?The Un-Official NVIDIA 680i Owners are Screwed Thread?

[Mr Fox]

NVIDIA has had a very poor history when it comes to INTEL CPU Core Logic chipsets.
Now it is official your 680i Reference MOBO is a boat anchor.

The latest thing to come down the pike is the total incompatibility of Yorkfield/Wolfdale(Penryn) with existing 680i Reference Motherboards.

Kyle Bennett over at HardOcp again has some very pointed comments about this issue.

News Article:

http://hardocp.com/news.html?n...CxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE

Forum Discussion:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1246348

While this may come across as NVIDIA Bashing That is not the Intent.

I am a diehard NVIDIA Graphics kinda guy.

I am a Consumer Advocate at heart, and expect good products, and services and when they are not I have been known to ?Take the Bull By The Horns?.

The following is an outline of the issues that surrounded NVIDIA 680i at launch, and going forward.

Now they are trying to sell a Re-Hash 780i and it is just as problematic as before because of the design lock-in and frozen Bill of Materials that was a large part of the issue with the original build.

Design Issues:

Last Year the Launch of 680i was highly problematic, with numerous bad motherboards being built, and delivered based upon the NVIDIA Reference Design, and Bill of Materials that was built by Foxconn, and distributed by their Video Card Partners; EVGA, XFX, BFG Tech, Biostar, and ECS.

The EVGA Reference Motherboards have been abysmally bad, and had ungodly failure rates. (11 in one year) http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1244339

The Locked in Reference Design had issues with one of their components, and this created data corruption when RAID was implemented.

Now with the above information in hand, the 680i owners are caught in the middle of a political pissing match between two rivals that would screw each other at the drop of a hat.

Driver /Support Issues:

Most of the issues centered on RAID issues (Data Corruption), Driver Issues ,Memory Issues, and Overall reliability issues that plague the boards to this day.
The Prime Partners, ASUS, MSI, ABIT, and Gigabyte were the only partners that were allowed to design, and build their own boards.

ASUS was first to market with their ?Striker Extreme? it had a big price tag, and a very high RMA rate. It also had issues with inconsistent performance part to part.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...s-striker-extreme.html

MSI - (MSI P6N Diamond) and ABIT - (ABIT IN9 32X-MAX) both came to market about a month later, and were only marginally better than the ASUS and Reference MOBO?s

Gigabyte took a very long time (Over 6 mos.) to bring the Gigabyte (GA-N680SLI-DQ6) to market, and it also had some issues, that were addressed in a subsequent revision.

The Issues were so deep in scope, and nature that Kyle Bennett at HardOcp Called out NVIDIA Publically at great risk to his Revenue Stream and Detailed the Issues.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...wxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...wxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

http://www.nvidia.com/object/680i_hotfix.html


Vista Issues and Support:
MS Vista Support and numerous issues with the new Operating System and Support of SLI functionality that centered around getting the second card to function in SLI Mode.
MS Support:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710


New 780i Same stuff different day ?
NVIDIA is supposed to be releasing 780i December 3rd. and it is essentially a re-hashed 680i that incorporated a PCI-E - 2 Bridge.

These links are from a Chinese review site :

http://www.expreview.com/img/review/780isli/600900.jpg

http://www.expreview.com/img/review/780isli/c72art.jpg

http://www.expreview.com/img/r...w/780isli/platform.png

http://www.expreview.com/img/r...w/780isli/sysmarkt.png

http://www.expreview.com/img/review/780isli/everest.png

http://www.expreview.com/img/review/780isli/quake.png

Based on that information this motherboard has no advances in performance overall, and is implementing a third PCI-E x16 for 3-way SLI, or Physics card Implementation.

Photos :

http://www.ubergizmo.com/photo...y-sli/3-way-sli_03.jpg

http://www.ubergizmo.com/photo...y-sli/3-way-sli_04.jpg

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v...ay/20070928160719.html

Now with all that being said, NVIDIA is saying ?Trust Me? this is just another twist in this weird tale of B/S.

The issues with lock-in and lock out have gone full circle now... First it was NVIDIA not supporting SLI and locking it out in their Video Card Drivers beyond 85.00 series.
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and Intel has locked NVIDIA out with Penryn.

 

[Mr Fox]

A quick update

More reaction from Bit-Tech:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2..._dont_support_penryn/1

The Forum Discussion:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=143069

A E- petition to "Fix 680i" (Only with c-4)

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nVidia680i/

 

[niggles]

I have the MSI P6N Diamond and aside from a really screwy bios setting for C1E there's nothing bad about the board.

 

[rt182]

lol yup this is me
my board is basicly gone.. sigh what a waste of cash

 

[Rike]

Stuff like this makes me never want to be a first adopter again. I don't understand how or why companies bring badly buggy products to market. I think it will be a while before I buy another nvidia mobo.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Rike
Stuff like this makes me never want to be a first adopter again. I don't understand how or why companies bring badly buggy products to market.

