Nvidia's nForce 600 Family For Intel Processors
As you can see on the following table, the 650i SLI is a decent product, which supports everything an educated user wants today: SLI dual graphics (eight lanes each), two available PCI Express lanes for add-ons, four SATA ports with RAID, High Definition audio, integrated Gigabit Ethernet with Nvidia's MediaShield firewall and up to eight USB 2.0 ports. The 650i Ultra basically is the same product, but it's configured for a single x16 PCI Express graphics card instead of two slots.
nForce 680i SLI remains clearly superior, as Nvidia added twin x16 PCI Express capability plus an additional 8+6 PCIe lanes. The specification claims FSB1333 system speed support, which our overclocking results clearly support. And there is support for SLI memory, allowing the system to auto-configure SLI-certified memory to run at shortest possible timings and maximum clock speeds.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI | NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI | NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Segment | Enthusiast SLI | Performance SLI | Performance |
| FSB (MHz) | 1333* MHz | 1066 MHz | 1066 MHz |
| Extreme FSB Overclocking | Best | Good | Good |
| NVIDIA SLI Technology | Yes2 x16 | Yes2 x8 | No |
| Third PCIe Graphics Expansion Slot | Yes | No | No |
| SLI-Ready Memory (MHz) with EPP | 1200 MHz | - | - |
| JEDEC DDR2 Memory (MHz)PCI Express | 800 MHz | 800 MHz | 800 MHz |
| # Lanes | 46 lanes | 18 lanes | 18 lanes |
| # Links | 9 links | 4 links | 3 links |
| Configuration | 16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 | 8, 8, 1, 1or16, 1, 1 | 16, 1, 1 |
| SATA/UltraATA drives | 6/2 | 4/4 | 4/4 |
| SATA speed | 300 MB/s | 300 MB/s | 300 MB/s |
| RAID | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1,0+1,5 | 0,1,0+1,5 |
| NVIDIA MediaShield Storage Technology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native Gigabit Ethernet Connections | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA FirstPacket technology | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Teaming | Yes | No | No |
| TCP/IP Acceleration | Yes | No | No |
| NVIDIA nTune Utility | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB ports | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| PCI Slots | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Audio | HDA (Azalia) | HDA (Azalia) | HDA (Azalia) |
* Available on CPUs supporting 1333 MHz FSBTable Source: nvidia.com
