Are there any reliable 680i boards?

I know this sounds stupid, but I highly value Newegg's customer reviews and base some of my purchasing on them. So when I was looking at some of the 680i boards, the best ones have only 4 stars (or eggs). Many of the reviews guarantee an RMA and say the failure rates are astounding.

So I'm just wondering if there are any good reliable 680i boards out there. I'd rather not have to go through the RMA process, and just want a good board to SLI a couple 8800GT's together and support the new 45nm CPU's.

as far as i know all 680i are the same like the bfg one or evga and ecs ... they used the reference board design from nvidia ... some like abit foxconn and asus made there own board based on the reference board but there are quite a bit different ... so imo abit make a very good 680i mobo with a great bios with a lot of tweaking inside to reach a good o/c ... google each one and read some review from site like Neoseeker or overclocker3d ... so i hope this would help ...

ASUS Striker Extreme Gamer's Motherboard

theblt said:

I know this sounds stupid, but I highly value Newegg's customer reviews and base some of my purchasing on them. So when I was looking at some of the 680i boards, the best ones have only 4 stars (or eggs). Many of the reviews guarantee an RMA and say the failure rates are astounding.

So I'm just wondering if there are any good reliable 680i boards out there. I'd rather not have to go through the RMA process, and just want a good board to SLI a couple 8800GT's together and support the new 45nm CPU's.

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Well, first off:

NewEgg "reviews" can be submitted by anyone, even if they didn't purchase it (I've seen "reviews" where people ask if it will work with x processor or memory). MOST of the reviews are by people that have NO IDEA how the hardware works and give a horrible review because they were doing something wrong and didn't know how to fix it.

All the 680i motherboard are "reliable", how could any manufacturer put out hardware that didn't work? It wouldn't sell.

On to the advice.

I highly recommend eVGA for their amazing customer service. I had to send in my 8800GTS 2 times (psu and mb respectively) and they sent me a new video card the same day they receive mine, no questions asked.

Other than that, they are all pretty much the same motherboard.

yeah, i just made a move from a P5N32E (Asus) to a eVGA 680i - my Asus board couldnt clock my quad for crap. i tryed 3 different bios. nothing over 3GHz.

word on the street is the A1 revision on the eVGA 680i is a good clocker for quads. i guess i'll find out tuesday.

if you were thinking about going quad i would go with the eVGA 680i (A1) - future proof yourself a little better. my Asus didnt clock for crap, and it's kinda turned me off from Asus.

bkny10555 said:

ASUS Striker Extreme Gamer's Motherboard

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For quad cores, I don't suggest the Striker Extreme. I've been building review systems that are going out to magazines and unfortunately, the Asus Striker Extreme was my only choice in-house for 3-way sli. We used the QX6850 and we couldn't overclock anything. The most I was able to do was bump up the multiplier once, twice if I had a better cooler. But overclocking the FSB even a tiny bit resulted in a very unstable system. Quad cores and Strikers don't mix well.

In other systems that went in for magazines reviews from other vendors, most used QX6850 with the eVGA 680i platform and was able to overclock and do very well.

For dual cores as in your case (from you sig) the Asus Striker Extreme would work just fine, but not for quad cores.

I have been testing a asus p5nt ws for a month now with a x6800 in sli 8800 ultras and with areca 1230 raid card with 4x150 raptors at 3.6 and iam impressed at how stable it is.Iam going to try a qx6850 and 4gb of ocz 9200flex with vista ultimate 64 and see how it gos.Iam not big on 680i but i had some parts laying around and would to try sli so i got a board with 3 pcie slots one being 8x and kinda liking it.It is still on the bench but very stable.