Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Name: Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 - Page 10
Brand: Gigabyte

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, July 12, 2007, 10:00 PM EDT

Performance Summary: The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 was an excellent performer in essentially every category. In both the synthetic and real-world benchmarks, the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 either finished at the top of the heap, or just behind the first place finisher. There isn't a whole lot to differentiate the overall performance between today's high-end motherboards based on competing chipsets, but it's safe to say the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 can hang with the best of them. The board is also passively cooled, so acoustically it’s a winner, and it performed very well in our overclocking tests too.

Gigabyte has done an excellent job with the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. This motherboard is an enthusiast class product in every way. The GA-N680SLI-DQ6 has a feature set as extensive as we have seen, thanks to its chipset and additional integrated peripherals. It's also a solid performer and an excellent overclocker. The elaborate passive cooling apparatus and 100% solid capacitor design also hint at the board's top notch build quality. Perhaps Gigabyte's zeal caused them to go a bit over the top with the Gigabit LAN and SATA connectivity options, but we doubt the type of users in the market for a board like this are going to knock it for having too many features. We disliked having to press CTRL-F1 to access the board's more advanced BIOS menus and had some minor concerns regarding its layout, but overall it’s hard for us not to really like the GA-N680SLI-DQ6. At about $285 on-line, the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 is one of the more expensive LGA-775 based motherboards on the market, but if you want support for Core 2 Duo processors and SLI, you can't do much better than this.


Good Performance Great Overclocker Slick Passive Cooling Over The Top Features	Pricey BIOS Quirks

Discuss This Article and Share Your Thoughts With Others!

Tags: Gigabyte, sli, 680, 80s

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com