The 680i Platform

Alongside the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS, NVIDIA is launching a brand new chipset for Intel processors, the nForce 680i (and 650i SLI and Ultra). Our own Wesley Fink has published an in-depth look at the new chipset, but we felt the release significant enough to comment on some of its features here in this review.

For the most part, competing with Intel for its chipset business is an effort in futility. The companies that have tried have ended up either segregated to the low end of the market or kept to an extremely small niche. The past has proven that it is simply very difficult for a company that isn't Intel to produce a better performing chipset for Intel processors.

The multi-GPU era has changed things a bit, because now all of the sudden there's a new feature that Intel can't simply support on its chipsets. It took a while but ATI eventually allowed Intel to support CrossFire on its chipsets, but who knows how long that will last given ATI's new owner. While ATI caved in and supported Intel, NVIDIA would not capitulate. NVIDIA is like a mini-Intel and just like the big version, it doesn't play well with others. Licensing SLI for use on Intel chipsets was simply not in the cards; instead NVIDIA used SLI support as a reason for Intel users to consider NVIDIA chipsets. As NVIDIA continues to have the stronger multi-GPU lineup (although ATI has recently started fixing some of its problems with CrossFire), the SLI brand remains strong.

Although behaving like a veteran chipset manufacturer, NVIDIA is still a relative newcomer to the chipset business, but one thing we have seen from the boys in green is that they definitely learn from their mistakes. Dating back to the original nForce chipset, NVIDIA fell flat on its face with its first attempt at PC core logic, but bounced back to topple VIA with its nForce2 chipset. And it's that nForce to nForce2 transition that we're seeing here again with NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI.

The 680i SLI is strictly a high end chipset, as the lower end of the market will still be serviced by NVIDIA's 570 SLI. The 680i supports all of the checkbox features: 1066MHz FSB (with unofficial support for higher speeds), dual channel DDR2-800, two PCIe x16 slots, one PCIe x8, 2 GbE ports, 6 SATA, 10 USB and HD Audio.

There are some pretty unique features about the new chipset. For starters it is the first NVIDIA core logic to be built on a 90nm process. The 680i SPP (aka North Bridge) is built on TSMC's 90nm process and thus ends up running cooler and can be overclocked more than NVIDIA's previous offerings in the area. The South Bridge (680i MCP) is still a 130nm chip but its functions are far less critical than those of the North Bridge.

In the 680i SPP is an updated version of NVIDIA's pre-fetching core called DASP. The major change to the 680i's DASP is that it is optimized for the memory access patterns of Conroe and Kentsfield which apparently are very different from NetBurst CPUs of the past. Given the aggressive prefetching done by the new Core processors and the large shared L2 cache, it isn't surprising to find out that memory controllers tuned to older Intel processors might not be best optimized for Core.

The primary function of the 680i's DASP is to examine memory access patterns and prefetch data into a local buffer that it thinks the processor will need at a later point in time. The updated version of DASP prefetches one cache line (64B) at a time into an internal buffer, although NVIDIA wouldn't disclose the size of the buffer.

We couldn't get much more information on DASP 4.0 from NVIDIA other than it supports prioritizing of reads over writes (to avoid read-to-write delays from random memory requests) and that a number of proprietary algorithms are used to make sure that prefetching doesn't occur when the CPU actually needs data from the memory controller.

Overclocking is a very large part of the new 680i chipset, and Wes' review of it goes into great detail about what exactly is possible with this new platform. For us, the other interesting part of the 680i platform is that, for the first time, NVIDIA is allowing its partners to sell NVIDIA engineered and designed 680i motherboards.

It has often been the case that a chipset maker's reference board has far more bells and whistles than anything its motherboard partners actually sell on the market. NVIDIA was growing weary of this being the case and instead effectively engineered a reference board that could be sold in retail.

Motherboard makers can still choose to design their own 680i boards, but some have opted to simply rebrand NVIDIA's design.

We ran all of our tests for this review on NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI motherboard; this particular one is branded by EVGA. We were extremely pleased with the stability, BIOS, attention to detail and overall performance of the 680i solution. The decision to introduce NVIDIA designed 680i boards also shows how far NVIDIA has come as a manufacturer; if you want something done right, you sometimes have to do it yourself, and that's exactly what NVIDIA decided to do here. Honestly, the only downside is its estimated cost of $229.


Three PCIe x16 slots (one is an x8 electrical)

NVIDIA is also introducing a lower cost 650i SLI chipset with only two x8 PCIe slots, but there will be no NVIDIA engineered boards available based on that chipset.

Power Supply Requirements The Test
Comments Locked

111 Comments

View All Comments

  • aweigh - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    You can just use the program DX Tweaker to enable Triple Buffering in any D3D game and use your VSYNC with negligable performance impact. So you can play with your VSYNC, a high-res and AA as well. :)
  • aweigh - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    I'm gonna buy an 88 specifically to use 4x4 SuperSampling in games. Why bother with MSAA with a card like that?
  • DerekWilson - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    Supersampling can make textures blurry -- especially very detailed textures.

    And the impact will be much greater with the use of longer more detailed pixel shaders (as the shaders must be evaluated at every sub-pixel in supersample).

    I think transparency / adaptive AA are enough.

    On your previous comment, I don't think we're to the point where we can hit triple buffering, vsync, high levels of AA AND high resolution (2560x1600) without some input lag (triple buffering plus vsync with framerates less than your refresh rate can cause problems).

    If you're talking about enabling all these options on a lower resolution lcd panel, then I can definitely see that as a good use of the hardware. And it might be interesting to look at more numbers with these type of options enabled.

    Thanks for the suggestion.
  • aweigh - Saturday, November 11, 2006 - link

    I never knew that about SuperSampling. Is it something similar to Quincux blurring? And would using a negative LOD via RivaTuner/nHancer counteract the effect?

    How about NVIDIA's Digital Sharpness setting in Color Correction? I've found a smidge of sharpening can do wonders to improve overall clarity.

    By the way, when you said Adaptive AA, were you referring to ATI cards?
  • Unam - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    Derek,

    Saw your comment regarding the rationale for the test resolution, while I understand your reasoning now, it still begs the question how many of your readers have 30" LCD flat panels?
  • DerekWilson - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    There might not be many out there right now, but it's still the right test platform for G80. We did test down to 1600x1200, so people do have information if they need it.

    But it speaks to who should own an 8800 GTX right now. It doesn't make sense to spend that much money on a part if you aren't going to get anything out of it with your 1280x1024 panel.

    Owners of a 2560x1600 panel will want an 8800 GTX. Owners of an 8800 GTX will want a 2560x1600 panel. Smooth framerates with the ability to enable 4xAA in every game that allowed it is reason enough. People without a 2560x1600 panel should probably wait until prices come down on the 8800 GTX or until games that are able to push the 8800 GTX harder to buy the card.
  • Unam - Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - link

    Derek,

    A follow up to testing resolutions, the FPS numbers we see in your articles, are they maximum, minimum or average?
  • Unam - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    Who the heck runs 2560x1600? At 4XAA? Come on guys, real world benchmarks please!
  • DerekWilson - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link

    we did:

    1600x1200, 1920x1440, and even 1280x1024 in Oblivion
  • dragonsqrrl - Thursday, August 25, 2011 - link

    ....lol, owned.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now