*** Official eVGA 680i Thread ***

[AnandTech Moderator]

In an effort to make finding information about the eVGA 680i easier for all forum members, please post and discuss your issues, problems, experiences, rants, raves and FAQs here.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[LifeStealer]

Dyslexia?

 

[Skott]

Can we get a seperate thread for the P5N32-E SLI and the Striker Extreme? We should keep them seperate from the reference mobos, the ECS, eVGA, and BFG. Both those ASUS mobos are out now.

 

[TBSN]

You mean the 680i, not the 860i....

---

Yes, do I. Fxied

Dyslexic Mdoerator

 

[LifeStealer]

Thus dyslexia..

 

[Skott]

Or a really new chipset they kept Ultra secret. ;-)

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Skott
Or a really new chipset they kept Ultra secret. ;-)

My fault, I did the typo, just sent a message off to get it corrected. We were trying to get the 680i boards separated for discussion. At least the thread got some replies and views. :laugh:

 

[genec57]

I have it and like it very much. It is teamed with a C2D E6600 and 4gigs Crucial XMS2 DDR2 5400 C4. I presently have it at 3400, stable. OC was about as good as it gets.
I have heard a number of flames about this board but my experience so far is completly positive. I am sure I could get more than 3400 but this is a production machine and I don't want to stress it too far. With a tuniq tower 120 load temps don't exceed 53c and it idles at 36.

 

[Roguestar]

Holy wow. I was looking it up on www.scan.co.uk to check it out after I heard rave reviews and good things about its overclocking potential... It's so expensive! I could buy an E6400 and a DS3 for the price of this motherboard! Aaah!

 

[Madellga]

Originally posted by: genec57
I have it and like it very much. It is teamed with a C2D E6600 and 4gigs Crucial XMS2 DDR2 5400 C4. I presently have it at 3400, stable. OC was about as good as it gets.
I have heard a number of flames about this board but my experience so far is completly positive. I am sure I could get more than 3400 but this is a production machine and I don't want to stress it too far. With a tuniq tower 120 load temps don't exceed 53c and it idles at 36.

I'm happy to. I sold my AW9D and OCZ Plat, went with the EVGA 680i and Mushkin 6400 C4. I'm running at same CPU speed but FSB is now higher. (378 =>425).

I used a pair of 7900 GTO from MSI for a week, no problems. I sold one of the GTOs and got a 8800GTX, running well also.

I couldn't overclock in the first shot, I had to "learn" the new BIOS, but got it easy now. Just +0.1V on the mch/fsb and it's 24h Orthos Stable.

I recommend using Sync in the memory, not the 1:1 option - this was the thing holding me back.

One thing though, this E6600 used to run at 1.375V on the Giga DS4, 1.40V on the AW9D and here requires AUTO (1.41V on bios readings) or 1.45V manual (1.41V on bios readings). Ntune reports it 1.4625V, but seems to be messed up now - it shows unrealistic FSB and CPU speeds: real fSB425 / CPU 3.4 ntune FSB 489 / CPU 3.8

Speaking of ntune, it doesn't work. It crashes if I try to access performance related menus.

Also the 8800 drivers are borked, it refuses to scale 1:1 on my monitor and it's missing the option to load an icm/icc profile.

I'm settling for this combo now for a long time....

 

[5uperGlu3]

i have to say that for the performance you get, this mobo is worth every penny. at stock speeds my pc was scoring 13000 on 3dmark05. OCing my e6600 to 3.59 gave me an extra 2150. once i get my 7800gtxs back to the higher clocks they were at, i'm hoping to hit 17000.

i have been reading that people have a bit of trouble with the BIOs at first, but that is the same with any new mobo manufacturer. going from one ASUS to another ASUS is not as bad as going from an ASUS to say a Foxconn. for those of you still having trouble with the BIOs, keep tweaking, it will get easier and the rewards will come. when i first hammered the Delete key to get to them, it was guess work on some of the options for a while. a little bit of research and time posting questions on this site will help a lot.

 

[Galadul]

Hey, I have e6600 and evga 680i, corsair dominator 2gb 4-4-4-12 (the ones with DHX), BigTyp 120VX HSF

I had two questions...
1. First, my Hiper 580w PSU, which I thought was pretty kick ass, and certainly was on my AMD system, has a 4 pin ATX connector, not an 8 pin. Is this a real issue? Should I not be overclocking until I get a 8 pin atx PSU? For now I'm running 3600 @ 1600 fsb, mem 1:1 synch. Seems stable, but haven't had time to run any comprehensive stress tests, and this weekend I'm whisked away for work. (Any free stress test programs to recommend?)

2. My ram, Corsair Dominator TWIN2X6400C4D 2048MB. Anyone have any experience overclocking these babies? Currently running them at 4-4-4-12 2T @ 2,1 volt as per factory specs. Now, I'm only interested in gaming performance, not how long it takes to convert wav to mp3 or various memory benchmarks or any of that. So basicly I guess what I'm asking is if there's any point to raising Mhz or lower the timings on these babies if I'm mainly concerned about gaming?

 

[Madellga]

Your memory should be able to reach FSB450 at those settings. But as you have the E6600 already at 3.6, I don't think you need to raise the bar even more.

 

[viper26]

Does anyone by chance know if Buffalo Firestix memory will work with the eVga 680i?

 

[3NF]

FYI - Worth a read.

EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard Review

 

[Skott]

Thats not a good review unless you plan on running a Non-Conroe chip with the mobo. They use a Pentium 670 chip and pretty much everyone is into Conroe now if they are going with a Intel system.

