NVIDIA's Flagship 680i has numerous issues from what I have been seeing on various forums, and now it has been recognized by Kyle Bennett over at Hard OCP.
Kyle Bennett at Hard OCP :
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI0NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Date:Thursday , December 14, 2006
Category:Chipset
Manufacturers:NVIDIA
Author: Kyle Bennett
We have given the new NVIDIA 680i-based motherboards some kudos, and some pans as well. (We have a follow-up to our Striker Extreme review coming up soon as we have done some more testing.) There seem to be some serious issues with the products though that are affecting some people and not others.
Some 680i Suck, Some Don?t
I have personally used four nForce 680i based motherboards here in our test labs without any issue whatsoever. My experiences with the 680i have been great, and I have gone as far to say the 680i has been the best motherboard I have ever worked with. And I still stand by that statement, but given the issues that others are seeing, I am not so gung-ho to put one in my own system any longer. We have had boards from ASUS, BFGTech, and EVGA that have all performed well. Dan, one of our motherboard reviewers, even purchased his own EVGA nForce 680i locally and built a new system with it. Dan ran into tremendous system stability problems. After spending a good amount of time with a laundry list of things to check, Dan ended up with problems that he simply could not solve, and returned the EVGA motherboard for a refund. He was still in possession of the ASUS Striker motherboard that he had reviewed and I told him he could drop that board into his system and see if it worked for him. Dan put the Striker in and has had no problems since.
One thing I do know for sure is that Dan knows how to build a system that is solid, but the nForce 680i motherboard that he was using had issues. You can read up on this more at the EVGA forums in this thread that is over 600 posts long. There are a lot of people having problems with their 680i motherboards. The problems however do not seem to be limited to the reference design boards but rather all nForce 680i motherboards. Seeing that EVGA is NVIDIA's e-tail launch partner, they have garnered most of the attention due to them selling more motherboards. The issues seem to stem to all 680i motherboards be they reference design or not.
Hardware or Software?
To be succinct, some nForce 680i motherboards have SATA issues. Data seems to get corrupted for no reason causing BSODs and corrupted hard drive errors. Obviously there is a reason, but the problem to the end user may seem very sporadic. The problems are severe enough that they can render a new system build useless. Talking to NVIDIA about this, we came up with the answers to a few questions, but no solutions.
Yes, NVIDIA is aware of the 680i issue and has been able to recreate it in their test labs.
Yes, NVIDIA is working to fix this.
Yes, NVIDIA states it is not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue so we are all hoping for a fix.
Shooting from the hip on this, and I am no driver engineer, but this sounds like a hardware problem to me. I hate to say it, but there seems to be a chipset problem here that is not apparent in every piece of silicon. I hope I am wrong and it is just a driver issue that can be fixed through a new driver drop, but I am not hopeful of this. After seeing Dan take his 680i build that was causing him severe problems, change out motherboards, and his problems then going away, it is hard for me to think that a driver caused the issue.
NVIDIA?s track record at HardOCP with storage controller solutions over the life of the nForce brand has been poor to say the least, but has been getting better as NVIDIA has moved forward. With their recent acquisition of ULI, we expected to see all storage issues related to the nForce chipset go away, but that has certainly not been the case.
The Bottom Line
We have been holding off a week or so on addressing this in hopes that we would have some solutions or answers for you, but those have not come forth. Some of the nForce 680i motherboards have some serious storage issues that can render a system build useless. Not all nForce 680i boards exhibit this problem. The problem does not seem to be confined to certain system configurations as some motherboards will work with a specific configuration while others will not. The problem also seems to spread across all 680i motherboards regardless of brand judging from feedback across Internet forums.
I hate to say this as my personal 680i experiences have been solid and left me with a good impression of the product, but I cannot suggest you buy a 680i board till this problem has been ironed out. If you have a 680i board now and are having data corruption problems, return it if you can and get your money back. If you have already purchased a board and it has issues, I suggest you RMA it and hope you get a motherboard that does not show the same issues.
Gigabyte?s DS3 and DQ6 motherboards would seem to be much better alternatives for Core 2 Duo enthusiast builds at this time.
We will certainly update our readers on this if we get any new information.
X-Bit also picked up on it.
