Seems I was too premature in buying my Asus. Now I'm not sure what to do?

Like everyone else with an Asus 680i mb, I can't get anything stable over 320FSBx10 after playing with voltages/memory with the QX6700. It is rock solid and cool at the 3.2ghz and and I haven't yet tried any other multiplier e.g. 11-12 but this FSB is disappointing compared to the C2D performance of the board.

I also now find out that the HD throughput on this 680i platform is effectively (although not by design) capped relative to Intel's 975. Something like 120mb/s versus 190mb/s.

The only other alternative is to get the revised EVGA 680i which allows better Quad OC and add a hardware RAID controller. This seems kind of silly given the controller itself is about $200 where a good 975/965 board has maybe slightly less OC room on the quad but superior HD performance.

Given that there is a problem both with OCing the quad on this Asus board specifically and a HD ceiling on the 680i generally, what Intel 975 board with 3PCI-E slots would you recommend?

Thank you.

mhw100,

I'm not sold on the nVidia chipsets right now. I just built a E4300/P5N-E SLI with the 650i chipset for a friend and had all sorts of problems. 3 motherboards later (yes, the first 2 were bad!), and I got it to run at 3.0GHz.

I just built another E4300 for myself, but used a GigaByte GA-965P-DS3 instead of the Asus. Best MB I ever owned! Supports Quad-Core and has a native 1333MHz buss. It easily overclocked to 3.275GHz.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128042

Just be sure if you do get one, it's v1.33 as the older versions do not support Quad Core or have a 1333MHz native fsb

Best Regards,
theonejrs