Introduction

nForce 680i motherboards are now starting to pop up from all the major players in the motherboard industry. ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte have already released boards that differ from the nVidia reference design. We have tested the ASUS board, the MSI product is on its way and now more are starting to flow in. While there are plenty of motherboards out there based on this chipset, we are really only interested in checking out boards that differ from the reference design as with these products the only difference is what is included inside the box.

Since ABIT has managed to get new backing for their motherboard label, we are starting to see new boards finally coming out of Universal ABIT’s production factory. While it’s taking them some time to recover with many new changes inside the company itself, it appears as if things are gradually getting back to normal for the Taiwanese company.

Today we are going to put their latest board, the IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi, based on the still newish nForce 680i chipset designed to take Core 2 platform to the next level, can it handle this or will it fizzle out under pressure? When we first had a chance to preview this board back a few months ago, we were very excited about the possibilities with claims that the board could reach around 550MHz FSB under the right conditions but now that we have a retail sample in our labs for testing, does it stand up to the hype?

It comes with some extra features such as the AirPace Wi-Fi 802.11g wireless kit and revised digital power management but how does it stack up when we overclock?

Let’s take a look and find out!