Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6

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.