Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4L

Introduction

Gigabyte has been around for quite some time, and is a well-known motherboard manufacturer. For the most part, the company has been know for their blue PCB motherboards and value. More recently, they've become popular with the tweaking crowd, starting with their P965-DQ6 and P965-DS3.

Today, I have their GA-N650SLI-DS4L on tap. This is based on the nVidia nForce 650i SLI chipset for use with LGA775 processors.


Specifications:

-nForce 650i SLI chipset
-LGA775 CPU
-533/800/1066/1333 FSB
-4x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots, 8GB max
-1x IDE
-1x Floppy
-4x SATA 3.0
-1x 10/100/1000 LAN
-4x USB 2.0 + 2x USB header
-7.1 channel audio
-2x PCIe x1
-2x PCIe x16, PCIe #2 8x only
-2x PCI
-SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5
-ATX Formfactor, 6 mounting holes

While it's not in the same league as the 680i or 780i in terms of features, let's not forget that this board is around $100 versus the $200+ range of it's brothers.

The motherboard box uses a black and green theme, likely a subtle reference to the nForce 650i SLI chipset sported within.


Inside, the package contains the following:

-1x ATA ribbon cable
-1x Floppy ribbon cable
-2x SATA cables
-1x I/O shield
-1x SLI brige
-1x Quick setup poster
-1x Manual
-2x Driver/Utility disc
-1x SLI bridge retention bracket

Gigabyte packs in everything you need to get going. The purpose of two driver/utility discs is that one is for Windows Vista, while the other covers everthing else. Now that we've danced around this, let's check out the board itself.

 

Motherboard Layout

Gigabyte stays true to form by sticking with the usual blue PCB. Both the nForce 650i-SLI MCP and SPP are covered with gold colored heatsinks. There is also a sticker over the expansion slots denoting the company's use of solid capacitors on the motherboard.

In the CPU area, the layout is fine for the most part. The auxillary +12V power connection is in a less than ideal location, but otherwise is fine. While the heatsink on the 650i MCP is large, it gets very hot under stock conditions. If you're overclocking, you may want to have a fan blowing over the heatsink or replace it altogether.

Moving down, we see the expansion slots. Six total slots are available for use, if you make use of SLI. Even if you use a pair of video cards with dual slot cooling, you will still be able to use at least one PCI and PCIe x1 slot. While I don't have a good picture, the second PCIe x16 slot is not just 8x electrically, but also physically. The remaining pins for all 16 lanes are not there.

Speaking of SLI, Gigabyte has done something interesting to enable this feature. Instead of a card that has typically been used for physical SLI switching, they've pulled a trick out of DFI's playbook and used a series of jumpers.

One issue I did see was between the first PCIe x16 slot and the DDR2 slots. If you have a longer card, you'll need to remove it to change your memory out. While the SLI jumper design makes the N650SLI-DS4L fall into the 7 expansion slot territory, the first PCIe x16 slot is the second slot. While this isn't a full ATX board, Gigabyte could've done a little better in this area.

Toward the bottom of the board are the 4 SATA and lone IDE port. Those with larger cases will probably find the location of the IDE port prohibitive if they wish to use the top 5.25" bay. I had to move my DVD-RW drive down one bay so the IDE cable could reach. Both the SATA and IDE ports are turned ninety degrees so the cables run parallel to the motherboard tray and can help in creating a tidy case.

Gigabyte was the first company I ran across to color code the front panel connectors, and they're still continuing to do this today. Beside them are the two USB headers that can add up to 4-more USB ports for the board's maximum of 8.

If you still use a floppy drive, you'll probably not find the location of the floppy connector that thrilling. It's located underneath the second PCI slot at the bottom edge of the board.

On the back panel, the N650SLI-DS4L includes 2x PS/2 ports, 1x Parallel, 1x serial, 1x SPDIF out, 1x Digital out, 4x USB 2.0, 1x 10/100/1000 RJ-45, and 6x audio jacks.

 

BIOS
Gigabyte have gone with Award for the N650SLI-DS4L's BIOS. The version used in testing was F2.

