Is nForce 650 the Mainstream Master?

[pschmid]

How good is Nvidia's mainstream nForce chipset? The 650i SLI takes on the competition by AMD and Intel.

 

[Whizzard9992]

Nvidia proved that it is capable of building very decent core logic for the upper mainstream and for the performance segment. While the new chipset cannot beat the efficiency, overclocking abilities and storage performance of Intel's P965 with ICH8, the nForce 650i SLI inherited the flexibility of the 680i SLI (software firewall, overclocking utility). This makes it equivalent to the P965 for power users and probably the better choice for gamers.

Is it me, or does the conclusion contradict itself?

So you're saying I should buy a motherboard that underperforms its competitor because it has a cool OC utility and a nice software firewall? :? :? :?

When you point out a flaw, and the justify it, you make the article sound bias, like you're looking for reasons to justify it...

Not much of a deal. It doesn't officially support FSB1333, but those processors aren't available yet

The SLI-memory feature was removed when Nvidia reduced the USB 2.0 port count from 10 to eight. It's a pity, but would you really spend several hundred bucks on memory? I doubt it.

But the 650i SLI inherited Nvidia's strength of keeping up relatively high I/O performance with a degraded RAID 5 array.

(this one was particularly funny. Most people wouldn't even RUN their computer if their array degraded.)


Personally, it underperforms the 965, however it's the most viable option for SLI. I would go 965 for x-fire, and 650/680 if I really wanted SLI. I still got a 965 with an 8800, though, assuming bearlake will support SLI.

*edit* typo, formatting

 

[GSTe]

Yeah, why when something performs crap do you then always conclude that it's great?

 

[Nossy]

I agree, this article is trying too hard to recommend the nvidia chipset, when the only thing it truly offers is the option to do SLI (Which is its biggest selling point).

Higher power consumption, lower SATA performance, for a bit more OCing flexibility and SLI? For anybody looking for a single card graphics solution, it's a no brainer to go with 965 or 975, Xfire or not.

If you absolutely want to go SLI than 650 should not even be an option and you should go straight to 680. If you want SLI you are an EXTREME user who is willing to spend to squeeze out as much performance as you can. You already spending lots of money for two video cards, why not spend 50-60 bucks more for 680? I'm not even sure why you would want to do SLI with mid-range cards, when you get the similar performance with a high end card.

 

[nicolasb]

When talking about the ATI XPress 3200 chipset you say "This solution is the only choice for dual x16 PCI Express ATI Crossfire graphics." Actually it's only x8/x8. There aren't any x16/x16 Crossfire solutions for Intel CPUs. (A source of some irritation to me!)

 

[Whizzard9992]

I'd also like to point out that most builders are aware that a chipset (currently) won't have much impact on processor/memory performance.

What we're interested in is
(1) How fast the northbirdge can overclock
(2) How hot does the motherboard get when overclocked
(3) The performance of the southbridge & value-adds

For the most part, you covered the major points well, yet somehow muffed up the conclusion (ICH8 was equal or better in all benchmarks except a degraded RAID 5 array). In all fairness, though, you really did a great job trying to cover stressing the southbridge. I'd like to see this done more often, since the performance of peripherals is really what sets mobo's apart; overclocker or not.

The situation is different as you enter a particular market segment. If you evaluate chipsets with various usage models in mind, differences start to emerge. Motherboards for business PCs do not have to carry lots sophisticated components. Instead, these products need to be reliable and easily manageable. A long warranty and support period doesn't hurt either. Multimedia computers should have a plethora of interfaces and decent audio and video components. Enthusiast platforms are expected to overclock well and support all sorts of high-end features and hardware such as RAID storage, multiple graphics cards or the fastest processors and a lot of RAM.

Overall, it's not a bad article if you look past what appears to be THG pushing the 650 too hard (for reasons unknown). The lack of an OC review is described well by the statement that nVidia doesn't list the 650 as an entusiast part, but contradicts the conclusion that it's equal to the 965 (or better for power users... 8O ).

