Good Morning Everyone.
Hindsight is most always 20/20, and in that respect, I think we now know "why" the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 board cannot be effectively "adjusted" by means of a BIOS upgrade to utilize the latest Quad-Core (1333 FSB) CPUs. As we all will recall, Gigabyte was rather late to the table with releasing their N680i board (ver. 1). At first, GB was saying that this delay was due to the R&D needed to produce the board with all the extra features to be coordinated onto the board.
However, it now appears that GB needed the extra time due to the fact that they were deviating from the nVidia prototype in significant ways, and had to re-engineer various portions of the nVidia reference system in order to get all those extra features to work (some still don't work right - i.e., NIC Teaming). In the course of that re-engineering, GB strayed so far from portions of the nVidia reference board design, that when the issues associated with the compatibility of the 1333 FSB Quad-Core CPUs surfaced, there was no way that the GB N680i board could be "adjusted" through a BIOS revision to accommodate those needs.
In essence, GB's over-reaching to produce the killer all-in-one board in the first place, left them unable to rectify the Quad-Core problem when it arose. The physical layout and electronic design of the board has not (at least up to this point) allowed a feasible path to fix the problem. It's really that simple an answer to this ongoing problem. And unless somebody figures out a BIOS revision remedy, 1333 FSB Quad-Core support is very unlikely. And further, since the N680i board has been considered by GB to be EOL for at least the last six months, they are not dedicating much, if any, R&D resources to look for a fix to this problem.
I know that the foregoing is not necessarily what a lot of members on this Thread wanted to hear, but I'm giving it to you straight, as best I can. Hope that helps everyone to know where we stand on this issue.
Best regards to everyone. TheBeagle :beer: