NVIDIA 680i: The Best Core 2 Chipset?
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on November 8, 2006 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Test Setup
NVIDIA designed the 680i chipset motherboard that is being released as the EVGA 680i SLI.
The 6-phase, 6-layer motherboard is passively cooled for normal operation. An accessory fan for the chipset is included for extreme overclocking. Since this is a review of the new 680i chipset there will not be in-depth comments on the board layout. However, readers should be aware of the horrible location of the front panel connectors in the middle right edge of the board. They are stacked in line on-top of the auxiliary 12V Molex and the IDE connector, with the memory slots on the other side.
This busy location makes it impossible to do much of anything in setup without dislodging the front panel LEDs and switches. The color code for the front panel connector is also wrong, and does not match any case setup we have tested. Color coding is a good idea but colors should match common setups. NVIDIA is aware of the issues with the location of the front panel connector and the color-coding and they have told us both issues will be fixed in a future revision of the motherboard.
The EVGA 680i SLI was used for all testing of the 680i chipset.
The AnandTech launch article for the NVIDIA 8800 GPUs provides test results with the 680i, 8800, and Core 2 Duo and Quad processors. This chipset review in contrast concentrates on comparing performance with our standard setup of the E6700, 2GB of DDR2 running DDR2-800 3-3-3 timings, and the NVIDIA 7900GTX to other tested Socket 775 Core 2 motherboards.
NVIDIA designed the 680i chipset motherboard that is being released as the EVGA 680i SLI.
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| Click to enlarge |
The 6-phase, 6-layer motherboard is passively cooled for normal operation. An accessory fan for the chipset is included for extreme overclocking. Since this is a review of the new 680i chipset there will not be in-depth comments on the board layout. However, readers should be aware of the horrible location of the front panel connectors in the middle right edge of the board. They are stacked in line on-top of the auxiliary 12V Molex and the IDE connector, with the memory slots on the other side.
This busy location makes it impossible to do much of anything in setup without dislodging the front panel LEDs and switches. The color code for the front panel connector is also wrong, and does not match any case setup we have tested. Color coding is a good idea but colors should match common setups. NVIDIA is aware of the issues with the location of the front panel connector and the color-coding and they have told us both issues will be fixed in a future revision of the motherboard.
The EVGA 680i SLI was used for all testing of the 680i chipset.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (X2, 2.67GHz, 4MB Unified Cache) |
| RAM: | 2 x 1GB Corsair TCM2X1024-9136C5D Tested at DDR2-800 3-3-3 2.2V |
| Hard Drive(s): | Hitachi 250GB SATA2 enabled (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA - 9.35 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x EVGA 7900GTX - All Standard Tests 2 x EVGA 7900GTX - SLI on NVIDIA 1 x ATI X1900XTX - ATI Standard Tests on Intel 2 x ATI X1900XT (Master+Standard) - CrossFire on Intel |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA 93.71 ATI Catalyst 6.10 |
| CPU Cooling: | Tuniq Tower 120 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXstream 700W |
| Motherboards: | EVGA 680i SLI ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe (Intel 975X) Intel 975XBX (Intel 975X) ASUS P5B Deluxe (Intel P965) ASUS P5N32-SLI (nF4 SLIX16 Intel) Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe (Intel P965) Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (Intel P965) DFI Infinity 975X/G (Intel 975X) ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (VIA PT880 PRO) |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
The AnandTech launch article for the NVIDIA 8800 GPUs provides test results with the 680i, 8800, and Core 2 Duo and Quad processors. This chipset review in contrast concentrates on comparing performance with our standard setup of the E6700, 2GB of DDR2 running DDR2-800 3-3-3 timings, and the NVIDIA 7900GTX to other tested Socket 775 Core 2 motherboards.
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Wesley Fink - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The other time you might need a fan on the northbrdige is when using water cooling or phase-change cooling. There is no air-flow spillover from water-cooling the CPU like there is with the usual fan heatsink on the CPU, so the auxillary fan might be needed in that situation.Wesley Fink - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The 680i Does NOT require active notrthbridge cooling and is shipped as a passive heatpipe design. At 80nm it is much cooler than the 130nm nVdia chipsets. The fan you see in the pictures is an included accessory for massive overclocking, much like Asus includes auxillary fans in their top boards.In our testing we really did not find the stock fanless board much of a limitation in overclocking as the northbridge did not get particularly hot at any time. We installed the fan when we were trying to set the OC record and left it on for our 3 days at 2100 FSB. Since it is a clip and 3 screws to install we left it on.
IntelUser2000 - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
That's funny. A cooler running one consuming more power. Must be the die size is much larger :D.
yacoub - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
ah okay thanks for that clarification! =)yacoub - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
NTune would be a lot more interesting if it wasn't so slow to respond to page changes, cumbersome, and a gigantic UI realestate hog.The same functionality in a slimmer, more configurable, and efficient UI design would be highly desireable.
yacoub - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
and actually, that goes for the entire NVidia display/GPU settings configuration panel.Khato - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Each CPU is going to have a max FSB clock that it'll run stably at for the same reason that it has a max core logic frequency. The main difference here is that you have two possible barriers: signal degredation due to the analog buffers not being designed for such high speed and then whatever buffer logic there is in the CPU to clock cross from FSB to core not liking the higher frequency. I'm kinda leaning towards the buffer logic being the limiting factor, since I'd expect the manufacturing variance in the analog buffers to be minimal. That and the described 75MHz variance in top FSB frequency between various processors sounds reasonable for non-optimized logic.Staples - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
I have no need for SLI. Makes the board more expensive and an SLI setup is just not worth it to me. I was about to buy a P965 chipset but now I am interested in a the 650i Ultra. Will we see a review of this chipset in the future? Most of it seems to be exactly the same as the 680i however it does lack some features and I am afraid that those missing features may affect performance. As it stands now, do you expect the performance of the 650i Ultra to perform identical to the 680i SLI?Gary Key - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
We do not, we do expect the 650i SLI to perform closely to it. We will have 650i boards in early December for review. :)
Pirks - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
is this functionality where you can overclock your CPU and FSB and memory on the fly without rebooting Windows available only on nForce mobos? I'm a stability freak and I want to be able to raise and lower my clocks and voltage on the fly, similar to the way Macs do this - they spin their fans under load and become totally quiet when idle - I wanna do the same so that my rig is dead quiet when idle/doing word/inet/email/etc and becomes noisy and fast OCed beast when firing up Crysis or something. and I want this Mac-style WITHOUT rebooting Windowsso do I have to buy nVidia mobo for that?
600i series only or earlier nForce 4 or 5 series will do as well?
I still can't dig what's up with these "dynamic BIOS updates that _require_ reboot to work" - so can you OC without rebooting or not? if yes - what are these BIOS options that nTune changes that DOES require reboot?
could you happy nTune owners enlighten me on that stuff? thanks ;)