EVGA 680i I need ** Help/Opinions

Associate
Joined
18 Sep 2005
Posts
21
Hi All

Last week I purchased the EVGA 680i along with a 6600C2D and some Cell Shock Memory all from OverClockers...

Now I am rather nervous of carrying out my system upgrade and as I speak everything has been cast to one side and I feel some what gutted and deflated that I may have made a very bad decision with the 680i Board.

I have been trawling through different forums (inc EVGA) to gen myself up on the upgrade and have been horrified to learn of some of the major problems the 680i board is producing to a large volume of users.

My personal two main concerns at the moment are the compatability with the Creative Labs X-Fi soundcard and the onboard SATA controller corrupting both standalone and raid configurations.

I am aware that the 21 bios improves the problems with the X-Fi card but more seriously there is an as yet unresolved issue with the SATA controller.

From what I have read in the various forums the problem is horrendous in that its causing BSOD, massive raid log errors and Windows failure resulting in an OS re-install.

The SATA problem with the 680i appears to be a wide spread issue and not isolated to just a few cases!

I rely on my computer on a daily basis and at the moment feel I would be a fool to put the new hardware into my PC, all I can do at the moment is look at the £700 plus I have spent on the hardware and feel somewhat sick.

This is in no way a rant at Overclockers, my frustration is with Nvidia for releasing a product so badly flawed and maybe undertested.

EVGA have commented in there forum that Nvidia are looking at the problem so its possible that it may get fixed with a bios revision but I have a gut feeling this board is going to require a hardware revision but thats just me speculating.

I would like to hear from anyone using a 680i board (EVGA or otherwise) and your own experiences good or bad.

Overclockers how do I stand with yourselves if the issues dont get resolved soon?

Thanks to all in advance for reading and responding to may post.

Coolur
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jul 2005
Posts
19,205
Location
Norfolk, South Scotland
OK - 2 Things;

1. You can always take it/send it back
2. It's actually pretty good kit, almost all those issues have been resolved.

No computer is perfect. They all have issues. You have bought enthusiast components. I am a computer enthusiast. I quite literally spend thousands of pounds a year on computer equipment. At home.

At work I have a Toshiba Laptop and a Dell Desktop. I couldn't even tell you what the spec of the desktop is - all I know is that it runs all my required applications just fine. The laptop is quite new and I specced that myself so I know it's quick. Both work machines are work machines. I never touch them. I have a nice colleague who won't give me the administrator password (bear in mind that I own 33% of the company) for any of our kit in the office. He's my safety net. I play with my own computers. I work with the company's.

If you need your PC day-in day out, buy another one to play with. You've already bought all the most expensive bits, so another £150 won't kill you. Once you've got the new one stable, then transfer all the extra bits eg. sound card etc. across.

But if you really need your other PC for work or college, make sure it's backed up and make sure those back-ups work.
 
Associate
Joined
14 Nov 2006
Posts
2,057
Location
UK
I made my new system with this board, had no problesm whatsoever, no sata problems or anything, I put it all together, posted 1st time, installed windows and i was desktop within 30-45 minutes :D, I just have a minor issue with windows, but who doesn't lol.
 
Associate
Joined
18 Mar 2006
Posts
759
I'm actually looking into this Motherboard both ECS and EVGA myself as i'm very interested in purchasing soon. I've come across a similar experience once when i purchased a AW8-MAX Motherboard where there was a lot of complaints of compatability issues etc, but i decided to take the chance, now i've had the Motherboard almost a year now and not had one issue at all.
 
Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2006
Posts
461
My 680i has been fine since the day I got it.

I am running windows from an old ide hdd and have 4 500gb sata drives in raid 0 for storage and I have not had any problems ([email protected]).

The only issue I have is with my wireless desktop th keyboard is connected via ps2 port and when gaming the keys stick but that should be sorted soon or if you use a usb keyboard then it works fine.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
14 Nov 2005
Posts
10,661
Location
Up North
Having owned both the EVGA and ECS models of the 680i (both Nvidia reference models) I can honestly state that this is the best and most stable board I have ever owned.

I have had NO problems with XFI. I didn't have problems with P19 (the supplied bios) nor with any of the bios updates.

I have had NO SATA problems ( I run 2x spinpoints in raid 0 and a backup data drive). No data/windows corruption whatsoever.

I havn't had ANY BSOD, even when I have been too ambitous in overclocking which is a first...the PC just resets. If it dosn't boot it will revert back to stock settings itself and then boot after giving you an error code(C1). I have only had to reset CMOS once due to an over ambitious memory overclock. CPU overclocks seems to reset themeselves. The good thing about this board is the placement of the CMOS reset and battery - no more need to remove the graphics card to get to the jumper/battery.

In short mate you really shouldn't read too much into the 'horror' stories as I'm sure they are a minority or simply user error such as one guy who claimed the 680i was killing memory, despite the fact he was taking his memory out of the sockets while the motherboard still had power! You will find people will report when things go wrong but the vast majority who's boards are fine have no need to post any problems because they simply are not having any. If you want a stable high-end board with the most overclocking option of any core2duo board out there then go with a 680i tbh. ;)
 
Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2004
Posts
1,195
Location
london
no problems here with EVGA mobo, 2 x 74raptors in raid0 and sata backup drive, very stable board imo. a lot better than my last board giga DS4.

one thing to note, i have cellshock 2gb c4 pc-8000 sticks that wont boot at default/stock bios. i have to stick in lower rated ram to boot into bios and set 2.2v for ram.
once it saved, switch off,swap ram, power on and all good.
 
Associate
Joined
18 Mar 2006
Posts
759
Hey guys good to see your getting on with the Motherboard you've just gave me enough information to go ahead with the purchase now after christmas, also going for the 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP, and the Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB).

