Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 Exclusive Preview

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Hardware

Gigabyte seems to be ready to challenge Asus in the next-gen motherboard war. We just got a word from Gigabyte about their new killer product, the N680SLI-DQ6 motherboard. As the name hints, this motherboard features the latest N680SLI chipset from Nvidia. This top notch motherboard will be competing with the Asus Striker series motherboards.

Although, there is no official statement at the moment about this product from Gigabyte, we managed to gather a little info about this board...

This motherboard is definitely for extreme PC enthusiasts and hardcore gamers who are looking to squeeze every last bit of performance from all their PC. The N680SLI-DQ6 is optimized for the latest Intel Quad-Core processors and features an all-solid capacitor design.

The D in the model name stands for Durability Enhanced just like in the P965-DQ6 boards. This enhanced durability is acheived by the use of solid capacitors. This board also has the 6-Quad Features which include - Quad BIOS, Quad Cooling, Quad Triple phase, Quad eSATA2, Quad-Core Ready, and Quad Gigabit LAN.

Quad BIOS is a unique Gigabyte feature unique that includes DualBIOS and Express BIOS Rescue Technology. This combination delivers a safety assurance mechanism that supports a total of 4 copies of BIOS distributed between the Flash ROM, hard-disk and driver CD. This feature helps to reduce the affects of virus attacks or firmware damage and provides multi-layer BIOS protection that assures greater PC platform stability.

Quad Cooling allows users to enjoy longer component lifetime through lower temperatures and absolute silence combined with the ultimate thermal performance on the chipset, CPU power components and the PCB.

The Quad Triple phase features is an other exclusive feature also found on the P965-DQ6 motherboard. This unique design incorporates Virtual 12 Power Phases to deliver steadier power and immediate current support for the CPU during heavy work loads or over-clocking. Additionally, Quad Triple Phase helps to improve component lifespan system stability by delivering lower component temperature.

The Quad eSATA feature provides four sets of external SATA ports which allows effortless sharing and transfer of content on external devices. The Quad eSATA delivers enhanced scalability and double the bus bandwidth for high-speed data retrieval.

As mentioned earlier, this motherboard is optimized for the latest Quad-Core processors which will enable even more multitasking with greater performance and reduced power consumption.

New to this board is the Quad Gigabit LAN, which integrates four Gigabit Ethernet MACs that can be used individually, combined, or configured in a number of ways depending on the needs of the user. This new technology provides advanced networking features including teaming, load balancing, fail-over, and TCP/IP acceleration.

In addition to these unique features, the board also features a Dolby Digital and DTS ready audio chipset. The board is RoHS compliant which is becoming a standard among leading PC component manufacturers now-a-days. The board is Vista Premium Ready and also features the Nvidia SLI Ready sign. This board is also Nvidia Essential Vista signed.

Apart from these features, the board ofcourse has all the standard features provided by the N680SLI chipset. Heres a summary of the features: