Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[TheBeagle]

Good Evening Everyone,

Praise the Lord - the E6850 has arrived! The new proc is installed in the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Rev. 1 machine that I am using to write and send this posting. This little baby is humming along just fine at 3.6 GHz (400 x 9), with DDR2 @2.25V; CPU @1.425V; and all the other voltage settings @+.10V. The memory is clocking @533, 5-5-5-15-31-2T. The BIOS is still the F5b, but seems quite content with the new proc and these speed settings. There is definitely a considerable bit more headroom for OC on this proc than on my original E6600.

It will be interesting to see how things perform when the new NV chipset drivers arrive (hopefully this week), and also the Final F5 (or higher?) BIOS. I'll keep you posted on the results. Have a great evening. TheBeagle :beer:

 

[Gary Key]

Hi,

New NV Vista drivers by Friday and the final F5 BIOS sometime tomorrow night.

 

[justinburton]

Thanks Gary!! Are the Nvidia vista drivers chipset drivers or graphics card drivers?

 

[mobileone]

thanks for you're replies Mr Blaze and Mr Beagle,

Mr Beagle yes I'm using the beta posted by Mr Gary but at post the the bios name stays the same no matter which I use. Hopefully a new release comes soon.

Blazer, I knew about the ~ button in DOS for long filenames, but I didn't know about the sequencing of similar names. thanks

 

[jwwill01]

Hello all,
I just tried to upgrade my board from 2x1GB to 4x1GB ram. All Patriot PC2-6400 SLI-ready running at 4-4-4-12 and 2.2V. Problem is that it won't post with all four sticks in. I get the long beep, then nothing. I have swapped out the sticks and all combinations run fine with 3 sticks in, as long as none are in slot #2. Any ideas? Help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Blazer7]

Mr jwwill01,

Is your board rev 1 or 2 ?

Are all of your sticks the same part number ?

Can you boot with any 2 sticks if one of them is in slot 2 ?

Have you tried posting with 2 sticks then setting the memory manually at 667 or 533 and then trying to boot with all 4 sticks at that speed ?

It would be a good idea to update your BIOS to F5 official as soon as this becomes available. Thanks Gary :thumbsup:

 

[jwwill01]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Mr jwwill01,

Is your board rev 1 or 2 ?

Are all of your sticks the same part number ?

Can you boot with any 2 sticks if one of them is in slot 2 ?

Have you tried posting with 2 sticks then setting the memory manually at 667 or 533 and then trying to boot with all 4 sticks at that speed ?

It would be a good idea to update your BIOS to F5 official as soon as this becomes available. Thanks Gary :thumbsup:

Thank you for your quick repsonse. My board is a rev1. All sticks are the same part number, but ordered at different times.

I have not tried 2 sticks with one in slot 2, but will do so later tonight. Also will manually set the speed at the slower speeds.

One more question: I cannot seem to get a floppy drive to work correctly. I have tried two drives (one new and one used). Windows recognizes the drive fine, but it will not read any disk I try (tried several). Because of this, I am worried about a BIOS update, since I don't really want to use the Windows Bios update tool.

Specs as follows: Windows Vista x32 Ultimate, F3 bios, E6600

 

[eklock2000]

jwwill01...don't worry about the floppy thing. I had trouble getting this board to recognize mine and ended up using a USB floppy which worked fine. After the OS install, I flashed to the F3 and put the BIOS update in the root C:\ and BIOS found it fine.

Peas,

EK2K

 

[jwwill01]

Originally posted by: eklock2000
jwwill01...don't worry about the floppy thing. I had trouble getting this board to recognize mine and ended up using a USB floppy which worked fine. After the OS install, I flashed to the F3 and put the BIOS update in the root C:\ and BIOS found it fine.

Peas,

EK2K

Does that mean I can just save the file to C:\ and point the bios update to that instead of even using a floppy at all? That would be nice. I've never done it that way. Always used a floppy.

 

[Blazer7]

Mr jwwill01,

I also have a rev 1 board and my floppy was working fine last time I checked. Anyway floppy drives are not the most reliable equipment, in fact, they are the most unreliable equipment by far. It's best that you double double check everything that has to do with your floppy. Cable, Drive, floppies, BIOS settings, Windows settings, everything. Even if you cannot make it work there are other ways to flash your BIOS. As Mr eklock2000 pointed out, you can use a USB floppy to copy the BIOS file to your C drive. Besides that, in the board's manual it is stated that you can use a flash drive or a hard drive to flash your BIOS with the Qflash utility. The only restriction there is that Qflash works only with drives that use FAT file systems (12/16/32).

I always use Gigabyte's face wizard utility for updating my BIOS and never had any problems except for the fact that I'm unable to change my welcome screen since the F4e BIOS. I, however, am still working with XP. Maybe some of the other souls in this forum can give you better guidance when it comes to updating your BIOS from within Vista 32.

Since Gary says that the release of the F5 BIOS is imminent I strongly recommend you wait for it and update as soon as you can get your hands on it. The one that you are using is one of the first and I doubt that you can get yourself into worse trouble by updating to a newer version.

