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NVIDIA nForce 680i Performance Preview November 19, 2006 Jake Lenin22 Ratner |
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Summary: NVIDIA's nForce 680i chipset boasts features that should please any hardware enthusiast or gamer: three PCI Express graphics slots for expansion, support for 1333MHz FSB CPUs and 1200MHz DDR2 memory, and guess what -- the chipset is built for overclocking. Read why this just may be the best chipset for Core 2 in today's article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 7 ) |
In August ASUS released their nForce 570 SLI-based P5NSLI motherboard (which we reviewed in our ASUS Core 2-ready motherboard roundup), and Dell uses NVIDIA’s nForce 590 SLI chipset in their XPS 700 systems, but other than that, nForce 500 motherboards for Core 2 have been hard to come by. It has been rumored that motherboard manufacturers have been passing on nForce 570/590 because it doesn’t scale well to higher FSB speeds. Based on end user overclocking reports with NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI X16 chipset, which the nForce 590 SLI is largely based on, this theory may certainly be true, as these chipsets barely overclocked beyond FSB speeds of 266MHz. In comparison, Intel’s own P965 and 975X motherboards have proven to hit speeds of 400MHz or more; that’s 1.6GHz effective FSB!
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With nForce 570 SLI and 590 SLI getting off to such a lackluster start, NVIDIA quickly went back to the drawing board and has now cooked up another new chipset for Core 2: the nForce 600 family.
While the nForce 600 moniker suggests this is an entirely new chipset platform, actually it’s not. NVIDIA uses the same basic South Bridge chips for nForce 600 that were used for nForce 500 previously. That means all of the South Bridge features such as audio, networking, storage, and USB carry over unchanged, however NVIDIA has employed an entirely new North Bridge chip for nForce 600.
nForce 680i SLI
Fundamentally the new North Bridge in nForce 680i looks a lot like the North Bridge NVIDIA used previously in nForce 590, it supports many of the same key features found in nForce 590 such as 1066MHz FSB operation, but nForce 680i adds support for DDR2-800 and NVIDIA’s 1200MHz “SLI-ready” memory (nForce 590 was officially limited to just DDR2-667 memory). NVIDIA has also completely redesigned the nForce 680i’s memory controller. Latency has been reduced in the prefetch unit of the new memory controller and it has been optimized to run better with Core 2’s new unified memory architecture.
Like the nForce 590 SLI, the nForce 680i SLI splits the PCI Express graphics duties between the North and South Bridge of the chipset. You’ve got one 16-lane connection on the North Bridge, and a second 16-lane graphics connection hanging off the South Bridge. Linking the two chips together is an 8GB/sec HyperTransport interface.
NVIDIA’s 680i chipset also provides a third PCI Express graphics slot, but it only supports 8 lanes. The premise behind this third graphics slot is for GPU-based physics processing. Ideally you’d be able to mix and match GPUs, so you could run a pair of GeForce 7900s or GeForce 8800s in SLI mode for graphics processing, and say a GeForce 7600 running in the third x8 slot for physics, but NVIDIA hasn’t announced anything yet so this is all speculative.
Built for 1333MHz(+) FSB
Of course, the feature enthusiasts want to see most nowadays is scalability. Simply hitting 300MHz isn’t good enough for most overclockers. Here NVIDIA’s nForce 680i chipset really delivers the goods. The North Bridge of the chipset has been designed from the start to hit 1333MHz FSB, even though 1333MHz desktop CPUs aren’t even available yet. In fact, NVIDIA’s documentation lists full support for 1333MHz FSB, and if you talk with an NVIDIA engineer about the topic, they’ll mention that speeds of 1400MHz or more aren’t out of the realm of possibility if the motherboard is built for the task. This is due in part to the chipset’s new 90-nm manufacturing process.
| nForce 600 (cont’d) | Page:: ( 2 / 7 ) |
Enthusiast-level performance comes at a price however, and thus nForce 680i motherboards sell for north of $200 online. For end users looking to spend a little less NVIDIA provides two additional options, the nForce 650i SLI chipset and nForce 650i Ultra.
nForce 650i SLI/Ultra
Like the nForce 680i SLI, the 650i is a dual-chip configuration. However, it is radically different after that. Gone are the dual x16 PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots. Instead the nForce 650i chipset splits the PCI Express lanes in SLI mode: eight go to the primary PEG slot, and the remaining eight lanes go to the secondary slot.
When using one GPU, the nForce 650i chipset sends all sixteen lanes to the primary PEG slot.
Another difference between nForce 650i and nForce 680i is memory support. Whereas nForce 680i SLI supports up to 1200MHz SLI Memory with EPP, the nForce 650i SLI chipset only supports DDR2 speeds up to 800MHz. Anything beyond that is officially considered overclocking and isn’t guaranteed. In addition, FSB speeds up to 1066MHz are all that’s supported, unlike nForce 680i SLI the 650 chipset doesn’t explicitly support 1333MHz FSB operation, and the chipset hasn’t been validated for “extreme FSB overclocking”. In other words, the nForce 650i chipset hasn’t been designed with overclocking in mind like the nForce 680i SLI is. Your overclocking mileage may vary.
