Final Thoughts

It seems that nVidia has not only learnt about its mistakes in the 590 SLI Intel chipsets but managed to fix them in some pretty quick time.

590 SLI was talked about for months but the new nForce 680i took half the time from production to market - most possibly because half the technology was already available, the MCP 590 just got a rename to MCP 680 as only a new Northbridge or SPP had to be fabricated.

nVidia has in reality made a very good start to its overclocking campaign and with so many enthusiasts out there with phase change, water cooling and even LN2 rigs floating around, we can clearly foresee some records being completely shattered with a 680i motherboard, Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor and a pair of GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards in SLI mode.

For eVGA's part in the process, the motherboard worked perfectly - no glitches, no bugs and no random reboots and BSOD's apart from the normal and well excepted errors when we overclock too much, but we never learn that lesson here.

Overall we cannot get enough of this chipset and look forward to seeing what some of the other companies start coming out with this new chipset from nVidia. It's clearly a chipset designed for enthusiasts and we think nVidia has done a very good job.

- Pros

Fast

Supports all Core 2 processors

More stable than 590SLI Intel

Overclocks better than any other Core 2 chipset to date

Dual Gigabit LAN with bridging for 2Gbps function

SLI Ready

Third Graphics slot for Physics engine

Water cooling users not forgotten

Unlinked CPU FSB and RAM overclocking

- Cons

No additional SATA controllers or e.SATA ports

Expensive but other 680i boards will be even more expensive

- Latest Pricing

Rating - 9.5 out of 10 and TweakTown's "MUST HAVE" Best Performance Award