I bought an eVGA 680i motherboard about 18 months ago. Love it - except for the high MCP temps. I was running at 3.6 GHz with an E6600. Testing showed my FSB topped out at 450 Mhz.
A couple of vacations ago, I brought back a G0 Q6600. After several hours of tinkering, the best I could do was 3.0 GHz. Started checking around online and I discovered that, apparently, 680i's have problems with overclocked quad core CPU's.
I'm running the P30 BIOS. I think they are up to P31 now.
I know the problem wasn't the Q6600. I put it into a GA-EP35-DS3P and it's Prime95 stable after 24 hours at 3.6 GHz.
I was able to run at 3.0 GHz at stock CPU voltage, and only had to increase CPU voltage to 1.30 volts to run at 3.3 GHz.
You might try finding a copy of WinXP just to eliminate the possibility of OS problems.
You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months. If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.