EVGA nForce 650i Ultra: Performance on a Budget
by Gary Key on April 10, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Thoughts
This is our first look at a true NVIDIA budget solution for the Intel platform. NVIDIA has done a terrific job combining the 650i SLI SPP and nf430 MCP into a board design that offers extremely competitive performance at a compelling price point. This is the same design philosophy that NVIDIA is using with the 680i LT SLI chipset but we felt like that EVGA board lacked a finishing coat of polish. In some ways we feel the same way about the EVGA 650i Ultra board as well.
Don't get us wrong: we think the performance of the board and the basic features are terrific for an estimated selling price around $95 to $99, especially when looking at other Intel solutions in this price range. However, we firmly believe that a few additions such as memory voltages to 2.2V, CPU VTT / GTL Ref voltage control, Firewire, and maybe a six-layer board design would have placed this board in the exceptional category for those enthusiasts on a budget.
What those extras would have meant in additional cost is something we will never know, but if it only meant a few extra dollars then we firmly believe they would have been well worth it. As it is, we have to judge the board on its own merits against other offerings in the same price range and with that we present it a Silver Editors' Choice Award.
The EVGA 650i Ultra stands out from other boards in this price category by offering top tier performance in several areas and a feature list that cannot be beat at very reasonable pricing. When comparing features to Intel P965 chipsets found in this price sector we see our EVGA 650i Ultra offering onboard RAID, asynchronous memory capability, and best-in-class overclocking for the same or less money. The addition of GPU optimizations that offer a free 2% to 4% improvement with certain GPUs in our gaming scores is an added bonus.
We did not experience any major problems with the board during an intense week long test schedule utilizing Windows XP. We did find a few minor issues with nTune, a fan header that is thermally preset to 60C before the fan will operate, and a few overclocking nuances with our quad core CPU due to crosstalk problems on the board. We just started Vista testing on this board and will provide an update in our upcoming roundup article. We have not experienced issues in Vista yet other than immature driver release problems. It appears from our forums and others that NVIDIA's current driver offerings are not as mature as they need to be for most users, and that problem has also cropped up with other drivers for other users.
We are concerned about the lack of a 2.2V memory setting as we would have liked some additional headroom with our mid to upper range memory modules. As it stands, we are still able to utilize CAS3 and 1T command rates with the SPP voltage increased to 1.30V with our premium memory selection. In all honesty, the application performance differences between our budget memory modules and the higher performing modules were usually less than 5% in extended testing that showed our Transcend JetRam DDR2-800 or Wintec AMPX DDR2-800 being a perfect budget match for this board with a price around $125 for 2GB.
The overclocking aspects of the board are terrific considering the price point and with the asynchronous memory capability you can really push the FSB while retaining budget priced DDR2-800 memory in the system. This is one area where NVIDIA has an advantage over Intel in this price sector as the P965 boards are generally limited to 400FSB and less than stellar memory performance. We typically found that 4-4-4-12 1T or 4-4-3-10 2T timings at DDR2-800 offered a nice balance between memory price considerations and performance on this board.
We feel like the EVGA 650i Ultra offers a high degree of quality, performance, and support in a package that costs a little under $100. This board is certainly not perfect nor is it designed for everyone but it offers almost the perfect package in an Intel market sector that has not had anything real interesting to talk about for a long time. We are left wondering why NVIDIA chose the silent path to introduce this chipset when it's obvious they really have something interesting to discuss this time around.
This is our first look at a true NVIDIA budget solution for the Intel platform. NVIDIA has done a terrific job combining the 650i SLI SPP and nf430 MCP into a board design that offers extremely competitive performance at a compelling price point. This is the same design philosophy that NVIDIA is using with the 680i LT SLI chipset but we felt like that EVGA board lacked a finishing coat of polish. In some ways we feel the same way about the EVGA 650i Ultra board as well.
Don't get us wrong: we think the performance of the board and the basic features are terrific for an estimated selling price around $95 to $99, especially when looking at other Intel solutions in this price range. However, we firmly believe that a few additions such as memory voltages to 2.2V, CPU VTT / GTL Ref voltage control, Firewire, and maybe a six-layer board design would have placed this board in the exceptional category for those enthusiasts on a budget.
What those extras would have meant in additional cost is something we will never know, but if it only meant a few extra dollars then we firmly believe they would have been well worth it. As it is, we have to judge the board on its own merits against other offerings in the same price range and with that we present it a Silver Editors' Choice Award.