Nitpicking, I guess.

The only BIG thing missing is an apples-to-apples comparison of features. I got all excited when I saw the PCI-E write-up with regards to chipsets and Gfx lanes. Then I saw the table in the following page, and I was utterly impressed, until I noticed that the 965/975/X3000 were missing from the table. The article isn't comparing the 650 to the 680; it's comparing it to the competition.

I think the 650 does offer some features above-and-beyond the 965, such as the azalia codec (Which is usually only available on the premium versions of other boards) and SLI (which is otherwise not supported on other chipsets). Given the way the board is "pumped up" despite its deficiencies, I probably would have doubted the benchmarks if they were in favor of the 650. Also, I know MSI seems to be dropping a lot of marketing $$$ onto the market, but perhaps an ASUS or Gigabyte motherboard would have been a better choice?

Again, more nitpicking.

Another very, very dissapointing conclusion, and its missing a real competitive analysis for features. Otherwise the performance charts were nice, and it was a good read.

 

[Nossy]

True to that. The way the graphic express lanes is controlled in dual graphic setup should also be emphasized. The 3200 Express (RD600) chipset offers 8x/8x lanes but all the lanes are controlled by the northbridge. This is similar to the 650i setup.

The 680i offers 16x/16x but only 16x lanes are managed by the northbridge and the other 16x are managed by the lower bandwidth southbridge.

I would like to see a benchmark using the SAME SLI setup comparing the 650i and 680i chipset and see if there is any difference in performance.

I'm curious to know if the extra 16x lanes controlled by the southbridge provide any REAL performance boost.

More lanes doesn't mean better performance. For example:

4 lanes operating at 2bits/sec each lane is providing the same bandwidth as 2 lanes operating at 4bits/sec each lane.

Edit: There are already some benchmark comparing the i975X Xfire setup (8x/8x) to the P965 (16x/4x) Xfire and it clearly shows that 975X 8x/8x wins for Xfire. I'd like to see the same for 8x/8x SLI and 16x/16x SLI. After all MOST OF THOSE who are interested in nvidia chipsets have thought about SLI setup now, or looking to buy that second card at one point. Since there really is no alternative chipset for SLI.

 

[Phrozt]

Once again, another attrocious "reveiw" from Patric Schmid.

Again I say, go back to jr. High School and learn what "a control" and "variables" are, as well as how to extract a valid conclusion from the data you presented.

You introduced ONE board that you used. We all know there are issues with manufacturers/versions of other boards... but you only said one ONE of them was... so how are we supposed to know if the results are tainted by bad revisions of the other boards?

I've writted to Tom's Hardware once, but perhaps I should do it again. This "author" is absolutely HORRIBLE at writing reviews.

 

[woodchuk]

This seems like a good time to throw a question on this thread, I'm planning a computer primarily for scanning and printing very high resolution negatives and prints, so I'm interested in good USB2 performance. I had decided on an Intel Core Duo with an Intel MB w/ICH8, although I do like the nVidia products. This machine also needs to be quiet, so the cooler Southbridge looks good on the Intel, those MB's seem to run cooler all around. This machine will be in an Antec Overture flat case, presumably with XP since Vista drivers are nonexistent for my high end Epson scanner.
Anyone do any fast scanning printing? Thanks

 

[truerock]

If the motherboard has a parallel port, serial port, PS/2 ports , FDD support or other worthless crap on it - it is automaticaly off my list for consideration

 

[ikjadoon]

Nice review, but read ahead:

Why did you not pick the ASUS P5N-E SLI, the *better* 650i board? It hits 500 with some tweaking and 400 easy!

~Ibrahim~

 

[bobak]

HI - i skimmed over this review and couldn't help thinking it told me nothing of much value.

