Re: 680i vs P965 vs P975X
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:43:30 -0400
Walter_S wrote:
As I try to figure out the differences between Core2Duo motherboards I
browsed to Toms Hardware to read up a bit and from an article back in
Dec 2006 they were saying that the nVidia chipset of the 680i based
motherboards are more advanced (better) than the intel 965 and 975x
chipsets. Is this widely acknowledged? And should I care? I'm not
an overclocker, probably won't be doing RAID or having it act as a
server, nor anything fancy. I do want to run some DX10 apps (Autodesk
Inventor I think is doing DX10) on an nVidia 8800 card and maybe will
want lots of USB ports. (although I can always use hubs for that) I
seem to have lots of peripherals plugged in.
Currently at midnight PST the US Asus site is once again down.... I
don't think I've seen as bad of a web site as Asus. Near impossible
to use during a weekday.
Which motherboards would I want if I want the 680i chipset?
Walt
When you see a term like "more advanced", that better be quantifiable.
Overclockers distinguish chipsets, by how far the memory interface
can be pushed. I'm not going to touch that one with a barge pole -
you can visit sites like http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/ and
check out their overclocking results. It would take me hours of
reading, to compare 680i versus P35 or P965.
Some users are annoyed, by how hot Nvidia chipsets get, compared to
other brands. That is not a measure of being "more advanced".
Remember that Nvidia doesn't make the chips themselves, they contract
out the manufacturing. They don't have their own fab. If Intel wants
to, Intel can use smaller geometry silicon. But for a chipset,
there really isn't a lot of incentive to do that. Making high speed
I/O drivers doesn't necessarily benefit from small geometry.
Nvidia chipsets are tied to their SLI concept, and the Nvidia drivers
help police which chipsets offer the ability to use SLI. If it wasn't
for SLI (running two video cards in tandem, for better 3D performance),
Nvidia would have a smaller market share.
I would have no reservation using an Intel chipset for any PCI
Express x16 slot usage. Especially if you are planning on running
at stock. If you aren't interested in SLI, then you can compare boards
based on their stated features and be able to buy in confidence.
"NVIDIA 680i SLI: Official 1333MHz FSB CPU Support Arrives"
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3042&p=4
"There was nothing really surprising in the initial test results from
a historical viewpoint. Both chipsets showed their strengths in certain
areas and held on tight in the others. In applications that are GPU or
storage system sensitive, the 680i consistently finishes first in most
of our benchmarks. It is only in the memory bandwidth, CPU throughput,
or latency sensitive applications that we see the Intel P35 chipset pull
away, although the differences for both are minimal in nearly all cases."
The comments from readers about an article, can also help (a bit).
http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?frmResourceID=3042&frmWhere=2
The master list of Asus boards is here, for quick reference.
Blitz Extreme is a P35 board that uses DDR3 (so you'll pay extra
for the memory). For most people, some DDR2-800 is plenty for
them, and nice and cheap stuff.
http://www.asus.com.tw/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1
Reading the comments on the motherboard entries on Newegg, will give
you some idea of the shipping quality of the boards. Sometimes, if
there are lots of DOAs, it doesn't matter what chipset is on the
motherboard. So the reviews on Newegg may also help shape your
opinion about what to buy.
Note that a $400 motherboard is not 2.66x as good as a $150 board.
Little remote controls, tiny LCD readouts, or other forms of "bling"
do not make for a superior motherboard. You can expect a few corners
to be cut, on the really cheap boards. But once you get past a certain
price point, the motherboard is about as good as it gets.
A good indicator, on the Newegg site, is to see which board has the
most reviews, as that implies it satisfies the majority of users.
Popular boards tend to get better support than unpopular ones,
in terms of things like continued BIOS updates.
Paul
.
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