INTEL G965 VS NFORCE 650I ULTRA VS SIS 672FX CHIPSET REVIEW AND BENCHMARK
Posted:2007-06-12 By chipset review Number of View:45123
INTEL G965 VS NFORCE 650I ULTRA VS SIS 672FX CHIPSET REVIEW AND BENCHMARK By :chipset review Posted:2007-06-12 xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source We propose in this review a test of three INTEL mainboards whose cost is lower than 100 euros. Here, we will check a mainboard on base of recent NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra , chipset SiS 672 FX with integrated graphic core and the reference mainboard G965MDH from MSI,. INTEL G965: the graphic part INTEL will release in next weeks new integrated graphic solution with G35 chipset . For the moment only G965 is available , This chipset was released several months ago. Let us note that INTEL is leader in 3D market with more than 40% ( market shares) while ATI and NVIDIA have only +/- 25%. Technically, G965 has a new graphic card : GMA X3000 and use an architecture different from GMA 900 and 950 which was in chipsets i915G/i945G. The GMA X3000 architecture is unified, just as GeForce 8 and Radeon HD. GMA X3000 support DirectX 10, (at least on paper),  in practice DirectX 10 functions will be never activated. As a result GMA X3000 support DirectX 9.0c and shaders 3.0. With eight unified calculating units which can treat pixels as well as vertexes shaders, GMA X3000 is handicapped due to the poor driver support. INTEL made some progress in this sphere but this was far from being enough..... INTEL finally published a beta version ( driver 14.31 ) witch activate Shaders Vertexes treatment… but only under Windows XP. We have checked the performance of this beta driver in comparison with 14.29 , but  we did not record any performance profit under Doom 3. Under FarCry , the average frame rate was doubled, passing from 10 fps in 1024x768 with a little more than 20 fps always using the same resolution. .. . Officially, INTEL indicates 667 MHz as operation frequency for the graphic core in G965. INTEL G965: other functionalities In functionalities, G965 chipset is similar to P965 . It support the processors Core 2 Duo and it is officially compatible with systems bus frequencies 533, 800 and 1066 MHz. Compatibility with Core 2 duo ( FSB1333 ) is not official. The memory controller is certified for DDR2 800/667/533 , INTEL proposes its technology Flex Memory witch allow to mix the memories volume . This chipset also propose PCI-Express with 16 ways in the north bridge and 6 in the south bridge. INTEL G965 South bridge used is ICH8 , offering 10 ports USB 2.0 and six connectors Serial-ATA 3Gb/S. The functions INTEL RAID are also supported with  :  RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, RAID 10 and INTEL Matrix. G965 does not propose any native IDE controller but it has a Gigabit network controller . MSI G965-MDH MSI proposes several models based on chipset INTEL G965 . The model MSI G965MDH  has a red PCB , this mainboard has four slot DIMM DDR2 and LGA775 socket . The chipset G965 is equipped with passive cooler , it is certified INTEL Viiv and proposes two ports PCI, one slot PCI-Express 16x and a connector PCI-Express 1x. This mainboard have a quad-phase power stage . Provided with six connectors Serial-ATA 3Gb/S, G965MDH has one disk drive connector and one IDE connector . The only problem here that the IDE connector  cannot be used to install an operating system… The IDE slot is compatible only with UDMA66.... MSI G965-MDH MSI G965-MDH come with VIA manager FireWire chip , audio codec Realtek ALC883 and INTEL network controller . In addition there a port parallel, series port , a connector VGA DB15, two ports PS/2, four ports USB 2.0, a FireWire connector , a connector RJ45 for network . MSI proposes the briefest BIOS which do not allow to regulate the system bus or memory frequency, there is no setting even for latency times. . The bundle accompanying the mainboard is particularly minimal. MSI deliver a book, CD, IDE cable, only one and single cable Serial-ATA and power adapter Molex SATA. MSI G965-MDH Details   NVIDIA nForce Ultra 650i   While waiting for the availability of first chipsets with integrated graphic for INTEL platform , NVIDIA launched recently the nForce 650i Ultra, a chipset dedicated for entry range. This chipset is deprived from graphic core, but it present a good number of usual specificity like the SLI support or advanced networks functions . This chipset is composed by a north bridge and a south bridge, it has a native support to the system bus 1333 MHz but here the memory controller (DDR2) is limited to DDR2-800. in addition EPP profiles are not supported. the nForce 650i Ultra is compatible with processors Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and other Pentium,  is has a rather old south bridge : nForce 430. Consequently, its functionalities are limited to a maximum four compatible ports Serial-ATA 3Gb/S NCQ and 8 ports USB 2.0. This chipset support modes RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5 in addition to doubles channel native IDE