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Overclocking

The overclocking potential of this board is excellent - with a 7X multiplier I was able to reach a stable 485MHz FSB, which while not as high as the 505MHz FSB I saw on an Asus P5B-E Deluxe is still an excellent result

Don't get me wrong though, I did manage to get to a stable 485MHz - but I had to jump through proverbial hoops to get there, including having two 12cm 63CFM fans blow on the passive chipset heat pipes - why? - because I was worried if I did not, I'd slag the motherboard!

I used the following settings to run at a 1700MHz FSB with the processor at 3.4GHz:

• CPU Vcore at 1.475V (you NEED excellent cooling for this)
• FSB voltage control at +0.20V
• Memory Voltage at +0.275VV
• HT Voltage at +0.2V
• North Bridge at +0.2V (I was afraid to raise it higher - it runs HOT)
• South Bridge at +0.2V

I was able to reach 3.6GHz with our E6400, running on a 1800MHz FSB - a very good result especially considering the processor was air cooled!

Conclusion

There is a LOT to like about the Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6

• 10 SATA ports
• 4 Gigabit Ethernets
• two 16x PCIe slots
• one 8x PCIe slot

So if you are into having an SLI gaming rig, it is a good choice.

Heck, it would be a decent choice for a server or high-end router!

BUT

The original benchmarks that were run with the F3 BIOS revision show that the N680SLI did not have a mature BIOS - however after publishing our review, Gigabyte sent us an updated BIOS that significantly improved the memory performance. There are a number of driver and BIOS issues that need to be resolved, and Gigabyte told us that future BIOS and driver releases will address them - at which point we may update this review yet again..

The SATA ports appeared to run in SATA 1 mode, thus limiting burst transfer rates.

The audio drivers gave unreliable RightMark 3DSound results, and I was not willing to present values that were plainly impossible.

However, even with these shortcomings, there is significant potential for this board, once the supporting software improves.

I was able to attain a stable 3.6GHz overclock of our test E6400 merely with air cooling - which is truly an excellent result, and with the F4e BIOS the original sub-optimal memory latency and bandwidth issues were resolved.

I originally wrote that

"It is possible that a future BIOS revision may be able to improve the latency issues, however if you don't need SLI support, you would be better off with a 975X based Asus P5W DH Deluxe, or a good P965 based board such as the Asus P5B-E Deluxe or Gigabyte GA965P-DS3."

And the F4e BIOS did address the memory bandwidth issues, improving them so much that now I have to consider the Gigabyte 6-Quad N680SLI-DQ6 a good choice for enthusiasts.

Frankly, if the poor display of voltages and SATA issues had been resolved, I'd have probably given the board an award - it is close to earning one.

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