Asus Striker II Formula nForce 780i Motherboard

Performance Summary: The performance of the ASUS Striker II Formula board was in line with the last 780i-based board we looked at.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it improved upon the numbers from a 680i board that we used for comparison, yet fell a few points shy from matching another one of ASUS' board, the Blitz Formula that used an Intel chipset.  One area we had really hoped for better numbers was in overclocking, as the Striker II Formula comes with a slew of options to choose from in this regard, but we couldn't get a much better overclock than our previous efforts a few months back.

As we concluded our look at the ASUS Striker II Formula, we went back to the original premise: does this board live up to the terms of Republic of Gamers' mission statement?  Does it provide the fastest performance?  Is it the most innovative? 

From a performance standpoint, we can say that this motherboard provided a good experience.  It didn't exactly knock the socks off any of us during the benchmarking runs, typically giving us only slightly better numbers than a MSI P6N Diamond using the previous nForce 680i chipset.  It was however, a very stable platform for testing, something that anyone can truly appreciate.  Our overall overclocking experience fell a bit short of what we were hoping, especially considering the number of settings in the BIOS, but as we always like to say, "your mileage may vary".

Innovation, and a nifty bundle, are what truly set this board apart from others.  Power users will be pleased by the LED Poster and onboard Power and Reset buttons, not to mention the rear-mounted Clear CMOS button.  And hardcore gamers with deep pockets can dream of 3-Way SLI configurations.  Unfortunately, Stan Lee said it best when he said, "with great power there must also come great responsibility, er, a great price".  Our look around the web pegs this board at a pricey $329.99, making it one of the more expensive nForce-based desktop boards available.  With the 780i possibly being overshadowed when NVIDIA releases the 790i, it might ultimately be best to wait and see how DDR3 affects the playing field. But with DDR2 prices so low right now, we could see this motherboard being popular with the hardcore gaming crowd.

Solid, stable, performer Multitude of BIOS options PCI Express 2.0 3-Way SLI Support Built with Power Users in mind	Price - be prepared to shell out for this board Overclocking results not what we had hoped for 790i around the corner