Inno3D nForce 680i SLI

Conclusions

Our experiences with nForce 680i SLI reference boards have been far from great thus far and we have had a refreshing change with Inno3D's board. Not only does it work right off the bat without a fuss, but it also seems to tolerate the wide range of memory we tried in the board. We've had OCZ, Kingston, Crucial and Corsair memory in the board and it ploughed through one of bit-tech's stress tests for over 24 hours without any sign of cracking under the pressure.

Inno3D could have gone to some lengths in order to associate the motherboard with its brand, rather than just unpack the board from NVIDIA and bung it in Inno3D-branded packaging. Even graphics cards get a sticker. Looking into a case you couldn't tell the difference between this and an EVGA nForce 680i SLI board, only the contents of the package tell you that, and Inno3D includes a less attractive bundle than EVGA.

While that would normally be a bad thing for a top of the range enthusiast board, you don't need things like a serial port PCI bracket and most cases have a front pair of USB ports. It's also cheaper than the EVGA as well, however at the time of writing the only UK stockist is Ebuyer, who is selling the board at £169 (inc VAT). The Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus is cheaper, and comes with a similar bundle and a similar feature set. However, the 650i northbridge might limit your overclocking endeavours a little.

On the subject of overclocking: we managed to get the board to a very healthy 487MHz front side bus, fully Prime95 stable with a 1.4V northbridge and 2.3V memory using sync settings with an Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU on a 6x multiplier. However, the board seems to have a very significant drop off between stability and refusing to boot. At 490MHz, regardless of voltage it would not budge any further.

Considering this is Inno3D’s first European motherboard release, we can cut the company a little slack on the branding front, but we hope that the company strive to make the presence of its brand felt a little better with future motherboard releases. The only thing differentiating this board from the competition is price, and Inno3D has almost no control on the price its retailers sell this board and its competitors boards for. However, this also frees Inno3D from the development and stress of designing and maintaining the BIOS, which costs a lot in R&D man power, increasing the price.

If you like the look and features of the reference board and want to save a bit of cash over the EVGA then go for it. However, a word of caution considering other reference boards: despite the fact we have one that works perfectly, it may be wise to keep an ear to the ground and seek other user’s experiences given the history of the design. Now that the board is starting to mature, far fewer people are having problems now.

We’d say that the reported problems these days are no different to what you’d get from any other board and many users have had very successful experiences with NVIDIA’s nForce 680i SLI reference board. The BIOS is also very mature and it is still cutting edge technology. If you stressed about everything you consider buying you'd never end up purchasing anything.

£170 is still a lot of money though, and there are cheaper boards available which are fully kitted out with additional value from solid state caps and eSATA ports. But still, very few people use eSATA and why do you need solid state capacitors if the board is an exceptional overclocker and by the time something may go wrong it's time to upgrade anyway.

Final Thoughts...

Ultimately it's a kick ass bit of kit, and it’s much cheaper than the similar-performing Striker Extreme from Asus. Also, despite being a reference design, we've had no issues with our nemesis this time around. The layout is solid and Inno3D has included the bare essentials in the bundle. However, we feel that Inno3D needs to differentiate itself more in a highly competitive market. It needs offer something other than a subtle saving to sway customers to its brand, in order to make an impact in a market where brand loyalty is high.