EVGA 680i LT SLI: NVIDIA's 680i Cost Reduced

Since Anandtech's first look at the 680i SLI chipset back in November we have been impressed with its performance and overall features. What was even more impressive was the fact that the chipset debuted on a motherboard that was designed by NVIDIA and built for NVIDIA's launch partners. This launch basically followed the path of the successful AM2 590SLI introduction except this time NVIDIA introduced and marketed the only board available with the 680i SLI chipset through a select number of partners. Although the 680i SLI motherboard was a reference design, it catered to the computer enthusiasts with a long list of features and a BIOS specifically aimed at the overclocking community.

It was several weeks before a motherboard manufacturer would offer a competing 680i solution. ASUS was the first non-reference board partner to offer competition to NVIDIA's reference design and it would take a few months before the likes of abit and Gigabyte were able to respond with their internal designs. We are still waiting on DFI's version to come to market and other motherboard manufacturers such as ECS and Biostar decided it was in their best interest to offer the reference board design that is built by Foxconn. The majority of NVIDIA's motherboard reference partners are actually heavily involved in the distribution of their graphics solutions with EVGA being the focal point of NVIDIA's reference program at this time.

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