Disappointing 780i pixellated

NVIDIA'S 780I CHIPSET gets a wibbly outing this morning, as pictures of one of the first boards to sport the Green Team's new silicon hit the web.

You can ogle at 'em here.

The board, according to the Chinese-language site that has the pics, has a 680i northbridge as well as the chip we have come to know as N200 - the super PCI-Express doohicky that enables three x16 lanes on the board, thus paving the way for triple-threat SLI.

In all other respects, this reference design appears pretty close to the standard 680i boards we've seen this year, with nothing new to note, aside from the obviously souped up specs that will allow it to compete with X38/48 from Intel.

Quite what those specs are will stay under wraps until a bit closer to launch, but given the fact the core silicon is mostly the same, don't expect anything too revolutionary beyond a speed bump. Nvidia seems to be living by the mantra 'If it ain't broke, just ramp the clock speeds.' µ