Nickname said:
Also, Nvidia already said that they were not going to support the new 45nm quads on the 680i, sorry Kip.
Actually the pre-release versions of the QX9650 and the new 45nm chips work great on the 680i chipsets and have been used in tech show demos all over the place. Apparently Nvidia refused to give Intel a license for SLI technology so they made the release versions of all 45nm processors electrically incompatible with the 600 series chipset. They CAN be fully compatible if Intel decides to get over themselves.
I’ve also heard of people using QX9650s in newer 680i motherboards and actually being able to POST and boot Windows with them. However most have had to disable 2 of the cores to do it and the few who have been able to use all 4 cores have had to reduce the FSB back to 1066.
Nvidia may make a BIOS update in the next year or so, if not it’s probably not a big loss. The Q6600 should bottom out in the next few months to clear them out of inventory and I doubt I’ll run into anything that’ll give it a run for it’s money within the next 2-3 years. The chip is extremely powerful for the price.