* Support for all Intel LGA775 processors, including Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme (including QX6700);
* NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI chipset
* Northbridge: NVIDIA C55-SLIX16N-A2;
* Southbridge: NVIDIA NF590-SLI-N-A2 (MCP55);
* Support for up to 8GB of DDR2-533, DDR2-667 or DDR2-800MHz memory, with additional support for NVIDIA SLI-Ready Memory up to 1200MHz;
* Two PCI-Express x16 slots for SLI (blue, running at x16) and one PCI-Express x16 slot (white, running at x8), one PCI-Express x1 slot and two PCI slots;
* Asus SupremeFX Audio Card with 7.1 channel support via ADI1988B HD Audio codec, complete with jack sensing, multi-streaming, jack-retasking and noise filter, along with co-axial and optical S/PDIF out ports;
* Dual Gigabit Ethernet PHY via a pair of PCI-Express based Marvell 88E1116-NNC1 network controllers;
* Six native SATA 3Gbps ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD;
* Two eSATA 3Gbps ports supporting SATA-on-the-Go (on rear I/O panel);
* Support for ten USB 2.0 ports (four on rear I/O panel, six via on-board pins/expansion brackets);
* Two IEEE1394a Firewire ports (one on rear I/O panel, one via on-board pins/expansion brackets);
* One ATA133 connector and one floppy connector.
Its typical ASUS launch. It will take few months for this board to really unveil its potential. ASUS launch bios always sucked for almost all boards with some quirks which needs fixing.
lol…one thing…nvidia’s original 680i’s had horribly placed front panel connectors…
also I don’t like the heat pipes completely surround the CPU region…makes removal etc difficult, especially with my large clumsy fingers…
ontopic: the motherboard is TOO expensive. i rmemeber days when people were not ready to pay > $200 for premium boards. I see this as a move on part of these manufacturers to push up the prices artificially.
