chaminga_d
01-17-2007, 09:52 PM
It may be a little late to the party, but Gigabyte has just introduced a motherboard based on Nvidia's nForce 680i SLI chipset. Unlike 680i SLI offerings from the likes of eVGA and Biostar, the snappily named GA-N680SLI-DQ6 isn't a rebadged Nvidia reference design. Instead, Gigabyte has gone its own way, most visibly by installing a copper, heat pipe-based cooler that extends from the chipset to the power regulation circuitry.
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/6240/gan680slidq62b9ba2jh0.jpg
Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6. Source: Gigabyte.
The board's layout is somewhat different from the reference design we tested last year, too. Gigabyte has swapped one of the PCI Express x1 slots for a 32-bit PCI slot and raised the SATA port total from six to 10. Gigabyte says the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 has four eSATA ports, but those aren't on the rear port cluster, so they likely come in an expansion slot bracket. The port cluster does include a whopping four Gigabit Ethernet ports, however. Gigabyte says those can be combined into two 2Gbps connections, should you somehow need the extra bandwidth.
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/6240/gan680slidq62b9ba2jh0.jpg
Gigabyte's GA-N680SLI-DQ6. Source: Gigabyte.
The board's layout is somewhat different from the reference design we tested last year, too. Gigabyte has swapped one of the PCI Express x1 slots for a 32-bit PCI slot and raised the SATA port total from six to 10. Gigabyte says the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 has four eSATA ports, but those aren't on the rear port cluster, so they likely come in an expansion slot bracket. The port cluster does include a whopping four Gigabit Ethernet ports, however. Gigabyte says those can be combined into two 2Gbps connections, should you somehow need the extra bandwidth.