Conclusions

In case it hasn't quite hit home yet - The Striker II NSE is identical to the Striker II Extreme in every way, shape and form, aside from the loss of official support for memory clock speeds up to 2000MHz.  If that single omission makes no odds to you, then the advice is quite simply - Forget about the Striker II Extreme and set your sights on this board instead if you're looking for the extra bells and whistles offered by ASUS' Republic of Gamers series parts.  At an official retail price of around £211 before the dreaded VAT strikes, it certainly still isn't cheap, particularly once you consider DDR3 prices, but in fairness the Striker II NSE finds itself priced well against other reference-based nForce 790i Ultra SLI offerings, so if the design and features of this board are more important to you than those memory overclocking abilities it's a good deal from where I'm sitting.

Overall then, just as we were impressed by the Striker II Extreme in many ways, so we're equally impressed by the Striker II NSE, only without almost passing out when we look at its retail price (choosing to merely hyperventilate instead).  It's still a little hard to argue the case for this board over Intel's latest high-end X48 chipset offerings for most users, and equally the time to move to DDR3 isn't quite ripe from a price perspective yet, but if SLI support is a must-have and you want to set yourself on a high-end footing with NVIDIA's latest and greatest, the Striker II NSE proves to be a most excellent prospect.

Product information

ASUS Striker II NSE

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Retail pricing and availability:

LambdaTek - £214.75 including VAT

Thanks to ASUS for providing the sample for this review

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