controller . The Integrated Gigabit network controller is deprived from usual functionalities NVIDIA like Teaming. But here , the technology First Packet still accessible . Side PCI-Express bus, the nForce 650i Ultra manages 16 lines , two lines are for peripherals PCI-Express 1x . eVGA nForce Ultra 650i eVGA is the only manufacturer, witch announced the mainboard equipped with chipset nForce 650i Ultra. This mainboard has an ATX format  with four DIMM slot DDR2 and six phases power system. The north bridge is covered with a passive radiator, the south bridge is naked. This mainboard is equipped with three ports PCI, one PCI-Express 16x for graphics card and two ports PCI-Express 1x. EVGA nForce 650i Ultra is equipped with only one port IDE (whereas the chipset can normally support two ) and five fan connectors : one dedicated to processor, this mainboard has a disk drive connector and offers an audio codec Realtek ALC885. eVGA nForce Ultra 650i This mainboard has only four ports USB 2.0, a RJ45 connector , two ports PS/2 and six audio connectors. With regard to the BIOS, this last is rather complete even if it is limited in comparison with nForce 680i. eVGA allow us to regulate the bus and memory frequency , in addition to the processor bus , the memory latency are largely adjustable. Different voltage can be also modified, including FSB and north bridge, with maximum 2,1v for the memory and 1,6v for the processor. The PCI-Express system bus can be also adjusted. NForce Ultra 650i eVGA Details Let us finish with the mainboard bundle . eVGA delivers, in addition to the fast installation guide , driver CD . There is four electric cables Serial-ATA, two adapters Molex SATA, IDE cable  and disk drive cable . Connector in nForce Ultra 650i   SIS 672 FX This chipset is compatible with processors INTEL Core 2 Quad, INTEL Core 2 Duo , INTEL Pentium D and INTEL Pentium 4 , SiS672FX is compatible with system bus 1066 MHz. This chipset has an integrated memory controller DDR2, SiS672FX is limited to DDR2 667 support (only one channel), This detail will kill the mainboard performances vs our other various solution. We note that our reference mainboard could function with DDR2 800 but this support is not official. SiS672FX support only two DIMM slots with maximum total 4 GB. SiS672FX has 16 lines PCI-Express , the north bridge of our SiS672FX is compatible with vision bus 1.1 . SIS 672 FX The graphic core integrated in SiS 672 FX is DirectX 9.0 compatible :  Mirage 3+. This last is able to work with up to 256 MB video memory, But the shaders support is limited only to the Second version ( shader 2.0). Vertexes Shaders are not supported by Mirage 3+ and this task is assnged to the processor. Particularly modest, SIS 672 FX is compatible with Windows Vista and its graphic interface Aero. We noted various bugs under Half-Life 2 Lost Coast and Far Cry (check the water in the next piture). In short SiS driver are worse than INTEL. ... Far Cry under SIS 672 FX: Many image corruption. Side southbridge, SIS 672 FX come with chip SIS 968 connected via bus MuTIOL  (1 GB/S band-width). The southbridge support two PCI-Express 1x, six ports PCI and has a IDE controller  ATA133. The Serial-ATA is also supported with two ports Serial-ATA 3Gb/S. This last is also compatible with AHCI, but not with NCQ, and proposes modes RAID 0 and RAID 1. Finally there is an USB 2.0 controller  with eight ports as well as codecs HD Audio interface. The network support is absent and mainboard producer has to use an external chip.   SiS672FX: mainboard SiS672FX reference With two ports PCI, this mainboard proposes a  PCI-Express 16x connector and two slots PCI-Express 1x. In addition , there is two connectors Serial-ATA, IDE connector and a port for disk drive. The sound management is ensured here with Realtek ALC883 chip , whereas network depends on SiS196 gigabit controller . SiS672FX mainboard proposes six ports USB 2.0, a RJ45 connector , port VGA DB15 and two connectors PS/2. There is no optical output proposed. The mianboard BIOS, proposes some functions for frequencies and latency adjustment .  The system bus can be adjusted . But we note that this BIOS does not allow to adjust voltage, witch will be a  crucial limit for overclocker . mainboard SiS672FX To evaluate the performances of those three chipsets, we had used the foloowing configuration : Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS, Hard disk Hitachi 80 GB - Serial-ATA Processor INTEL Core 2 Duo E4300, Our various systems used the last drivers and BIOS available (ForceWare 158.24). Let us note that we used a graphics card for synthetic benchmark and the memory regime was set to DDR2 667 MHz, since chipset SiS and MSI mainboard  do not support DDR2-800. We will test the mainboard eVGA nForce 650i Ultra with DDR2-667 and also with DDR2-800. ALL test where under Windows Vista .2x1 GB memory DDR2 Corsair Twin2X 6400 C4,     3DMark 06 - v1.1.0 - Processor Test 3DMark06 processor test  seems to give its preference to INTEL G965 which finishes first while the chipsets nForce 650i Ultra and SIS 672 FX are