Today we have in our hands what is easily the most lethal SLI platform yet, as we bring you the ASUS Striker II Extreme motherboard, based on the new Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset.
Unlike the previous generation 780i, this new chipset has been completely redesigned to properly accommodate technologies such as PCI Express 2.0 and Triple-SLI. The nForce 790i adopts Nvidia"s C73 north bridge and MCP55 south bridge, giving it proper 1600MHz FSB support for the latest Intel 45nm processors.
There is however one chink in the Striker II Extreme"s armor, and that is its exclusive support for DDR3 memory. While this could be seen as both a positive or negative feature, at least for now we feel most consumers will look at this as a drawback. Currently DDR3-1333 costs roughly four times more than DDR2-800 memory, while offering next to none performance advantages. It is not until frequencies of 1600+ MHz are reached that DDR3 begins to come into its own.