DailyTech - Gigabyte United Announces nForce 680i SLI Offering

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Hardware Gigabyte United Announces nForce 680i SLI Offering
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - January 16, 2007 5:13 PM

10 comment(s) - last by rtrski.. on Jan 17 at 1:02 PM

Gigabyte United jumps on the nForce 680i SLI bandwagon with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Gigabyte United has announced its latest Core 2 compatible offering—the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. The latest offering from Gigabyte United takes advantage of NVIDIA’s recently released nForce 680i SLI chipset. It offers compatibility with Intel Core 2 dual and quad-core processors up to a 1333 MHz front-side bus.

Gigabyte United has opted not to rebadged NVIDIAs reference board unlike other manufacturers such as BFG, ECS and EVGA. Nevertheless, Gigabyte United has equipped the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 with three PCI Express x16 slots for NVIDIA’s upcoming SLI physics processing. Quad SLI is also supported with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6.

In addition to quad SLI readiness the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 features quad Gigabit LAN, that’s four Gigabit Ethernet ports for those who need it. While quad Gigabit Ethernet ports may sound like overkill, Gigabyte United is able to take advantage of NVIDIA’s Dual-Net teaming technology to combine all four Ethernet connections into a single 4Gbit connection. Lastly in terms of overkill the Gigabyte United GA-N680SLI-DQ6 features a total of ten SATA 3.0Gbps ports—four of which Gigabyte United provides e.SATA brackets for.

Other notable features of the Gigabyte United GA-N680SLI-DQ6 include 1394a, high definition audio, dual BIOS and a passive heat pipe chipset cooling solution.

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Not too shabby...

By rtrski on 1/16/2007 10:04:00 PM , Rating: 2

All solid caps, not just for the voltage regulation circuitry.

Looks like at least 2 fan connectors (3-pinned) aside from the one for the CPU, and what appears to be internal/front USB x2 and Firewire headers.

Sound looks like a crab collective chip, but if it's got DDL at least (preferrably DTS-connect as well) this might be my next board!

RE: Not too shabby...

By customcoms on 1/16/2007 10:22:15 PM , Rating: 2

This looks like an impressive board, however on board headers for USB and Firewire are nothing new. This Abit KD7 (thats a via KT400 AMD Socket A board) I was just messing with for a buddy has on board USB 2.0 and Firewire headers. If your spending the $250+ this board WILL command at launch for some USB headers, you should looka t some other boards imo. My main concern is max overclocking, and the preview for the DFI Infinity P965 is looking exceedingly promising-had an E6300 at 3.73ghz, 3DMark stable. Thats on the first release bios, which is generally crap from DFI (based on personal experience).

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RE: Not too shabby...

By rtrski on 1/17/2007 1:00:45 PM , Rating: 2

Nah, not buying based on USB/FW, which as you say are pretty ubiquitous. Just glad to see they didn't get pushed off the board by the 3 PCIex16 slots. (Speaking of which, I don't need or want them, as I don't even plan on going SLI, so on second thought I'm probably better off sticking with GB's 965 chipset version of the DQ6).

But it does look like a well thought-out board that didn't sacrifice much for the extra ethernet or longer PCIe slots...I guess that was my only real point. :)

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4 Gigabit LANs !

By amdsempron on 1/16/2007 11:47:34 PM , Rating: 2

4 Gigabit LANs ! I don't think there is anybody uses all of them !

RE: 4 Gigabit LANs !

By friky19 on 1/17/2007 1:43:03 AM , Rating: 2

i guess youve never gone to a lan party and bridged connections when you ran out of space in the switches. I have two gigabit lans onboard and one 10/100 one on my pc just in case. so i think this will come in handy once in a while

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RE: 4 Gigabit LANs !

By bunnyfubbles on 1/17/2007 5:57:54 AM , Rating: 2

If you read the article it talks about using nVidia's dual-net teaming technology - where you can combine 2 of the ports for an effective 2Gbps connection, or even all 4 for a 4Gbps connection.

Although such a thing wouldn't really be justified as anything other than a LAN server (whether it be home or party).

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Huge heatsinks

By FITCamaro on 1/17/2007 7:03:50 AM , Rating: 2

Those are some pretty damn big heatsinks on the voltage regulators and northbridge. Thats gonna affect what cooler people are able to run. I'm surprised they made them that big knowing that anyone buying this board is likely to be running an aftermarket cooler. Which have gotten bigger and bigger lately.

10 SATA ports though. *drools*