Around about a couple of years ago, it was hard to find boards of a large variety for the Intel processor platform. Pentium 4 was really a sour spot with the motherboard producers. On the other hand, chipsets for AMD’s Athlon 64 processors were plentiful - nVidia, SiS, ULi, ATI and even VIA technologies all had chipsets out to take some market share for Athlon 64.
Now the tables have turned - AMD is on the back burner, while there are chipsets still being made for AMD processors, clearly Core 2 has given Intel new life, and chipsets from the major vendors are coming in hard and fast.
Intel has its own very solid P965 and 975X chipsets along with its upcoming Bearlake P35 and X38 series chipsets with DDR-3 memory support among other things and should show up in the May and June time frame. SiS has new ones coming out, VIA even has started to look into Core 2 and even AMD/ATI has chipsets currently on the market and even working on new ones for their competitors processor platform. nVidia though at this time is the biggest player for Core 2, especially for Dual Graphics SLI.
Today we are looking at another contender for the Core 2 market using the nVidia nForce 680i chipset being Foxconn with their obscurely named N68S7AA-8EKRS2H motherboard. Foxconn has been known in the past for the more budget conscious boards, not wanting to take on the big boys like MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte and the likes who really push overclocking to its limits but it seems like they mean business now and are ready for the challenge.
Let’s see just how well this motherboard is able to perform compared to others on the market and if it’s worth buying consideration.
