Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[sskmercer]

Originally posted by: 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.

Firstly i gotta i'll get to Smitty in a minute ok LOL. 2nd all this is at your own risk ie. Disclaimer etc.. .

Hit CNTL F1 when booted into bios.

Ok lets party. Firstly in the ADVANCED section of bios setup make sure you have No Execute Memory Protect=Disabled, CPU Enhanced Hlt=Disabled, CPU EIST=Disabled, Virtualisation Tech=Disabled, so all you have in that little section that is enabled is the CPU Thermal Monitor(TM2).

The reason behind this is they will throttle your O/C's once in windows etc. If you to farr with your O/C you still cant boot and have too reset so their is still a bit of a fail safe there.

Ydef i dont know what ram you have but this is what i suggest (if you dont know where these settings are let me/us know). Set the Multi to 7.
SLI Ready Memory=Disabled
FSB Memory Ratio=Unlinked (to start with)
CPU Host Freq=350fsb (this is to start with ok)
Memory Freq=800(not know what RAM you have makes this hard, even Generic is doing 900@4-4-4-12 easily in most cases on stock volts)
Now the 3 PCIE options, set them all to 100 ok, as with some O/C teh Auto function sets some realy stupid numbers and could corrupt your O/S install.

Change your memory timings to the above as well 4-4-4-12(you could do better)

As fot Voltages just stick with standard 1.3v(no warranty voiding there) and on the DDR volts change it to .200.

Boot up run a few wPrime runs, with 2 cores selected or Prime 95 small fft's for 10mins, this will dtermine if it's stable and keep an eye om temps (suggest you use Core Temp .95). If all is good keep bumping the FSB by 10 each time till you hit a ceiling. Then if you have EXCEPTIONAL cooling chuck a couple of more volts at it as there is some serious vdroop on these boards, ie. Bios is 1.3v under load real is about 1.23odd.

Have fun and let us know ok.

 

[sskmercer]

Smitty1705
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

Firstly use Celcius LOL. Nah all good thank god for Calculators, I'm in Brisban, Australia Mate gets hot in summer too 35c(95f)-40c(105f).

Lets play.

Again boot into Bios hit CTRL F1

Goto Advanced Bios Features
No-Execute Memory Protect=Disabled
CPU Enhanced Halt(C1E)=Disabled
CPU Thermal Monitor 2(TM2)=Enabled
CPU EIST=Disabled
Virtualisation Tech=Disabled

I'm assuming you know the rest in regards to boot up, etc.

PC Health Status
Cpu Warning Temp=Enabled i set mine to 70c/158f
CPU/SYSTEM/POWER = Enabled (assuming you have these plugged into mobo)
CPU Smart Fan=Disabled (runs the fan at MAX)
System Smart Fan=Disable as well (ithis is what i have setup)

SYSTEM CLOCK SETTINGS
SLI-Memory=Disabled
FSB-Memory Clock=Unlinked (to start with)
FSB Memory Ratio=Auto (again to start with)
CPU Host FREQ = 350 (will give you 3150Mhz on stock multi of *9) to start with
Memory Freq = 900 (again to start with, your memory will goto 1000@5-5-5-12 most likely)

Agian all the PCIE set to 100.

Voltage wise start at 1.3 and run Prime 95 small fft's for 10mins, with an on Temps (Core .95 Google it), if all is stable drop the voltages down, one step at a time, s this will help with your temps. I've got the Q6600 (fix the GSB problems Gigabyte) and run anywhere from 266-315 at 1.2v and is rock solid.

Give that a ago and let us know how it wrks for you ok.

Cheers

 

[Riddler6777]

Hey sskmercer nice part of the world Brisbane, im from wagga wagga hehe not quite as nice.

 

[Riddler6777]

Hey Guys/Girls

Forgive me for being a noob but can someone please tell me how to install F4F i have downloaded it but have no idea how to update my bios. Can i use this in @Bios or do i have to do it another way?? also should i go with F4f or should i go with F4e i noticed a few of you guys seemed to be having trouble with F4f ??

 

[Seanies Show]

Sorry guys some bad news im affraid, here it is, Gigabyte correction to their first balls up of this board:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot...roductID=2553&ModelName=GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Revision 2, SO SOON, Do you really think they will continue to support both ????

 

[Ydef]

sskmercer,

Cool I'll give your advice a whirl. Didn't know all those advanced bios features need to be DISABLED to allow me to OC.

Also, what sort of core temperatures should I feel comfortable normal operations? At gigabyte stock 1.325 voltage I found it pushing 80C, which is ridiculous, so I brought the voltage down manually to 1.2, which allows it to run at about 55C now, much improved. I'm spent the last three x86 generations on AMD's solution ... haven't had an intel upgrade since my dual proc P2 about 8 years ago so I'm unfamiliar with how temps on Intel's are expected to run, but I'm pretty sure at least moderately higher without the benefit of AMD 3dnow.

 

[overpowered]

Originally posted by: eklock2000
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.

I plugged case fan into it and it's spinning but I don't see it picked up by anything. I'm still on the F3 BIOS though so maybe that's why.

