Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

Page 41 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Toti

Junior Member
Mar 26, 2007
13
0
0
Hi all


I think I am in deep trouble. I was updating backup bios in Q-flash with a floppy drive
and everything was ok untill I got this message at the end" Copy bios failure"

Now the pc alwayes starts in Q-flash trying to copy the bios from floppy but doesnt work.

Think i killed my mobo
 

cdfire

Member
Feb 23, 2007
159
0
0
Toti, Have you tried clearing the CMOS? I don't know if that will help or not, but it may be worth a shot.
 

Blazer7

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,136
12
81
Toti, You should also check your floppy disk. Floppy disks tend to go bad and a bad floppy with a BIOS file is a recipe for disaster.
 

Toti

Junior Member
Mar 26, 2007
13
0
0
I checked the floppy drive in windows before and the floppydisk.
It worked ok. And the bios file i used to update main bios i copied to the floppy.
I used Qbios in windows to update the main bios and worked fine as usual.

I cleard the CMOS but still the same.

Thanks for reply and help
 

cdfire

Member
Feb 23, 2007
159
0
0
The only other thing I can think of is to maybe make a new floppy from another pc and try a differant BIOS file, F2 or F3 maybe, provided you are using the REV 1 board.
 

TheBeagle

Senior member
Apr 5, 2005
508
0
0
Good Evening Mr. Toti.

Since there's a backup BIOS built into your board, you should be able to retrieve a working BIOS version and get the board back in operation. What BIOS version were you trying to install?

I would recommend that you install the latest one that Gary posted about a week ago, it is F5b. After you use the backup BIOS to get back in operation, then carefully do a FULL FORMAT on the floppy disk to ensure its integrity.

Then copy the F5b BIOS.bin file to that floppy disk. Then try the BIOS flash again. However, do NOT try to flash the secondary (backup) BIOS until you are sure that the primary BIOS flash procedure went OK. Let us know how you make out. Best regards. TheBeagle
 

Blazer7

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,136
12
81
Mr Toti, I would follow the Beagle's advise and flash the primary BIOS to F5b as this works fine for most of us.

If you can do that, then you can access your primary BIOS and go into the Dual BIOS utility (press F8 from within BIOS). Then you can try and copy the primary BIOS onto the backup (Copy Main ROM Data to Backup).

From my experience Dual BIOS is much more reliable than a floppy and it is better to try and copy the primary BIOS onto the backup with this utility as soon as you make sure that your primary BIOS works ok. By doing this there is a good chance that you can solve the problem with the backup.

If this does not work there is a chance that the secondary BIOS chip on your mobo died. In that case this is a loss but not the end of the world. Quad BIOS is there to address/bypass this kind of problems.

PS
Have you used the Express Recovery2 utility ?
 

Kaptdeath

Member
Jun 22, 2007
64
0
0
Tonti,

If your clearing the BIOS by jumping the "clear CMOS pins" didn't work, you might try popping the battery out and shorting the contacts. (with the power off, and unplugged.)

Blazer7,

Those are some amazing memory timings! What brand is that stuff? I also was under the impression that "tRAS" had to be the sum of "tCL + tRCD + tRP" (the first 3 numbers listed in memory timing.) Is this not necessarily true with DDR2?

I am curious what others are getting for tRC. Auto is setting mine to 30. Which according to my limited knowledge is correct by "tRC = tRAS + tRP". (The highest tRC available on this board is 32, I think.)

Also, has anyone found a slick way to mount a fan on the northbridge? I know 42-44C is "normal". I would like to see a little cooler temperatures.

Thanks,

Kapt'n
 

Kaptdeath

Member
Jun 22, 2007
64
0
0
All,

Oops, sorry about that. I mean tRC should be 20. (Blasted arithmetic.) CPU-Z suggests that it should be 22.

Kapt'n
 

Toti

Junior Member
Mar 26, 2007
13
0
0
Hi

My computer specialist tried to fix it also but it was stuck in this loop.
Always starting in Q-Flash trying to update BIOS but failed.
We tried everything but didn,t work.

He told me it could possible to flash another mobo that is GA-N680SLI-DQ6 to mine
but the risk is that you can burn one of them for good.

So guyes thanks for everyhing this has been a great forum.
I have got a very good help here.

So later all thks for everything.
 

Blazer7

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,136
12
81
Katp'n, I'm using 2 sets of G.Skill F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ. These babies are certified to operate at 4-4-4-5-1T@2.2-2.4V.

http://www.gskill.com/indexen.html -> products -> DDR2 -> F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ

However what G.Skill fails to mention is that you definitely need some extra cooling in order to hit the specified timings. At the beginning I had nothing of sorts and after just 5 minutes @1066 the sticks were getting so hot that I was getting all sorts of memory errors. Now I'm using an OCZ XTC cooler and everything works fine.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/p...roducts/ocz_xtc_cooler

I was also able to run stable at 4-3-3-3 but had the best results at 4-3-3-5 & 4-3-3-7, thus I 've chosen to stay at 4-3-3-5-2T@2.275V. I would love to have them running at 1T but this is out of the question with 4 sticks.

