Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI enthusiast chipset review and specs

Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI Chipset

Summery - The Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI chipset has a lot of hype to live up to, it was billed by some of the media as a better chipset for Intel processors, than the Intel Chipsets. Tough words indeed, but Nvidia really has taken up the challenge with the nforce 680i SLI Chipset. Absolutely packed full of features and overclocking options makes this chipset definitely worth a look for the performance enthusiast.

The Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI chipset can be described as one of the most feature rich chipsets ever to be released. This one is for the enthusiasts out there. There has been debate out there for a while now that basically concluded that between the top chipsets there is very little performance difference when doing day to day activities. This has not always been the case but all the major players seem to have got right when it comes the basic performance of windows.

That brings us on to why some chipsets are perceived as better than others, and that is what the chipset offers you when you want to go beyond the norm, and do more than the average computer "user". This is of course where the Nforce 680i comes to the for-front. There are two versions of the 680i SLI chipset, the normal 680i SLI and the 680i LT (lite) 680i. The main differences between the two chipsets are that the lite version has slightly less overclocking options and slightly slower support of SLI-Ready Memory. See the table below for the full set of features of the Nforce 680i SLI and 680i LT chipsets.

	Abit IN9 32X-MAX	Asus Striker Extreme	BFG Nforce 680i	ECS PN2 SLI2+	Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6	MSI P6N Diamond
Size	30.5cm x 24.5cm	30.5cm x 24.5cm	30.4cm x 24.4cm	30.5cm x 24.4cm	30.5cm x 24.4cm	30.5cm x 24.5cm
DIMM Slots	4x DDR2 32Gb Max	4x DDR2 8Gb Max	4x DDR2 8Gb Max	4x DDR2 8Gb Max	4x DDR2 8Gb Max	4x DDR2 16Gb Max
Expansion Slots	2 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 16x (8x bandwidth) 1 PCI-E 1x 2 PCI	2 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 16x (8x bandwidth) 1 PCI-E 1x 2 PCI	2 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 16x (8x bandwidth) 1 PCI-E 1x 2 PCI	2 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 16x (8x bandwidth) 2 PCI-E 1x 2 PCI	2 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 16x (8x bandwidth) 1 PCI-E 1x 3 PCI	4 PCI-E 16x 1 PCI-E 1x 2 PCI
Storage	1 x UDMA 133Mhz 6 x S-ATA 3Gb/s	1 x UDMA 133Mhz 6 x S-ATA 3Gb/s	1 x UDMA 133Mhz 6 x S-ATA 3Gb/s	1 x UDMA 133Mhz 6 x S-ATA 3Gb/s	1 x UDMA 133Mhz 10 x S-ATA 3Gb/s	2 x UDMA 133Mhz 7 x S-ATA 3Gb/s
RAID	S-ATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD	S-ATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD	S-ATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD	S-ATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD	S-ATA RAID 0,1,5,10	S-ATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 and JBOD
Integrated Features	Dual Gigabit LAN 7.1 Audio codec	Dual Gigabit LAN ADI 1988B 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC	Dual Gigabit LAN 8-channel High Definition Azalia audio	Marvell 88E1116 Gigabit Fast Ethernet PHY x2 Realtek ALC885 support Intel 8-ch HD Audio	Quad Gigabit LAN Realtek ALC888 7.1 Codec	dual 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet ports by Realtek® RTL8211B Chip integrated by Creative ® Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio chipset
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