I'm new to monitoring tools other than Gigabyte's Easy Tune. Please forgive my ignorance.

I tried speedfan (since you mentioned it) and the fan speeds are all out of whack. I'm sure I haven't figured out how to configure it properly yet. The NB fan does not show up. Fan 1 is supposedly 1350000 RPM. Fan2 is also 1350000 RPM. FAN 3 is 675000 RPM. Easy Tune 5 is showing CPU 2311 RPM, PWR1 1201 RPM and System 1607 RPM. The Easy Tune numbers seem a little more plausible. I'm thinking 1.35 million RPM's would be very noisy . I saw the "FANx div" under Advanced tab->IT8712F (which is what it seems to think controls the fans) but that only goes to 20. 1350000/20 is still ridiculous.

The temperatures from speedfan seem to be close to the same as Easy Tune 5. However, ET5 doesn't show disk temps. I have 3 regular non-RAID disks hooked up to the NV SATA controller and two disks in a RAID 1 on the Gigabyte GSATA. The ones on the GSATA do not show up in speedfan. The ones on the NV SATA do.

I tried nTune. It seems to have trouble reading a lot of stuff on the board.
I tried Core Temp. It just shows the core temps.

Any other free ones to try or do I need to shell out for Everest?

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Morning Mr. Seanies.

Yes, you are quite correct about the release of a Revision 2 of this board. In fact, on April 29, 2007 I wrote:

I'm aware that the present board is now being labeled on the Gigabyte web site(s) as Rev. 1. That usually means that there's a Rev. 2 lurking somewhere on the drawing boards, since it would be unnecessary to have revisions of a board that was truly EOL.

I have directly inquired of Gary as to his understanding of the level of continued support and BIOS development for the Rev 1.0 boards, and I'm expecting to hear back from him in the near future. However, the "Good News" is that Gigabyte is obviously committed to this board, in whatever level of revision it might be. This sort of evolution also took place with the GA-965P-DQ6 series of boards. That board went through an initial Rev 1.0, then Rev 2.0, and then a Rev 3.3, over the span of about a year and one-half. In motherboard terms, that was quite a lengthy evolution and improvement/revision cycle for a single MB design.

Hopefully Gary will get back to all of us in short order, and let us know what to expect in the future with this board, of course within whatever NDA he might be operating under. I also wouldn't be too surprised to see a new review article which contrasted and compared the Rev 1.0 board with the new Rev 2.0 version. Have a nice day everyone. TheBeagle

 

[cdfire]

For those that windows is reporting the correct BIOS version, can you tell me if when using @BIOS if you are selecting clear DMI data or if using QFlash if on the main QFlash Screen you have Keep DMI Data Enabled or Disabled.

Everything, like I said is working great but I got to say this F2 showing in windows, CPU-Z and Everest is driving me nuts. Starting to think flashing this board is doing nothing for I have gone threw step by step several times now and no matter what Windows thinks it?s F2. Makes it so the boot screen says F3, windows says F2, so how the heck is one to know what BIOS is actually loading.

BTW there does seem to be a REV 2 of this board already. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot.../Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2553

 

[dlbetz]

I use @BIOS and check next to clear DMIPool and the other one. I still am havig no issues with F4F and All Bios Either at bootup or with CPUZ says F4F. Also I think they should let us rma rev1 for 2 being's most of us spent nearly $350 for the board. Or at least some kind of trade up program. Just my opion..

 

[OBR]

Hi all, i have this board from today but i have serious problem with.

If i set some OC settings, and shut off the system completely. On new start my OC settings are gone, and boards "beeps" like your CMOS data are wrong" ... but if i set the same setting again is pretty stable in Orthos, till next shut down of system.

I need to set my OC settings every start of system ... it it crazy!

I switched my good EVGA mobo for this Gigabyte and i am confused, better EVGA with bunch of another problems!

PS. I tested F4F bios, and there is problem with shutdown ... where is problem, i can RMA it and buy another, like Striker ...

 

[Bayard]

maybe RMA it... seems like maybe just your board or the battery may be dead.

 

[OBR]

Is pretty new! I bought it on friday! Battery is OK, i measured it by multimeter.

My board behave exactly :

If i set everything except OC, everything is ok and my settings in BIOS stayed.

Then i set FSB 500MHz, RAM to Sync in Linked, to 1000MHz at 12-4-4-4@2.2V (tested on EVGA and working perfectly) and SAVE, everything worked great! After lot of restarts everything is good!

Then i shut down computer completely, power it again and my OC settings are gone, Multiplier and everything is correct but FSB is back to 266MHz ... is this for RMA?

New investigation :

Everything works perfectly if my absolute CPU frequency is below 3200MHz! Everything works great at 520x6, 455x7, 400x8 ... but if i will set something (multiplier, FSB) and CPU frequency is higher then 3200MHz, my system cannot to post with this bios settings ... If i am already in BIOS, and will set etc. 500x7 - 3500MHz, i can boot into Windows and PC is Orthos stable lot of hours ...!