"I don't understand how or why individuals want to be first adoptors..."

They did not bring a buggy product to market (well, besides the 10 BIOS updates in the first month). They brought a product to market that worked just fine with all the processors available for the following year. I don't think you can fault Nvidia for not having a crystal ball and "knowing" that their board design wouldn't work with a future CPU that they didn't have an ES to test with.

Heck, this even happened to Intel themselves. I know someone who bought a BadAxe a month before the Core 2 Duo chips came out. He needed to buy at that time and couldn't wait a month, and he explicitly chose that motherboard BECAUSE he had read it supported the future (at the time) Core 2 Duo processors. Well, all the news articles were talking about a revision of the board. The one he was able to purchase at retail a month before the C2D came out... does not support that chip.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Rike
Stuff like this makes me never want to be a first adopter again. I don't understand how or why companies bring badly buggy products to market.

"I don't understand how or why individuals want to be first adoptors..."

They did not bring a buggy product to market (well, besides the 10 BIOS updates in the first month). They brought a product to market that worked just fine with all the processors available for the following year. I don't think you can fault Nvidia for not having a crystal ball and "knowing" that their board design wouldn't work with a future CPU that they didn't have an ES to test with.

Heck, this even happened to Intel themselves. I know someone who bought a BadAxe a month before the Core 2 Duo chips came out. He needed to buy at that time and couldn't wait a month, and he explicitly chose that motherboard BECAUSE he had read it supported the future (at the time) Core 2 Duo processors. Well, all the news articles were talking about a revision of the board. The one he was able to purchase at retail a month before the C2D came out... does not support that chip.

Well from this Chipsets inception it has fried Memory, and the Northbridges out and that is because of two factors;
NVIDIA has always been picky on memory, and they are trying to adapt their designs from AMD for use with Intel the NVIDIA 590 was such a miserable failure that they yanked this chipset out of their ass in about 90 days between design, testing, and final tape out for production.

NVIDIA has never done a blank sheet of paper design for Intel..... and that is where the true issues lie.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: Zap

They did not bring a buggy product to market (well, besides the 10 BIOS updates in the first month). They brought a product to market that worked just fine with all the processors available for the following year. I don't think you can fault Nvidia for not having a crystal ball and "knowing" that their board design wouldn't work with a future CPU that they didn't have an ES to test with.

Heck, this even happened to Intel themselves. I know someone who bought a BadAxe a month before the Core 2 Duo chips came out. He needed to buy at that time and couldn't wait a month, and he explicitly chose that motherboard BECAUSE he had read it supported the future (at the time) Core 2 Duo processors. Well, all the news articles were talking about a revision of the board. The one he was able to purchase at retail a month before the C2D came out... does not support that chip.

It?s not all nVidia?s fault for sure. nVidia still claims that the 680 is capable of handling quad-core penryns and the upcoming 780 is more or less a 680 with a pci-e 2 bridge. The thing is that nVidia cannot guarantee that all 680 mobos out there will handle the cpus and that?s because they do not have full control over the end product.

Most tier 1 mobo manufacturers tend to use their own designs and this can differentiate things a lot. I?m not saying that nVidia?s reference design works, if it doesn?t, then they have misled many of the mobo manufacturers and are responsible more than anyone else for this fiasco.

Still there are many different mobo designs out there and right now it seems that most of them won?t work with Yorkfields while some few of them still have a chance. Gary has posted that the Striker extreme works with Yorkfield & we know that MSI is testing them on their P6N Diamond.

Regardless of what mobos will work with Yorkfield the big issue for us 680 owners is that mobo manufacturers like Gigabyte & ASUS advertised on quad-penryn compatibility and by the looks of it they may not deliver. Many of us spent some hard earned cash on these mobos and one of the reasons we did so was because of these claims. It?s cool to start with an E6600 and end up with a quad-core 45nm monster running @3 or 4GHz with 12MB cache and SSE4. If mobo manufacturers didn?t advertise on quad-core penryn compatibility no one would be in trouble right now but since they did, they do have an obligation towards their customers to make things right somehow. Don?t you think ?

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Rike
Stuff like this makes me never want to be a first adopter again. I don't understand how or why companies bring badly buggy products to market.

"I don't understand how or why individuals want to be first adoptors..."

They did not bring a buggy product to market (well, besides the 10 BIOS updates in the first month). They brought a product to market that worked just fine with all the processors available for the following year. I don't think you can fault Nvidia for not having a crystal ball and "knowing" that their board design wouldn't work with a future CPU that they didn't have an ES to test with.

