Nvidia 780a Chipset Preview

Conclusion

NVIDIA have plainly pulled out all the stops to bring the 780a to the performance market. With Hybrid SLI technology and the ability to run up to 3 cards in SLI no-one can doubt that this chipset is going to be a gamers delight. Sadly our overclocking exploits were hampered by a restrictive CPU but if you have a chip that is up to the task I have no doubt that the Crosshair II (and thereby the 780a chipset) has the minerals to eek every last drop of performance from it.

I have shown that despite the on-board VGA not being designed to be a standalone VGA solution it is quite ample for day to day use and only shows it’s weaknesses when asked to perform 3D tasks such as gaming at anything other than low settings. I for one would like to see onboard VGA become a feature on motherboards once again if for nothing other than to use as a troubleshooting aid.

The chipset does not appear to be a major heat source as with its 780i counterpart, feeling luke warm to the touch and with the motherboard not reporting temps of over 35c during our benchmarking runs it certainly reports to be very cool and efficient which is a plus as in the UK were expecting some hot weather this summer for a change.

In the very near future we will be analysing the 780a chipset once more with the Asus Crosshair II receiving the full OC3D treatment. We will also see how quad SLI scales with the new chipset but for now, the 780a on-board and very capable VGA will have to suffice.

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