Anyway - I won an MSI P6N SLI-FI board and have done for a few weeks now.
It looks great, has a lot of features for £70 and had everything I needed to work right out the box as it should. After 10 mins of installing windows I couldnt help to notice, my system had frozen. I restarted, giving it the benefit of the doubt and carried on. Freeze after Freeze after Freeze. I finally found that if i moved the ram to different Dimm slots it worked fine.

It's up and running now and is working just fine, but I can't help feeling I have a rather buggy and inferior chipset/motherboard in my case. If you trawl the MSI forums, you'll find problem after problem with this board and it seems to be fairly incompatible with a broad spectrum of RAM types.

Good luck with this one. I'm saving for an EVGA 680i.

 

[bobak]

*own

 

[disposablehero]

mainstream = not enough for the high-end, too much for the low end.

IMO, thats where the 650i fits in.....PATA + SLI + decent OC ability. jack of all trades, master of none.

as far as the review, i agree the conclusion kind of sneaks up on you. i was expecting a "good enough, but nothing special".

 

[Spanki]

ASUS = "Better"? That kinda depends on your definition and your requirements (ie. it's subjective)...

PCI Slots: MSI has 3, ASUS has 2
Audio: MSI has 8 channels, ASUS has 6
LAN: MSI - Realtek RTL8211BL, ASUS - Marvell 88E1116 (~shrug~)
S/PDIF: MSI - optical + coaxial, ASUS - coaxial only
Cooling: MSI - heat-pipe across NB, SB and PWM + NB fan... ASUS - heatsink on NB only.
Caps: MSI - 100% solid, ASUS - not so.
Cost: MSI - ~$165, ASUS - ~$130

...so the MSI Platinum clearly out-classes the ASUS feature-wise, but it costs a bit more, so maybe that's not a fair comparison. The "value" MSI SLI-FI is more in it's class...

PCI Slots: MSI has 3, ASUS has 2
Audio: MSI has 8 channels, ASUS has 6
LAN: MSI - Realtek RTL8211BL, ASUS - Marvell 88E1116 (~shrug~)
S/PDIF: MSI - optical only, ASUS - coaxial only
Cooling: MSI - heatsinks on NB and SB... ASUS - heatsink on NB only.
Caps: tie.
Cost: MSI - ~$113, ASUS - ~$130

...hmm, looks like the "value" MSI board still has more features - and is ~$20 less expensive to boot .

As for over-clocking, if you look on the Taiwan forums, they've been doing 500+ oc's on the MSI board too. Let's just say that I've heard that told from both ends of the spectrum, including from new MSI board owners who rma'd thier ASUS board because it "didn't over-clock worth a damn" (or didn't work with thier memory, or was DOA or whatever).

Obviously different people, with different skill levels will have varrying experiences with pretty much any board you care to name. It could be that the ASUS board is easier to oc for some folks than others, but the oposite may be true as well.

As for the Gigabyte board... as far as I know, noone's seen it. Why would vapor hardware make a good choice for such an article? :roll: (I'd love to see a review/preview of the GA board, but it's not available yet).

I don't claim that the MSI boards are without problems (various people have had various memory problems), but you'll find similar posts about any board on the market.

Of course I'm biased (as anyone else here)... I bought the Platinum board (my first from MSI) - it suited my needs and has been running solid. ~ shrug ~.

 

[ikjadoon]

It does, but how many people do you know that have 7.1 sound? Not too many. And cooling: Legit Reviews, I think, got it to 496FSB without a cooler on the south bridge and the fancy copper cooling on the MSI couldn't do that!

Maybe THG got a bum board, but from what I'm seeing the ASUS can overclock to higher speeds without 100% solid caps and a fancy all-around copper cooler...The ASUS can do nearly 500FSB without fan noise, too.

You've got me on the PCI slots and S/PDIF, however, yet I barely use the former and don't even touch the latter. I agree that it is extremely subjective, but from this one (1) review, the MSI board is not proving itself in overclocking. MSI, actually, has some very nice overclocking boards: anyone remember the MSI K8GM2-FID or whatever mATX S939 board they had? That thing overclocked higher than some full-size boards!

lol, I'm not trying to get you into buyer's remorse or anything: the MSI board is great and if did my build again I would seriously give the MSI board a hard look. (After I read a review of it hitting 500FSB, though.)

