Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
Gary -

Isn't the F4f the one you gave us a week ago? Did you mean F4G by chance? I already have F4f on mine from you last time.. =)

Thanks..

Smitty

This is a revised F4F....

 

[Curr]

In regards to bridging two of the lan ports to be seen as one, has for me, one very significant advantage.

I play a lot of online games, and seed/download lots of p2p stuff, and before if I'd wanted to game, BF2, WoW, EQ, etc. I would have to pause all my running ul/dl so I wouldn't lag so bad.

Well the other I day I started playing WoW (and I "two-box", or run 2 clients at the same time on one machine) and realized about an hour into playing that I still had my torrents running, with no ill effects on my in game lag.

Yay!

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Evening Everyone.

Well, so far, I am NOT IMPRESSED with the "Revised" F4f BIOS. I still have shutdown and OC problems. Someone back at the Gigabyte workshop messed something up in the BIOS code. Gary, you sure don't want to have them release either the original F4f or revised F4f BIOS, since you might be overwhelmed with bitches, etc on this Thread. Have a nice evening everyone. TheBeagle

 

[dlbetz]

I am having no issues with the new Bios. Seems fine to me. So far that is.

 

[Bayard]

so how is this port teaming done? just put 2 cat-5s into the network?

 

[MraK]

since i got this board, have been using it flawlessly with my BFG 8800GTX and yet it bugs me to think should i get another 8800GTX to make it SLI? i mean ive seen what SLI could do (my old 7600GTs) with my last computer i had before this one, and now that games will very soon need this kind of extra power, do any of you think its worth it to get another GTX at this time, since the gigabyte board works pretty well with this card.

 

[Curr]

Originally posted by: Bayard
so how is this port teaming done? just put 2 cat-5s into the network?

For the teaming, under nVidia, see below! (Learn something new everyday!)

For bridging of the LAN ports, just enable LAN and LAN1 in bios, plug in 2 CAT-5's from your mobo to the router, then go into networking from the control panel, highlight both active lan ports, right click and select "bridge connections", and, viola! All done.

To MrAK:

I am in the same sort of situation right now, but I am holding off on buying any new cards, I haven't found any games really that I need another GTX for yet, and who knows in 6 months what will come out.... a faster refresh of the 8800, the 8900, the 8950... I don't need it now, so I'm not gonna buy it.

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: TheBeagle
Good Evening Everyone.

Well, so far, I am NOT IMPRESSED with the "Revised" F4f BIOS. I still have shutdown and OC problems. Someone back at the Gigabyte workshop messed something up in the BIOS code. Gary, you sure don't want to have them release either the original F4f or revised F4f BIOS, since you might be overwhelmed with bitches, etc on this Thread. Have a nice evening everyone. TheBeagle

I have to agree with you, I still have the same issues as well. Still can't get the machine to power down all the way. I have not tried any OC'ing yet at all though.

Smitty

 

[FMR]

Good Morning, I'm new to this forum but I've been reading all your postings since the thread started which convinced me to buy the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 and I am very pleased with it.

To answer your question about activating teaming:

Please note that you should disable your software firewall before you do this and turn it back on when you are done. I had some problems getting it to work until I realized that ZoneAlarm, which is my software firewall, was the cause. I don't use the Windows Firewall and can't comment to that.

Teaming is accomplished by using the Nvidia Network Access Manager which you hopefully installed along with the Ethernet Drivers. If not, you can install the Nvidia Network Access Manager by using custom install option in the Nvidia Forceware installer.

To activate teaming connect two Ethernet cables to your motherboards lan ports and then plug them into your router or switch. Now, go to the Nvidia Control Panel/Networking/Adjust Teaming configuration - Select: Combine my network adapters, apply the changes, your done.

To enable teaming on the Marvell Network use the Marvell Network Control Panel which can be installed from the Gigabyte CD.

Teaming is not bridging, here is a simple explanation what a network bridge is:
XP's Network Bridge feature can combine two or more local area networks (such as wired and wireless) into one logical network. Computers on each network can communicate with computers on all of the other networks, sharing files, printers, and even an Internet connection.

...and what teaming is:
NVIDIA teaming technology combines two or more Ethernet interfaces on your
system into a single logical interface to form a team, resulting in increased
bandwidth and network redundancy. The Windows operating system detects only
one logical NVIDIA interface to which an administrator can then assign an IP
address.
NVIDIA Teaming technology improves network throughput by distributing traffic
efficiently across all available Ethernet interfaces, also known as ?load balancing?. In
normal network conditions, both transmit and receive traffic are distributed.

Hope this helps. FMR

 

[sskmercer]

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
I'm probably just missing a setting in the bios but i don't see it. Is anyone else noticing when they do a shutdown in Vista (or XP i guess) that the machine doesn't shut down all the way and power off? Vista is shutting down but the machine still has power, with fan LED's still on as well as the power LED. I have to hold the power button down for 4 seconds or so before it goes off all the way. Any ideas?