Looking forward to getting a decent PC with good performance and rock solid stability.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2006
Posts
3,422
Location
127.0.0.1
if you went by the feedback at the EVGA forums this would be the worst motherboard ever released.

i've been clocking hardware for years and this is easily the most painless build i've ever done, rock stable and overclocks like a mofo.

i haven't setup raid on it but i've seen zero SATA problems with my memory @ 450 4-4-3-12 1:1 with FSB running orthos for 4hrs.

after 1 day of testing it's got my L27B 6600 sitting at 3700 on air with 1.37v set in bios, reported it droops to 1.32 in bios & windows, & runs my crucial anniversarys @ 450 with only 2.025v.

so i'd say build it ;)
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
25 Oct 2002
Posts
38
Location
Wrexham
Well sorry to LANGUAGE! on your chips, but I would be adding to the high praise here for this board, in fact I was running me 6300 at 7 x 485 at 4 4 4 12 2T for two weeks, apparently no issues, no SATA erros in the log etc etc, read all the same stuff as you and thought oh well mines ok, whingeing gits.
So I tried to see if I could get the same problems, guess what, I can and I can get them every single time, just do a transcode of a DIVX to a hard drive folder using NERO Vision, two cores utilised and heavy IO traffic, any ram settings above 799 and a good old solid hard lock, every time. SO there is an issue, its just that it takes real stress to find it. I can run Orthos all day and prime, Super Pi etc etc . I actually emailed EVGA and they have confirmed they can also recreate it and are working with Nvidia to find a solution, it is not a myth it is a real problem. Just thought you should know.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2006
Posts
3,422
Location
127.0.0.1
just out of curiousity are you using the nvidia ide drivers or M$ drivers?

i don't doubt there's some kind of sata problem somewhere going by the thread on EVGA forums but i've had no probs so far ...granted i haven't stressed this board via I/O as of yet just seeing how high i can clock.
 
Associate
Joined
25 Oct 2002
Posts
38
Location
Wrexham
Ive actually tried both, and various other things, like disabling prefetch, no vga drivers, etc etc. I have two images on my USB drive that i can restore to quickly for testing. As I say I had to actually struggle to find an application that did the trick. I did use Easy AVI2DVD and that actually produced a disk error in the log, but the actual installer I had was infected with a worm and a naughty back door Trojan, so I had to abandon that one and then used Nero Vision. I actually have a few versions of Nero Vision, and they all do it. Usually within about 2 minutes of starting. This is what I communicated to EVGA to try to help them replicate the error.
Thanks for the line comment, I hope you werent taking the pisss... :cool:
 
Associate
Joined
16 Nov 2006
Posts
753
ocuk charlatans

I posted a personal view of the board, and my experiences with it. Unfortunately that review never got posted. I wonder why? I gave it 2/5, which is a fair reflection I think, with the terrible support and lacklastre features, it's an overpriced beastly waste of cash. PB5 Delux or AW9D would have been my choice with hindsight. Yet this gibberish gets posted up instead of mine:

*****
Reviewed by: P Nisbreth

Supr 'D' mo8o, e6300@3400 'nair. 58K wit a pr of 8800gtxers on 03 !!! Dudz zit man itzit !!!!!

ridculous. :rolleyes:
 
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
168
Location
On the Knowle
firstly remember most of the issue's will apply to all 680's!

I've got one (spec in sig)...not too many problems (certianly not the sata or soudn issues).

Biggest I've got is that the auto voltage seems to suck big time, and a large number of reboots are needed for things like sli memory to work, which aint friendly! Oh and the nvidia network stuff sounds great, but the first thing to remember is never install it!!! :mad: bit poor that, esp as it sounds like a long standing issue with nf4/5 and now 6!

having said all that, the system is great as a whole.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Jan 2003
Posts
5,947
Location
Chesterfield, UK
tdream said:
I posted a personal view of the board, and my experiences with it. Unfortunately that review never got posted. I wonder why? I gave it 2/5, which is a fair reflection I think, with the terrible support and lacklastre features, it's an overpriced beastly waste of cash. PB5 Delux or AW9D would have been my choice with hindsight. Yet this gibberish gets posted up instead of mine:

*****
Reviewed by: P Nisbreth

Supr 'D' mo8o, e6300@3400 'nair. 58K wit a pr of 8800gtxers on 03 !!! Dudz zit man itzit !!!!!

ridculous. :rolleyes:

Perhaps the reason your review never got posted is because it was gibberish. Just a thought :)

I have had Zero problems with this board.

tdream said:
with the terrible support and lacklastre features"

I think EVGA/Nvidia have been excellent with there support. They have just released P23 which is supposed to address the SATA problems. :)

"lacklastre features" LOL. Are you using a 680i? You sound very confused my friend :)
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2006
Posts
3,422
Location
127.0.0.1
i swear to god most of the people with issues on this board apart from probably the SATA and sound crackling are down to user error.

i've been torturing it non stop since i got it monday, ROCK :p

it's like s939 DFI all over, people either loved or hated it.....those who hated it didn't know how to run it.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
18 Sep 2005
Posts
21
A little Update

Well after my initial fears over my recently purchased 680i I thought it was time I poped back in the thread and updated all those who have been kind enough to post to my initial message venting my concerns over my purchase.

At the moment I am stress testing the board on the bench in preperation to carry out my system upgrade.

My results so far have been good, I have thrashed everything and to-date I have not had a single error with the sata controller or otherwise.

Its good to see that EVGA have released a beta P23 bios to address the sata issue and I hope it fixes the problem for those people having sata issues.

Regards

Coolur
 
Back
Top Bottom