The G.Skills are also the main reason for me switching boards from GA-965P-DQ6 rev 1 to GA-N680SLI-DQ6 rev 1. The GA-965P-DQ6 was a great board and my 1st non ASUS board the last 4 years but it gave me lots of trouble during boot. Despite the fact that I had asked both my retailer and G.Skill Europe for advise on compatibility issues prior to buying the board, and despite both of them claiming that the G.Skill - Gigabyte combo would work trouble free, I ended up between a rock and a hard place. After a month of efforts to get the sticks from Germany and after endless hours on top of my pc I found myself ready to RMA the RAMs and send the board to hell.

Whenever I tried to operate the memories near their specs it was an 80 vs 20 chance that it would boot and the 80 was not in my favor. Once there, it was like a dream but most of the time it was a nightmare. After a couple of months straggling with boot problems when running @1066 and after many BIOS updates without the anticipated results I gave up. Since the G.Skills were far more expensive than the board I had no choice but to sell it.

I was looking to get the striker extreme from ASUS since it is a good board and I've never had problems with ASUS boards in the past but the rest of my setup was a bit too much for it. On the other hand the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 was exactly what I was looking for in terms of features and specs and although my first Gigabyte was not a success I'm glad that I went with it instead. With the exception of the RAID controller, this is much better than the GA-965P-DQ6, and it is exactly what I was hopping/praying for in terms of performance and compatibility with my G.Skills.

No matter what anyone may say about heat issues etc, this is a great board.

-------------------------------
Chieftech BA-01B-B-B, Enermax Galaxy 850W, GA-N680SLI-DQ6 rev 1 - F5b BIOS, Thermalright SI-128 + Thermaltake A2018 120x120x25 Smart Fan, 2 x G.Skill F2-8500PHU2-2GBHZ - 4 x 1GB DDR2-1066 @1066 4-3-3-5-2T@2.275V + OCZ XTC Cooler, ASUS EN8800GTX 768MB HTDP, 6 x WD 74GB Raptors in 3 sets of Raid 0, 2 x Seagate Barracudas 7200.10 320GB in Raid 0, Plextor PX-716SA, Plextor PX-760SA, LG GSA-H20L, Iomega REV (35/90GB ver), LG L1980Q, Kitchen Sink.
 

Kaptdeath

Member
Jun 22, 2007
64
0
0
Blazer7,

Very nice. That is quite the impressive rig. I've never seen a computer component (the memory) with the price listed as "left nut" before. I'm going to have to do some reading to understand more thoroughly how these memory timings work. My memory is pretty well stuck at 5 5 5 15, but I am going to see if changing tRC from 30 to 22 will buy me anything (besides a headache).

Thanks,

Kapt'n
 

Kaptdeath

Member
Jun 22, 2007
64
0
0
Blazer7,

tRC from 30 to 22 yielded a 2% badwidth increase. 6592MB/s to 6723MB/s. Sigh, it ain't much, but it is still stable. Do you have any suggestions on what order to tweak the memory timings in? ie. start with tCL , tRCD, tRP or tRAS?

Thanks

Kapt'n
 

Blazer7

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,136
12
81
Kapt'n, I think you are wrong about the price of the G.Skills. I think it was like an arm and a leg something . Anyway they were the only ones to confirm that 4 sticks of their memory would work at 5-5-5-15-2T.

That's right. This is what I've asked G.Skill to confirm. Before that, I've asked Corsair the same for their TWIN2X2048-8500C5 memory as this was my first choice (at that time I was very fond of my arms and legs, quite attached to them too) . I do have very good past experience with Corsair DDR memories (4 x CMX512-3200C2 - TWINX1024-4400C25). But guess what, their reply was that they would be surprised if the GA-965P-DQ6 could hit the 1000 mark with 2 sticks let alone 4. By then the dominators were just starting to appear in the market with fans louder than hell and prices about the same as the G.Skills, and the Kingston KHX9200D2K2/2G were just a distant rumour.

My goal was to have 4GB @1066 running in sync with the cpu and be ready for Vista when the time comes (SP1). The minimum timings that I was after were 5-5-5-15-2T (these are decent timings and you are already there) and if I was lucky maybe I could do 5-5-5-12-2T with 4 sticks. The rest is history.

Tweaking the memory is not an easy thing. In fact it is one of the most time consuming things I know of. You will have to run memtest for hours every time you change something however insignificant that may be just to make sure that your data are not getting corrupted. I've seen rigs that could boot in XP virtually ok, perform all sorts of tasks and even burn DVDs only to find out during verification that the data on the discs were corrupted. Eventually the OS would die and we all know what this means.

As far as tweaking is concerned, I would start by visiting the memory manufacturer?s official forums and start looking for people using the same RAM-board combo. This is always a good place to start (Corsair probably have the best forums out there).