Smitty

Thank God it wasnt just me, i've been searching high and low for a fix to this problem of the PC not shutting down properly with the F4F bios. Then did a google search and it brought straight back to here LOL.

It does look like quite a few people have been affected by this. The other i noticed is i was getting a shiteload of "ACPI bios does not contain an IRQ for teh device" errors with the F4F.

Firstly i would like to atleast thank Gary (sry if thats wrong) for atleast getting these drivers to us, someones gotta be a guinea pig LOL. But in the end they caused alot of problems. Went back to F3 in what appeared to not be a problem and then spent the next 2hrs sorting problems out with Vista for conflicts of some nature. Before anyone asks the only difference was the BIOS which to me does seem a bit strange.

My main question to Gary (if he knows) what is Gigabyte going to do about the Overclocking problem with Quad cores, with aceiling of only 320fsb (multiple links to prove that), this board will fail badly when the 1333fsb chips come out, especially since the Gigabyte does say Quad Core Optimised for 1333fsb.

Sorry for my long rant. I do have a few work arounds now due to my issues that i have had so if anyone has questions fire away.

Cheers

Edit - I've also now sent 2 emails off to Gigabyte regarding the Quad Core situation (not this bios release here, as much trouble it caused me, i do appreciate it) and still no reply. That is not good service!

 

[MraK]

oh... i guess no one could help me....

 

[jp4miller]

OS will be Vista Ultimate.

Thanks for the info Beagle

jp

 

[overpowered]

Looking at my board, I noticed a fan connector that doesn't seem to be in the manual. It also isn't in the image on the Gigabyte web site. It's next to the "SILENT-PIPE" heat sink on the side towards the PCI/PCIe bus connectors. My eyes aren't so good anymore but it appears to be labeled "NB FAN". It does appear to be in the image on the Newegg site but that image is too low resolution to see the label. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: MrAK
since i got this board, have been using it flawlessly with my BFG 8800GTX and yet it bugs me to think should i get another 8800GTX to make it SLI? i mean ive seen what SLI could do (my old 7600GTs) with my last computer i had before this one, and now that games will very soon need this kind of extra power, do any of you think its worth it to get another GTX at this time, since the gigabyte board works pretty well with this card.

MrAK -

Personally.. I have a single 8800GTX and I can't see a reason to have 2. Everything I throw at it seems to run fine so i can't justify the extra money. I woudl wait until you think you need an upgrade and a couple more video card releases have come out untl you buy a second one. At that time you will notice a huge difference (more games and such to support DX10 and this card) and the price will come down quite a bit. Totally just my opinion and what I plan on doing but to each their own when it comes to their money. =)

Smitty

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: sskmercer

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
I'm probably just missing a setting in the bios but i don't see it. Is anyone else noticing when they do a shutdown in Vista (or XP i guess) that the machine doesn't shut down all the way and power off? Vista is shutting down but the machine still has power, with fan LED's still on as well as the power LED. I have to hold the power button down for 4 seconds or so before it goes off all the way. Any ideas?

Smitty

Thank God it wasnt just me, i've been searching high and low for a fix to this problem of the PC not shutting down properly with the F4F bios. Then did a google search and it brought straight back to here LOL.

It does look like quite a few people have been affected by this. The other i noticed is i was getting a shiteload of "ACPI bios does not contain an IRQ for teh device" errors with the F4F.

Firstly i would like to atleast thank Gary (sry if thats wrong) for atleast getting these drivers to us, someones gotta be a guinea pig LOL. But in the end they caused alot of problems. Went back to F3 in what appeared to not be a problem and then spent the next 2hrs sorting problems out with Vista for conflicts of some nature. Before anyone asks the only difference was the BIOS which to me does seem a bit strange.

My main question to Gary (if he knows) what is Gigabyte going to do about the Overclocking problem with Quad cores, with aceiling of only 320fsb (multiple links to prove that), this board will fail badly when the 1333fsb chips come out, especially since the Gigabyte does say Quad Core Optimised for 1333fsb.

Sorry for my long rant. I do have a few work arounds now due to my issues that i have had so if anyone has questions fire away.

Cheers

Edit - I've also now sent 2 emails off to Gigabyte regarding the Quad Core situation (not this bios release here, as much trouble it caused me, i do appreciate it) and still no reply. That is not good service!

