The nForce 650 chipset is an interesting one that sits right at where the low point of the Intel pricing range for motherboards starts to get interesting. Compared to its older brother the 680i, the 650 is almost as fast in performance in most instances. There are instances where the ECS NF650iSLIT-A chipset falls short, namely in SLI x16 with a single card and memory being locked at 5, but this is a good compromise. From a feature point of view the board is excellent, bringing a mixture of SLI, HDA, Intel platform on a board that will likely retail below $150.
NVIDIA has launched two new chipsets in the last few weeks, the nForce 680i LT SLI chipset, which has many of the features of the 680i chipset minus the higher memory clocking and a third PCI Express x16 slot for other uses and the nForce 650 Ultra chipset which was launched this week which lacks SLI technology for $99. This puts this board at $150 in an interesting position. If you want a SLI board with the bells and whistles you can expect from a lower range board, this is the board for you. If you don't want SLI, the 650 Ultra may be for you. Overall for the price versus performance and features is a well balanced one.