How is your's overclocking?

~Ibrahim~

 

[Spanki]

Well, as someone mentioned above, the title (and presumed intent) of this article was to determine whether or not the 650i represented a good 'mainstream' chipset. For mainstream use, you want out-of-the-box stability, performance and features/diversity. If the board also has good/moderate overclocking ability, then that's a plus.

IMO, the MSI P6N SLI Platinum fits that description pretty well . I didn't mention it before, but here's another review that has the MSI board performing well against the ASUS P5N (and the Striker Extreme, for that matter), in 'out-of-the-box' configuration.

I don't have a 7.1 speaker system myself, but that doesn't mean I won't want to buy one 6 months from now . For PCI slots, I also have more than *I* can use, but if someone is running a SLI setup with 2 2-slot-wide VGA cards, they lose one PCI slot in either board. That leaves you with exactly one PCI slot on the ASUS board, where the MSI board has 2 left - a better situation for 'mainstream' use (where people may have a TV tuner card, and/or X-Fi or other sound card they want to use, additional raid controller cards or whatever).

As for over-clocking... as mentioned before, to some extent, that will depend on the skill/knowledge of the person doing the oc'ing, as well as their cooling setup. I have no problems believing that the ASUS board may ultimately oc higher (they've put out more BIOS updates), but I've also seen some impressive figures with the MSI boards. Unfortunately, I don't speak Chinese, but if you look around in the "New Intel Mainboard and related test" forum, you can find several threads where they are getting 450-515+ FSB on the MSI boards.

Me? I'm still running the stock Intel HSF on a E6400 (locked at 8x multiplier), which gets pretty hot as you approach 3GHz, and I need to have a stable system for work, so I haven't pushed it yet. But don;t worry, I have no buyer's remorse - I'm perfectly happy with my decision - it was the right board for *me* .

 

[Spanki]

Again, the posts in that forum lose something in thier translation from Chinese, but here's a few of the threads to look for:

"965P killer N650i. MSI P6N-SLI Platinum Firm Listed!"

"CompoTech 650I overvalued well plate measured go up in smoke !P6N sealed listed platinum version" (trust me, that title didn't translate well )

..also, if you get to page 3 of this thread, you'll see a 515(x7 = 3.604 GHz) posting. And on page 5, another one from yamate at 427(x9 = 3.85 GHz).

 

[ikjadoon]

I've considered the 650i more of watered down 680i than a mainstream counterpart; I know they mean kind of the same thing, but I just expect amazing overclocks out of them.

Maybe THG just got a bum board, then. Shame, I was hoping for some high numbers.

If I can get just one review of some high OCs (I prefer a review versus people only for credibility's sake), I will fall in love with the P6N. The *only* thing that isn't making me leave my bias with the ASUS is the MSI's current lack of overclockability in review boards. I like my P5N-E just fine. I'm not missing that extra PCI slot, but I might one day! Personally, I'm still waiting for PCI-e to start booming in non-GPU related areas.

Exactly. I think if I bought again (the P5N-E came in a system that was bought, not built), I would probably go with the P6N Platinum for the aforementioned reasons and just to try out it's OC'ing skills. It looks like a great board, a board that the P5N-E should've became. Hopefully, ASUS will released a P5N Premium to generate some competition and lower that $160 price!

Same here: The P5N-E SLI is great for *me*.

~Ibrahim~

 

[ikjadoon]

Never mind. Found that Anandtech review! They hit 450FSB with the P6N, while the P5N-E they had hit 502FSB...They are close, but the P5N-E has a *slight* upper hand in overclocking.

~Ibrahim~

 

[disposablehero]

another P6N review done today - http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2099

435 on the overclock

 

[darklife41]

I'm usually quick to buy and test new motherboards. But the 6xxi series doesn't excite me too much.

