Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[XB3]

GriMRRapeR,

I've had nothing but problems trying to use my Creative X-FI Fatality with my new rig. Every time I install it my system refuses to boot. Then after removing it from my system I still have to reformat my RAID and reinstall XP.


-- ALL --

I am having a problem that I'm hoping someone might be able to help me with. After using the system all day yesterday, rebooting numerous times after installing alot of software and game patches I turned the system off for a couple of hours. My wife comes home to 'check her mail', jumps on the new system and it won't boot. WTF! So I boot it into the Windows XP recovery console and run CHKDSK and I told I have a unrecoverable error. So now I reformatted my primary RAID, reinstalled XP, and in the process of reinstalling all of my software. All of my drives are plugged into the NV SATA ports, 2,3,4,5.

I'm not overclocking or doing anything special. Just trying to get a good stable system. I've formatted the Raptors as a RAID and separately in IDE mode and run scandisk thorough and haven't found any problems with the drives. Why would my RAID corrupt ... or am I doing something wrong? When running, everything is great and the performance is very good.

Here's what I have:

Case: SILVERSTONE TJ09-B
Case: SILVERSTONE SST-FP32-B Aluminum USB/1394/Audio Panel
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W W0131RU
MoBo: GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6 (F3 BIOS)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
RAM: OCZ Titanium 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 OCZ2T8002GK
GPU: 2 x EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB (SLI)
HDD: 2 x Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB (RAID 0)
HDD: 2 x Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB (RAID 0)
DVD: SONY DRU820A DVD Burner
DVD: ASUS DVD-E616A3 DVD-ROM Drive
O/S: Windows XP Pro SP2b

 

[Reanim8r]

I just finished setting up the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 with the QX6700 processor and 4 500 gig drives on the SATA and 2 500 mirrored on the GSATA. I have had no problems with anything until I am now setting up the Razer headphones. I set it for 5.1 but I can only hear the front two and the woofer, no center and no surround speakers seem to work. I am running x64 vista ultimate.

Anyone with any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Curr]

Well, I'm up and running, hooray!

It turns out that my problem was that I needed to disable the NV SATA Raid controller completely, AND load the F6 drivers upon install with Win XP Pro Sp2.

Disabling the NV SATA Raid controller may be optional, but loading the NV SATA Raid / MCP55 SATA drivers isn't.

I'm currently steaming along quite happily.

Quick run down of assembled shiny bits stuffed into a TJ09.
E6600, 4Gb Corsair PC8500C5D, BFG Tech 8800GTX, X-Fi Fatality, Silverstone OP1000 PSU. I have a Tuniq on the CPU and a Thermalright HR03-Plus on the 8800.

Vdimm is at 2.2V, Vcpu at 1.375, NB, HT, and SB voltages all bumped up 1 incrememt (I think it's 10mV but may be 100mV). I pushed FSB up to 300MHz and currently spinning merrily away. I ran Orthos for 8+ hours and temps stayed around 42-43C so I'll probably just leave it here for a week.

Anyone else put their finger on that NB heatsink? Ouch, hot! Gonna try and squeeze a fan in there, but it's a really tight fit.

Overall, I am *extremely* happy with this board.

To XB3,
I haven't had any issues with my X-Fi as of yet. But that is one thing that scares me is all of the problems people seem to experience with them and nVidia based boards. So far, I'm very happy with it *knock on wood*

To Reanim8r,
Are you using the onboard HD audio? I'm unfamiliar with the Razer headphones, but are you saying you can't hear the speakers / subwoofer when you have the headphones on / plugged in? and that you can't hear your rear speakers?

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello Mr. Reanim8r.

The onboard audio options on this motherboard are controlled by software. At the end of the User's Manual, there is a bit of an explanation about all of the various settings. May I suggest that you read that material closely and then give the audio configuration utility a try. That might solve your problems. TheBeagle

 

[Reanim8r]

I did read but I still can't get the center and the rears working in 5.1. I can get the rears working in 7.1 but not the center channel. and the side rear speakers are ignored.

 

[TheBeagle]

Double entry - Sorry!

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello Again Mr. Reanim8r,

There is an updated audio driver package on the Gigabyte (Taiwan) web site. Here's the link for that item: Motherboard_driver_audio_realtek_azalia.exe. May I suggest that you load the new driver package and give the utility a try. I'll admit that the utility is a bare-bones piece of crap, but I suppose it's better than nothing at this stage in the Vista driver development. I hope that's of some help to you. TheBeagle

 

[Toti]

Hi all
I got some proplems with Smartfan. The CPU fan is on full rpm when i start the computer and in Easytune the button is shadowed cant click it does not work.
But when i reboot it is ok. Then everything works fine. Has this happened to you guyes?
And also i cant get into Easytune after sometime I have to end the process and start
Easytune again.