Heck, this even happened to Intel themselves. I know someone who bought a BadAxe a month before the Core 2 Duo chips came out. He needed to buy at that time and couldn't wait a month, and he explicitly chose that motherboard BECAUSE he had read it supported the future (at the time) Core 2 Duo processors. Well, all the news articles were talking about a revision of the board. The one he was able to purchase at retail a month before the C2D came out... does not support that chip.

I'm not fried about the 680i; I didn't buy one. Nor do I fault Nvidia for not having a crystal ball. But it's exactly the problems like those you mentioned (10 BIOS updates in a month) you mentioned that make me gun shy of being a first adopter. Or the Nforce4 boards with Coax audio out that won't work with Nvidia's own drivers. Or how about all the trouble shooting fun you can have with ActiveArmor? And every maker has there own list of faults.

Please don't mistake me, I like a lot of Nvidia's stuff. I've never bought an ATI video card, although after the complete lack of Vista driver support for my 7900GT, an HD 3870 may very well be in my future. Though I hesitate on that too, because who knows what bugs those might have. I just want to buy stuff that works well right away and keeps working. For that, I will happily retreat from the bleeding edge.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I haven't had as much trouble as some. There was even a rumor -- call it "skinny on the street" -- that filling all slots with memory would not play nice with 680i.

I've since discovered that there was some flaw or defect in ORTHOS -- I believe so, anyway.

I wasted two days trouble-shooting a blend-test error that kept coming up exactly after 2 hours, 52 minutes, "using FFT length 20K." I switched over to PRIME95 v 25.4, and the system is rock-stable.

The worst thing I can imagine is what y'all are complaining about. We're sittin' on pins and needles wondering if our boards will work with Yorkfield. I have trouble understanding why they work with Kentsfield, they're certified to work with Wolfdale, but we're in a panic they may not work with Yorkfield.

About the only BSODs I've had with my Striker Extreme seemed linked to my twiddling with "Power Options" with SpeedStep "on." Oh -- and a thoughtlessly unprepared BIOS flash -- I forgot to reset the CMOS. Pulling the processor out and putting it back in seemed to make the trouble go away. Other than that, I had a couple freezes while gaming after setting my nVidia VGA with ATI Tool, and that problem disappeared when I started using RivaTuner.

Figure it this way -- we're better off than were people at the edge between AGP/socket 478 and PCI-E/socket-775.

I'm just betting that all will resolve itself with some BIOS upgrades. But do the mobo makers have the will to do us that service? Or do they have the unscrupulous greed to leave us hanging with our *** in the wind?

 

[JustaGeek]

I've been perfectly happy with my P5N-E SLI, for about 1 year now.

Maybe I am lucky, but when I bought it, no one ever promised me more than 1333MHz FSB in the future.

That's all.

Even Intel is replacing their 965 and 975 chipsets with P35 and X38.

I do not understand why anyone would start a thread just to complain about the chipset that they do not even use!

Mr. Fox, are you happy with your P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP...?

So am I with my P5N-E SLI.

This is not a healthy thread, I can't even see a constructive criticism here.

If you hate NVidia so much, why do you even use their Video Cards...?

I would be embarassed if I were you...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Reading above and following links, I can see the chances that a BIOS fix would manage the 680i with Yorkfield are . . . . . lower.

The problem with succumbing to "always buy the chipset from the CPU-maker" -- you're a doormat for the dominant-firm in an industry with few competitors. See, it's one thing to be indifferent to AMD's beating over the past couple years. It's another thing to say "oh, I'll just buy ALL my parts from Intel and live with Crossfire-capability."

And that's the problem with industries under limited competition. Pretty soon, if they have some dispute with a competing company, or some company won't play ball with them for something like SLI "licensing," they can forget the customer and seek to spite the other firm instead.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
I've been perfectly happy with my P5N-E SLI, for about 1 year now.

Maybe I am lucky, but when I bought it, no one ever promised me more than 1333MHz FSB in the future.

That's all.

Even Intel is replacing their 965 and 975 chipsets with P35 and X38.

I do not understand why anyone would start a thread just to complain about the chipset that they do not even use!

Mr. Fox, are you happy with your P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP...?

So am I with my P5N-E SLI.

This is not a healthy thread, I can't even see a constructive criticism here.

If you hate NVidia so much, why do you even use their Video Cards...?

I would be embarassed if I were you...

965 and 975 had no major issues, and the southbridge that they were paired with limited them because they were older tech.

I am happy with all my Intel Chipsets,(975x & P35} and My NVIDIA's for AMD (2x NF 4)

The point of the thread is that NVIDIA has failed quite badly on their Intel chipsets.

My observations are very much backed by Objective Evidence !!

Where NVIDIA has failed is delivering a decent High End Intel solution.

I know that 650i seems to not be as plagued by the issues that surround it's full featured brethren. You also have a partner developed MOBO, and not a "Reference Unit".

