NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Preview

Name: NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Preview - Page 17
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, November 08, 2006, 12:50 PM EDT

We have a few final data points to cover before bringing this article to a close. Throughout all of our benchmarking, we monitored how much power our nForce 680i SLI based test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idle and under a CPU load. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption here, not just the power being drawn by the motherboards and processors alone.

Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Test System Power Characteristics

Processors and Platforms Compared

The nForce 680i SLI motherboard consumed marginally more power than any of the other systems while idling, but surprisingly it consumed a bit less power than the nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition under load. The 975X Express-based system consumed considerably less power at idle and under load, but there are some things to take into remember looking at these numbers. The nForce 680i SLI has more than double the amount of PCI Express lanes than the 975X Express, and the EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard we used for testing has a host of integrated peripherals that all consume some level of power.

Tags: Nvidia, nforce, sli, Pre, force, preview, review, view, 680, IE, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com