Conclusion

It is very hard to make any final conclusions about ASUS Striker II NSE mainboard basing on the benchmark results. Despite a few unpleasant issues it did perform very well in our practical tests. Of course, memory modules compatibility issues or occasional boot-up failures with correct settings are frustrating, but not critical problems. Especially taking into account that this mainboard overclocks processors really well and performs practically as fast as top platforms on Intel X48 Express. And we would definitely recommend ASUS Striker II NSE to all advanced users, if it were not for one thing: this mainboard is based on nForce 790i SLI from Nvidia.

The thing is that Nvidia cannot design a problem-free chipset for LGA775 platforms that would behave predictably. The new nForce 790i SLI followed in the footsteps of nForce 680i SLI: it still suffers from the old problems such as unexplainable HDD crashing, and acquired a few new ones such as system hanging during video playback with SLI enabled. Moreover, we can’t be sure that this chipset will not surprise us with something else later on. It can easily turn out incompatible with one of the new processors or some other hardware. We have already experienced things like that, so now we need to be very cautious when it comes to nForce 790i SLI based solutions.

As a result, ASUS Striker II NSE mainboard is definitely a great solution as a test platform for a dedicated computer enthusiast who is willing to face difficulties and put up with sudden restrictions for the sake of the highest performance.

It is a pity that Nvidia don’t give their fans any other choice. If you want to put together a system with SLI support, nForce is your only option. That is why mainboards like ASUS Striker II NSE find their way into the market. And the users will not be disappointed if they don’t face those problems we talked about. However, if you are not going to use dual-GPU video subsystem in SLI mode, then it may be better to consider other options.