MSI P6N SLI Platinum: NVIDIA's 650i Part Two
by Gary Key on March 13, 2007 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Gaming Performance
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks with our standard 1280x1024 resolution without antialiasing enabled (and generally without anisotropic filtering, though that varies by game). Given the number of users that run 19" LCDs these days, 1280x1024 represents one of the most commonly used resolutions. We could certainly increase the amount of eye candy being displayed in most of the games, but as this is a motherboard benchmark we aren't particularly interested in maxing out the graphics cards in our tests.
It's the same old song and dance but these results basically show that any of the chipsets listed will perform equally in today's games when equipped with the same high-end GPU. Our MSI board wins two benchmarks, finishes a very close second in one, and in the CPU intensive Company of Heroes finishes last - though it is less than a 1 frame per second difference from the top scoring ASUS 650i board. We did not experience any issues during testing or during game play with the MSI board. We generally play over a dozen different games for at least a couple of hours on each board to verify that there are no issues such as overheating, stuttering, or network connectivity problems when playing on-line with a various combination of components.
We will have a full selection of SLI game results along with a couple of new benchmarks in our 680i/650i review. In the meantime, we did not find any noticeable differences in 8800GTX SLI performance between the 680i and 650i chipsets up to 1920x1200 resolution in games. The synthetic benchmarks did show differences up to 6% but for the majority of gamers the differences in SLI performance between the two chipsets is negligible in actual game tests. It is only when you crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 or increase AA/AF settings that the dual x16 PCI Express capability on the 680i performs better than the dual x8 PCI Express setup on 650i, and even then the difference isn't all that great.
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks with our standard 1280x1024 resolution without antialiasing enabled (and generally without anisotropic filtering, though that varies by game). Given the number of users that run 19" LCDs these days, 1280x1024 represents one of the most commonly used resolutions. We could certainly increase the amount of eye candy being displayed in most of the games, but as this is a motherboard benchmark we aren't particularly interested in maxing out the graphics cards in our tests.
It's the same old song and dance but these results basically show that any of the chipsets listed will perform equally in today's games when equipped with the same high-end GPU. Our MSI board wins two benchmarks, finishes a very close second in one, and in the CPU intensive Company of Heroes finishes last - though it is less than a 1 frame per second difference from the top scoring ASUS 650i board. We did not experience any issues during testing or during game play with the MSI board. We generally play over a dozen different games for at least a couple of hours on each board to verify that there are no issues such as overheating, stuttering, or network connectivity problems when playing on-line with a various combination of components.
We will have a full selection of SLI game results along with a couple of new benchmarks in our 680i/650i review. In the meantime, we did not find any noticeable differences in 8800GTX SLI performance between the 680i and 650i chipsets up to 1920x1200 resolution in games. The synthetic benchmarks did show differences up to 6% but for the majority of gamers the differences in SLI performance between the two chipsets is negligible in actual game tests. It is only when you crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 or increase AA/AF settings that the dual x16 PCI Express capability on the 680i performs better than the dual x8 PCI Express setup on 650i, and even then the difference isn't all that great.
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ranutso - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
Great article. Thank you Gary.cosmotic - Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - link
How can you say that MSI software is decent? It's totally hideous. I think Anandtech owes it to the community to encourage motherboard manufactures to start writing native-feeling Windows applications instead of these crap piles all the manufactueres are shipping now. This includes AMD/ATI, nVidia, Realtek, and many others for their drivers as well.Gorgonzola - Thursday, June 21, 2007 - link
I could not agree more!anandtech02148 - Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - link
Here I go againcomplaining about the psu and power consumption, but 300watts load,200watts idle,
not to mention fancy subwoofer, a few electronics here there,
good gaming is in the summer time, and i'll be cranking up the AC too which is another 250wtts.
i wish newegg.com would sell me a n.korean light water nuclear reactor so i can run all my greatest hardwares.
Spanki - Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - link
Hey Gary,Since it looks like this mb outperforms pretty much every other board in the review in most tests (at stock speeds, where head-to-head comparisons usually take place) - including the much touted 'Extreme' board(s), do you plan to include it for comparisons in future reviews?
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
The 650i uses 21% more power on idle compared to the ICFX3200. What is nV doing with all that power? This seems absurd.Gary Key - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
It is being channeled into the on-board Flux Capacitor. ;-) I can tell you that we have hounded NVIDIA to no end about this issue with their chipsets. It should be addressed when they finally go to a single chip solution later this year (we are still hoping this occurs).
Frumious1 - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
If I were to venture a guess, NVIDIA probably isn't doing any proper power savings work for the chipset. Just like with CPUs and GPUs, there's a lot of stuff on the chipset that is often not in use and can be put into a sleep/deep sleep mode. The 650i and 680i use 100-107W more power at full load than at idle. The 975X uses 141W more at load, P965 139W more, and RD600 105W more.IIRC, AMD is using a newer process technology for RD600, so that would help explain their lower overall power. Intel seems to benefit from power savings in idle mode, but at full load they are pretty close to NVIDIA. The extra "stuff" in 680i relative to 650i could easily account for the added ~10W that it requires. Seems to me like all companies involved could do more with chipset power savings. AMD is just ahead on the process tech (again, I think); Intel uses an older process but decent power saving circuitry; NVIDIA doesn't do anything to conserve chipset power.
When you consider that at idle the PC is doing nothing important, AMD and Intel should drop CPU clocks further (600 MHz ought to be enough), and they could drop FSB/bus speeds and chipset voltages as well. Why run 1066FSB when you're doing essentially nothing? Why run 1000MHz HyperTransport to transfer... nothing? I believe AMD does drop HT speeds at idle on their mobles chips, so why not on desktop offerings?
Just my two cents.
WT - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Patiently awaiting the Gigabyte version of this board, as I was most interested in upgrading to the 965DS3 board rev 3.3, but the 650 look like it is worth the wait. Also, since the C2D price drop isn't until late April, I have time to wait and make a decision once that board is available. Good read as usual guys !ghitz - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
Exactly what I was thinking !!