ECS PN2 SLI2+ (NV 680i) Mainboard Review Intro 1/5
Bluetooth 5 Dec 2006

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Introduction

2 weeks ago, NVIDIA launches its newest chipset, NForce 680i for the LGA775 Core 2 Duo. To date, most of the manufacturers haven't deliver their in house designed mainboards. As one of the key partners of NVIDIA, ECS is the first in Asia to launch its first mainboard based on the 680i chipset.

As most of you probably have guessed, this board looks just like the other brand in US under another brand name. This is probably an indication that NVidia is modeling along its high end graphics cards, selling the boards themselves to manufacturer and they re-package it and sell it on time with the launch.

The PN2 SLI2+ mainboard is based on the NVIDIA nFORCE 680iSLI C55XE/MCP55PXE chipsets which consists of the North bridge C55XE and south bridge MCP55PXE. This board supports the LGA775 socket for Intel® Core 2 Quadro/Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Duo /Pentium D / Pentium 4 /Celeron D Processors wiht FSB 1333(Core 2 Duo 1333)/1066/800/533 MHz. That is actually quite future proof as we would be expecting CPUs that clocks at 333MHz in the near future.

In terms of memory expansion slots, the board supports up to 4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket  up to 8 GB of DDR2 800/667/533/400 DD2 module. This is also the first board that comes with 3 full length PCIe x16 slots. 2 slots runs at full PCIex 16 while the third slot operates at PCIe x8.. There are 2 PCi slots and 2 PCIe x1 slot.

The south bridge MCP55PXE supports 1 x Ultra DMA133/100/66/33 port and 6 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices. NVIDIA MediaShield™ RAID supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD. On board audio uses the Realtek ALC 885 for HD audio. The board also comes with Dual GbE using Marvell 88E1116 and TI's 1394a

The package comes with 4 SATA cables, LAN, 2 USB+1394 bracket, 2 SATA powercable, Long SLI connector, eSATA bracket, IDE cable and  a cooling fan, CD ROM and manual.

In the next few pages, we will take a look at the mainboard and the BIOS.
 

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