SSKMERCER -

Please let us know what Gigabyte says on this, Im anxious for results on this also. Like i mentioned previously, I still get a message on bootup (don't have it in front of me) that says "SLI MEMORY DETECTED - Disabled 4 memory modules not supported. I do show 4 gig in the bios but I'm curious why I even get this message? Still some odd things..
For now I just hold in the power button to turn it off.. I'm sure they will fix this one soon.. (I hope)


When you get to choose between a Yugo and a Mercedes when you buy a car you notice the huge difference in price and expect a lot more out of the Mercedes. if you did not get that you would be upset and wonder what happened if the performance and features you paid for were not working. How come a board that costs us $300 - $400 bucks doesn't have the speed and features advertised when I drove it off the lot? They need to fix this stuff a little faster and not release half way tested things... I guess we are running a beta bios but the only reason they have to keep writing new ones is because THINGS ARE NOT WOKING RIGHT.

Okay.. done ranting.. I just want all of the junk fixed. =)

Thanks..

Smitty

 

[eklock2000]

@ overpowered...

Yes, I noticed that one too and plugged in a NB fan at that location. It's picked up by many of the hardware monitoring programs (speedfan, etc.) and reports an RPM value. I think there are a total of 4 fan headers on this board.

EK2K

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: overpowered
Looking at my board, I noticed a fan connector that doesn't seem to be in the manual. It also isn't in the image on the Gigabyte web site. It's next to the "SILENT-PIPE" heat sink on the side towards the PCI/PCIe bus connectors. My eyes aren't so good anymore but it appears to be labeled "NB FAN". It does appear to be in the image on the Newegg site but that image is too low resolution to see the label. Has anyone else noticed this?

OVERPOWERED -

I did notice that also. i think it has 3 fan options on the board? I plugged fans into all of them and they seem to be working. I actually plugged my rear exhaust fan into that NB fan connector.

I also noticed that the orange/yellow SATA connectors are labled funky in the directions vs how they actually show on bootup. I plugged 2 SATA drives into what should have been 0 and 1 ports and they show up as 2 and 3 or something different. They ARE working fine but I noticed that also.

Smitty

 

[sskmercer]

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your kindly mail and supporting GIGABYTE.
About the issue you mentioned in your earlier mail, according to chipset specification, NVIDIA NFORCE® 680i SLI MCP which support 1333Mhz FSB CPU in future the CPU such as E6850 is still under developing by Intel,
once the mass-production CPU is available in retail market, GBT will update the list on the website.

It does not mean you can use 1066Mhz CPU to overclock up to 1333Mhz. The overclock result will depend on your peripheral devices, and the CPU maximum performance. It might be the CPU cannot reach so high FSB freq. We will not guarantee any result caused by system overclocking.

BTW, we will increase CPU Vcore to get more system stability when overclocking sometimes, but please be informed that it might cuase H/W damage. In addition, the CPU speed must match with the frequency ratio. It will cause system hanging up if the frequency ratio is higher then that of CPU.And we are not responsible for any results from overclock. Please also be careful of the overheat problem.

At last, we apology if our past service was not satisfactory. Due to the vast amounts of questions we receive daily, we understand the inconvenience of waiting for e-mail responses. If you still have any further question or suggestion about our product, please do not hesitate to contact with us. Thanks again for your understanding, and please receive our sincerely apology.

******** Thank you for supporting GIGABYTE products ***********

I'll start with the abopve response i got back from Gigabyte. Technically they are correct and dont support O/C, though i could run a Multiplier of 7* and that wouldnt be Overclocking my Quag what so ever. They have a serious problem here where QUADS can not reach an FSB 0f 333 which means these boards will not work the next lot of CPUS with fsb1333 capabilities. Also notice they mention a Dual Core in the response, as we know they can get to close to 500fsb, again no probs for C2D's but for Quads WTF?

I do love some of the parts where they talk about O/C with higher vCore etc.. I think i know what i'm doing LOL. I will reply to this to try and make it clearer that without O/C the CPU ie Q6600@7*333 can not be done still as it is a problem with the board. The only board at the moment that is seeing past say 325fsb is the DFI 680LT as it has the GTLRef voltage fix (mod) done already.

Smitty1705

Please let us know what Gigabyte says on this, Im anxious for results on this also. Like i mentioned previously, I still get a message on bootup (don't have it in front of me) that says "SLI MEMORY DETECTED - Disabled 4 memory modules not supported. I do show 4 gig in the bios but I'm curious why I even get this message? Still some odd things..
For now I just hold in the power button to turn it off.. I'm sure they will fix this one soon.. (I hope)


When you get to choose between a Yugo and a Mercedes when you buy a car you notice the huge difference in price and expect a lot more out of the Mercedes. if you did not get that you would be upset and wonder what happened if the performance and features you paid for were not working. How come a board that costs us $300 - $400 bucks doesn't have the speed and features advertised when I drove it off the lot? They need to fix this stuff a little faster and not release half way tested things... I guess we are running a beta bios but the only reason they have to keep writing new ones is because THINGS ARE NOT WOKING RIGHT.

