EVGA nForce 650i Ultra

cheap and weak.... remembers me my evil asrock board, how i hate it for being weak, at least it had lots of features. that back side looks very barren and it is greeeeen, my old asrock was dark blue and was cheaper.

Cheap board should have parrallel and serial on the I/O at least, it'd save money from running extra cables and making extra PCI-blanking plates

Not a bad review, but I found the gaming section a bit weak. I understand why it was coupled up with a budget card and so on, but given that not a single other board it was compared with shared the same card, it failed to give a proper indiction of its relative performance. It seemed almost pointless including the results from other motherboard/card combos as they added nothing IMO.

If you're comparing gfx cards against each other then it makes sense to test a variety of cards.

When comparing motherboards surely it makes sense to keep as much as you can the same, including the gfx card - especially when looking at game performance? The fact that it got beaten by every other board was not surprising given they housed a 7900GTX.

Aye, that does seem a bit of a strange decision.. why not do another run of gaming benchmarks with the 7900 card plugged in?

A budget setup doesn't necessarily mean *everything* has to be a few notches behind technologically.

I see your point, I just don't have anything in the lab to compare it to. The Gigabyte and board has gone back already and I only just found the MSI P6N Platinum again.

The 650i Ultra is specifically designed for the 7600GS.

In hindsight I should have tested with an E6300 and 7900 GTX, perhaps, or given I found the MSI far sooner I might have had time to put that together with a 7600GS and E6300.

The gaming performance in high res is GPU limited anyway, if anything the 7600GS is a representation in there.

It's a point noted, but I find it hard to review mainstream boards since companies tend to want to keep the hardware.

If you really want, I can throw the board back on when I have time and do a 7900 GTX and E6300 with the 650i but the MSI will take far longer since I've got to start from a scratch installation.

I like the position of the Pci slots on this here board. Moast of Nforce 500-600 series boards the pci's slots are smushed together, near a potential dual slot GPU, or in the middle of two pci express lanes. This one is breazy-Mc-easy. Plenty ov room for tv tuners, sound cards, and what have you.

I don't consider this board a bargain for US pricing... Considering a 680 ultra from EvGA is 25 bones more... 25 dollars is not a lot when you weigh in what Joe consumer gets on a 680 ultra.

Flawless review, and the new color-coated graphs have grown on me. I'd really like to see a nice laptop review from you guys soon, the last one was from rock and had a whole lotta creepy skulls on it...

note: for those of you using a mac, you can make that badgi's avatar go in slow motion if you click on the scroll bar really fast like... :D

I just looks like it is missing a lot of stuff. It looks like a low end Intel mother board

but swapping out the CPU for a certain unreleased 1333MHz FSB Intel processor allowed us to easily exceed this limit.

gimme

Maybe for a sec...i thought rich will use 8600 GT or GTS.I mean that will give the better idea for the latest things.

hmm.. i like.. I still run an EVGA 7800GS AGP on a p4p800s-e mobo. might be time to upgrade to this board and a 8something series card. Couple that with a Samsung or LG 22" inch tft and that should keep me happy for a few years. just dont know which gfx card. 88 or 86.
And i like it oldskool (yes skool ;) ) watercooled ofc.

Originally Posted by eek
Not a bad review, but I found the gaming section a bit weak. I understand why it was coupled up with a budget card and so on, but given that not a single other board it was compared with shared the same card, it failed to give a proper indiction of its relative performance. It seemed almost pointless including the results from other motherboard/card combos as they added nothing IMO.

If you're comparing gfx cards against each other then it makes sense to test a variety of cards.

When comparing motherboards surely it makes sense to keep as much as you can the same, including the gfx card - especially when looking at game performance? The fact that it got beaten by every other board was not surprising given they housed a 7900GTX.

yep, me flicking through it thought somethings not right here. then found out once i read though it carefully.

strange way of testing gaming performance, almost pointless imo

Originally Posted by DougEdey
Cheap board should have parrallel and serial on the I/O at least, it'd save money from running extra cables and making extra PCI-blanking plates

I wondered about that too, surely it's cheaper to solder a serial port onto the board than make a PCI bracket with cable. At least they haven't just disposed of it entirely I guess, some of us with serial port UPS's don't want to buy USB>RS232 converters.

The parallel port on the other hand? Good riddance I say.

E6300, 7900 GTX scores added for comparison :) ;)

i sure as hell hope theres a labelling mistake on the photoshop graph

Originally Posted by Woodstock
i sure as hell hope theres a labelling mistake on the photoshop graph

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
E6300, 7900 GTX scores added for comparison :) ;)

woot! Crikey, they're quite telling!

I can't find anything in documentation about a connector on this mobo for the PC case speaker but I see a 4-pin connector near the audio connectors in the corner of the board that fit the connector that my case has for the speaker. Any ideas?

Also, if I want to connect my CD/DVD player to the mobo to get audio (with either a 2 or 4-pin connector) can I do that? Again, nothing in documentation. In my other systems without integrated audio, the sound card typically has a place to plug this connector in.

PC Speaker? Why do you need it? Boot problems? It'll likely be on the front panel pin out. I've not seen anyone use an old 4-pin connector for the DVD/CD player in YEARS, now it's all done over the normal IDE/SATA digital connection in all OS' and software I can think of. Or do you mean a separate external devise, like a stand alone?