XFX has officially launched its motherboard based on the Nvidia nForce 780i chipset.

The new 780i motherboard from XFX is based on Nvidia reference design with black PCB. So basically nothing has changed: Tri-SLI support with PCI-Express 2.0 slots, support for high speed SLI-ready memory up to DDR2-1200, support for 45nm CPUs and support for Nvidia's ESA.

Both XFX and EVGA have decided to stick with Nvidia's reference design and for now MSI is the only one that has announced 780i motherboard that doesn't use Nvidia's reference design. As for the design itself, the fan that blows hot air from Northbridge heatsink directly on the graphics card, from the looks of it mostly on the place where GPU would be, just doesn't look good.