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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fenacv - Tuesday, January 8, 2008 - link
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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.