Date:
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Author:
Daniel Dobrowolski
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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EVGA 650i Ultra

EVGA continues their lineup of Intel processor motherboards with the addition of the nForce 650i Ultra chipset. It is poised to offer a no-nonsense bang for your buck. Does it really compete with Intel’s proven P965 boards?

650i = Ultra Value?

One of the biggest complaints we have heard about motherboards recently is that they are too expensive. Certainly they have gotten more costly overall than they have been in the past, but there are simply a lot more includes on the motherboards of today. NVIDIA is making some good headway in order to bring prices of motherboards back down. Obviously not everyone needs a $360 motherboard and if you can find one for less than a $100 now days that has a good feature set, is reliable and stable, well, that is a bargain. If you can find one that gives you all of that plus good overclocking features that work, well, that might just be a gem.

So today we show you the EVGA motherboard that follows the NVIDIA reference design for the nForce 650i Ultra chipset. This is another EVGA motherboard that is “Designed by NVIDIA.”

Bra$$ Tacks

As alluded to above, NVIDIA is positioning this motherboard to fit into the sub-$100 space.

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And a little bit of poking around will find it at ZipZoomFly and Newegg for $99.99 after rebate at the time of publication.

Now if you look around you will find more expensive EVGA 650i Ultra motherboards that carry the "A1" part number as opposed to the "T1" part number of the $99.99 motherboard linked above. These two motherboards are the exact same hardware; the very same motherboard. However the A1 is the "retail" package while the T1 is the “channel” or “OEM package” more likely to be used by system builders. The A1 comes with fewer cables and such. The biggest difference though is that the A1 carries a lifetime warranty while the T1 carries a "1 + 1 year registration, both requiring product registration. The A1 stocked at ZipZoomFly carries a $30 premium.

650i Ultra Features

So what do you not get compared to the 680i series?

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Most importantly this chipset does not support SLI or have active coolers on the hotter motherboard components that might be an issue with overclockers in the long run. Two SATA ports have been lost as well and there is no FireWire on the board.

Outside of those issues you will see a somewhat chopped down enthusiast BIOS, but still chock full of plenty of tweaking features for novice overclockers as well as those that may just be looking for a system that is a quick build. Pairing this board up with a Core 2 Duo E6300 and some easy overclocking can get you a system faster than Intel’s X6800 flagship running at 2.97GHz for less than $300. I hope you enjoy our review and documentation that follows.