Gigabyte 6-Quad N680SLI-DQ6 Review - PAGE 1William Henning - Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
April 27, 2007 - updated with results from the F4e BIOS Gigabyte sent us - the F4e BIOS significantly improved the memory performance of the N680SLI-DQ6
Today we look at the Gigabyte 6-Quad N680SLI-DQ6 motherboard - Gigabyte's new high end motherboard for SLI enthusiasts.
This is our second NVIDIA 680i based motherboard review, the first was Abit's IN9 32X-MAX - a nice board that had certain BIOS and performance issues.
Will Gigabyte's 680i board do better?
As you can see from the specifications below, Gigabyte is clearly aiming at the enthusiast market here - I mean why would the board be such an I/O powerhouse otherwise?
After doing many motherboard reviews, I've come to take a lot for granted - but even I was surprised to see four Gigabit ports on the back of the I/O panel. 10 SATA ports is not that unusual, but it is still nice to see - and the dual PCIe 16x slots are practically begging for an SLI setup, with an additional PCIe 8x slot for a third GPU for physics.
All in all, quite a powerhouse.
|
Specification - Courtesy of Gigabyte
|
| Form Factor |
- ATX
- 30.5cm x 24.4cm
|
| BIOS |
- 2 4Mbit flash ROM
- Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
- PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0b
|
| Chipset |
- NVIDIA NFORCE® 680i SLI MCP(Northbridge: C55XE, Southbridge: MCP55PXE)
- Marvell 88E8052/88E8056 chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
- Marvell 88E1116 phy (10/100/1000 Mbit)
- Realtek ALC888 DD audio codec
- T.I. TSB43AB23 1394 chip
|
| Processor |
- LGA775
- Support Intel® Core™ 2 Quad/Core™ 2 Duo/Pentium® D/Pentium® 4 Processor
- Supports 1333/1066/800/533 MHz FSB
|
| Internal I/O Connectors |
- 1 24-pin ATX power connector
- 1 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 4-pin PCIe 12V power connector
- 1 floppy connector
- 1 IDE connector
- 10 SATA 3Gb/s connectors
- 1 CPU fan connector
- 1 system fan connector
- 1 power fan connector
- 1 front panel connector
- 1 front audio connector
- 1 CD In connector
- 1 S/PDIF In connector
- 3 USB 2.0/1.1 connectors for additional 6 ports by cables
- 2 IEEE 1394a connectors for additional 2 ports by cables
- 1 TPM connector
- 1 LPT connector
- 1 Power LED connector
- 1 Chassis Intrusion connector
|
| Rear Panel I/O |
- 1 PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 serial port
- 1 IEEE 1394a port
- 1 S/PDIF out port (optical)
- 4 RJ-45 port
- 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 6 audio jacks (Line In / Line Out / MIC In / Surround Speaker Out (Rear Speaker Out) / Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out / Side Speaker Out)
|
| Expansion Slots |
- 2 PCI Express x16 slots
- 1 PCI Express x8 slot
- 1 PCI Express x1 slot
- 3 PCI slots
|
| H/W Monitoring |
- System voltage detection
- CPU / System temperature detection
- CPU / System / Power fan speed detection
- CPU warning temperature
- CPU / System / Power fan failure warning
- CPU / System smart fan control
|
| Other Features |
- Supports @BIOS
- Supports Download Center
- Supports Q-Flash
- Supports EasyTune (Note 3)
- Supports Xpress Install
- Supports Xpress Recovery2
- Supports Xpress BIOS Rescue
* (Note 3) EasyTune functions may vary depending on different motherboards. |
| Memory |
- 4 DDR2 DIMM memory slots (supports up to 8 GB memory)
- Support Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 unbuffered DIMMs*
- Supports 1.8V DDR2 DIMM
- Supports DDR2 667/533/400 DIMM
- Supports ECC type DRAM
|
|
forums
send article 
hardware newsletter 
article comments (9) 
Lowest prices check
Digg this!
del.icio.us