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: Seanies Show
Sorry guys some bad news im affraid, here it is, Gigabyte correction to their first balls up of this board:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot...roductID=2553&ModelName=GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Revision 2, SO SOON, Do you really think they will continue to support both ????

Wow... so what's up with that? I wonder what they are changing with rev 2? If they can't fix the quad core OC'ing wiht rev 1 but they do in rev 2 I wonder if we can get ours replaced? Kind of jumping the gun on this.. but i'm curious wy the rev 2 so soon?
Gary - do you happen to know anything about this?

Smitty

 

[justinburton]

OK that f*ckin blows. I just paid $325 for my board. Sh*t. I was hoping to throw in a quad and overclock it in a couple months.

 

[OBR]

Whats about my problem guys?

 

[lopri]

First time posting (reading, for that matter) this thread - was wondering why this thread is so long. Kinda understand now but I never thought this board was popular to begin with. What was the most appealing factor of this board for you guys' purchase?

Hope the quad-core issue isn't the same issue that EVGA board went through. At least EVGA replaced the boards for all quad owners. If by any chance it's the same issue, Gigabyte should step up and do the same what EVGA have done for their customers, IMO.

 

[OBR]

Dont bash about Rev 2.0 .. please help me, is it my board normal?

 

[MraK]

ive read from some sites (reviews and forums) that some of the boards that were sold in the past died after 2 or so months in other words failed completely and wouldnt start up again

 

[OBR]

And so what? Please read my post and tell me, has your mobo the same problem like mine? Can you set cpu frequency higher than 3200MHz awith no problems on posting from shut down? This is only my question!

 

[cdfire]

Originally posted by: lopri
First time posting (reading, for that matter) this thread - was wondering why this thread is so long. Kinda understand now but I never thought this board was popular to begin with. What was the most appealing factor of this board for you guys' purchase?

Hope the quad-core issue isn't the same issue that EVGA board went through. At least EVGA replaced the boards for all quad owners. If by any chance it's the same issue, Gigabyte should step up and do the same what EVGA have done for their customers, IMO.

Personally I bought the board due to a couple reasons. One it did not have the issues other 680I boards had. The reviews where all good, the cooling seems to be one of the best and I have used Gigabyte boards for years without issue.

I sure hope its not the same issue as the EVA boards had. EVA cross ships and from what I hear Gigabyte don't which means even if they did offer a replacement, we would all be waiting around for weeks on end for a new board. In the past when Gigabyte releases a new rev it was to add support for something or it upgraded things like solid caps, but I don't recall a rev 2 coming out so fast with any of the other Gigabytes boards which makes me think maybe EVA all over again. I bought a E6600 with the board with the intent of upgrading that to the new Quads when they come out hopefully around the time or before UT3 comes out. I sure hope this board does not have the EVA issue for that would really put a damper on my plans and make me think to get a new board of a differant brand at that time.

 

[MraK]

to OBR,

well i OCed my cpu to 3.34Ghz (e6600 2.4) and since then (April 12th) my board has been up to par, had no issues whatsoever and the temperature of my cpu never went over 45c it was just bothering me a bit for those people to have had it abit longer than i have, to have it die on them, hopefully my board wont give up on me.

 

[OBR]

Thanks! But test it for me: if you set up 420MHz * 8 and shot down the PC completely ... and start it again, will your system on 420x8? Are you sure, if you are i need to RMA! Thanks for test!

 

[justinburton]

Originally posted by: OBR
Thanks! But test it for me: if you set up 420MHz * 8 and shot down the PC completely ... and start it again, will your system on 420x8? Are you sure, if you are i need to RMA! Thanks for test!

OBR, My board was running fine at 425*8 forever and booted fine. I dropped it to 400*8 for everyday use though. Maybe your memory can't handle it? Make sure you are running the RAM unlinked and at 1066mHz. My board wouold automatically go back dow to stock speeds if the over clock wasn't stable. This happened to me at 900*4. Also make sure you have the latest BIOS on the main and backup. Sometimes this board likes to boot the backup.

My PC Specs:
Case: Lian Li G70B w/window
MB: Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6
CPU: Intel e6600@3.2gHz [watercooled]
Mem: OCZ 2x1GB PC2-8500 1066mHz (5-5-5-15)
Video:2 BFG 8800GTX in SLI @ 626/1458/2000mHz [watercooled]
1 Asus PhysX P1 card (Ageia)
Power: Thermaltake Toughpower 850 Watt (W00131)
Sound: Creative soundblaster Xfi Fata1ity Platinum
Monitors: Dell 24" LCD and Viewsonic 19" LCD
HD: 2 Western Digital 74GB in Raid 0, 1 Seagate 500GB, 1 Seagate 320 GB, 1 Maxtor 500GB
CD-ROM: Liteon SATA SH-16A7S, Samsung SH-D162(Xbox 360), LG drive (Wii)
Cooling: Asetek Xtreme pump, Black Ice Xtreme 3 radiator, Tygon tubing, Fluid XP
Mouse: Logitech G7 laser wireless
Keyboard: Auravision Eluminx keyboard

 

[OBR]

Ok, but why unlinked? I want to Linked and Sync ... FSB500. RAM at 1000MHz!