eVGA nForce 680i SLI

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] When you think of NVIDIA products, eVGA is not usually far from mind. They've been producing video cards utilizing NVIDIA's GPUs for quite a while now, but recently they have been trying to make a name for themselves in the motherboard market. Things started off slowly, but they are quickly gaining momentum and are releasing some quality boards, one of which we will be taking a look at today. The 680i SLI board has been available for many months now, so we are going to take a fresh look at it and see how it compares to our 975X and P35 boards. As the name gives away, the board is based on NVIDIA's 680i SLI chipset, their current top offering on the Intel platform. It supports all of the latest Intel CPUs with an 800/1066/1333 FSB. It also supports up to 8GB of ram with frequencies up to DDR2-1200. The board we are looking at today has an A1 in the product code. T1 revisions are also available, with the primary difference being that it includes a Quad-Core fix. If you have an A1/AR board and are having problems with overclocking your Quad-Core, eVGA will fix it for you. Closer Look Before we jump into our look of the board itself, here are the complete specs. In addition to what's mentioned above, we have a total of 10 USB 2.0 ports, 6 on the board itself, then four more to be used with your case or add-in card. We also have two LAN ports, which will be appreciated by those who need them. Feature Specification Performance Based on NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Chipset chipset Supports Intel Core 2 Extreme, Intel Core 2 Quad, Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium EE, and Pentium processors 1066/1333 Mhz Front Side Bus Memory 4 x 240-pin DIMM sockets Dual Channel DDR2 Maximum of 8GB of DDR2 533/667/800/1200MHz SLI-Ready memory Expansion Slot 2 x PCIe x16, 1 x PCIe Graphics expansion slot, 2 x PCIe x1, 2 x PCI 2 x 32-bit PCI, support for PCI 2.1 Storage I/O 1 x UltraDMA133 6 x Serial ATA 300MB/sec with support for RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 1 x Floppy disk drive connector Integrated Peripherals 7.1 Channel, Azalia (HDA) 7.1 Channel, Azalia (HDA) 2 x 10/100/1000 LAN via Multi I/O 1 x PS2 Keyboard 1 x PS2 Mouse 1 x Serial Ports 10 x USB2.0 ports (6 external + 4 internal headers) Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC) Form Factor ATX Form Factor Length: 12.0in - 304.8mm Width: 9.6in - 243.6mm The 680i arrived in one of the largest motherboard boxes I've ever seen. The reason behind this is that the board is kept safe in a large clamshell like packaging. Whereas many motherboards are kept in the direct bottom of a box, here it's kept in the center. Here is the inside packaging I was speaking about. On one side of this is where all of the accessories and manuals are kept. Within these accessories is all of the required IDE, S-ATA and floppy drive cables. They also include adapters to add another firewire and four more USB ports. Next up, the board layout. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Board Layout] In all of it's black glory, here it is. At first glance, there are no problems I have with the overall layout. There are two S-ATA ports on the side, which is handy for drives closest to it. There is also an LED BIOS code readout, a handy feature if you run into problems at POST. The only issue I really have, is the fact that the ATX case connectors are placed in between the DIMM slots and a molex connector. This is a very tight squeeze, and considering that these cables are small, more room would have been nice. You will also notice that by default, the board is entirely passive cooled. A single copper heat pipe runs between the north and south bridge, with the PWM having it's own tall heatsink for heat dissipation. The northbridge is kept cool via a passive heatsink with many fins. For those who with to overclock, eVGA includes a small fan that clips on, as you can see below. The south bridge utilizes no fan at all, which I didn't find to be an immediate problem during any of my testing. Here is the Winbond W83627DHG chipset which handles much of the I/O for the motherboard, including PS/2 peripherals, printer, joystick, et cetera. It is also responsible for passing along the boards temperatures to you. You can also better see the two side S-ATA ports. To the right of the DIMM slots are the ATX connectors as we mentioned, an IDE connector and also the 24-Pin motherboard power connector. Four more S-ATA ports can also be found here. At the bottom of the board you will find the CMOS reset switch, serial port connector and a 3-pin fan header. The location of the J1H3 LPC header would have been great for the front panel connectors. The board includes two PCI-E 16x, one PCI-E expansion slot and two PCI-E 1x slots, in addition to two classic PCI slots. Instead of a boring PWM heatsink, eVGA added some flair with a 'cool' wavy design. If your CPU cooler is a tank, you might have a hard time installing it as there is not an abundance of room around the socket. Most people should have sufficient space to install their cooling though. I installed the Zalman 9700LED cooler with no issues. For those who enjoy staring at the back of motherboards for fun, here you go. Before we wrap up, I will elaborate on the ATX connectors a little more. As you can see in the picture, I only had patience to install the ATX PWR SW connector. I think the only problem with their location is the fact that a 4-Pin molex connector is to plug in directly beside it. It's not a big problem, but better placement would have been appreciated. Next, we will take a look through the BIOS, which offers plenty of options for overclocking enthusiasts. