Our testing methods
We'll be comparing the performance of Nvidia's nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard to that of EVGA's rebadged nForce 680i SLI reference design and to a couple of nForce 600-series boards from Asus. Since a number of Nvidia's partners will be offering essentially the same LT board, we'll be referring to it with a more generic Nvidia nForce 680i LT SLI name in our graphs. The board we tested will appear on store shelves as the EVGA 122-CK-NF67.

All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Core 2 Duo E6700 2.67GHz
System bus 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard Asus P5N-E SLI Asus Striker Extreme EVGA 122-CK-NF68 EVGA 122-CK-NF67
Bios revision 0401 0901 P24 2.0536.72
North bridge Nvidia nForce 650i SLI SPP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI SPP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI SPP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI LT SPP
South bridge Nvidia nForce 430i SLI MCP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI MCP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI MCP Nvidia nForce 680i SLI LT MCP
Chipset drivers ForceWare 8.26 ForceWare 9.53 ForceWare 9.53 ForceWare 9.53
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
CAS latency (CL) 4 4 4 4
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 4 4 4 4
RAS precharge (tRP) 4 4 4 4
Cycle time (tRAS) 12 12 12 12
Audio codec Integrated nForce 430i/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.57 drivers Integrated nForce 680i/AD1988B with 5.10.1.4570 drivers Integrated nForce 680i/ALC885 with Realtek HD 1.57 drivers Integrated nForce 680i LT/ALC885 with Realtek HD 1.57 drivers
Graphics GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 93.71 drivers
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 2

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.