Introduction

The platform for Core 2 keeps growing on a daily basis - chipsets are coming left, right and centre - and we are more than pleased about that.

Intel has chipsets for their processor and it is no surprise that both are for high-end (975X), mainstream (P965) and value (G965). While Intel does make their own chipsets and some are very solid indeed, they aren't always the most feature rich or technically impressive, what the market even wants. I do remember the old Intel I820 chipset and the attempt to push people on to RDRAM (Rambus) but that was a total failure, which they seem to have learnt from.

nVidia is definitely the major player in the Core 2 market. AMD/ATI does have a chipset for this market, but we haven't heard much more about upcoming chipsets for this platform. VIA has no intention of pushing into the market as the major player, only SiS has the opportunity, and they are starting to work on this.

Today we are looking at nVidia's mainstream SLI product designed to keep the costs down but give the customer something that is worth the money. Today we are looking at the nVidia nForce 650i SLI chipset in the form of the version 1.0 NF650iSLIT-A motherboard from ECS.

Its advantage is that it is cheaper than more expensive 680i SLI and 680i SLI LT motherboards but does that make it a substandard motherboard? Let's read on and check out the onboard features, performance and overclocking and then try and make a decision.