 

[Curr]

I noticed EasyTune locking up too. GUI.exe I believe is the right process to kill. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I haven't looked too much into fiddling with it, as any OC'ing / OV'ing I have done has been straight through the bios settings.

I haven't looked into CPU fan RPM issues, I put a Yate Loon fan in my Tuniq, so even if it was full speed, I'm not sure I would be able to hear it.

Beagle,

Have you done much OC'ing yet? Have you looked into / thought about applying extra cooling to the NB heatsink? I'm going to download nTune, and hopefully be able to check out motherboard / chipset temperatures. I get conflicting numbers with the different programs.

 

[Smitty1705]

Hmmm... with the FSB on a quadcore being limited to 335 FSB, this SURRRE reminds me of the hardware issues EVGA was having. I'm a little worried now, how do we know this can be fixed via a bios update and not a hardware swap like the EVGA ones went through? I hope there is some good news on this soon. =(

Thanks for the mini update Gary... Look forward to the F4 bios update later this week!

Smitty

 

[dlbetz]

Here are the Default "normal" Voltages setting I got from Tech support for whoever wants to know:

Memory defaults at 1.8v while processor should default at 1.325v
CPU to NB Voltage - 1.2v
NB to SB Voltage - 1.3v
NB Core / PCIe Voltage - 1.2v
SB Core / PCIe Voltage - 1.2v
SB Standby Voltage - 1.5v

It Helps when you read that overclocking artical from nvidia...

 

[bka4u2c]

Originally posted by: dlbetz
Here are the Default "normal" Voltages setting I got from Tech support for whoever wants to know:

Memory defaults at 1.8v while processor should default at 1.325v
CPU to NB Voltage - 1.2v
NB to SB Voltage - 1.3v
NB Core / PCIe Voltage - 1.2v
SB Core / PCIe Voltage - 1.2v
SB Standby Voltage - 1.5v

It Helps when you read that overclocking artical from nvidia...

Thanks for the list of defaults!!

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Smitty1705
Hmmm... with the FSB on a quadcore being limited to 335 FSB, this SURRRE reminds me of the hardware issues EVGA was having. I'm a little worried now, how do we know this can be fixed via a bios update and not a hardware swap like the EVGA ones went through? I hope there is some good news on this soon. =(

Thanks for the mini update Gary... Look forward to the F4 bios update later this week!

Smitty

I do not have an update from Gigabyte on the Quad Core overclocking (asked again today) but did receive news today that a final F4 BIOS is a "few" days away from release. I will post it up here before it is on Gigabyte's site, at this time F4B is the latest.

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello Mr. Curr.

The short answer is yes and no. Yes, I've done some OC. No, I'm not too pleased with the results as of yet. My board seems a bit sensitive to the "right" combination of factors, and dialing in on those has been a challenge. As I mentioned earlier in another post, the main problem seems to be getting it to launch into Windows Vista, and to stay stable. I have very little problem getting it past the POST, but the transition into Vista has been less than what I would have liked. However, I'm continuing to work with it, and we are making some incremental progress, albeit at a rather slow pace. I'll keep in touch on this. TheBeagle

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: TheBeagle
Hello Mr. Curr.

The short answer is yes and no. Yes, I've done some OC. No, I'm not too pleased with the results as of yet. My board seems a bit sensitive to the "right" combination of factors, and dialing in on those has been a challenge. As I mentioned earlier in another post, the main problem seems to be getting it to launch into Windows Vista, and to stay stable. I have very little problem getting it past the POST, but the transition into Vista has been less than what I would have liked. However, I'm continuing to work with it, and we are making some incremental progress, albeit at a rather slow pace. I'll keep in touch on this. TheBeagle

Vista testing is touchy at best with us right now. I had planned on having the NV 680i roundup with Vista-64 Ultimate but after two registry corruptions (takes about six hours to create a test image platform), numerous application errors, and several issues with SLI we are going back to XP tonight, first two board comparison will be up on Wednesday.

 

[eklock2000]

To Beagle/Gary...

Is it safe to say that overclocking forays will be more fruitful in XP and that Beagle's limited "stable" overclocking success may be due to Vista?

If so, what is the likelihood that a future BIOS would solve this? I guess we'll know more later this week...just pontificating.

Thank you,

EK2K

PS - I would like to echo Mr. GriMRapeR's comments about appreciating the high quality content. The utility of a forum such as this with users truly interested in having relevant discussions about cutting edge products is invaluable.

