Asus 780 board pictured

THE ONLY AMD 780 board we have seen to here date is from Asus, the Asus M3A. So far, all the other stands at in the Computex halls only seem to have 790 systems.

So, what is it? It is basically a 790 with 16 less PCIe2 lanes. The high points are 20 PCIe2 lanes, socket AM2+ with 5200 MT/s HT, DDR2 1066, 10 USB and 8 channel audio. Pretty standard fare for a next gen mobo.

One interesting thing to note, the Asus 790 board sitting right beside it has a copper habitrail of heat pipes, more fins than the Scandinavian peninsula and more cooling power than a nuclear reactor.

The 780 had the same south bridge with a little dinky passive heatsink where the 790 had a finned monstrosity with heat pipes all over it.

Anyone care to guess which is the correctly-sized cooler and which is designed for posers? µ