EVGA nForce 650i Ultra: Performance on a Budget
by Gary Key on April 10, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
EVGA 650i Ultra Basic Features
The EVGA BIOS offers a decent set of options available for tweaking the board with specific emphasis placed on the available memory settings. However, with memory voltages limited to 2.10V we found it difficult to take advantage of the memory options with a vast majority of our modules. Only our high end modules from OCZ, Corsair, and Patriot were able to operate at 1T command rates with absolute stability. We found in memory testing that switching to manual settings and changing the tCAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, and command rate was required to ensure optimum performance.
While we understand NVIDIA's reluctance to open up the BIOS options on a board designed for the budget market we do think they made a mistake in this area. Our performance results generated by the board would indicate that a couple of additional voltage options, improved electricals, and an increase to 2.20V for the memory would have transformed this board from very good to exceptional status in the sub-$100 market.
EVGA offers full support for NVIDIA's nTune system utility and we only had a couple of minor problems with it during testing. You need to use the PCI-E slider to change the SPP voltage while the ability to change the FSB voltage is not available. Otherwise, the utility is one of the better vendor supplied programs available, although it's not quite as polished as the uGuru technology from abit.
| EVGA nForce 650i Ultra | |
| Market Segment: | Budget Performance - $99 |
| CPU Interface: | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support: | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Pentium EE, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA 650i Ultra SPP (C55) + nF430 MCP (MCP51) |
| Bus Speeds: | Auto, 400 to 2500 QDR (100~625) in 1MHz increments |
| Memory Ratios: | Auto, Sync., 1:1, 5:4, 3:2 |
| Memory Speed: | 400MHz~1400MHz in various increments |
| PCI Express: | 100MHz~200MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| LDT Frequency: | 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x |
| Core Voltage: | Auto, 0.80000V to 1.60000 in 0.00625V increments |
| FSB Options: | Auto, Linked, Unlinked |
| CPU Clock Multiplier: | Auto, 6x-11x in 1X increments - Core 2 Duo, downwards unlocked, Core 2 Extreme 6x-50X |
| DRAM Voltage: | Auto, 1.80V to 2.10V in .10V increments |
| DRAM Timing Control: | Optimal, Manual - 10 DRAM Timing Options |
| NB Voltage: | Auto, 1.20V to 1.50V in .10V increments |
| FSB Voltage: | Auto, 1.20V to 1.40V in .10V increments |
| Memory Slots: | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration, DDR2-400, 533, 667, 800 Regular Unbuffered Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots: | 1 - PCIe X16 (x16 electrical) 2 - PCIe x1 3 - PCI Slot 2.2 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID: | 4 SATA 3Gbps Ports - nF430 MCP (RAID 0,1, 0+1, 5, JBOD) |
| Onboard IDE: | 1 ATA133/100/66 Port (2 drives) - nF430 MCP |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394: | 8 USB 2.0 Ports - 4 I/O Panel - 4 via Headers Firewire 400 - not supported |
| Onboard LAN: | NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet - PCIe - 1 x Marvell 88E1116 PHY - 1 port via 430 MCP |
| Onboard Audio: | Realtek ALC885 - 8-channel HD audio codec |
| Power Connectors: | ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EATX 12V |
| I/O Panel: | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x Audio Panel 1 x RJ45 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| BIOS Revision: | Award 731N1P01 |
| Board Revision: | ILL 1.0 |
The EVGA BIOS offers a decent set of options available for tweaking the board with specific emphasis placed on the available memory settings. However, with memory voltages limited to 2.10V we found it difficult to take advantage of the memory options with a vast majority of our modules. Only our high end modules from OCZ, Corsair, and Patriot were able to operate at 1T command rates with absolute stability. We found in memory testing that switching to manual settings and changing the tCAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, and command rate was required to ensure optimum performance.
While we understand NVIDIA's reluctance to open up the BIOS options on a board designed for the budget market we do think they made a mistake in this area. Our performance results generated by the board would indicate that a couple of additional voltage options, improved electricals, and an increase to 2.20V for the memory would have transformed this board from very good to exceptional status in the sub-$100 market.
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| Click to enlarge |
EVGA offers full support for NVIDIA's nTune system utility and we only had a couple of minor problems with it during testing. You need to use the PCI-E slider to change the SPP voltage while the ability to change the FSB voltage is not available. Otherwise, the utility is one of the better vendor supplied programs available, although it's not quite as polished as the uGuru technology from abit.
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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.