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=The BIOS] eVGA knows that a good fraction of customers who buy their board are interested in overclocking, so it's no surprise that the BIOS reflects that. Before we move into our performance reports, we will take a stroll through the BIOS to see all that it offers. The first few screens need no introduction. Under the Advance BIOS Features menu, you are able to set boot devices, priorities and also enable the full screen logo, if you prefer it. Advance Chipset Features is where you will find all of the overclocking and tweaking options. Everything is split into different sections. On the main page here, you can save your overclocking profiles with the Save timing/voltage set. It's not as blatantly obvious as on other boards, but it's here. As with most recent 775 boards, eVGA's 680i offers a wide range of overclocking headroom. On the FSB & Memory Config, you can enable EPP memory and also adjust your FSB and memory frequencies. You have an option to keep it Linked, Auto or Unlinked, which is of most interest. Unlinked allows you to manually select FSB and MEM differently, so that your memory will not hold back a CPU overclock. For example, if you are using 1600FSB but your memory won't overclock alongside it, you can manually set the memories frequency and the board will select the ratio closest to it. The sub menu here is to adjust your memory timings, which all of the common ones listed. It is by no way as in-depth as some other motherboards on the market, such as the DFI RD600, but it should get the job done. You will not likely be spending much time in the CPU Configuration screen, but if for some reason you wish to disable a core or two, you have the ability. Under the Integrated Peripherals section you can set up a RAID, alter USB settings, config your eSATA and also disable or enable onboard audio, firewire and floppy controller. Here are a few more screens, the most important one being the System Clocks, where you can alter your CPU multiplier. The BIOS on the board is not feature-packed, but it gives you all the necessary overclocking headroom to get things done. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Testing Methodology, SYSmark 2007] Throughout all of our benchmarks regardless of what we are reviewing, testing is done in a clean and stand-alone version of Windows XP Professional with SP2. No Windows Updates are applied for the sake of efficiency, unless one is required for a piece of hardware on the computer. Prior to testing, these conditions are met: Desktop and scrap files are cleaned up, including emptying of recycle bin. No virus scanner or firewall is installed in the stand-alone installation. The stand-alone installation drive is completely defragged using Diskeeper 2007 Professional. All unnecessary programs are closed, so that Windows should have no more than 15 active processes running. Computer has proper airflow. The testing rig used for todays benchmarking is as follows: CPU: Intel E6600 - 2.4GHz. Motherboard: eVGA nForce 680i SLI A1. Memory: OCZ 2GB NVIDIA PC2-7200 Video: ASUS EN8800GTX 768MB. Sound: Onboard HD Audio. Storage: Seagate 7200.9 320GB Etcetera: Windows XP Professional SP2. Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500 Compared Motherboards ASUS P5K. ASUS P5K3 Intel XBX2. For comparison purposes, we have pitted the eVGA 680i against the ASUS P5K and P5K3 boards, both which use P35 chipsets and also the Intel XBX2, which uses the 975X chipset. The P5K3 is a DDR3 board, so it's important to note that it wouldn't be a surprise to see it dominate in the charts, thanks to it's faster memory speed. We have included it because it's still a relevant comparison. The memory speeds used are as follows: DDR2 memory is run at DDR2-800 speeds with 4-4-4-12-2T timings at 1.9v. DDR3 memory is run at DDR3-1066 speeds with 6-6-6-15-2T timings at 1.6v. 2T was used for the DDR2 settings because of the Intel XBX2's inability to use 1T. SYSmark 2007 Preview SYSmark is an industry leading system benchmarking tool, which is completely automated but utilizes real-world tests. It installs common applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, Photoshop CS2, 3DS Max, SketchUp! among others. SYSmark grades the performance of the system with various methods, but most notably how well it could handle...

eVGA nForce 680i SLI

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Rob Williams