Not too long ago, I published a news post about the issue with 680i boards and the lack of support of 45nm "Penryn" based Core 2 Quad processors, codenamed "Yorkfield".
At the time NordicHardware had good news for owners of Asus and DFI boards, since some beta bios were supposed to show up that enabled support.
Today I can tell you that the 680i does indeed support Core 2 Quad processors, albeit only the Q9300, Q9450 and Q9550 - the most appealing ones anyway.
The only 680i board that has support for them is the one from MSI, the P6N Diamond. For now, only the Q9450 is supported, since BIOS version 1.3, and the other two are under testing, though they should work fine anyway.
This new event puts to rest the rumor that the problem was with the chipset; it should be a problem with the design of the PCB or the PWM module, just like previously reported. Both DFI, Asus and MSI used custom PCBs, but only the later was able to support the new processors.
Asus and DFI and still don't have any support for quad-core 45nm processors and, at this time, I wouldn't expect it to come anyway. The DFI beta BIOS only claims support for the E8xxx series, the dual core processors, and Asus seems to have also dropped the ball.
What is interesting about this matter, is that MSI's board only supports the processors more recently released, which were at some time said to be delayed due to compatibility reasons and not by lack of pressure from AMD. That, in conjunction with their lower clocks and power consumption, points almost exclusively to the above mentioned PWM circuitry incompatibility with early designs of 680i boards.
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