NVIDIA's 680i SLI Chipset Ready for Primetime

AnInkle writes, "The Tech Report conducts their usual exhaustive evaluation of NVIDIA's other big launch today, the nForce 680i SLI. The new chipset pairs an already proven south bridge chip with a new north bridge that has impressive overclocking potential and a redesigned (read: fast) memory controller. Combined with a motherboard design, production-quality BIOS and polished tweaking software that are all attractive and retail-ready, you end up with a 'complete reference platform that's perfect for picky enthusiasts and serious overclockers,' if you want to pay for it."

Re:Scores wern't overly impressive

[pjbass]

Just speculation, but the fact the layout of the motherboard to prevent clutter is more significant than you'd think. In systems with bleeding edge components, you will have components that will still be pulling a generous amount of power. If you have cluttered cables around main airways across the motherboard, you don't remove heat as fast as a well-designed and channeled system. If it's really bad, then you can overheat the machine and have components shut themselves down, or clock themselves down.

Something as little as component layout can make a huge impact.

More In-depth Analysis Here At HotHardware.com

[MojoKid]

NVIDIA also launched a new enthusiast line of motherboard chipsets today in support of Intel's Core 2 Duo/Quad and AMD Athlon 64 processors. NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI and nForce 680a SLI motherboard chipsets [hothardware.com] will also allow a pair of GeForce 8800 series graphics cards to run in tandem for nearly double the performance. The new chipset also offers a ton of integrated features, like Gigabit Ethernet Link Teaming, FirstPacket traffic priortization and MediaShield RAID technologies.