EVGA 680i LT SLI: NVIDIA's 680i Cost Reduced
by Gary Key on March 28, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Standard Gaming Performance
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks with our standard 1280x1024 resolution without antialiasing enabled (and generally without anisotropic filtering, though that varies by game). Given the number of users that run 19" LCDs these days, 1280x1024 represents one of the most commonly used resolutions. We could certainly increase the amount of eye candy being displayed in most of the games, but as this is a motherboard benchmark we aren't particularly interested in maxing out the graphics cards.
It's basically a toss up as to which chipset you select for a gaming machine. All of the results are very close and during actual game play we could not tell the difference between any of the boards. Our EVGA board finishes near the top in each test with a 2T command rate enabled and first in three tests with 1T enabled. While there is a measurable difference in the benchmarks, actual game play is the same - the largest performance increase from 1T is still only 2.5% in Half-Life 2. However, we will always take advantage of any opportunity to improve our system's performance.
We did not experience any issues during testing or during game play with the EVGA board at stock settings. We did encounter the dreaded NF4_DISP.DLL error while our system was overclocked with the E6600 processor at 9x425FSB. However, after removal/reinstallation of the video drivers along with the deletion of a particular registry key that NVIDIA suggested might be the culprit, we have not experienced any further issues. We generally play over a dozen different games for at least a couple of hours on each board to ensure there are no issues such as overheating, stuttering, or network issues when playing online with a various combination of components.
We will have a full selection of SLI game results along with a couple of new benchmarks in our next review. In the meantime, we did not find any noticeable differences in 8800GTX SLI performance between the 680i and 650i chipsets up to a resolution of 1920x1200 in games. The 3DMark06 synthetic benchmarks did show differences up to 6% but for the majority of gamers the differences in SLI performance between the two chipsets is negligible in actual game tests. It is only when you crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 or increase AA/AF settings that the dual x16 PCI Express capability on the 680i chipsets performs better than the dual x8 PCI Express setup on 650i.
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks with our standard 1280x1024 resolution without antialiasing enabled (and generally without anisotropic filtering, though that varies by game). Given the number of users that run 19" LCDs these days, 1280x1024 represents one of the most commonly used resolutions. We could certainly increase the amount of eye candy being displayed in most of the games, but as this is a motherboard benchmark we aren't particularly interested in maxing out the graphics cards.
It's basically a toss up as to which chipset you select for a gaming machine. All of the results are very close and during actual game play we could not tell the difference between any of the boards. Our EVGA board finishes near the top in each test with a 2T command rate enabled and first in three tests with 1T enabled. While there is a measurable difference in the benchmarks, actual game play is the same - the largest performance increase from 1T is still only 2.5% in Half-Life 2. However, we will always take advantage of any opportunity to improve our system's performance.
We did not experience any issues during testing or during game play with the EVGA board at stock settings. We did encounter the dreaded NF4_DISP.DLL error while our system was overclocked with the E6600 processor at 9x425FSB. However, after removal/reinstallation of the video drivers along with the deletion of a particular registry key that NVIDIA suggested might be the culprit, we have not experienced any further issues. We generally play over a dozen different games for at least a couple of hours on each board to ensure there are no issues such as overheating, stuttering, or network issues when playing online with a various combination of components.
We will have a full selection of SLI game results along with a couple of new benchmarks in our next review. In the meantime, we did not find any noticeable differences in 8800GTX SLI performance between the 680i and 650i chipsets up to a resolution of 1920x1200 in games. The 3DMark06 synthetic benchmarks did show differences up to 6% but for the majority of gamers the differences in SLI performance between the two chipsets is negligible in actual game tests. It is only when you crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 or increase AA/AF settings that the dual x16 PCI Express capability on the 680i chipsets performs better than the dual x8 PCI Express setup on 650i.
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MrWizard6600 - Thursday, March 29, 2007 - link
dont know the full details, but the newest P26 Bios from EVGA Removed LinkBoost support“LinkBoost was removed from nForce 680i SLI because it did not show significant demonstrable benefit in games. We had hoped newer games would take advantage of this additional bandwidth but this has not been the case. Please note that future BIOS upgrades will only remove the automatic overclocking component of LinkBoost. Users can still manually overclock the PCI-Express and HyperTransport buses in the BIOS."
SniperWulf - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
Any chance I can get that registry key that you deleted after the nv4_disp crash?yacoub - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
It's time to start recommending Supreme Commander to be the RTS game test choice. Now that there's a new RTS game that can crush systems (SupCom) the way FEAR did for FPS games for the last couple years, a game that makes use of multiple cores at that, we should start to see it used in the suite of games in future motherboard, cpu, and gpu tests. Perhaps Anandtech have already started planning for this?yyrkoon - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
Well, it is not an RTS game, but one I play frequently should also be used to test gaming rigs in my humble opinon. Titan Quest (Immortal Throne if deemed nessisary).My gaming Rig is not top of the line, but it is no slouch, and this game constantly drags in areas that are low light areas, or are outside, and night time. Anyhow, and game that brings my opteron 1210 / ABIT NF-M2 nView / 2 GB DDR2 6400 memory, eVGA 7600GT KO to a crawl, SHOULD be used as a benchmark, at least once in a while. F.E.A.R does not lag like this game does on my system . . .
Stele - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
I agree to an extent, as the current test suite's figures are starting to show their age a wee bit... 100+ FPS, as Quake ended up with newer CPUs/GPUs. Having said that, Anandtech was probably trying to ensure consistency in its tests, so that at the very least, past test results for other products can always be quite easily compared over time. Perhaps in the near future we might see it yet! :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
I believe Gary is looking at benching with Supreme Commander. That's one of the games that will be added in future reviews, as far as I know.yacoub - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
Awesome, glad to hear that! One can see the benefit to maintaining benchmark titles for as long as possible to allow the greatest comparison back to past reviews. On the up side, SupCom looks to easily task systems well into the future (much like FEAR has thus far since its release) and would be an excellent choice for the RTS benchmark game. :)yyrkoon - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
Firstly, I have to get this out. It is a completely LAME excuse for nVidia, eVGA, Foxconn, or whomever, to 'claim' the reason this board does not have passive cooling (OTES or equivelent), is to help cut costs. 20 bux less, and they rip out passive cooling ? Lame. Take ABITs NF-M2 nView $85usd , including passive cooling, and moderate other features. Granted, it is based on the NF4 chipset, but who cares, it has passive cooling, and loads of other features for the price.I have to agree somewhat with the first poster, this board is dead, before it even reaches market. Crippled features, missing other features, all for to save $20-$50 usd. Sorry nVidia, and whomever else, but you have not only completely wasted your time, but ours as well, for having to read a review on such a shitty product.
yacoub - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
very much agree. the passive cooling is (and should be) an integral feature of current generation motherboards. there's no reason ANY motherboard released today should require active northbridge (or southbridge) chipset cooling (unless you're overclocking, obviously).yyrkoon - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
One thing I did keep wondering the whole time I was reading the article, and you were mentioning how the BIOS was basically a crippled version of the full blown i680 SLI version was: 'I wonder how soon someone would mod a BIOS version based on the i680 SLI chipset BIOS, to add removed 'features' such as certain voltage settings, etc.'Also, Jarred, or whomever else would like to answer, how hot does the PWM section of this motherboard run ? Seems lately, dual core on up motherboards tend to run hot in the PWM.