 

[3NF]

Originally posted by: Skott
Thats not a good review unless you plan on running a Non-Conroe chip with the mobo. They use a Pentium 670 chip and pretty much everyone is into Conroe now if they are going with a Intel system.

I guess I should have mentoned that - "Worth a read" was trying to say that

 

[WowbaggerTIP]

I'm getting an eVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR motherboard and need some help figuring out what memory is compatible with it. I was looking to get the OCZ2P800R22GK (OCZ Platinum rev.2 PC6400) kit, but not sure if it will work or not. The board isn't in the OCZ compatibility database. Can anyone help? Thanks!

 

[lopri]

I'd rather get Micron based sticks for the price. Don't get me wrong, OCZ makes quality sticks and their customer service is top notch. But their D9 sticks tend to be somewhat more expensive than other brands'.

http://ramlist.ath.cx/ddr2/

Go with sticks utilizing 'Micron D9GMH' or 'Micron D9GKX'.

 

[Saldrin]

Need advice please.

I'm stuck between this board and the p5n32-e. Are there any major differences besides board layout? I'm miffed about the eSATA ports and frankly I'm not going to spend an additional $150 for the ports and some stupid lights, so the striker is out. I spent $1 on batteries a few months ago so a flashligh works just as good to see the ports I use every six months....

Newegg has this board on sale for a great price, and most importantly it is in stock. I'm not much of an overclocker, I just want a solid SLI motherboard with some future proofing.

Sound isn't an issue, I have the X-fi fatality (ZZF had it on sale for the same price as the platnium a few months ago). So I could care less about on board sound. Although I do miss my digital 4.1 sound.... I am interestd in a raid 0 setup.

Suggestions? I have two 7900gts being wasted ( I presently have a p5b) and I want to at least use them before taking the plunge on a 8800.

 

[5uperGlu3]

if you want sli and lga 775 supporting conroe* the 680i is for you. even when your not overclocking, the 680i is very stable. it just came out so there are bugs in the bios, but it just came out so they (nvidia) is going to be working much harder to get those bugs fixed. the older nvidia chipsets that support conroe are not going to be getting updates for much longer. the 680i is more futureproof.

 

[Skott]

And yet the P5B D/E is still the OCing king. Manufacturers are gonna have to tweak the 680i mobos BIOSes better than they have so far if they want to surpass the 965 mobos for OCing. Right now the 680i is about on par with the 570 mobos. Possibly a bit ahead. The 680i looks to have alot of potential. Better BIOS is needed though.

 

[de8212]

1. With regards to connecting this board up to my firewire cables on my case (thermaltake tsunami) the case only has one wire for a ground however the board has three pins for ground. Is connecting the one wire enough?

2. What utility can I use to monitor temperature in windows? What all temps can I monitor (cpu, case, graphics card, etc??)?

3. The two 120 mm fans are both connecting to a chassis fan header on the mobo. They each have the rpm monitor wire but I can only see one of the fan rpms in the bios. Isn't there a program that comes with this mobo for monitoring the rpms? WIll it monitor all the headers on the mobo? Is there a better software for this?

thanks for any help.

 

[3NF]

Originally posted by: Saldrin
Need advice please.

I'm stuck between this board and the p5n32-e. Are there any major differences besides board layout? I'm miffed about the eSATA ports and frankly I'm not going to spend an additional $150 for the ports and some stupid lights, so the striker is out. I spent $1 on batteries a few months ago so a flashligh works just as good to see the ports I use every six months....

Newegg has this board on sale for a great price, and most importantly it is in stock. I'm not much of an overclocker, I just want a solid SLI motherboard with some future proofing.

Sound isn't an issue, I have the X-fi fatality (ZZF had it on sale for the same price as the platnium a few months ago). So I could care less about on board sound. Although I do miss my digital 4.1 sound.... I am interestd in a raid 0 setup.

Suggestions? I have two 7900gts being wasted ( I presently have a p5b) and I want to at least use them before taking the plunge on a 8800.

I guess I'm in a similar situation. I'm trying to decide between the eVGA and ASUS board. I've been using ASUS boards in all my computers for a very long time, so I'm a little hesitant to try the eVGA ... but it is in stock and cheaper

 

[Saldrin]

Originally posted by: 3NF

Originally posted by: Saldrin
Need advice please.

I'm stuck between this board and the p5n32-e. Are there any major differences besides board layout? I'm miffed about the eSATA ports and frankly I'm not going to spend an additional $150 for the ports and some stupid lights, so the striker is out. I spent $1 on batteries a few months ago so a flashligh works just as good to see the ports I use every six months....

Newegg has this board on sale for a great price, and most importantly it is in stock. I'm not much of an overclocker, I just want a solid SLI motherboard with some future proofing.

Sound isn't an issue, I have the X-fi fatality (ZZF had it on sale for the same price as the platnium a few months ago). So I could care less about on board sound. Although I do miss my digital 4.1 sound.... I am interestd in a raid 0 setup.

Suggestions? I have two 7900gts being wasted ( I presently have a p5b) and I want to at least use them before taking the plunge on a 8800.

I guess I'm in a similar situation. I'm trying to decide between the eVGA and ASUS board. I've been using ASUS boards in all my computers for a very long time, so I'm a little hesitant to try the eVGA ... but it is in stock and cheaper

I've been using Asus ever since I can remember with an occasional Gigabyte here and there... The thing that is really catching my eye is the lifetime guarentee.

The only issues I have seen, besides the sound issue with sli+ 8800s (fixed) have been overclocking complaints. That does not concern me. I think I am going to take the plunge.

I do need to check my case though, I can't recall if my power switch is a two or three pin. I've read that the board wants the three. Although finding a new switch probably won't be that hard.... And I will miss Qconnect, buts what's 5 more minutes.