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The ASUS Striker Extreme has been built around the NVIDIA 680i chipset -- the most powerful and feature filled of the NVIDIA 600-series chipsets. The NVIDIA 680i chipset is relatively new, and is making great strides towards becoming the choice chipset for extreme gamers and hardware enthusiasts looking for the SLI performance advantage.
ASUS has bestowed the Striker Extreme Edition motherboard with the notable 'Republic of Gamers' tag. Though it may be simple marketing on the part of ASUS -- a simple hope to capture the interest of gamers -- those ASUS boards that have been dubbed with that definitive distinction 'Republic of Gamers' do tend to be among some of the top performers ASUS has to offer.
The following diagram serves to illustrate the basic architecture of the NVIDIA 680i chipset.
So let's take a quick look at what features the NVIDIA 680i chipset has to offer, and whether or not ASUS has taken full advantage of them with the Striker Extreme motherboard.
| NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI | NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI | NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra | |
| Segment | Enthusiast SLI | Performance SLI | Performance |
| Socket | Intel Socket 775 | Intel Socket 775 | Intel Socket 775 |
| CPU | Core 2 Extreme (dual and quad core) Core 2 Quad Core 2 Duo Celeron D Pentium 4 Pentium D 9XX Pentium D 8XX |
Core 2 Extreme (dual and quad core) Core 2 Quad Core 2 Duo Celeron D Pentium 4 Pentium D 9XX Pentium D 8XX |
Core 2 Extreme (dual and quad core) Core 2 Quad Core 2 Duo Celeron D Pentium 4 Pentium D 9XX Pentium D 8XX |
| FSB (MHz) | 1333* MHz | 1066 MHz | 1066 MHz |
| Extreme FSB Overclocking | Best | Good | Good |
| NVIDIA SLI™ Technology | Yes 2 x16 |
Yes 2 x8 |
No |
| Third PCIe Graphics Expansion Slot | Yes | No | No |
| SLI-Ready Memory (MHz) with EPP | 1200 MHz | - | - |
| JEDEC DDR2 Memory (MHz) | 800 MHz | 800 MHz | 800 MHz |
| NVIDIA LinkBoost™ technology | Yes | No | No |
| PCI Express | |||
|
# Lanes
|
46 lanes | 18 lanes | 18 lanes |
|
# Links
|
9 links | 4 links | 3 links |
|
Configuration
|
16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 | 8, 8, 1, 1 or 16, 1, 1 |
16, 1, 1 |
| SATA/PATA drives | 6/2 | 4/4 | 4/4 |
| SATA speed | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s |
| RAID | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1,0+1,5 |
| NVIDIA MediaShield™ Storage Technology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native Gigabit Ethernet Connections | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA FirstPacket™ technology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA DualNet® technology | Yes | No | No |
|
Teaming
|
Yes | No | No |
|
TCP/IP Acceleration
|
Yes | No | No |
| NVIDIA nTune™ Utility | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB ports | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| PCI Slots | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Audio | HDA (Azalia) | HDA (Azalia) | HDA (Azalia) |
I've used this particular table before, and I do find it to be quite the handy tool for distinguishing between the different flavours of the NVIDIA 600-series chipsets. In terms of what NVIDIA 600 series chipset based boards we've touched upon before, both the MSI P6N SLI Platinum (nice, but needs a re-design) and the ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus (runs hotter than the surface of the sun) were some of the recent NVIDIA 650i SLI chipset-based boards we've reviewed. As for the 680i series, the Gigabyte 6-Quad N680SLI-DQ6 (first BIOS sucked, second BIOS rocked, all the drivers need work) and the Abit IN9 32X-MAX (needs a new BIOS, but a great tweakers board) both had some pretty good potential.
It's obvious that the 680i SLI chipset from NVIDIA does have potential -- that much is certain. So I'm going to take a moment to go over some of the NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset features as they pertain to the ASUS Striker Extreme Edition motherboard.
It looks like the Asus Striker Extreme motherboard does take full advantage of the NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset. There are those little extras, like the NVIDIA FastPacket technology (better network communications) and NVIDIA MediaShield (data protection) that are the icing on the already big cake, but the the base for a performance system is there, thanks to the 680i SLI chipset.
And here we have the NVIDIA 680i northbridge sitting up north, and the MCP55 southbridge, a very feature rich chip, down below. Perhaps now we'll take a gander at the ASUS Striker Extreme Edition motherboard itself.
ps; i am aware that it looks like the originator is me because ive been sniffing around for this mobo...i assure you that im not.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=Striker+Extreme&SLanguage=en-us
But honestly, I never encountered any signigiant problems during my testing. Sure, the slow SATA speed results from HDTach bothered me, but that may have been a communications error between HDTach and the SATA controller (no being able to properly register the correct SATA speed when everything was running fine).
Furthermore, I decided not to run the RightMark Audio tests as I received all zeros for the CPU utilization during that test. Yeah, no CPU load when running audio would be nice, but would also be impossible.
As I had concluded in my article, the Asus Striker is a sweet piece of hardware that needs a few good BIOS revisions before it'll start to shine (already great though).
Hmmm, I wonder if some extreme water cooling could get this board past 4GHz? I wouldn't doubt it
I'm curious, the particular board you reviewed; did Asus send it to you, or is it an off-the-shelf retail part?
And yes, Asus did send us this board. They didn't cherry pick it however. No one at Asus tested a batch full of Strikers and sent us the best of the lot. What we got would pretty much be what the average consumer could expect if they went out an bought a Striker of their own.
But as for that issue of some Strikers hitting a 500MHz plus FSB, those review sites actually sent their Striker back to Asus to get a better one that would hit 500MHz plus.
That seems unfair. In relation, we've had memory modules pass through Neoseeeker with the manufacturers claim that said modules will hit some very high timings. When they don't meet these specs, we send them back and get a pair that do meet spec. But we always report on out initial findings, regardless of how good or how bad the performance was.
The average consumer can't send their board back to Asus and request one that'll hit some higher performance standard. All of our testing and results are what the average consumer can expect if they we to purchase the same part (though performance may vary slightly).
Furthermore, some sites will claim an outrageous overclock acheivement regardless of stability. For us, it isn't enought that the board simply POSTs, but it has to run our tests and cannot crash. If it does crash, we count that as unstable and would not claim it as our final figure. Stability is of the utmost importance.
I wasn't implying that you had received a hand-picked board, I was just asking.
I am always skeptical, however, when manufacturers supply reviewers with product.
If you have taken time to visit the Striker Extreme forum, I think you will find that you were fortunate to receive a relatively good mobo.
I hope Asus decides to step up and resolve the many issues with this board.
It's like 'Consumer Reports'. They will go out and buy the products they review and rate. They won't accept a product direct from the factory. A car maker could have a team of mechanics rebuild and blueprint the car from scratch, invalidating the quality of their production products.
But I do agree in that Asus has to clean up the Striker. Most of its ills right now lay within the BIOS. I'll probably check back with subsequent BIOS revisions and see what happens, and keep the article updated as such.
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6850 batch #L723A943
RAM: 2GB Corsair Dominator 10000
Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme (bios 1303)
Video card: Evga 8800 GTX Super overclocked version
Hard drives: 3 (750GB Western Digital 7500AAKS)
Power Supply: 750W PC Power & Cooling Quad
And a VapoChill LS that is keeping the CPU into the negative tempas. And all I can get is a measly 3.7Ghz
Any professional help would be appreciated
Adam