This was on X-bit here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/20061214235359.html
Nvidia?s High-End Chipset Under Fire for Problems.
Enthusiasts Report Issues with Nvidia?s nForce 680i Serial ATA Controller
Category: Chipsets
by Anton Shilov
[ 12/14/2006 | 11:54 PM ]
Nvidia Corp., a leading designer of graphics processor and core-logic sets, is about to face criticism from enthusiasts for the problems that occur with the company?s latest premium-class chipset. Apparently, the core-logic?s I/O controller has issues with Serial ATA and RAID (redundant array of independent disks) capabilities.
Users in several forums, particularly, in EVGA and Nvidia tech support forums, report about ?lock up? and ?disk error? issues with Serial ATA hard disk drives and RAID capabilities of the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI core-logic that sells for $120 per two chips alone. Some end users even cannot install Windows XP operating system, whereas others could not use their systems flawlessly for long and some even report data corruption.
Even though the majority of users have stable mainboards, the number of those, who purchased mainboards based on Nvidia nForce 680i chipset and now report instabilities seems to be significant and the problem ? widespread. The issues do not seem to have relation to overclocking or Serial ATA working modes. In fact, users reported problems with RAID in case of previous-generation Nvidia nForce chipsets as well, but, perhaps, earlier the problems were not faced by a significant number of users.
Nvidia Corp.?s specialists confirmed in an interview with Hard|OCP web-site that the company was ?aware of the nForce 680i SLI issue?, had been able to recreate it in their test labs and was working to fix this. However, the company states that this was ?not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue?, which is strange, as Nvidia's Serial ATA drivers cannot affect installation procedures of Windows XP. Still, the company may resolve the issues by releasing certain firmware.
This is the third time that Nvidia faces scandals with its high-end hardware this year. Back in May it transpired that certain GeForce 7900-series graphics cards may become malfunction and in early November the company had to recall the yet-unreleased GeForce 8800 GTX graphics boards due to manufacturing flaw, nevertheless, some of such boards were then acquired by end-users.
These issues seem to plague NVIDIA and hopefully we can have some feedback here that will assist the correction of some of the issues...
It will be interesting to find out what the root causes are....
Kyle Bennett at Hard OCP :
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI0NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Date:Thursday , December 14, 2006
Category:Chipset
Manufacturers:NVIDIA
Author: Kyle Bennett
We have given the new NVIDIA 680i-based motherboards some kudos, and some pans as well. (We have a follow-up to our Striker Extreme review coming up soon as we have done some more testing.) There seem to be some serious issues with the products though that are affecting some people and not others.
Some 680i Suck, Some Don?t
I have personally used four nForce 680i based motherboards here in our test labs without any issue whatsoever. My experiences with the 680i have been great, and I have gone as far to say the 680i has been the best motherboard I have ever worked with. And I still stand by that statement, but given the issues that others are seeing, I am not so gung-ho to put one in my own system any longer. We have had boards from ASUS, BFGTech, and EVGA that have all performed well. Dan, one of our motherboard reviewers, even purchased his own EVGA nForce 680i locally and built a new system with it. Dan ran into tremendous system stability problems. After spending a good amount of time with a laundry list of things to check, Dan ended up with problems that he simply could not solve, and returned the EVGA motherboard for a refund. He was still in possession of the ASUS Striker motherboard that he had reviewed and I told him he could drop that board into his system and see if it worked for him. Dan put the Striker in and has had no problems since.
One thing I do know for sure is that Dan knows how to build a system that is solid, but the nForce 680i motherboard that he was using had issues. You can read up on this more at the EVGA forums in this thread that is over 600 posts long. There are a lot of people having problems with their 680i motherboards. The problems however do not seem to be limited to the reference design boards but rather all nForce 680i motherboards. Seeing that EVGA is NVIDIA's e-tail launch partner, they have garnered most of the attention due to them selling more motherboards. The issues seem to stem to all 680i motherboards be they reference design or not.
Hardware or Software?
To be succinct, some nForce 680i motherboards have SATA issues. Data seems to get corrupted for no reason causing BSODs and corrupted hard drive errors. Obviously there is a reason, but the problem to the end user may seem very sporadic. The problems are severe enough that they can render a new system build useless. Talking to NVIDIA about this, we came up with the answers to a few questions, but no solutions.