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We did not experience any major problems with the board during an intense week long test schedule utilizing Windows XP. We did find a few minor issues with nTune, a fan header that is thermally preset to 60C before the fan will operate, and a few overclocking nuances with our quad core CPU due to crosstalk problems on the board. We just started Vista testing on this board and will provide an update in our upcoming roundup article. We have not experienced issues in Vista yet other than immature driver release problems. It appears from our forums and others that NVIDIA's current driver offerings are not as mature as they need to be for most users, and that problem has also cropped up with other drivers for other users.
We are concerned about the lack of a 2.2V memory setting as we would have liked some additional headroom with our mid to upper range memory modules. As it stands, we are still able to utilize CAS3 and 1T command rates with the SPP voltage increased to 1.30V with our premium memory selection. In all honesty, the application performance differences between our budget memory modules and the higher performing modules were usually less than 5% in extended testing that showed our Transcend JetRam DDR2-800 or Wintec AMPX DDR2-800 being a perfect budget match for this board with a price around $125 for 2GB.
The overclocking aspects of the board are terrific considering the price point and with the asynchronous memory capability you can really push the FSB while retaining budget priced DDR2-800 memory in the system. This is one area where NVIDIA has an advantage over Intel in this price sector as the P965 boards are generally limited to 400FSB and less than stellar memory performance. We typically found that 4-4-4-12 1T or 4-4-3-10 2T timings at DDR2-800 offered a nice balance between memory price considerations and performance on this board.
We feel like the EVGA 650i Ultra offers a high degree of quality, performance, and support in a package that costs a little under $100. This board is certainly not perfect nor is it designed for everyone but it offers almost the perfect package in an Intel market sector that has not had anything real interesting to talk about for a long time. We are left wondering why NVIDIA chose the silent path to introduce this chipset when it's obvious they really have something interesting to discuss this time around.
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Zak - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
Is there a SPDIF out bracket included? I'd find that a show stopper if it wasn't. Also, regarding the layout: with more and more video cards being quite large these days why they don't allow some extra space between the PCIx graphics slot and the next slot? This is a huge problem with mobos IMHO. Just because I want non-SLI, midrange motherboard doesn't mean I won't have a high end video card in it. Zak.saratoga - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
I noticed the onboard sound benchmarks, but theres nothing about the onboard sound quality. Rightmark has a benchmark for this that take 2 minutes to run and spits out very useful information. Why not include those results like some other sites do?While knowing how it performs is great, knowing if the results are worth listening to is also important. I don't care if its the fastest onboard sound in the world, if its got poor SNR figures, I'm probably going to buy a PCI card :)
yacoub - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
Added two items to your list of desired additions. If a 650i Ultra board came out with the above features, it'd be worth an additional 25% in price to me. (i.e. $125)
It's still practically amazing how well the C2D chips OC even on this board with its somewhat limited overclocking features. =)
Thanks again for a great review Gary.
yacoub - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
Thanks for including the benchmarks with a real-world system. It's neat to see how incredibly different most of the test results are compared to your monster rig with XLC Flex RAM and an 8800GTX. ;)yacoub - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
So don't buy this board if your DDR2 sticks want to run at 2.2v or 2.3v.
yacoub - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
Ah yes, there you go:So time to wait and see if any other folks (Asus, Abit, MSi, etc) come out with a 650i board that offers better adjustment options in the BIOS.
Also would like to see a fully solid-capacitor design as well. Wouldn't mind paying $120-$125 for one of these 650i Ultras with those features added.
yacoub - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
I'm really glad you posted that nice feature chart on page 2 because I didn't know that only 680i boards got the EPP compatibility. Boy it sure would suck to spend extra money on nice high-performance DDR2 RAM that advertises really nice timings when EPP is enabled, only to find out your nice new 650i SLI or Ultra board doesn't support EPP.nullpointerus - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - link
I'll probably be getting one of these when I upgrade to C2Q late this year. From my browsing experiences, the current crop of Core-compatible boards are much too expensive or lack the new features I would like to gain by upgrading to the new platform. Kudos to EVGA for bringing a solid mid-range board to market!I'm glad to hear nTune (almost) works properly with this board. On my NF4 Ultra board, nTune crashes everytime I try to bring up the system status/overclocking stuff, and BTW the software is a pain to get working in Vista--something like six error messages come up when started without administrator permissions. Hopefully, the Vista issues will be resolved in a few months.