When will more manufacturers start delivering nVidia 680a SLI motherboards?

Question

As best as I can tell, Asus is the only company with an nForce 680a motherboard out there. Perhaps I'm falling for a marketing trap by believing that a BFG nForce 680a motherboard would somehow improve upon the performance of a pair of BFG 8xxx graphics adapters.

So two questions:
1. Any ETA's for other makes of 680a motherboards?
2. Will the others be any better really?

Answer 1

At this point the only 680a that i am aware of is from ASUS, and the only board i've actually seen is for the FX-74 dual cpu solution (currently the only thing close to quad core from amd) while checking out the benchmarks and other information it was revealed that the board was actually faster with only one cpu installed. Seems the memory latency jumped up between 11 to 15ns with the other cpu installed. There are known problems with the 680i chipset, such as it requires a bios flash to work with higher end Core2's....flash the bios and the board is dead (had this happen with 3 different boards) It is also VERY picky concerning ram. I'm sure that ASUS and others will have more boards out with 680a chipset soon, and if at all possible i would go with an ASUS mobo......have owned many and they are rock solid. The only way that a BFG mobo would work better with a BFG graphics card is if there are bios tweaks specific to the cards in question. If anyone was going to go to the trouble of adding specific bios tweaks it would be a company like BFG. Haven't used much of their stuff, but i always like to read about products from a company that produces mostly enthusiast level components. Guess its a wait and see game.....see who packs in the most features and tools, warranty, and keep in mind customer service......here's to the next best thing!!!

Answer 2

Here is the problem with the 680a chipset. It's only purpose is to run AMD's Quad FX platform. Unfortunately the reaction to the Quad FX platform so far has been less than enthusiastic. So, there isn't a whole lot of demand out there for 680a based motherboards, hence there is not a lot of incentive for manufacturers to put the work necessary into making one (which from what I have read is a good amount). Couple this with the fact that AMD now owns ATI, nVidia's main competitor, and I would say the future of the 680a chipset is not very promising.