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Tested 15 years ago: The “new” nForce 780i SLI on an XFX mainboard

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In the test 15 years ago, Nvidia's new high-end chipset nForce 780i SLI (test) stood for Intel's LGA775 socket, which inherited the nForce 680i Ultra. With few changes from its predecessor, Nvidia is taking a copy-and-paste approach to the expensive high-end platform.

Table of Contents

  1. nForce 200 for PCIe lanes
  2. The performance was sometimes up and sometimes down
  3. Conclusion
  4. And today?

    5. < /ol>

    nForce 200 for PCIe lanes

    The most important and almost the only new feature of the nForce 780i was SLI a third chip called the nForce 200 that complemented the north and south bridges. The nForce 200 provided 32 PCIe Gen 2 (PCI Express 2.0) lanes, replacing the 16 Gen 1 PCIe lanes previously offered by the Northbridge.

    In comparison to the cheaper nForce 750i SLI, the high-end chipset offered an additional 16 PCIe lanes according to standard 1.1 via the south bridge, resulting in a total of 48 PCIe lanes.

    The second, less significant change from the previous generation was support for Nvidia's Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), which should allow certified components to communicate – for example, a water cooling system should be able to read the GPU temperature in order to adjust its pump and fan speeds.

    1. XFX nForce 780i SLI

    Image 1 of 9

    XFX nForce 780i SLI
    XFX nForce 780i SLI
    XFX nForce 780i SLI
    XFX nForce 780i SLI
    XFX nForce 780i SLI ATX bezel
    XFX nForce 780i SLI
    SLI bridge for SLI (left) and triple -SLI

    The performance was sometimes up and sometimes down

    In the benchmarks, the XFX nForce 780i SLI under test generally cut a good figure. Differences to Intel's X38 chipset were particularly evident in the memory tests. While Intel was way ahead in Raid 0 mode, there was a tie in Raid 1 and in Raid 5 Nvidia took the lead. The situation was similar in 3DMark Vantage: Intel was ahead in the memory tests and Nvidia in the gaming tests.

    Charts

3DMark06 – Overall

Unit: Score 3DMark06 – CPU

Unit: Points 3DMark06 – SM2

Unit: Points 3DMark06 – SM3

Unit: Points FireWire – Average

Unit: megabytes per second (MB /s) FireWire – CPU load

Unit: percent FireWire – Burst

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) Vantage – PCMark Suite

Unit: Points Vantage – Memories Suite

Unit: Points Vantage – Games Suite

Unit: Points USB – Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) USB – CPU Load

Unit: Percent USB Burst

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 5 – Write Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 5 – Read Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 5 – CPU load

Unit: percent RAID 5 – Burst

Unit: megabytes per second ( MB/s) RAID 1 – Write Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 1 – Reading Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 1 CPU Load

unit : Percent RAID 1 – Burst

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 0 – Write Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 0 – Read Average

Unit: Megabytes per second (MB/s) RAID 0 – CPU load

Unit: Percent RAID 0 – Burst

Unit: megabytes per second (MB/s)

Conclusion

The nForce 780i SLI wasn't really convincing at the end of the test. Nvidia had introduced too little innovation, the performance was fluctuating and the price for the corresponding mainboards was high at 200 euros and up. Both Intel and AMD already offered PCIe 2.0 natively in their boards without the corresponding additional chips. The nForce 780i was primarily a do-it-yourself solution for those who wanted to combine three graphics cards in one system.

And today?

The SLI concept should not prevail. While Nvidia combined up to four graphics cards in one system at the peak of the technology, it is hardly used today. With the GeForce RTX 4000 series (test), support for multi-GPU systems in the consumer sector has officially ended. Nvidia hasn't developed motherboard chipsets since the nForce 980a in 2009.

In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editors have been taking a look at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

Even more Content of this kind and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner e in the ComputerBase forum.

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