Yes, NVIDIA is aware of the 680i issue and has been able to recreate it in their test labs.
Yes, NVIDIA is working to fix this.
Yes, NVIDIA states it is not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue so we are all hoping for a fix.
Shooting from the hip on this, and I am no driver engineer, but this sounds like a hardware problem to me. I hate to say it, but there seems to be a chipset problem here that is not apparent in every piece of silicon. I hope I am wrong and it is just a driver issue that can be fixed through a new driver drop, but I am not hopeful of this. After seeing Dan take his 680i build that was causing him severe problems, change out motherboards, and his problems then going away, it is hard for me to think that a driver caused the issue.
NVIDIA?s track record at HardOCP with storage controller solutions over the life of the nForce brand has been poor to say the least, but has been getting better as NVIDIA has moved forward. With their recent acquisition of ULI, we expected to see all storage issues related to the nForce chipset go away, but that has certainly not been the case.
The Bottom Line
We have been holding off a week or so on addressing this in hopes that we would have some solutions or answers for you, but those have not come forth. Some of the nForce 680i motherboards have some serious storage issues that can render a system build useless. Not all nForce 680i boards exhibit this problem. The problem does not seem to be confined to certain system configurations as some motherboards will work with a specific configuration while others will not. The problem also seems to spread across all 680i motherboards regardless of brand judging from feedback across Internet forums.
I hate to say this as my personal 680i experiences have been solid and left me with a good impression of the product, but I cannot suggest you buy a 680i board till this problem has been ironed out. If you have a 680i board now and are having data corruption problems, return it if you can and get your money back. If you have already purchased a board and it has issues, I suggest you RMA it and hope you get a motherboard that does not show the same issues.
Gigabyte?s DS3 and DQ6 motherboards would seem to be much better alternatives for Core 2 Duo enthusiast builds at this time.
We will certainly update our readers on this if we get any new information.
X-Bit also picked up on it.
This was on X-bit here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/20061214235359.html
Nvidia?s High-End Chipset Under Fire for Problems.
Enthusiasts Report Issues with Nvidia?s nForce 680i Serial ATA Controller
Category: Chipsets
by Anton Shilov
[ 12/14/2006 | 11:54 PM ]
Nvidia Corp., a leading designer of graphics processor and core-logic sets, is about to face criticism from enthusiasts for the problems that occur with the company?s latest premium-class chipset. Apparently, the core-logic?s I/O controller has issues with Serial ATA and RAID (redundant array of independent disks) capabilities.
Users in several forums, particularly, in EVGA and Nvidia tech support forums, report about ?lock up? and ?disk error? issues with Serial ATA hard disk drives and RAID capabilities of the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI core-logic that sells for $120 per two chips alone. Some end users even cannot install Windows XP operating system, whereas others could not use their systems flawlessly for long and some even report data corruption.
Even though the majority of users have stable mainboards, the number of those, who purchased mainboards based on Nvidia nForce 680i chipset and now report instabilities seems to be significant and the problem ? widespread. The issues do not seem to have relation to overclocking or Serial ATA working modes. In fact, users reported problems with RAID in case of previous-generation Nvidia nForce chipsets as well, but, perhaps, earlier the problems were not faced by a significant number of users.
Nvidia Corp.?s specialists confirmed in an interview with Hard|OCP web-site that the company was ?aware of the nForce 680i SLI issue?, had been able to recreate it in their test labs and was working to fix this. However, the company states that this was ?not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue?, which is strange, as Nvidia's Serial ATA drivers cannot affect installation procedures of Windows XP. Still, the company may resolve the issues by releasing certain firmware.
This is the third time that Nvidia faces scandals with its high-end hardware this year. Back in May it transpired that certain GeForce 7900-series graphics cards may become malfunction and in early November the company had to recall the yet-unreleased GeForce 8800 GTX graphics boards due to manufacturing flaw, nevertheless, some of such boards were then acquired by end-users.
These issues seem to plague NVIDIA and hopefully we can have some feedback here that will assist the correction of some of the issues...
It will be interesting to find out what the root causes are....
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