As far as constructive criticism is concerned the facts have been laid out, and HardOCP, and EVGA forums are filled with People that should rightly be upset. And i'm sure if you went on the other partners forums the theme is the same.

The only way to get the issues out is to get people to express anecdotally their experiences good, and bad.

My area of Personal Interest was the issue of Vendor Lock-in v.s. Open Platforms in the Multi-GPU field but I'm not going down that road here.

This is just one more example of ignoring the customer.

And based on what Kyle Bennett had to say, they need to play better with others, or the future may not bode so well for them.

I only bring the news.

 

[Mr Fox]

The Fun Continues over at Hard Ocp --- the first 780i samples are in, and the news is not all that great...

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1252422

 

[JustaGeek]

If it isn't Broke Leave it Alone !!

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
If it isn't Broke Leave it Alone !!

Who are you, Chris Crocker?

I have never been impressed with nVIDIA boards. The one I have is so picky with the memory that you put in it. Just crazy...

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
If it isn't Broke Leave it Alone !!

Who are you, Chris Crocker?

I have never been impressed with nVIDIA boards. The one I have is so picky with the memory that you put in it. Just crazy...

How did you know...???


BTW, I absolutely love my 650i motherboard.

600 family chipsets have been around since November 2006. And even Intel created new chipsets starting in May 07 with the P35, to replace their aging 965's and 975's.

And now, they are probably witholding certain instructions from NVidia, so they can increase sales of their own P35's and X38's.

I am not worried about NVidia. They prove their creativity over and over, lately with the G92 GPU.

And I will gladly upgrade to the new Nvidia chipset supporting the new processors, when I decide to update my 650i. Just like the users of 945, 965 and 975 do now.

The easiness of overclocking with NVidia chipsets, and practically unlimited number of memory dividers/multipliers with the unlinked FSB/RAM settings will probably never be available on Intel platform.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
If it isn't Broke Leave it Alone !!

Who are you, Chris Crocker?

I have never been impressed with nVIDIA boards. The one I have is so picky with the memory that you put in it. Just crazy...

The thing that is so funny ... the stuff that was sent to Kyle... were Media Samples....

You would believe that if you wanted to quiet a nay-sayer... you would send quality hardware....

I only bring the news..........

 

[JustaGeek]

See, Mr Fox, it takes quite a hypocrite to use the NVidia Video Cards, and then on the first sign of some weakness, start a thread how much they suck in another "department".

Just "use the best of this", and "the best of that", but if you are in any type of perceived (or real?!?) trouble, "I am going to point out every single mistake you've ever made".

You must be very proud of yourself...

 

[vhx]

Wolfsdale is supported by the EVGA 680i SLI and Yorksfield is not. Atleast it's something, I guess.

From what I read it was an issue with a change specifically to the Quad cores at the last minute that made them incompatible, but who knows. On the other hand it could of been a joint venture between NVIDIA and Intel to give people a specific reason to upgrade to a 780i.

 

[MegaWorks1]

I don't see why people buy the 680i or any nVidia chipsets for that matters. I know if you want to go SLI it's the only way. Then why are you buying nForce 680i if you're not doing SLI?

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks1
I don't see why people buy the 680i or any nVidia chipsets for that matters. I know if you want to go SLI it's the only way. Then why are you buying nForce 680i if you're not doing SLI?

Let me quote a part of my previous post:

"The easiness of overclocking with NVidia chipsets, and practically unlimited number of memory dividers/multipliers with the unlinked FSB/RAM settings will probably never be available on Intel platform."

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks1
I don't see why people buy the 680i or any nVidia chipsets for that matters. I know if you want to go SLI it's the only way. Then why are you buying nForce 680i if you're not doing SLI?

BTW, why did you get the MB with X38 chipset to run your Pentium D 925 on...?

Are you getting ready for the new 45nm CPU's, and upgraded the MB for that reason...?

Wasn't your previous chipset adequate for the new processors...?

Just don't tell me that you had the NVidia 680i chipset, and you HAD to upgrade...

 

[MegaWorks]

lol!! Well I got the Pentium D for free so I said why not upgrade from my Opty 165 rig.

Yes I'm waiting for Intel next quad core "45mm" that's why I selected the X38 chipset.

To be honest I was looking into the ABIT IN9 32X-MAX to go SLI, but decided not to because

of the 680i chipset problems. So basically I'm going CrossFire for my next GPU.

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek

Originally posted by: MegaWorks1
I don't see why people buy the 680i or any nVidia chipsets for that matters. I know if you want to go SLI it's the only way. Then why are you buying nForce 680i if you're not doing SLI?

Let me quote a part of my previous post:

"The easiness of overclocking with NVidia chipsets, and practically unlimited number of memory dividers/multipliers with the unlinked FSB/RAM settings will probably never be available on Intel platform."

Well I prefer stability over memory dividers!