NVIDIA 680i: The Best Core 2 Chipset?
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on November 8, 2006 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
General System Performance
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. The test is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of graphics subsystems, CPU, hard disk, and memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature while providing consistency in our benchmark results.
The 680i leads the PCMark 2005 results, but scores are close at the top. While the 975X/P965 and 680i are close in performance, the 680i provides a slight edge in General Performance - about 1% which can be considered negligible.
General Graphics Performance
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
Our nForce 680i SLI results are essentially the same as the performance of the 590 and Intel 975x/965 families. Since the most recent 3DMark06 is very tied to the GPU, this does not come as much of a surprise.
Rendering Performance
The Cinebench 9.5 benchmark heavily stresses the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. We utilize the standard benchmark demos along with the default settings. Cinebench 9.5 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image.
The nForce 600i desktop platform shows competitive performance in these benchmarks. The range of results are not performance differences you will see looking at the daily performance of 975X and 680i systems.
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. The test is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of graphics subsystems, CPU, hard disk, and memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature while providing consistency in our benchmark results.
The 680i leads the PCMark 2005 results, but scores are close at the top. While the 975X/P965 and 680i are close in performance, the 680i provides a slight edge in General Performance - about 1% which can be considered negligible.
General Graphics Performance
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
Our nForce 680i SLI results are essentially the same as the performance of the 590 and Intel 975x/965 families. Since the most recent 3DMark06 is very tied to the GPU, this does not come as much of a surprise.
Rendering Performance
The Cinebench 9.5 benchmark heavily stresses the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. We utilize the standard benchmark demos along with the default settings. Cinebench 9.5 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image.
The nForce 600i desktop platform shows competitive performance in these benchmarks. The range of results are not performance differences you will see looking at the daily performance of 975X and 680i systems.
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davidos - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Great Review... When can we expect the cheaper 650 boards?Gary Key - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
December for 650i SLI and January for 650i Ultra.
jackylman - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Why no power consumption tests? I mean, we know the NFurnace is a power hog, but numbers would be nice.A review from another site has the NFurnace consuming about 25W more at idle than a P965. Buy one now and save on your heating oil bill!
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
The upcoming 8800 review reports power consumption of the 8800 on the 680i. We figure a 680i with 8800 SLI and phyics processor should draw enough power to light San Jose :-) ALL the first DX10 video cards will likely require huge amounts of power.We will compare 975x, 965, and 680i chipset on power consumption and add it to the review later this evening.
jackylman - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Awesome, thank you!Gary Key - Sunday, November 12, 2006 - link
Hi,I decided to run the power tests with a typical high-end setup in a case. We are still working on getting down to the board level properly but these numbers should give you a good indication of the results to date.
X6800, 2GB Memory, 8800GTX, 2 Optical drives, 2 320GB Hard Drives, USB Floppy, Cooler Master Stacker 830 case with 4 120mm Fans, Tuniq 120 Cooler, SB X-FI.
Idle - Power Savings Off
680i SLI - 242W
590SLI - 236W
975X - 221W
P965 - 218W
Full Load -
680i SLI - 324W
590SLI - 331W
975X - 313W
P965 - 309W
We should have some overclocking and SLI numbers by the end of the week.
gramboh - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Been waiting for this chipset/mainboards to come out for a while, might finally be time for C2D build (with G80!)Thanks for the review.
BladeVenom - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Nice review. Any idea as to when these should start to shop up at retailers?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
The EVGA boards are supposed to go on sale today. We have reports they were on the shelves at Frys last night.nVidia says partner boards will be available beginning today, and ODM boards should start appearing in early December.
hubajube - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
They're on sale at Newegg right now. $270.