,
4 DIMM slots for 8GB DDR3 memory,
Dual Gigabit LAN