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NVIDIA's 680i SLI Chipset Ready for Primetime
AnInkle writes, "The Tech Report conducts their usual exhaustive evaluation of NVIDIA's other big launch today, the nForce 680i SLI. The new chipset pairs an already proven south bridge chip with a new north bridge that has impressive overclocking potential and a redesigned (read: fast) memory controller. Combined with a motherboard design, production-quality BIOS and polished tweaking software that are all attractive and retail-ready, you end up with a 'complete reference platform that's perfect for picky enthusiasts and serious overclockers,' if you want to pay for it."
I wish they'd stop doing that, I just BOUGHT a brand new motherboard with the 550 SLI about 2 months ago... now both my 79xx card and my MB are "obsolete" and some damned 13 year old will get this new stuff for xmas and have shinier graphics than mine!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No....this article from today: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/ 08/1942207 is the GPU they recently released. The article from *this* post is about their new SLI-compatible chipset. Completely different hardware...
Just speculation, but the fact the layout of the motherboard to prevent clutter is more significant than you'd think. In systems with bleeding edge components, you will have components that will still be pulling a generous amount of power. If you have cluttered cables around main airways across the motherboard, you don't remove heat as fast as a well-designed and channeled system. If it's really bad, then you can overheat the machine and have components shut themselves down, or clock themselves down.
Something as little as component layout can make a huge impact.
NVIDIA also launched a new enthusiast line of motherboard chipsets today in support of Intel's Core 2 Duo/Quad and AMD Athlon 64 processors. NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI and nForce 680a SLI motherboard chipsets will also allow a pair of GeForce 8800 series graphics cards to run in tandem for nearly double the performance. The new chipset also offers a ton of integrated features, like Gigabit Ethernet Link Teaming, FirstPacket traffic priortization and MediaShield RAID technologies.
I've always had a thing for intel motherboards, at least when building computers for use at work. Something about having an intel chipset on an intel board always seemed to result in fewer motherboard setup problems. Sure some of the tweaking was not there, but for the "it just needs to work" systems i wasn't looking for tweaking. The only problem was having to use an intel processor. Now that nVidia is making motherboards, or so it seems, this should create a reliable solution in the AMD-flavor of motherboards. Now to convince my boss...
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I mean, seriously, is that just a random marketing buzzword to make them sound special? Are other BIOS's not "production-quality"?
I always get a laugh out of this sort of thing. The basic premis here is that at stock speeds it is about the same as other motherboards (Intel Core 2 Duo). However the differenace is that it overclocks like a motherfu*ker. If you look at its compitition in the Asus and Gigabyte using an intel chipset, they also overclock well (if not quite so much). The big kicker is that this new board costs about 300$ compaired to like 170$ or even 130$.
So the moral of the story is just because some piece of computer equipment does something really well, a better computer it does not make (within reason, most people have some sort of cost restrictions to their lives). What I mean by this is, why buy a 300$ motherboard to overclock a 210$ CPU, when you can buy a 170$ motherboard and use the extra 130$ to buy a better CPU to overclock in the first place? Thats the differance between an E6300 and a E6600, for those that know what that means. Of course if your like me, you think the money would be better spent on a E6400, and pocket the change, for say something really important like beer or possibly pizza.
Of course prices will go down, but so with the compitition (at least to a certain threshold), its all about finding that perfect (or as close as you can get it) balance of components and price.
Just my 2 cents.... Cheers!