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Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6

Rather than join the fray with just another reference design clone, Gigabyte brings the N680SLI-DQ6 to market with a touch of style and innovation that Gigabyte has been known for.

Introduction

GIGABYTE has been relentless this last year releasing many impressive high quality motherboards that have become highly sought after by the enthusiast. Indeed their GA-P965-DQ6 Rev 1.0 is one of the best P965 boards released to date. Gigabyte didn’t rest on their laurels and released a revision 2.0 version of that board as well as several other excellent models in a wide range of price points. Their latest crop of boards have not only been stable, but have been excellent overclockers as well. Gigabyte has joined in on the recent the 680SLI mania by releasing their own 680SLI chipset based N680SLI-DQ6, albeit a little later than most vendors.

The Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 is the latest addition to Gigabyte’s already successful lineup of motherboards. The N680SLI-DQ6 features the NVIDIA 680SLI (C55XE and MCP55XE) chipset. The N680SLI-DQ6 supports the latest Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. Following Industry trends the N680SLI-DQ6 requires only a few components to create a working machine. The required components are: Socket LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. GIGABYTE integrated the following components into the N680SLI-DQ6: 1 ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 10 USB ports; 4 on the backplane and 3 headers supporting 2 ports each.) ; 10 SATA 3G ports; 4 GigE Ethernet ports; Onboard Realtek ALC888 DD audio codec; Coaxial, S/PDIF In/out; 3 IEEE1394 ports (1 on backplane and 2 via header) and of course standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

Other than changes to the artwork, the packaging is virtually identical to the packaging used with the GA-P965-DQ6 and other more recent motherboards. The hard plastic shell keeps the motherboard well protected, and the accessories are all crammed into two separate compartments in the accessories box. One side containing manuals, the driver CD and documentation, and the other side contains all the included cables.

Board Layout

The board layout is adequate for the most part, and all the shortcomings of the board aren’t a deal breaker, but some of them are annoying. For starters, the SATA ports attached to the GB363x are far too close to the secondary video card slot. With two 7900GTX’s installed, I was not able to connect any SATA cables to those ports, unless they had a right angle connector on one side. Another huge point of irritation is the CPU area which is far too overcrowded. Another problem is the location of the IDE port. It’s too close to the ATX power connector. To Gigabyte’s credit, they designed the board so that memory can be installed without removing the primary video card. The layout of the expansion slots is generally good, and is nearly identical to the layout of the NVIDIA reference design. The PCB revision tested was version 1.0. I was unable to identify the exact manufacturer of the all-solid capacitors found on the surface of the N6860SLI-DQ6.

The CPU area of the Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 is very crowded. This isn’t something I am used to seeing on a motherboard, and frankly I am disturbed by Gigabyte’s cooling setup for a number of reasons. The first problem is that I can see how it would interfere with the installation of several coolers. The most disturbing and problematic issue with the CPU area is not what’s on top of the board, but rather what is on the bottom of the board. There is a large plate on the bottom of the board which will in fact prevent the installation of some mounting plates and other mounting hardware. I tried to use the Thermaltake Big Typhoon and was unable to do so as it raised the motherboard too high to make contact with the rubber stand offs on my HSPC Tech Station. This problem will also affect most cases unless the standoffs are long enough. So far the only case I know of that this won’t be a problem with is the Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 and 810.

The board has 4 240-pin DDR 2 DIMM slots located in front of the CPU socket. Gigabyte has left plenty of room to allow the installation and removal of memory without having to take out the video card. Many boards lack this feature, and it’s nice that Gigabyte kept this in mind when designing the N680SLI-DQ6.

The North bridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket. The heat pipe based cooling solution connects to the voltage components behind the CPU, as well as the south bridge. The cooling system works very well at stock speeds and is adequate for even some higher FSB overclocking.

The south bridge is located in front of the orange PCIe x16 slot. It’s a low profile heat sink unit connected to the rest of the motherboard cooling system. Directly in front of the south bridge is six SATA II ports connected to the NVIDIA south bridge. To the left are an additional four SATA ports connected to Gigabyte’s GB363x controller.

The Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 has three PCIe x16 slots. The two light blue colored slots operate at x16 speeds while the third orange slot operates at x8 speeds.

On the back of the Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 has the following ports on the backplane: 1 PS/2 mouse port, 1 PS/2 keyboard port, 1 Optical port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, six mini-stereo ports, one RS232 port, and one IEEE1394a port.

GIGABYTE EZ-Tune 5

Gigabyte has included Easy Tune 5 with the N680SLI-DQ6 . It allows for dynamic overclocking within Windows as well as PC health monitoring. When the application launches, you will find yourself looking at the main screen as you might imagine. There are two modes of operation, Easy and Advanced. When the utility is run in Easy mode, you can raise the current CPU FSB in percentages using the up and down arrows within the GUI menu of the program. Advanced mode allows for FSB tweaking, and Voltage tweaking of BIOS options like CPU, DDR, and PCI-Express bus speeds and voltages.

The CIA MIB button gives you access to the CIA/CIA2/MIB/MIB2 selection screen. CIA2 allows for system overclocking through automated means using 5 preset states: Cruise, Sport, Racing, Turbo, and Full Thrust. The Cruise mode is the least aggressive, while the Full Thrust mode offers the most aggressive preset state of overclocking.

The PC Health button gives you access to several submenus for monitoring system fan headers, activity and voltages. Alerts are also controlled from here. The Hardware Monitor option lists current values for monitored system voltages, fan headers, and temperature readings. The Settings option also allows for configuration of minimum fan speed and temperature thresholds. The Alert Auto setting controls the actions taken by the system when one of the monitored fan header’s speed drops below minimum safety thresholds or in the even that temperatures exceed pre-defined safe limits.