Since you are using OCZ memory (8500 reaper if I?m not mistaken) then you can up your mem voltage to 2.35V without invalidating your warranty (OCZ EVP feature). If you are gonna start messing with the voltage though, I strongly recommend that you get some extra cooling for your DIMMs first. Extra cooling is always good and its not gonna cost you much. Considering the heat pipes already fitted to your DIMMs I do not know if you can fit an extra fan on them. Maybe the Corsair dominator fan will fit but I?m not sure. The good thing is that you ?ll probably won?t need any extra cooling as long as you keep the voltage to 2.35 max. OCZ know their stuff and they wouldn?t set the EVP to 2.35 without their cooling solution being able to cope with the extra heat.

As for which timings I would get to modify first, my favorites are tRAS ? tRRD & tRP.
Cas Latency and Ras to Cas are by default hard targets and most times you will have to crank up the voltage in order to get better results. Even that is not guaranteed for these settings are the first to hit the wall.

I wouldn?t be surprised if you could do something like 5-5-4-12@2.35V. Sometimes dropping from 1T to 2T may allow for tighter timings that will compensate for the 1T loss and more.

Hope this helps

Blazer
 

Cookie Monster

Diamond Member
May 7, 2005
5,161
32
86
Can anyone confirm offically that the rev2 board uses a 570 instead of 590 for the southbridge? From my own knowledge the 590 wins hands down in terms of features compared to the 570.

I was doing quite abit of research and this board seems to be the best choice so far.
 

stilln00b

Junior Member
Jul 9, 2007
2
0
0
hello! new here, and first post. Long time lurker but never really joined, sorry XD. I wanted to ask something, but am not really sure where to put this question. See, I recently wanted to upgrade my PC, my old PC has a Gigabyte 945p-S3 mobo, Dual core e6600, WD 320gb SATA II HDD, base intel CPU heatsink, Leadtek 7600 GS, Kingston 512mb RAM

I already have Gigabyte 768m 8800 Ultra, and Corsair Dominator 2G twin2x2048 8500C5D (Can't buy 8888 or more... damn expensive XD) I will still use my 6600 and HDD though.

I wanted to change the moBo as well, and stumbled upon this nifty moBo. it looks like a winner for 680i chipset (been reading reviews all around, and lurking in this very topic) but I think I also wanted to change the heatsink. There are a lot of good heatsinks (Zalman 9700 and Thermalright 120) but they don't really fit in the mobo now, are they? I was told (and read) but I'm just too scared to mod the heatsink myself cause I'm all thumbs. Now I read that Gigabyte 3D Rocket II (with their dual fan and whatnot) clips perfectly with the mobo but I haven't been able to find a review that satisfy me about its ability. Does anyone know any other heatsinks that are compatible with the moBo without the need to mod anything out of them both? Cause I don't know exactly how much space the moBo has T_T

thanks and appreciated!
 

Blazer7

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2007
1,136
12
81
Mr stilln00b,

Almost everything that doesn't have a custom backplate will fit on this board without any modifications. Please take some time to browse through some of the pages of this forum. I am sure that you will find many people that use different heatsinks, many of those, I'm sure will be of your liking.

It will also help bigtime to know if you are planning to oc.

I was using a Thermalright SI-128 with my E6600@stock and the temps were around 19/20C at idle with Environment temp of 28C. (my post - page 49)

And you are right. This board is a winner.
 

stilln00b

Junior Member
Jul 9, 2007
2
0
0
ah yeah, thanks for the reply!

I had another fast reading and I found that Zalman 9700 can actually be used in the mobo using the ZM-CS1 clip, so now I'm leaning towards that.

but thank you again though, I will have a read carefully and see what I can get again.
 

eklock2000

Senior member
Jan 11, 2007
292
0
0
@stillnoob...I'm super happy with the 9700...I think I posted some pics of it on my rig on Pg. 20 of this thread.



Has anyone removed the CrazyCool pipe setup on this board? I'm wondering specifically about the SB portion where the Crazy pipe ends? There seems to just be a block of copper there (under the "Ultra Durable") and I would like to add some fins/fans to do a better job cooling that thing off. Is that block just glued on or are there some screws on the underside?

The NB seems fine tho and I've added a little fan to help there.

Thanks in advance.

EK2K
 

cdfire

Member
Feb 23, 2007
159
0
0
I too would be interested in doing something with that South Bridge for that thing gets real hot. I have tryed a few things with differant fans, but with the 8800GTX card in the way, it makes it hard to get anything to attach solid.
 

eklock2000

Senior member
Jan 11, 2007
292
0
0
cdfire...I rigged something up this weekend, but I'm not happy with it. Have you considered moving the 8800 to the second PCI slot?...or are you running SLI/add-in cards that are in the way?

I destroyed the "Ultra-Durable" plate trying to get underneath it. It's just a solid block of copper under there, and it has a radius to it. Wondering how hard it would be to get that off without removing the whole setup?

Also, looks like the "offset" Thermalright HR-05 might fit, but contact with that curved SB copper block would not be great. Also, getting it to stay there would be tough without removing that section of the CrazyCool pipe. Hmmrumph!

Peas,

EK2K
 

cdfire

Member
Feb 23, 2007
159
0
0
Have not tried moving the 8800 simply because the Gigabyte manual suggest installing it in the first slot. Might be worth a shot though. As for removing anything, I am not that brave, but if I can get a fan securely on there I will be happy.
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |