Overclocking and Power Consumption
NVIDIA has become well known for their overclocking prowess with the Intel platform but it has been a long time since they made an enthusiast AMD chipset so I was curious to see how they have migrated over to the Phenom platform.

ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Review - nForce 780a SLI for Phenom Arrives - Motherboards 84

Using our X4 9850 processor I had no problems reaching a CPU frequency of 220 MHz – it doesn’t sound like much but getting these CPUs to overclock in that manner has been a struggle for enthusiasts.  The processor hit 2.75 GHz very easily and I have seen this core go to 2.8 GHz without much trouble; I think the 780a SLI chipset is more than capable of pushing any Phenom core to the processors limits.  The chipset will not be what is holding you back.

Chipset Power Consumption

ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Review - nForce 780a SLI for Phenom Arrives - Motherboards 85

While we have seen subsystem performance and even integrated GPU performance, we have yet to see how the new the 780a chipset from NVIDIA compares on the merits of simple power consumption. The results you see above show us that not only can the AMD 780G chipset outperform the new NVIDIA 780a SLI chipset in terms of gaming performance, it does it while using less power.  NVIDIA’s chipsets have never been known for their frugality in the world of power consumption and heat dissipation and the 780a SLI, unfortunately, continues on that trend.

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