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- Date:
- Wednesday, May 09, 2007
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
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?
Introduction
As many of our readers are already aware, EVGA has been the principal company offering NVIDIA reference designed motherboards in the last few months. While initially the 680i offering had a shaky start, it has since matured and is considered by many to be the board to beat for the enthusiast. While there are some individuals that are stuck on Intel chipsets, if you want SLI and the power of Intel’s Core 2 Duo, the EVGA 680i SLI has been the only game in town. Now NVIDIA has a competitor to Intel’s P965 Express chipset which has often been the premiere choice for single graphics card gaming and computer enthusiasts for a long list of reasons. NVIDIA’s 650i Ultra comes in at a lesser price point, and is supposed to offer superior performance when paired with a GeForce 8 series video card.
The EVGA 650i Ultra is the latest addition to the growing line of EVGA/NVIDIA reference designs. The 650i Ultra features the NVIDIA 650i Ultra chipset. The EVGA 650i Ultra supports the latest Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. Following industry trends the 650i Ultra requires only a few components to create a working machine. The required components are: Socket LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. EVGA integrated the following components into the 650i Ultra’s design: 1 ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 8 USB ports; 4 on the backplane and 2 headers supporting 2 ports each.) ; 4 SATA 3G ports; 1 GigE Ethernet port; 6 mini-headphone jacks and of course standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The packaging is virtually identical to later packaging used on the EVGA nForce 680i SLI and nForce 680i LT boards. It does a good job of making sure the board makes it to the end user without getting damaged in shipping. In the box is a manual, driver CD, quick start guide, and two bags of cables. (Please note that our unit being reviewed here is the A1 retail model.)
Board Layout
The board layout is exceptional. I can find no problems or shortcomings to the layout of the EVGA 650i Ultra. You can add and remove memory modules without removing the video card. All power connectors and headers are well placed. SATA and IDE ports are easy to reach and finally the expansion slots are laid out in almost perfect fashion. I can’t think of anything I’d change concerning the layout of this board. The NVIDIA engineers deserve a lot of credit for that as I’m very picky when it comes to motherboard layouts.
The CPU area of the EVGA 650i Ultra is clear of obstructions and the use of large heat sink and fan assemblies are not a problem. My Thermaltake Big Typhoon fit without any clearance issues.
The board has 4 240-pin DDR 2 DIMM slots that are well placed in front of the CPU socket. NVIDIA left plenty of room to install or remove memory modules without interference from cables or the video card. Many boards seem to compromise on this design aspect.
The north bridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket. The chipset is passively cooled. During my testing the chipset was always cool to the touch at stock speeds and seems to be adequate.
The south bridge is located in front of the PCIe x16 slot and has no cooling on it whatsoever. This concerned me a little during testing as it became quite warm to the touch. A passive heat sink would have helped quite a bit in my opinion.
The EVGA 650i Ultra has one PCIe x16 slot, 2 PCIe x1 slots and 3 PCI 2.2 slots.
The EVGA 650i Ultra has the following ports on the backplane: 1 PS/2 mouse port, 1 PS/2 keyboard port, 1 RJ-45 port, 4 USB ports, six mini-stereo ports,
NVIDIA NTune
EVGA bundled the NVIDIA nTune software for Windows based overclocking and system monitoring. nTune version 5.05 was used for testing and is shown below.
The Adjust Motherboard Settings link opens to the Adjust Motherboard Settings page, which contains all the options and settings for voltages, clock speeds, and memory timing settings. Likewise, the Adjust GPU Settings link opens to a page of the same name which allows you to adjust settings for NVIDIA GPU based cards. This page contains performance tuning options and fan speeds settings for any NVIDIA video card installed in the system.
The Tune System Link brings up a page allowing for automated overclocking. With this utility, the system automatically determines the overclocking capabilities of the system based on the components selected for overclocking and stress tests the machine for stability within a specific user specified time period. The View System Information link displays a system information page containing a read-only view of many system settings. Here processor, memory and general settings information. There is also an Adjust Custom Rules page. This page allows the user to setup rules for system performance based on thermal events and user specified events. You can setup an overclocking profile for events such as games where more CPU performance is required, or setup a rule to keep the system fan speeds and clock speeds down while watching a movie.
There is also a Perform Stability Test Page. When accessed from the System Stability Link on the Primary NVIDIA Control Panel page, various settings can be accessed for performing a system stress test. The stress test can be setup to stress the whole system or individual subsystems.