About 2 yrs ago we started testing AMD boards and CPUs again. Hadn't been using them for quite awhile due to reliability problems with the socket 7.

Anyway, to make a long story short... we tried several high end NF4 boards, including DFI Lan Party DR-SLI and Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI. Every darned NF4 chipset had problems with corrupting RAID arrays. Every one. I think the longest an array lasted was 6 months, but we were lucky if they lasted 3 weeks. Seemed to be a stray voltage issue with the chipset, as the only way to get back to normal was to remove the SATA connectors from the NF4 controller, connect them to the other controller, power up and down, then connect them back to the NF4 controller. This was the same on all boards with NF4, regardless of the manufacturer.

So we ditched AMD and Nforce completely. Never had a similar problem with an Intel board with the same components. Also got a lot of BSODs with AMD/Nforce, that I haven't had since Windows 98 on an Intel system. Sometimes the BSOD would trigger the corrupt array, but not always. Often just shutting down normally and starting up the next day would do the same thing.

Bottom line is that we were very disappointed with Nvidia chipsets, but mainly for the RAID issue. I've never seen this problem listed on the internet. Mostly people have been very high on Nforce chipsets, which makes me wonder how many actually run RAID.

I'd like to know people's experience with 6xxi and RAID arrays lately. The problem with the reviews is that they don't have the system long enough to see how they last over time. Anyone?

 

[ShadowdogKGB]

Well all nit picking aside, I bought one and it's sitting here with an e4300 and I'm just waiting on some memory this week so I'll post some results.

 

[ikjadoon]

Awesome, can't wait for the results!

~Ibrahim~

 

[flyer335]

mis dos centavos,

I am another pleased owner of this fine board. Proud to say it!
Great layout, install was a breeze (though MSI is in serious need of
a native English speaking tech writer), basic setup went alright,
though I still have issues (probably due to using the crappy utilities);
but performance and ease of OCing is great. On my second bootup I disabled all the 'auto' stuff, set 'System Clock Mode' to 'LINKED', entered 1333 'FSB Clock' and CPU multiplier of 8, saved and rebooted to CPU-Z for 2,668MHz 'Core Speed', 333.5MHz 'Bus Speed' and 1334MHz 'Rated FSB'. Memory 'Dual channel', 1:1 FSB/DRAM @ 332.5MHz (4-4-4-12clocks-18clocks-1T).
No increase in voltages nor adjusting ram timing.

Furthermore, this board booted the Patriot memory in my sig without manually setting the vDIMM (couldn't due to lack of required keys on my keyboard).

I had been waiting for 'the right 650i mobo' to come out (needed to hang on to my soon-to-be 'legacy' gear), though, since
September , I used an ASUS P5PE-VM I purchased when I bought my E6400. Talk about a nightmare install! Manual mislabelled and inaccurate, ASUS/Asrock/Gygabyte doesn't even know how to hook-up the 'Front Panel Audio' header (their QC has gone...), though it did match the P5NE on features! No, wait! The P5PE-VM had 4 PCI slots.
I had two ASUS boards prior to that (they were adequate, NO Problems at all in 5 years use). Took 3 days to sort out the problems on that last one.

I know 2.9GHz ain't .. uh, all that, but I haven't even tried yet.
I needed the features that, at the moment, only the P6N Platinum offers- reliably, that is unless you can afford a Striker (which means you could probably afford to pay someone to OC and play your games for you).

nur meine swei fennigen...
TonyB.
--------------------
P6N SLI Platinum, MSI; BIOS ver. 1.0
E6400 @ 2900.0MHz (8x362.5) 36% Over specification
w/Sythe Ninja plus Rev. B; 35c idle/45c normal load
2GB Patriot PC-6400/DDR2-800 PDC22G6400LLK
XFX Fatal1ty GeForce 7600GT
2xIDE HDD
1xLiteOn DVD-R/RW
Antec TP-430 PSU
Audigy2ZS
Presonus Firebox
M-Audio O2