 

[Curr]

To Eklock2000,

I would say I'm having "pretty good" success in Win XP32 Pro right now playing around with OC'ing with the F3 bios. I'm currently at 333MHz FSB at 9x multi on my E6600 (linked memory). I ran Orthos for an hour or so (just to gauge whether it was safe to move on, play some games, etc) and my temps never got above 44C.

I did increase DD2 Voltage (to 2.2V; 4Gb Corsair memory), NB/PCIE increased 0.1V, SB/PCIE increased 0.1V, HT-Link increased by 0.1V, SB Standby Voltage still in Auto, and CPU Vcore increased to 1.375 (increased by 50mV).

I played HL2, WoW, ran Sisoft Sandra, Orthos, and Everest benchmarks, and everything seems very stable. I'm quite happy with 3GHz right now, but will probably move up some more, in hopes of getting 3.6GHz "Orthos stable".

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: eklock2000
To Beagle/Gary...

Is it safe to say that overclocking forays will be more fruitful in XP and that Beagle's limited "stable" overclocking success may be due to Vista?

If so, what is the likelihood that a future BIOS would solve this? I guess we'll know more later this week...just pontificating.

Thank you,

EK2K

PS - I would like to echo Mr. GriMRapeR's comments about appreciating the high quality content. The utility of a forum such as this with users truly interested in having relevant discussions about cutting edge products is invaluable.

Yes, at this time I am seeing anywhere from a 4%~7% improvement in overclocking when using XP. The video and platform drivers are just not mature enough in Vista at this time to take advantage of the operating systems strengths in my opinion. This should change over the next few months, just as it did in XP and Win2K upon release. My major concern with Vista is that once we push the envelope in memory timings the registry seems to be very sensitive to corruption. I have a call in to Microsoft to discuss it.

 

[Curr]

Question... What programs are you all using to monitor the onboard fan / temp sensors? Especially in your labs Gary, since you do the "most scientific" testing of the people in this thread.

I'm using CoreTemp 0.95 for CPU temps, but programs like MBM5 don't seem to recognize the sensor package that Gigabyte used on the 680-DQ6. Easytune seems to lock up on me randomly, nTune doesn't seem to work properly either.

Also, does Intel's TAT work on this board? I can't get the one I found to download, to work correctly.

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello To Gary.

I've begun to experience some of those Registry problems that you mentioned with the Vista install - most disappointing! I'm tempted to return to WinXP-SP2 just to see how it compares with Vista for OC. Can you offer any tips on BIOS settings for Vista OC? Not just the regular stuff, but some of the other things (exotic?) that might affect the launch into Vista.

As I stated in an earlier post, I can get the PC through the entire POST at a significant OC, but when it attempts to load Vista, it just stalls for a few moments, searches all the optical drives for a second or so, and then reboots. Overall, I'm rather pleased with the hardware and especially the board, but as they say, "the devil's in the details!" Thanks for any info you can offer. TheBeagle

 

[Smitty1705]

This F4 bios review is killing me! hahahaha
Depending on what Gary reveals as far as FSB for Quad cores is going to make or break it for me... I can't wait ANY longer on ATI and the vaporware R600 so this board review is my LAST thing until i hit the "purchase" button at 'ol NewEgg. It's KILLLLING me .. I check this site a bazillioin times a day! hahaha
NO pressure... just wanted to say I'm anxious! =)

Thanks for all of your hard work and letting us know how things REALLY work, instead of us having to find out on our own and risk a bad purchase and a bad experience on something most of us look forward to!

Okay

Smitty

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Evening Everyone.

Just in case anybody needs some new ATI drivers, Version 7.3 was just released and is available on the ATI web site for download. Enjoy. TheBeagle

 

[justinburton]

Smitty, I check this site at least 5 times a day too so ur not the only one. Anyways the topic of this forum is "Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?" What a great question. They are still only available at one or two online retailers. How come? When are they going to end up at computer stores like Fry's Electronics? WHERE ARE THEY!!!!!!

 

[FSH42NA]

ewiz.com has em for alot less than I paid

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-N68SLI

 

[Smitty1705]

Hahaha I'm not too worried about where they are until I know that they work the way I want them to!

Personally I would never buy anything from Fry's since they take returned product, shrink wrap it and throw it right back on the shelf.. I have had too many bad experiences from Fry's to use them anymore, unless it's something like a book or magazine. I will stick with NewEgg! I go to Fry's to see the product in person though... =) Not to mention, you aren't going to get any type of a deal from them..

Smitty