The South Bridge on the nForce 650i SLI isn’t as robust as nForce 680i either. The chipset supports up to 8 USB ports and the storage controller supports more parallel ATA drives (4) but gives up two SATA ports (up to four SATA drives are supported). Considering the target market of this chipset is more likely to have older parallel hard drives, this 4x4 configuration makes sense in our opinion, although it is a shame to lose 2 SATA ports. The chipset also lacks support for NVIDIA networking features such as teaming and TCP/IP acceleration, which allows users to combine both GigE connections for better performance as well as packet prioritization.
For single GPU users, NVIDIA also offers the nForce 650i Ultra chipset. It shares most of the key features found in the nForce 650i SLI, with the obvious omission of dual x16 graphics slots for SLI.
The following chart summarizes the differences between NVIDIA’s latest chipsets:
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| nForce 600 lineup | |||
| nForce 680i SLI | nForce 650i SLI | nForce 650i Ultra | |
| FSB (MHz) | 1333 | 1066 | 1066 |
| Extreme FSB Overclocking | Best | Good | Good |
| NVIDIA SLI Technology | Yes 2x16 | Yes 1x16/2x8 in SLI | No |
| NVIDIA LinkBoost Technology | Yes | No | No |
| Third PEG Slot | Yes | No | No |
| SLI-Ready Memory with EPP | 1200MHz | 800MHz | 800MHz |
| JEDEC DDR2 Memory | 800MHz | 800MHz | 800MHz |
| PCI Express # of Lanes | 46 lanes | 18 lanes | 18 lanes |
| PCI Express # of Links | 9 links | 4 links | 3 links |
| Configuration | 16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 | 8, 8, 1, 1 or 16, 1, 1 | 16, 1, 1 |
| SATA/PATA Drives | 6/2 | 4/4 | 4/4 |
| SATA Speed | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s | 3Gb/s |
| RAID | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 |
| NVIDIA MediaShield | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native Gigabit Ethernet Connections | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA FirstPacket Technology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA DualNet Technology | Yes | No | No |
| Teaming | Yes | No | No |
| TCP/IP Acceleration | Yes | No | No |
| NVIDIA nTune Utility | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB Ports | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| PCI Slots | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Audio | Azalia HD Audio | Azalia HD Audio | Azalia HD Audio |
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| EVGA nForce 680i motherboard | Page:: ( 3 / 7 ) |
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During our AM2 Chipset Shootout, Foxconn manufactured and sold an exact replica of NVIDIA’s reference motherboard for the nForce 590 SLI launch. This time, eVGA takes the honors. They follow NVIDIA’s exact reference board design, which isn’t necessarily bad. Like the previous time, this motherboard turned out almost perfect.
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In the first photo we see four 240 pin DDR2 slots. They are all color-coded to show the two memory channels. Below them, we see the 24pin ATX2.0 power connector. Next to that is the lone PATA connector. Above it is a Molex connector for adding extra power to the motherboard and the front panel connectors.
This is the only flaw we found on the layout of this board. Front panel connectors are usually found toward the bottom right corner of the motherboard. This time, they are placed at the middle right edge of the motherboard. This placement was in no way obtrusive, but it was kind of strange.
In the next photo, you see all of the expansion slots. There are 3 PEG slots, 2 PCI slots and 2 PCI Express x1 slots. As we mentioned before, there is an extra PEG slot for an extra video card which can be used to drive additional displays and/or NVIDIA’s upcoming physics solution utilizing Havok FX. If you use video cards that utilize dual slot coolers, expect to lose a PCI Express x1 slot and another PCI slot if you enable SLI. Lastly you can also see a red colored 1394 Firewire header.
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Here is the nVidia 680i SPP and its massive passively cooled heatsink. A heatpipe brings heat from the MCP to the heatsink as well, so it gets quite hot under load, especially when overclocking. EVGA mitigates this by including an optional fan which can be attached to the base of the heatsink. The photo on the right shows the CPU socket area. As you can see, the MOSFETS are cooled, but the PWM (Power Management, labeled R50) blocks are left uncooled. You can also see the EPS 8pin connector. It is compatible with standard 4pin connectors as well.
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These two photos show the bottom corner of the motherboard and the rear ports. The motherboard has a Winbond sensor chip that reports fan speeds and temperature. Next to it is a pair of diagnostic LEDs which display hex numerals telling the user what’s going with the system. This is a great debugging feature. Right next to the LEDs are two blue USB2.0 headers for powering 4 additional USB ports. Towards the bottom of the photo we see two of the six total SATA2 ports facing 90 degrees, and a floppy connector turned 90 degrees as well. Here we should note that according to NVIDIA, all SATA ports are eSATA ready, although EVGA’s nForce 680i motherboard doesn’t include eSATA support.
