MSI P6N SLI Platinum: NVIDIA's 650i Part Two
by Gary Key on March 13, 2007 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
A 2GB memory configuration is standard in our XP test beds as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory - and we personally wouldn't think of running Vista with less than 2GB. Our choice of mid-range OCZ Flex XLC PC-6400 memory represents an excellent balance of price and performance that offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. We also utilized our Corsair XMS2 Dominator (Twin2x2048-9136C5D) memory on this board to verify DDR2-1066 compatibility with another memory type. We are currently completing testing several other memory modules ranging from Transcend, TwinMOS, and WINTEC DDR2-800 down to A-DATA DDR2-533 for compatibility and performance benchmarks, and we will provide more details on performance/compatibility with these memories in a future article. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via MemTest 86 and test application results for each board. We only optimize the four main memory settings with sub-timings remaining at Auto settings.
We are utilizing an MSI 8800 GTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games does not cause the performance of the system at our standard resolution to really change (i.e. we're CPU limited with the 8800 GTX). Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this article at High Quality settings. We also tested at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 4xAA/8xAF for our NVIDIA SLI results that will be presented in an upcoming 680/650i roundup.
All of our tests are run in an enclosed case with a dual optical/hard drive setup to reflect a moderately loaded system platform. Windows XP SP2 is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each system to ensure driver conflicts are kept to a minimum. The MSI P6N SLI Platinum defaults to a 268FSB so we have to change our settings to manual and reduce the FSB to 266, and that also resulted in our DDR2 memory speed dropping to 799. As you will soon see, this did not have an adverse effect in our test results.
| Standard Test Bed Performance Test Configuration |
|
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 4MB Unified Cache) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.66GHz, 8MB Unified Cache) |
| RAM: | OCZ Flex XLC (2x1GB), 2.30V (Micron Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Buffer |
| System Platform Drivers: | Intel - 8.1.1.1010 NVIDIA - 9.35, 8.43 ATI - 6.10 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x MSI 8800GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA 97.92 |
| CPU Cooling: | Tuniq 120 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ ProXStream 1000W |
| Optical Drive: | Plextor PX-760A |
| Case: | Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 |
| Motherboards: | ASUS Striker Extreme (NVIDIA 680i) - BIOS 1002 ASUS P5N-E SLI (NVIDIA 650i) - BIOS 0401 ABIT AB9 QuadGT (Intel P965) - BIOS 1.1 B06 DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G (AMD RD600) - BIOS 12/22 GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6 - BIOS F3B/F3A Intel D975XBX2 (Intel 975X) - BIOS 2333 MSI P6N SLI Platinum (nForce 650i) - BIOS 1.22 / V.20 |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| . | |
A 2GB memory configuration is standard in our XP test beds as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory - and we personally wouldn't think of running Vista with less than 2GB. Our choice of mid-range OCZ Flex XLC PC-6400 memory represents an excellent balance of price and performance that offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. We also utilized our Corsair XMS2 Dominator (Twin2x2048-9136C5D) memory on this board to verify DDR2-1066 compatibility with another memory type. We are currently completing testing several other memory modules ranging from Transcend, TwinMOS, and WINTEC DDR2-800 down to A-DATA DDR2-533 for compatibility and performance benchmarks, and we will provide more details on performance/compatibility with these memories in a future article. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via MemTest 86 and test application results for each board. We only optimize the four main memory settings with sub-timings remaining at Auto settings.
We are utilizing an MSI 8800 GTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games does not cause the performance of the system at our standard resolution to really change (i.e. we're CPU limited with the 8800 GTX). Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this article at High Quality settings. We also tested at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 4xAA/8xAF for our NVIDIA SLI results that will be presented in an upcoming 680/650i roundup.
All of our tests are run in an enclosed case with a dual optical/hard drive setup to reflect a moderately loaded system platform. Windows XP SP2 is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each system to ensure driver conflicts are kept to a minimum. The MSI P6N SLI Platinum defaults to a 268FSB so we have to change our settings to manual and reduce the FSB to 266, and that also resulted in our DDR2 memory speed dropping to 799. As you will soon see, this did not have an adverse effect in our test results.
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nicolasb - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Maybe this was mentioned in part 1 and I missed it, but how does the 650i perform in terms of heat output? And how effective/noisy is the north bridge cooling on the MSI board? And how does the overall power consumption of the system compare to P965? The 680i certainly runs very hot indeed compared to its Intel rivals;I think need to know if the 650i does the same.Gary Key - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Power consumption numbers are on page 9. Thermals are a different story as they will vary widely depending upon the case design and internal cooling. The best I can do is to setup a 650i and a P965 on a test platform and take readings without any airflow across the boards. I will do that tonight but from the touch of your finger testing, I figure the 650i is about 15% warmer on average. The fan that MSI includes has a db rating of 34 and did not sound whiny in testing.nicolasb - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
I think we need to know, even.Geraldo8022 - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Yes, this is very important to me and I also would like the answers to these questions.phusg - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Guys I agree it's very important but please RTFA first ;-)From page 9 power consumption you can conclude that the 650i uses some 10-15 Watts less than the 690i.
phusg - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Additionally if idle is more important to you then the P965 seems to nose in front, if load is more important then the RD600 chipset seems to be king. Unfortunately only DFI has a board at the moment although I think ASUS is rumoured to be preparing one too.And as far as noise goes I think all these motherboards are passively cooled, so they should be pretty close to 0db.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
First, let me get this out of the way:Last page second to the last paragraph, I'm assuming you meant 'knock-out blow' ?
Now that, that is out of the way, is it just me, or does it seem that MSI is/has been encroaching on ABIT, and like companies as far as stability goes ? I personaly have not owned any MSI motherboards for quite some time, but everytime I read about their boards, it seems to be getting more, and more favorable for them.
Now a question concerning functionality. Will this SIL eSATA chip handle SATA Port multipliers well ? Would be a very good option if so. Also how many PCIE lanes do these boards actually use vs the i680 boards ? I remember seeing a spec sheet of the 590 vs the 570 (which if I recall correctly, was half the PCIE lanes, 590 vs 570 that is) but I do not recall seeing any data concerning the i680 vs its little breathren.
Gary Key - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Hi,It should have been knock-out blow and is corrected now. On the front page we linked to our 680i launch article that explained the technical differences between the chipsets - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">680i Launch - but to answer your question quickly the 680i has 46 PCI Express Lanes and nine links compared to 18 PCI Express Lanes and four links on the 650i SLI. The specs on the SIL3531 can be found here - http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?...">SiL3531. The chipset has support for Port Multipliers with FIS-based switching such as their own SiL3726 chipset.
MSI over the last couple of years had lost their focus to some degree in the motherboard market and it seemed as though they either wanted to product low cost boards to compete against ECS/Foxconn or high-end boards in their Diamond series. You never knew what to expect from them when a new chipset was released. They were also getting a bad rap for being late to market along with getting the board finally tuned correctly about the time production ended on it. I know from several discussions with them over the past couple of months that they are aware of past issues and are vigorously working to correct those issues now. Product quality has always been good overall but has certainly become better as of late while pricing is still aggressive based upon feature sets.
Thanks for the comments.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Thanks for the reply Gary.Am I right in assuming that just because a given chipset has x mount of PCIE lanes/Links, that <insert OEM> motherboard manufactuer is not obligated in using all of these lanes /links ? IF this be the case, how would one go about finding this information out, without reverse engineering the motherboard ?
just4U - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
Odd is it not? They used to be first to market in alot of boards and had to constantly fine tune after launch because they were riddled with issues. I've always liked MSI and usually purchase a few of their boards each year.