Feature Articles

NVIDIA nForce 600i Series - Intel Platform Core Logic Technology Overview

By Zachary Chan - 9 Nov 2006

Features and Final Words

nForce 600i Series Features

  • Extreme Overclocking - Without an actual board on hand at the time of writing, we do not really have first hand experience on the true overclocking potential of the nForce 680i SLI chipset. However, it you look at its specifications, NVIDIA is hell bent on beating any and all its competitors. Right out of the box, they are basically guaranteeing that the chipset will support a 1333MHz FSB and DDR2-1200 (if you have the proper CPU and RAM of course). From our experience, we already know that the Core 2 Duo processors have no problem working with a 1333MHz FSB, so the nForce 680i SLI could be your ticket to a 'manufacturer supported' speed bump. nForce 680i SLI boards should also have a powerful BIOS that puts users in control of just about everything similar to what we've been accustomed to on the nForce 590 SLI AMD chipset.

For the nForce 680i SLI, all three graphics PCIe lanes can be manually controlled - A tweaker's paradise.

  • LinkBoost Technology - For people who want to overclock, but perhaps a little daunted by the BIOS can look forward to LinkBoost technology from NVIDIA. LinkBoost will detect your hardware installed and automatically apply a guaranteed 25% overclock to the PCIe and SPP/MCP HT link frequencies. At present, LinkBoost will only work with a combination of nForce 680i SLI and GeForce 7900 GTX or 8800 series cards. LinkBoost doesn't overclock your FSB though, just the PEG clocks (PCIe link speeds).
  • SLI-Ready Memory with EPP - No surprise that EPP memory modules are supported across the board for all three nForce 600i series chipsets. With SLI-Ready memory, NVIDIA introduced Extended Memory Profiles with tweaked timing in addition to regular SPD. Since the nForce 500 series was launched, available SLI-Ready EPP memory modules have increased. Currently NVIDIA has certified various SLI-Ready memory modules from Corsair, Kingston, OCZ and Crucial and being one of its closes memory partners, Corsair is introducing their Dominator series of DDR2 memory with speeds up to DDR2-1200.

    The nForce 650i SLI and 650i Ultra officially support the DDR2-800 specifications, but the nForce 680i SLI claims to be compatible with memory up to DDR2-1200. This should truly please enthusiasts who have been lamenting on the nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition's weak support for high frequency memory and FSB. Like Intel's Fast Memory Access and Memory Pipeline Technology, the nForce 600i series will feature NVIDIA's fourth-generation DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Preprocessor) memory optimization for perfecting data to feed the processor. Specifically, the DASP 4.0 is tweaked for Kenstfield processors as traffic patterns for quad-core vary from that of a dual-core processor, plus the difference in the processor's L2 cache.

  • DualNet Technology - Introduced with the nForce 500 series for AMD, DualNET is also available on the nForce 600i series. Chipsets with DualNet basically have two Gigabit LAN MACs built-in, but the beauty of this technology is that both MACs can work as a Teaming pair, forming a huge 2Gb pipe with fail-over and load balancing features. There is one caveat for the nForce 600i series however. While DualNet was a standard feature in all three of the nForce 500 AMD chipsets (excluding only the entry-level nForce 550), the nForce 680i SLI is the only chipset in the nForce 600i family to feature DualNet. Both the nForce 650i SLI and 650i Ultra will only feature a single Gigabit LAN port.
  • FirstPacket - FirstPacket is a built-in network feature supporting real-time packet prioritization, benefiting latency sensitive applications like games and VoIP software. With FirstPacket, users can configure and optimize which applications have priority queue in your network. FirstPacket is available in all the nForce 600i chipsets.
  • nTune 5.5 - In order to enable the full tweaking features under Windows for motherboards running on the nForce 600i series of chipsets, users will have to use the latest nTune 5.5 and above. Of course, like all the previous nForce and nTune versions, the motherboard needs to support it as well.

 nTune 5.5 plugs into NVIDIA's new control panel scheme.

 

Conclusion

The launch of the nForce 680i SLI puts NVIDIA's Intel platform solutions back on track with its AMD counterpart as far as benefits and chipset feature set is concerned. And just in time too to support not only Intel's Core 2 Duo, but promote the Core 2 Quad as well as enthusiast overclocking with 1333MHz FSB and the new DDR2-1200 SLI-Ready Memory support.

It is very obvious that NVIDIA is focusing on the nForce 680i SLI as the flagship chipset for the Intel platform. With all the new features and extreme frequency support, they hope to once again challenge Intel's own chipsets like the original nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition had. If its features are anything to go by, the nForce 680i SLI should be a very attractive and powerful platform indeed. However, we're looking at a very steep pricing for nForce 680i SLI boards. We're still awaiting pricing information from manufacturers, but NVIDIA's estimate of US$249-299 will be much higher than most of the Intel 975X Express enthusiast boards available today. For comparison, the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Wi-Fi can be found online for US$230. Another interesting matter pertaining to nForce 680i boards is that NVIDIA would now not only offer the reference design specs to its board partners who require it but it also offers a completely ready-built reference board (made by their contract manufacturer) for the board partner to repackage and put it into retail as soon as possible. While this is the reason for new motherboard vendor names like EVGA and BFG offering classy nForce 680i motherboard packages, enthusiasts should also expect to find more of these boards to have a lot in common.

If you're looking at plain performance, we're sure that all the chipsets in the nForce 600i series will do pretty well, but there is a slight tinge of disappointment with the muted features of the nForce 650i SLI and 650i Ultra compared to the 680i SLI. It seems that NVIDIA focused completely to deliver 'One-chipset to rule them all' and we can't help get the feeling that the rest was more of an afterthought. True to this statement, nForce 680i motherboards are populating the channels today, but expect a later rollout the custom designed boards as well as for the rest of the series.

With this nForce 600i series primer, we hope we have better enlightened you of what the new chipsets are, the changes that have undergone from their predecessors and the target market segments. So stay tuned to www.hardwarezone.com as we bring you the actual board reviews that will soon follow suit.

With the nForce 600i series, NVIDIA is back on track delivering powerful core logic solutions to both the AMD and Intel platforms.

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