with equality. We  note that the passage from DDR2-667 to DDR2-800 (in the mainboard nForce 650i Ultra)  does not change the performances. PCMark 05 - CPU - v1.2.0 Without surprise, PCMark 05 processor test does not show any difference in performances between our three systems. PCMark 05 - Memory - v1.2.0 Contrary to the processor tests , PCMark 05 (Memory test ) show a clear difference between SIS 672 FX which is satisfied with a single channel memory controller and Intel G965 (Dual channel). The memories performances of INTEL G965 are 19% higher than SiS chipset  . And logically, the nForce 650i Ultra used with DDR2-800 takes the lead with the best performances. Sandra Xi SP1 - Processor Test Just like 3DMark 06 and PCMark 05, Sandra Xi does not show any performance difference between our various chipsets. Sandra Xi SP1 - Memory Test The memory test is more interesting since it puts a true performances differences  . At the first place we have the nForce 650i Ultra which was used with DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 . With its single channel memory controller , SiS672FX finishes last . NForce 650i Ultra coupled with DDR2-667 offers 36%  higher memory band-width than SIS chipset . ScienceMark 2.0 - Primordia For ScienceMark 2.0, mathematical test , the performances are equivalent between all system . We notes a light difference between DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 with nForce 650i Ultra , But this boost does not exceed the 0,3%. Cinebench 9.5 For Cinebench,  nForce 650i Ultra and G965 are with equality. On the other hand, the chipset SiS 672 FX finish last. According to Cinebench, INTEL G965 with identical configuration is 4% faster than SiS. Files Compression : WinRAR 3.70 For this test, we measure the time necessary to compress a little more than 650 MB data in RAR format . We used here the last version 3.70 and results are expressed here in seconds (Lower value = faster performance) . The slowest system here is SiS platform which puts more than five minutes to compress the data wile the nforce 650i ultra do the same task in 4 minutes . Video compression: TMPGenc 4.2.3.193 Xpress   Here the results are expressed also in seconds . The single channel  again hold  SIS 672 FX performance witch is the slowest in this test. Here INTEL G965 system is faster than nForce 650i Ultra with DDR2-667. Note for 3D benchmarks we compare the results obtained from SIS 672 FX and INTEL G965 integrated graphic core with GeForce 7300 GT. Doom 3 We starts with Doom 3 where the performances of our various integrated chips is just more than poor . SIS 672 FX show here 2 FPS  in 800x600 . INTEL G965 does better with 13 and 17fps average but this remains far from being playable frame rate . No comment about the performance of those integrated graphic core with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT . Far Cry v1.4 Let us check Far Cry where INTEL G965  is much faster than SIS 672 FX . SIS chipset does not even exceed 4 fps in 800x600 while G965 reaches 10 fps. In short, Far Cry, witch was released in March 2004, is unplayable, using chipset INTEL or SiS  . The NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT is the only graphic processor in this review witch allow to play Far Cry with frame rate superior to 75fps. 3DMark 06 Without much surprise, 3DMark 06 confirms the monstrous differences between our various solutions. SiS672FX is handicapped while G965 provide better performance but it still far from being acceptable … Half-Life 2 Lost Coast   We finish with Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, where SIS 672 FX is not able to post even one image . Overclocking From our three selected mainboards , the only one witch allow some worthy overclocking is the eVGA mainboard. The MSI mainboard BIOS block any FSB frequency change . At the best case, we could pass our Core 2 Duo E4300 FSB 800 MHz to FSB 1066 MHz, is was impossible to reach FSB 1333 MHz. Back to nForce 650i Ultra which allows us, to pass from FSB 800 to system bus 1333 MHz  with a simple bios modification . For sure further voltage tweaking will allow higher clock frequency. Conclusion Arrived at the end of this article, the conclusion is that the integrated graphic core are far from being able to play game . INTEL integrated graphic core performance still unable to show normal frame rate even for 2004 Games … And in case of Mirage 3+ (SIS chipset) the performances are even worse. In short, chipsets with integrated graphic core are especially for desktop application and nothing more. Let us finish with nForce 650i Ultra . This chipset show good performances, rather complete functions and even overclocking capacities . xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source we would be happy to answer for your question . if you have suggestion or comment regarding this review our support would be glad to help just join our forum and ask u will get the best answer to discuss check our forum section :-) RATE THIS REVIEW 1 2 3 4 5    / 5   View Stat

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