I'd like to get an nVidia chipset motherboard because I like nVidia graphics cards and would like to be able to SLI. However I've heard they don't overclock as well as he x38 boards for example. What is the best nvidia chipset mobo for overclocking?

Today we are looking at MSI's top offering for Nvidia's nforce 680i SLI chipset. The P6N Diamond looks to offer the consumer a lot more than some of the other motherboards available with the 680i chipset. While a little late in coming from its original release date of mid December, the delays may have allowed MSI to produce a motherboard that offers everything the consumer may want from a top end board. The P6N Diamond motherboard is for use with the Intel Core 2 line of products as well as the Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron D CPU's.

A quick run down of some of the most attractive features gives us firstly four, yes 4! PCI Express 16x graphics card slots. The P6N diamond is fully capable of supporting 4 graphics cards. While the latest graphics cards such as the Geforce 8800 series are currently struggling with Nvidia drivers for this setup, I'm sure this will change. In the mean time, other cards such as the Geforce 7900GS and the Geforce 6600GT has been tested successfully in this setup. Next thing of note is the integrated sound system. Most motherboards these days come with integrated sound, but the P6N Diamond comes with a creative X-FI audio chip onboard. This could well mean that the P6N diamond motherboard has the best integrated sound system of any motherboard on the market.

Using a four Graphics card setup

The reality of using four graphics cards at once is very real. While at this stage we don't know off hand which combinations work the best and what is required in the future in order to get 4 graphics cards to work together in a quad SLI system, we do know that this is exactly what the P6N diamond motherboards 4 PCI express slots were created for. What we are seeing is a prediction that Nvidia will develop a system and drivers for a quad system. And why not, after all a quad SLI system means people buying 4 Nvidia graphics cards. Fantastic if your the one selling them.

Quad SLI has been here before though, taking a look at the Geforce 7950 GX2 which essentially was two graphics cards fused into one, and only taking up 1 PCI express slot. By placing these graphics cards into an SLI configuration you are effectively getting a quad GPU system. from this we know that the possibility is there and development for 4 individual graphics cards quad SLI is likely.