We simply couldn’t find any negative point on this motherboard. If you are looking for a high-end motherboard for your AMD system supporting SLI including 3-way SLI this is definitely the motherboard you should buy.
This board features only the cutting-edge technology: socket AM2+ (i.e. HyperTransport 3.0), three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, six SATA-300 ports, one eSATA port, two Firewire ports, Gigabit Ethernet, on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors. With this board you won’t need to upgrade your PC for several years. In fact, the only reason you may want to think about upgrading your system based on this motherboard is when socket AM3 CPUs are released, which will support DDR3 memories. Since in practical terms DDR3 does not bring higher performance compared to DDR2, even this upgrade is questionable if you think of it only for the memory reason (maybe for having a CPU with a higher clock rate it will make sense).
Even though this motherboard supports HybridPower, which allows the system to turn off your video cards when you are not playing games and make 2D video to be produced by the motherboard on-board video card, only rich ultra enthusiasts will have access to it, as only GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GX2 support this technology (and it only work under Vista).
On the other hand, the on-board video from this motherboard allows you to expand the number of simultaneous video monitors you can have attached to your system. Of course we don’t see anyone buying a high-end motherboard to use only the on-board video, but in fact it can be a handy feature while you are waiting for your video card to arrive or if your video card burned and you are waiting for its replacement.
The highlight of this motherboard is its memory passive cooling system that according to ASUS reduces memory temperature in 10º C, which should help you achieving a higher overclocking.
The quality of the on-board audio of this motherboard is also something we need to say: with over 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio on its output you get the same quality of good add-on sound cards. Its input signal-to-noise ratio, however, is low for today’s standards, with only 92 dB while it should have at least 95 dB. Even though this is enough for the regular user, if you are looking for a motherboard for professionally capturing and editing analog audio (converting LPs, VHS tapes, etc) you should look for a different motherboard or install a better add-on sound card on this board.
Also on the good side is the manufacturing quality of the board, with passive heatsinks that eliminate the noise produced by the motherboard, solid aluminum capacitors, which provides a higher life span compared to traditional electrolytic capacitors plus you won’t face the infamous capacitor leakage problem, and ferrite coils on the voltage regulator circuit, which provide a lower power loss.
As we mentioned this board has also features found on other high-end motherboards from ASUS, like Express Gate, which allows you to browse the Internet and access Skype without entering the operating system and even without a hard disk drive attached. It is done by incorporating a small Linux version with web browsing and Skype on the motherboard ROM memory. This feature would be really interesting if added to entry-level motherboards, because then you could assemble really cheap medialess PCs for Internet browsing.
The only problem is that nVidia is very delayed with the nForce 780a release. Motherboards based on the competing AMD 790FX are out there since the end of last year and the second series of nVidia chipsets for the Intel platform supporting 3-way SLI, nForce 790i, was already launched – before the first generation for the AMD platform – causing frustration for high-end users willing to upgrade their PCs to a Phenon-based system with an nVidia-based motherboard.
We also don’t have any idea of the price this board will reach the market, so we can’t say whether it provides a good cost/benefit ratio or not.