The back panel of the EVGA motherboard is fairly standard. Gone are the legacy parallel and serial ports. There are 6 USB2.0, a 1394, and the PS2 ports for connectivity of peripherals. Standard 8-channel audio is included as are the two GigE ports.
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Here is the included 40mm fan for optional cooling of the SPP when overclocking.
Overclocking
Overcloking on the nForce 680i is pretty straightforward, but it requires a bit more knowledge than to overclock on an Intel chipset. You must know to lower the HT Multipliers to 3x if your FSB goes above 400. FSB here is multiplied by 4, so in your head you must remember to divide by 4, and then multiply by the CPU Multiplier to get the final CPU speed. The above settings only show the max CPU, not FSB overclock.
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One interesting feature NVIDIA’s Intel-based chipsets have supported for some time now is that the memory bus and FSB can run in asynchronous mode. This allows you to run the memory bus and FSB at different speeds. EVGA’s nForce 680i motherboard provides memory speeds of 400MHz-1400MHz in 1MHz increments, this allows end users to really fine tune performance when overclocking.
We got a max of 1804FSB (451FSB) with our EVGA nForce 680i board, which is excellent, and on par with the recently tested Intel motherboards.
| System setup | Page:: ( 4 / 7 ) |
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR nForce 680i motherboard
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (P965)
Shuttle SD37P2 (975X)
2GB Corsair PC2-6400C4
BFG 7900GTX
250GB Samsung SATA2
Software
Lavalys Everest
- Memory Read
- Memory Write
- Memory Latency
3DMark06
Aquamark 3.3
HDTach
Quake 4
- 1600x1200 Ultra Quality 4xAA 16xAF
Call of Duty 2
- 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF
FEAR
- 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF Maximum Settings
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Outdoors 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF
- Indoors 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF
- Foliage 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF
| Synthetic benchmarks | Page:: ( 5 / 7 ) |
AquaMark
3DMark
Everest
HD Tach
| Game benchmarks | Page:: ( 6 / 7 ) |
Quake 4
F.E.A.R.
Oblivion
Call of Duty 2
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 7 / 7 ) |
Not only did nForce 680i deliver better performance than Intel’s P965 and 975X chipsets in our gaming performance tests, memory testing with Everest indicates that that the tweaks NVIDIA has implemented in the nForce 680i’s memory controller is definitely an improvement over Intel’s chipset offerings as well.
What’s really got our attention though is the overclocking prowess NVIDIA has built into nForce 680i. Whereas NVIDIA’s previous Intel chipsets had a hard time breaking beyond 370MHz FSB, we hit bus speeds of 451MHz with our EVGA nForce 680i motherboard, and other online reports are just as robust – it clearly looks like NVIDIA has delivered on their claims of 1333MHz+ FSB speeds with the new chipset. And with 1200MHz SLI memory support also built-in to the chipset, the nForce 680i platform is clearly built to appease the performance crowd, nothing from Intel even comes close in comparison.
On top of that, you’ve also got features unique to NVIDIA such as teaming and FirstPacket. With FirstPacket, latency sensitive applications such as VoIP and online gaming will be put ahead in the queue, reducing, or completely eliminating any lag, and preventing dropped connections. Teaming and Failover double the available bandwidth of the network connection on the motherboard, while also providing redundancy, a spare connection that will keep the transfer going if one connection goes down (or if someone trips on a wire). MediaShield is the industry’s easiest way to setup and maintain multiple RAID configurations. NVIDIA also provides a PATA controller built in to the chipset, so motherboard manufacturers don’t have to provide an external storage controller to support DVD drives and IDE hard drives.
And of course, NVIDIA’s nForce SLI chipsets are the only game in town if you want to combine two graphics cards for SLI.
nForce 680i SLI motherboards won’t come cheap though. Right now EVGA’s nForce 680i SLI motherboard sells for about $250+ putting it in the same price range as many 975X Core 2 motherboards. If this is too much for you, NVIDIA and their board partners will be offering nForce 650i and 650i Ultra motherboards shortly. The nForce 650i SLI should replace the nForce 570 SLI chipset in the $150+ price range, with the Ultra selling for a little lower than that. We haven’t had a chance to test a motherboard based on either of these chipsets yet, but if the nForce 680i SLI is any indication, both of these chipsets should be excellent platforms for gamers and enthusiasts on a budget. We just hope motherboard manufacturers don’t water down their boards based on these chipsets too much. We’ll have to wait and see on that one though.
But for the high-end gamer or enthusiast who wants to build the fastest Core 2 system possible and has the budget to do so, it doesn’t get any better than nForce 680i SLI right now. NVIDIA’s got all the features (and then some) that you’d expect from a high-end chipset, and as we just saw with EVGA’s nForce 680i SLI motherboard, the chipset has the performance numbers and overclocking potential to best any other chipset that’s currently available on the market. NVIDIA really has outdone themselves with this one!