NVIDIA 680i: The Best Core 2 Chipset?
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on November 8, 2006 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
MediaShield
While the networking side has undergone an extensive makeover, the storage side of the nForce 680i has been fine tuned but the features remain the same as the nForce 590SLI. The nForce 680i SLI series offers three separate SATA controllers each with integrated dual PHYs that are capable of operating at 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s speeds. This results in six Serial ATA devices being available for the user instead of four as in the nForce4, Intel ICH7/ICH8, or ATI SB600. These devices can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. There is no support for RAID 1+0 although the performance numbers with RAID 0+1 are very similar.
Considering the support for six drives, it is now possible to run a massive RAID 5 drive consisting of a pair of three-drive RAID 5 arrays, or running multiple combinations of RAID technology together. NVIDIA also supports the shared spare (or dedicated spare) technique in MediaShield. The spare disk feature, available with MediaShield RAID 5, offers protection with a dedicated spare drive that can take over for a failed disk until the repair is completed. However, the performance results during our RAID testing found no measurable differences between the nForce4, nForce 590SLI, and nForce 680i SLI storage systems. In fact, the "average" write performance of the nForce4 and nForce 590SLI in RAID 5 continues in the 680i SLI chipset although we still find its performance to be 5% better than the Intel ICH8R.
NVIDIA introduced a new twist to improve their SATA controller performance by offering performance profiles for specific hard drive models in the nForce 590SLI MCP. These performance profiles continue in the 680i SLI MCP. Since each hard drive has unique performance characteristics, NVIDIA matched the capabilities of their controller logic to each drive's particular strength. So far, Western Digital's 150GB Raptor has the only performance profile loaded, but there are plans to profile additional performance oriented drives that are popular in the market. In our testing with dual WD1500 Raptors we noticed benchmark results that were on average about 3% better in our IPEAK tests while the synthetic tests realized a 4% gain in some areas.
While NVIDIA has implemented six native SATA ports in their current MCP55 chipset, they reduced the available native PATA ports to one with support for two drives. This is an improvement over the PATA challenged Intel ICH8 series which requires a separate chipset for PATA support. We firmly believe the reduced number of PATA ports is still a mistake for all chipset manufacturers.
Considering the Optical drive manufacturers have been very slow to implement SATA technology in their drives, this decrease in drive support could affect those users who have multiple optical drives for audio/video content creation and manipulation. However, our discussions with the major optical drive manufacturers show an aggressive transition to SATA technology by the third quarter of 2007.
HD Audio
NVIDIA has finally decided that life after SoundStorm no longer means the continual punishment of users by only offering AC-97 based audio support in their chipsets. As with the nForce 500 lineup, the nForce 600 series will offer full support for the various "Azalia" based High Definition Audio codecs. While the choice of which HDA codec along with the associated circuitry can still greatly impact audio quality and performance, any of these options are better than the AC-97 solutions previously offered.
While the networking side has undergone an extensive makeover, the storage side of the nForce 680i has been fine tuned but the features remain the same as the nForce 590SLI. The nForce 680i SLI series offers three separate SATA controllers each with integrated dual PHYs that are capable of operating at 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s speeds. This results in six Serial ATA devices being available for the user instead of four as in the nForce4, Intel ICH7/ICH8, or ATI SB600. These devices can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. There is no support for RAID 1+0 although the performance numbers with RAID 0+1 are very similar.
Considering the support for six drives, it is now possible to run a massive RAID 5 drive consisting of a pair of three-drive RAID 5 arrays, or running multiple combinations of RAID technology together. NVIDIA also supports the shared spare (or dedicated spare) technique in MediaShield. The spare disk feature, available with MediaShield RAID 5, offers protection with a dedicated spare drive that can take over for a failed disk until the repair is completed. However, the performance results during our RAID testing found no measurable differences between the nForce4, nForce 590SLI, and nForce 680i SLI storage systems. In fact, the "average" write performance of the nForce4 and nForce 590SLI in RAID 5 continues in the 680i SLI chipset although we still find its performance to be 5% better than the Intel ICH8R.
NVIDIA introduced a new twist to improve their SATA controller performance by offering performance profiles for specific hard drive models in the nForce 590SLI MCP. These performance profiles continue in the 680i SLI MCP. Since each hard drive has unique performance characteristics, NVIDIA matched the capabilities of their controller logic to each drive's particular strength. So far, Western Digital's 150GB Raptor has the only performance profile loaded, but there are plans to profile additional performance oriented drives that are popular in the market. In our testing with dual WD1500 Raptors we noticed benchmark results that were on average about 3% better in our IPEAK tests while the synthetic tests realized a 4% gain in some areas.