Okay.. done ranting.. I just want all of the junk fixed. =)

For that bit my friend i think i might have a fix for You. Under the ram settings, where you select 0,5,10,15% Overclocked or Expert etc. You stick with the 1st Option and not goto Expert as it is telling the board it's SLi memorywhich really dosnt mean much, if even know the basics of O/C/. I will reboot now and make sure of those settings for you OK champ.

 

[sskmercer]

To Smitty1705, that ram setting, just set it to disable then it dosnt look for SLI memory. You should'nt see that msg in post anymore.

Then just go to the next option down and choose Linke or Unlinked what ever you might be doing with your O/C.

Cheers

 

[Smitty1705]

I have no idea if I want linked or not, I have little to no experience with OC'ing so I really haven't done anything yet. I will switch it off of expert mode to get rid od the message, that's all i changed like you mentioned.

Thanks for the heads up!

Smitty

 

[sskmercer]

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
I have no idea if I want linked or not, I have little to no experience with OC'ing so I really haven't done anything yet. I will switch it off of expert mode to get rid od the message, that's all i changed like you mentioned.

Thanks for the heads up!

Smitty

What r your PC specs, i should be able to point you in the right direction for a small, mild or wild OC.

Cheers

 

[MraK]

sounds like a good way to go smitty1705, tnx ill do that

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: sskmercer

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
I have no idea if I want linked or not, I have little to no experience with OC'ing so I really haven't done anything yet. I will switch it off of expert mode to get rid od the message, that's all i changed like you mentioned.

Thanks for the heads up!

Smitty

What r your PC specs, i should be able to point you in the right direction for a small, mild or wild OC.

Cheers

SSKMERCER -

I went went with the following -

Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6
Intel C2D E6600
Zalman 9700 LED
EVGA 8800 GTX (one)
4 gig of PC8500 Crucial Balistix memory
2 Seagate 7200.10 Perp 320 gig drives
1 Sony Optiarc DVD/RW drive
Creative X-fi Extreme Gamer
Antec Tru Power Tri 650
and the big Mistumi Floppy/Multi card reader!
Logitech MX Revoultion mouse not hooked up yet

I also put 2 fans at the front (lined up with the zalman 9700) to push air over the hard drives through the zalman and out a large 120 exhaust fan in the back. I also found some really nice fan filters for the front ones in the case to try and keep dust from getting sucked in.. Arizona is really bad for dust and your PC gets hammered no matter what you try and do.


Thanks for any help you can give me.. This BIOS on this MB has a ton of crazy settings! We need a sticky for this one so people can copy settings for OC'ing! I'm only looking for 3.0 - 3.2 really. It gets so dang hot here I don't want too much more heat to be honest. It's already 100 + every day in Arizona now and once it gets up to say 115 degrees it's going to be unbareable in my PC room.. (yes.. i run the AC and a fan) but it's still hot! The 21" CRT probably doesn't help! hahaha

Smitty

 

[Warpx9]

Originally posted by: Smitty1705

Originally posted by: TheBeagle
Good Evening Everyone.

Well, so far, I am NOT IMPRESSED with the "Revised" F4f BIOS. I still have shutdown and OC problems. Someone back at the Gigabyte workshop messed something up in the BIOS code. Gary, you sure don't want to have them release either the original F4f or revised F4f BIOS, since you might be overwhelmed with bitches, etc on this Thread. Have a nice evening everyone. TheBeagle

I have to agree with you, I still have the same issues as well. Still can't get the machine to power down all the way. I have not tried any OC'ing yet at all though.

Smitty

Well I had reverted back to F4e and still noticed that Vista would not shutdown all the way. I figured maybe something in the BIOS wasn't right. So, I went into the BIOS reloaded the Optimized Defaults, then went and changed only the BIOS settings to what I had before, and now it shuts down without a problem, weird huh.

 

[Ydef]

Anyone around that has trying OC'ing on the E6300 where BIOS (f4e) only allows 6x and 7x multipliers? Well at least in theory. In practice, despite setting it on 6x multiplier and trying to OC via FSB in the 400's, the bios ALWAYS falls back to setting 7x multiplier and FSB in the 300's (i currently am running at too modest and very disappointing (7x309)=2.163 which barely pushes 15% of stock 1.86) regardless that what it POSTS totally contradicts what it actually runs at.

That is WEAK. If it's not going to let me OC the FSB and set my multiplier at 7x it should at least TELL me that when it POSTS on boot, rather than say i'm OC'ing at 6x before I get the wakeup call from my software needing to tell me otherwise.

Anyway, seems like everyone here did the smart thing and at least picked up the E6700 QNX unlocked, which I should have thought more seriously of doing. But seeing that the E6300 has monster overclocking potential on other mobos, i really did expect more coming from GA's N680 ethusiast offing.