ASUS Striker II NSE Motherboard

When Benchmark Reviews visited with NVIDIA at the 2008 CES and first learned that Triple- Quad- and Hybrid-SLI Technology was going to be possible with the nForce 790i SLI chipset, I was curious just how well this news would be received by enthusiasts. After all, America was in a recession whether the government was willing to admit it or not, and this was going to be NVIDIA's crown-jewel product offering with a royal price tag.

My skepticism also took into consideration the drought of high-profile video games for the PC platform. Among the very short list of titles that could possibly benefit from the multi-card SLI arrays was Crysis, which was already playable so long as higher post-processing effects were turned down. It seemed like bad timing all the way around, similar to Solid State Drives and DDR3. Great ideas; but not the greatest launch environments.

Months later, on 18 March 2008 NVIDIA launched the GeForce 9800 GX2, making Quad-SLI a reality. Although there were no new games capable of taxing this powerful new graphics card, there wasn't much hesitation from the gaming community to test the performance. Having seen the GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB video card launch a few days prior, the birth of three new SLI orientations had become official. The remaining question would then become whether or not gamers and enthusiasts would create a worthwhile demand.

More than anything else, the new NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset is designed for next‐generation processor technologies, and supports 3‐way SLI, Quad SLI, DDR3 with EPP 2, PCI Express 2.0, 1600 FSB CPUs, and the meticulous hardware control via the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA).

The ASUS Striker II NSE nForce 790i SLI motherboard provides true triple PCIe 2.0/16x lanes with support for 3‐Way SLI and Quad SLI. It includes 60 PCI Express lanes and 10 links, six SATA ports, one eSATA port, 10 USB, and two Gigabit Ethernet NVIDIA MAC, ATA‐133 interface, two PCI slots, and HD audio. Impressive right?

The Ultimate Gaming/Overclocking Platform

ASUS labels its Republic of Gamers category to consist of nothing less than the best of the best. ASUS ROG products offer the best hardware engineering, the fastest performance, the most innovating ideas, and ASUS encourages the best gamers to join in. Here's what ASUS says about their elite offering:

In the Republic of Gamers, mercy rules are only for the weak, and bragging rights means everything. We believe in making statements and we excel in competitions. If your character matches our trait, then join the elite club, make your presence felt, in the Republic of Gamers.

About the company: ASUSTek Computer, Inc.

ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading provider of 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) total solutions, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.

In 2006, the company shipped 55 million motherboards, which means one in three desktop PCs sold last year was powered by an ASUS motherboard. Our 2006 revenues reached US$16.5 billion, and is expected to garner US$23 billion in 2007.

ASUS products' top quality stems from product development. It's like learning Chinese Kung-Fu; one must begin with cultivating the "Chi" and inner strength. Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction. ASUS notebooks are the first TCO'99-certified notebooks worldwide. The requirements for this honor include radiation emission control, energy (battery consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics.

To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 100,000 over employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.

With unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, ASUS won 2,168 awards in 2006, meaning on average, the company received over 5 awards everyday last year. BusinessWeek ranked ASUS amongst its "InfoTech 100" for the 9th straight year. The readers of Tom's Hardware Guide, the world's largest IT website, selected ASUS as the best maker of motherboards and graphics cards. Furthermore, the company is ranked as No.1 in quality products and services by the Wall Street Journal.

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