The board is sweet got mine on the 24th and matching XFX alpha dog graphics, built rig straight after opening presents on chrimbo day ( misses was not impressed ) but then again one of the things she got me was a 24" wide screen monitor sooooooo cant complin. And she was cooking dinner. Will post pics when I get around to taking them.
Board itself when everything was installed powered up first time and easily installed XP.
I set up 2x320 gig samsung spinpoints in raid stripe in the bios very quick and easy , Then gave the cpu its correct multiplyer 9 as the system had it at 6 then got the OS installed.
Use the drivers from the disk as the nvidia website does not recognise the board properly yet and wants you to download and install the 680i chipset drivers which bork your network and cause a pain.
The onboard sound is one of the best ive heard, listened to a CD then an mp3 using the onboard then installed an X-Fi Gamer card put the CD back on and promptly removed the Xf-I due to hiss and crackles from the card , From the onboard nothing just the tunes no hiss pops or crackles.
Other thing to watch for is none of the testing software recognises the board properly yet even to a point of them all giving wild readings as to the CPU temp varying by as much as 30 degres "core temp" cant even spot the CPU saying its an Intel core 2 6600 quad kentsfield when it is actually a Qx6850 ( got it cheep from ebay after getting a pic of the top of the cpu sent showing the intel model numbers) XP reads the chip properly so does the mobo and cpu-z.
It set the memory timings loose 5 5 5 5 18 when the memory is 4 4 4 4 12 corsair dominator 800mhz so check for that.
Stability wise its quite good at stock even to the point of being able to run 3 instances of a space online game 9 keep reading as to why its not overclocked yet )accross 3 monitors, The 24" from the misses and 2 15" sony tft's on a dual link cable ( the game is more cpu than gpu soo its giving the cpu some stress ) second 24" and graphics card will be purchased start of febuary.
The nvidia software is ermm lacking to say the least lackluster and plain it looks like it has been hashed together last min so the board could be shiped, It does have some nice features though just its looks bland, It allows memory timings change , cpu fsb change , general fsb change and GPU changes if supported,
As for overclocking not done any yet as ive said I cant get a decent program to properly monitor the mobo ( its new what can I expect ) also the rubbish cooler does not inspire me with confidence asaka Revo.
Not good imho
Board layout very good loads of room around the CPU for the bigest cooler you will ever find you can turn an articulated lorry around in the space just the north bridge fan seems odd the way its orentated pulling what would be warm air from the bottom area of the CPU heatsink if you have say a thermaltake 120 or similar as it is with the revo its fighting for some of the air.
In a Antec 182 case where the middle case fan is that draws air into the case the first graphics card is pretty much in the middle of the fan properly disrupting the airflow.
USB and Firewire headers could have been better placed like at the bottom edge of the board rather than between the second Pcie and first pci slots.
Good board though cant wait for the new bios update see what trinkets that unlocks. :tup
Forgot to say this mobo does not have the in windows bios flashing software so hopefully not many will get borked.
The only decision now is do I install the 2 8800GTX or 2 8800GTS 512...
, also comes with 6 sata cables , 3 sata power converter cables, plus other bits.
