Thing is, your talking about just buying another board, so you wouldn't use the 680i immediately right? If somehow the worst happens and power decides to go out just in the middle of the 1-2 minutes it takes to update your bios, all that means is you have to rma the board and are w/o it for a week or so. Hardly a risky procedure, especially considering then you just buy a new boards anyway, and sell the old one, I'm assuming your current plan of action. And that's if the absolute worst happens, an overwhelmingly more likely scenario is you successfully update the bios and can now use 45nm chips. Easy as pie. Updating the bios could be said to be less risky and easier than installing windows (a bad analogy, but really, it'll take all of 5 minutes and is incredibly straightforward). There's no reason to buy a new board since you've made it abundantly clear oc'ing is not important to you, nor is new architecture, you just want to play games. By your own logic it would be silly not to attempt it, as you have no need for a new board. Then again, you seem to be defying logic..........
And sorry if I seem insulting, that is not my intention. I'm just trying to make you see things from many of our point of views, it just doesn't make much sense what your trying to accomplish here, and the best results are simply unattainable to you if you don't listen to reason.
Anyway, my suggestion is a bios flash and a e8200 couple w/ a gtx 260 (if you don't need the few hundred mhz gained from oc'ing, you don't need the few hundred mhz from a e8500 or e8400, e8600 is overpriced). Be about $450, maybe a little more. Drop down the proc to a e7300 to save some more dough.