While NVIDIA has implemented six native SATA ports in their current MCP55 chipset, they reduced the available native PATA ports to one with support for two drives. This is an improvement over the PATA challenged Intel ICH8 series which requires a separate chipset for PATA support. We firmly believe the reduced number of PATA ports is still a mistake for all chipset manufacturers.
Considering the Optical drive manufacturers have been very slow to implement SATA technology in their drives, this decrease in drive support could affect those users who have multiple optical drives for audio/video content creation and manipulation. However, our discussions with the major optical drive manufacturers show an aggressive transition to SATA technology by the third quarter of 2007.
HD Audio
NVIDIA has finally decided that life after SoundStorm no longer means the continual punishment of users by only offering AC-97 based audio support in their chipsets. As with the nForce 500 lineup, the nForce 600 series will offer full support for the various "Azalia" based High Definition Audio codecs. While the choice of which HDA codec along with the associated circuitry can still greatly impact audio quality and performance, any of these options are better than the AC-97 solutions previously offered.
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fenacv - Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - link
http://www.pricebat.ca/EVGA-122-CK-NF67-T1-LGA-775...">http://www.pricebat.ca/EVGA-122-CK-NF67...-SLI-ATX...If you don't really care the prefermace, I found it's onsale just buy one only 138 bucks. It's cheap.
TheBeagle - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
I'm wondering if these touted new 680i boards are vaporware, especially the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 board. Ever since you first alerted us to the fact that the 680i chipset was replacing the 590 version, I've been waiting to see this whole new array of motherboards. However, aside from a few boards (ASUS and a few others) the major board manufacturers haven't been forthcoming with these products. Maybe this is just going to be some sort of a big Christmas present that Santa delivers on the holiday. If you guys at AnandTech have some info on this, I'd sure like to hear about. Thanksmbf - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
I, for one, am going to seriously miss the native hardware firewall of the nForce3 and nForce4 chipsets, so I'm anything but "thankful" for seeing it "jettisoned into deep space." Actually, this was one of the coolest features of the nForce chipsets and truly innovative.nVidia's stance as to removing it because the functionality is built into Windows Vista doesn't ring true. A software solution can never work as efficiently and transparently as a hardware solution. And what of the people having no intention to switch to Windows Vista, and there are many reasons for not wanting to. They're practically left out in the cold.
I second the opinion that nVidia probably botched the hardware in some form or other, although the hardware firewall works quite well on my nForce3 250gb based system, once you get familiar with its quirks. This actually doesn't bode well for nVidia's "inventiveness" and "forward-thinking" (think DualNet), since chances are nVidia will drop support completely rather than work out the bugs that inevitably will be there. Removing the hardware firewall is the best example of this.
Also, and this is a bit off-topic in regard to the rest of this topic, wasn't there supposed to be ECC memory support in the new northbridge for the 680i chipset? I remember reading about the northbridge also being used in the new nForce Pro series chipsets. Another feature that has been removed in the mean time?
skrewler2 - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
How was the Tuniq Tower 120 on the board? I've heard lots of people complaining about backplates not fitting right on this board because the back of the mobo has lots of capacitors... Did you need to do any modding or did it just work?Gary Key - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
I used the Scythe Infinity in my testing, Wes used the Tuniq. I did try the Tuniq and it was okay with an extra pad on the backplate that negated any damage to the capacitors.mlau - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Did you test a recent Linux kernel on this board?Which components are supported (I don't care about "raid"),
and how buggy are the HPET, (IO-)APIC and ACPI implementations?
Governator - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link
First off, very well done article guys, but I've a question on the layouts with regards to PCI slots so far with the Asus and Evga; are we to expect similar layouts with upcoming boards from other manufacturers? I ask because I'm planning on a water cooled SLI setup upon a 680i and am planning on an X-Fi card but not sure if I'll be able to use the middle PCI slot, TIA...Gov
Gary Key - Sunday, November 12, 2006 - link
Most of the 680i boards have the same basic layout. On the Asus Striker board you should be able to use the X-FI with most watercooled SLI setups as an example. It will all depend on your setup but you can kiss the middle PCIe slot good-bye. ;)Governator - Saturday, November 18, 2006 - link
Hi Gary, sorry I meant to reply sooner but thanks for this. I'm hoping I'll be in good shape with the fact that I'll be using the new 8800GTX water block codeveloped by BFG Tech from Danger Den which appears that it'll only take up one slot allowing for that bottom PCI slot to go to the X-Fi card, thoughts? TIA ;)deathwalker - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
I wonder if there are Matx mobo's in the future for the 600 series chipsets.