The first ODM product based on the NF680i chipset is here. Elegantly designed and packed with interesting features, this board excels in details that most manufacturers would have overlooked.

Built for the Conroe family of CPUs, this board can support the quad core and extreme edition processors. It can also support future 1333MHz FSB CPUs. The expension capabilities include 4 DIMM slots support DDR2-800 (8GB MAX). It also has 3 PCIe x16 slots (2 at 16x for SLI and 1 at 8x for other usage). The board also support the 6 SATAII (in RAID 0,1,0+1,5, JBOD) and 2 SATAIi ports by SIl3132 for eSATAII at the back plate. There are also two GbE by Marvell which supports Dual NET. The audio uses ADI 19888 8 ch HD audio codec and supports DTS Connect and ASUS array Mic. The 1394 allows DV players to be conneted for fast transfer of video images. The board also supports 10 USB ports and comes bundled with games like Ghost Recon, 3Dmark06 advance edition, intervideo media launcherand Kaspersky anti virus software. The board also comes with the LCD POSTER at the back panel for diagnostics checking and push buttons for PowerON/off, Reset and ClrCMOS.

In terms of performance, the board wins some and loses some in various categories when compared to the 965P board. Overall, the performance can be tuned up with auto overclocking features and tighter ram timings.

The board has lots of overclocking features with adjustments of CPU, DIMM, Chipset voltages, ASync settings, ram timing adjustments. You can check the gallery for more details. In our test, the max we can reach is 470MHz x 6 or 3.7GHz (370x10) on the X6800 processor. The CPU Vcore is already set at 1.5v, vdimm at 2.1v. This seems to be limitation of the CPU we have. We tested the QX6700 (2.66GHz) and it just couldn't get stable at 3.7GHz on air cool at 1.5v (CPU).  A new BIOS might be able to help to get it to 500MHz (but it might be due to the limitation of the CPU). The NVIDIA system drivers allows direct BIOS modification within Windows. This is something that will be useful for some but I still prefer to meddle with the BIOS directly. In the BIOS there are also options of NVIDIA GPU Ex and LinkBoost. We tested them using a pair of 8800GTX. For those who are interested in Dual 8800GTX running on this board, we have tested it with 3DMark06. Driver 97.44 is used. An increase of performance is noted when GPU Ex is enabled. When Linkboost is enabled with NVIDIA GPU EX, the performance drops.

Something users ought to take note is that ASUS spent a lot of time testing and tuning their BIOS to cater for a larger range of DDR2 modules. As you have noticed, the box has a sticker which shows, use QVL listed DDR2 modules for it. Thus, it is better that you use those in the QVL list to run on this board.

As far as I am concerned, I feel that the layout of the board can be improved. Some areas of the board, the IDE channel and the Power plug is too close to each other. Another area to note is the heatpipe and 8 pin AUX power plug. The LCD Poster should also be placed on board or give it an external bracket as it is difficult to read the error msg if you were to troubleshoot it outside the casing.

Overall, the board runs as it should and we did not experience any major issues with ram compatibility as we use SLI ready memory from Corsair in our tests.

Pricing

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Pros

• 3 x PCIe x16 slots for SLI (2 PCIex16 and 1 PCiex8)

• Quad Core support

• Plenty of oc options in BIOS

• Switches for Power, Reset and Clear CMOS

Cons

• Chipset is hot

• Compatibility issue with DDR2, check QVL

• Expensive

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.