At first look, most exciting features are not present. However, if you press [CTRL]+F1, some hidden options will appear. Gigabyte has been doing this for years, and needless to say, it's an obnoxious habit. Since the company has started appealing to the overclocker, it's due time they dropped this "feature". Now, I've gotten that off my chest, so let's continue.


I'm not going to go into detail over some of the more common screens, but here they are in brief: Standard CMOS Features, Advanced BIOS Features, Integrated Peripherals, Power Management Setup, and PC Health Status. For the most part, this covers what you'll see in the typical BIOS today.

The one screen I want to detail specifically is the Advanced Chipset Features screen. Normally, this is not displayed, but will be once you hit [CTRL]+F1. As the nForce 650SLI employs the HyperTransport bus, the LDT Frequency is adjustable from 1x to 5x. Secondly, while not documented in the manual, the nVidia GPU Ex is stated to offer additional performance for nVidia GPUs. In testing, I found no performance benefit from enabling this option.


Now, it's time for the good stuff. Gigabyte has labeled their tweaks and overclocking section M.I.T., or Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker.

Right off the bat, you'll have the System Clock Setting sub-menu option. If the title doesn't drop a hint, this is where you play with the FSB and Memory settings. The second to last option is the Memory Timing Setting, where you can fine tune the memory timings. Even though the N650SLI-DS4L may not be seen as an enthusiast class board, it still has a nice selection of memory tweaks.

Once you set the System Voltage Control to Manual, you'll notice a flashing notification about the voltage not being optimized. While the red lettering does get your attention, I don't think the wording properly convey's Gigabyte's warning to be careful about your voltages.

The DDR2 Voltage Control offers settings from +0.025V to +0.600V above the stock voltage. The NB/HT-Link Voltage ranges from +0.05V to +0.35V, the FSB Voltage +0.05V to +0.35V, the South Bridge Voltage +0.1V to +0.3V, the VCC12_DL Voltage +0.10V to +0.20V, and lastly, the CPU Voltage has a range of +0.68750V to +2.37500V.

Okay, now that we've looked at this board, let's see how this thing runs.

 

Test Setup and Software

Test system:

Motherboard, BIOS: Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L, BIOS F2
CPU, Clock Speed/FSB: Intel Pentium E2160, 1.8GHz/800MHz FSB
RAM, Timings: 2 x 1GB OCZ Vista Upgrade PC2-6400 (DDR2-800), 5-5-5-12
Video Card 1: PNY GeForce 7900GS 256MB
Video Card 2: eVGA GeForce 7900GS KO 256MB
Primary Hard Drive: Seagate 160GB SATA II
Secondary Hard Drive: Western Digital 160GB SATA II
Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-109BK 16x DVD-RW
Sound Card: Philips Dynamic Edge 4.1
Power Supply: Corsair HX520
CPU Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2
Chipset Drivers: nForce 8.43
Video Card Drivers: Forceware 169.17 WHQL

For general system tests, I will also use the following:

Motherboard, BIOS: MSI P965 Neo-F, BIOS
CPU, Clock Speed/FSB: Intel Pentium D 920, 2.8GHz/800MHz FSB
RAM, Timings: 2 x 512MB SuperTalent PC2-5300 (DDR2-667), 5-5-5-13
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon X1650 512MB
Hard Drive: Seagae 80GB SATA II
Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x DVD-RW
Sound Card: Hercules Fortissimo II
Power Supply: OCZ Modstream 450
CPU Cooling: Intel LGA775 Cooler

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2
Chipset Drivers: Intel 8.1.3.1009
Video Card Drivers: Catalyst 8.3

Testing Software:
SiSoft Sandra XII
Science Mark 2.0
FutureMark 3DMark 06
F.E.A.R., v1.08

SiSoft Sandra XII

Arithmatic


Multi-Media


Memory Bandwidth


Despite running a full 1GHz behind the Pentium D 920, the E2160 shows it's Core-based roots by leading it's predecessor. However, when it comes to memory bandwidth, the 650SLI platform doesn't fare as well. I'm sure that this has to do with the higher CPU clockspeed.

 

Science Mark 2.0

CPU Cache


Memory Bandwidth


I was unable to include results from the 920/P965 for the CPU cache. Whenever I tried to run it, Science Mark 2.0 would not detect the L1 or L2 cache, thus they have been omitted and just the results of the E2160 have been shown. As with Sandra, the E2160/nForce 650SLI platform comes in behind the older 920/P965.


3D Mark 2006

This is from the free verison and ran at program default resolution of 1200x800. For both SLI and non-SLI modes, the benchmark was run 3 times and the results averaged.


It may surprise some to see a 3DMark test included. However, after noting that other synthetic benchmarks are in use, it makes no sense to discard this one. As you can see, SLI is working on this board and with noticeable results.


F.E.A.R. v1.08

As with 3DMark, F.E.A.R. was run 3 times, and the results tallied. In both SLI and non-SLI runs, the following settings were used.

Advanced Computer Options

Physics
-Single Player Physics: Maximum
-Multi Player Physics: Maximum
Effects
-Particle Bouncing: Maximum
-Shell Casings: On
-World Detail: Maximum
-Corpse Detail: Maximum

Advanced Video Card Options

Effects
-Effect Detail: Maximum
-Model Decals: Maximum
-Water Resolution: Maximum
-Reflections & Displays: Maximum
-Volumetric Lights: On
-Volumetric Light Density: Maximum
Graphics
Resolution: 1440x900
-FSAA: 4x
-Light Detail: Maximum
-Enable Shadows: On
-Shadow Detail: Maximum
-Soft Shadows: Off
-Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 16x
-Texture Resolution: Maximum
-Videos: Maximum
-Pixel Doubling: Off
-DX8 Shaders: Off
-Shaders: Maximum


In gaming, SLI is still working. One thing the built-in benchmark shows is where SLI really helps. While the minimum FPS doesn't increase significantly, the peak FPS shows some substantial gains.

Now that we've seen this thing work at stock speeds, it's time to open the throttle and wrap up this review.

 

Overclocking

If you've paid any attention to Core 2 Duo's and the Pentium E derivatives, it's obvious these are monster overclockers. From what I've seen, a 50% overclock is considered "bad", so I was curious to see what kind of results the N650SLI-DS4L would bring.

Unfortunately, a 50% overclock was all I could muster. I bumped up the FSB from the stock 200 to 300MHz and that was all I could manage. I tried giving the northbridge all the voltage I was able to as well as bumping up the CPU voltage a little more. I even dropped the multiplier to 8x hoping to crank it up more. However, 2700MHz was all I was able to get this board to post.

While it's possible I might have a crummy chip, I'm inclined to believe this board is letting me down. Firstly, the results I've seen have this CPU and stepping doing 3GHz on air, if not more. Secondly, dropping the multiplier to 8x still would not allow me to push past a 300MHz FSB, despite voltage increases. From other reviews of Asus and MSI 650SLI boards, this chipset should be doing at least 400MHz or better in the overclocking department. Sadly, Gigabyte's offering doesn't even come close.

Conclusion

You can find the N650SLI-DS4L for right around $100 plus shipping. Gigabyte starts off with a bundle to get you started. The packaging is nice and offers a solid, detailed manual. The smaller footprint makes this board great for cases short in real estate. For the most part Gigabyte does a good job on the layout, the IDE connector placement is less than ideal, and the memory slots positioning is poor. It's not terrible, but a few nagging issues could've made it shine.

As far as the BIOS goes, Gigabyte offers a nice selection of voltages and tweaks. However, if Gigabyte wants to make itself known as an overclocking force, they need to stop hiding the overclocking options. While the options should be plenty for anyone to overclock, they don't seem to help, leaving the N650SLI-DS4L stuck at a 300MHz FSB.

Overall, this isn't a bad board. It works fine at stock, and the SLI implementation works without issue. However, if you're looking for more than that, I would suggest looking elsewhere.


Rating: 3.5 out of 5.