 

[jwwill01]

Thanks everyone for the help so far. Here is an update. I tried just my original two sticks of ram, but in slots 1&2 instead of 1&3. Same problem. Long beeps and no post.

I changed it back out and went into the BIOS, set the speed manually at 533 (was 800). Put ram back into slot 2 and still have the same problem.

Does this mean it is a problem with the slot itself? I have tried the voltage at the manufacturers recommended 2.2v (which is what I always ran the original two sticks at), and tried it back at the default 1.825v.

Tried with the SLI-memory detect thing enabled and disabled.

So as of now, I have gone from 2GB of dual channel memory to 3GB of single channel memory.

Just not sure what to do next.

 

[romper76]

hi every one ive been keeping an eye on this thread ever since i got my dq6 sli m/b im quite happy with the m/b now but has taken a long time to get everything running just right ! (win vista 64 ).
i have my e6600 @3600ghz 450X8 @ 1.58 volt (water cooled) i have 4gb of ram 2gb Ocz Titanium Alpha pc-8000 and 2gb Corsair 6400 XMS2 Dominator with no problems what so ever! but need to give memory 2.2 volt to be fully stable.
really looking forward to updated drivers and bios, and a cpu upgrade when the new quad cores are here.

 

[Gary Key]

Tonight has not been a good night.....

1. Gigabyte will not have a final F5 BIOS until the first week in August now. The delay stems from new code delivered by NVIDIA. I am trying to get the next beta at this time.

2. NV is very non-committal all of a sudden on the Vista driver updates. Even their product managers were sounding upset tonight at the delays.

More later...

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello Everyone.

Gary's update is a bit disappointing. Sounds like the code boys in Taiwan and elsewhere still have some major work to do. However, on the bright side, maybe we won't have another Final F4 BIOS type fiasco this time, since they seem intent on not releasing a "Final BIOS" until it is truly ready for prime time.

Many thanks to you Gary for staying on top of this for us. I really don't know what we would do without you. Mere mortals like the rest of us would NEVER otherwise have access to this inside information, let alone a continuing stream of beta BIOS releases over these many months.

Well, so much for my weekend plans to experiment with a new Final F5 BIOS and and an equally new set of NV chipset drivers for Vista. I guess there's only one thing left to do - Drink Beer!

Best regards. Have a nice evening. TheBeagle :beer:

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: jwwill01
Thanks everyone for the help so far. Here is an update. I tried just my original two sticks of ram, but in slots 1&2 instead of 1&3. Same problem. Long beeps and no post.

I changed it back out and went into the BIOS, set the speed manually at 533 (was 800). Put ram back into slot 2 and still have the same problem.

Does this mean it is a problem with the slot itself? I have tried the voltage at the manufacturers recommended 2.2v (which is what I always ran the original two sticks at), and tried it back at the default 1.825v.

Tried with the SLI-memory detect thing enabled and disabled.

So as of now, I have gone from 2GB of dual channel memory to 3GB of single channel memory.

Just not sure what to do next.

Mr jwwill01,

It seems that the F5 BIOS will have to wait . Many of us use the F5b beta which proved to be quite good so far. You can find a link to the BIOS file in one of Gary's posts on page 46. After you update use 1 DIMM only, to see If you can boot from any slot including slot 2.

If you can boot with a DIMM in slot 2 then you can start trying other combinations. If you can boot with DIMMS in all other slots but slot 2, then 2 things are possible.

a) There is some weird kind of incompatibility with this board-mem combo.

b) Slot 2 is bad

You can eliminate a) by trying other DIMMs from other manufacturers. If the board still won't boot then you should probably contact Gigabyte and RMA the board. If the board boots with slot 2 occupied the only thing that you can hope for is that a new Gigabyte BIOS will solve the issue. I don't know if you can do/try anything else.

 

[EateryOfPiza]

Hello... long time reader, first time poster. Anyways, I have a Rev 2.0 board and a Q6600 with a Zalman 9700NT (Thanks to the dude with the idea for the cs-1 clip!). I have a couple issues.

1) The BIOS cant detect the Vcore, it gives me a red FAIL in PC Health (and a red FAIL for 1.8v ram but im not worried about that), which is annoying becuase I need to know in order to overclock properly. (Right now I can get it to 276 MHz FSB x9 multiplier for 2.48 ghz on Auto system voltage control. i suspect i can do better with manual voltage control)

2) How has the FAb bios been doing? (as an aside, the gigabyte site lists the lastest bios as the FA bios.... http://www.gigabyte.com.lv/pro...ga-n680sli-dq6_20.html ... i thought i twas in beta?)

3) It seems I need to manually set the timings on my ram to 4-4-4-12 (Patriot ram), they seem to default to 5-5-5-16. Anybody have any ideas why?

4) I'm not that familar with Firewire, but when I plugged in my external drive through Firewire Windows server 2003 x64 and Windows Vista Ultiamte x64 were not able to install the drive properly. The Hardware Manager listed the icons with yellow exclamation points. Do I need to do anything special for firewire? Both of my case's firewire ports are plugged in securely to the two plugs that are provided on the mobo (near the PCI slot closest to the side of the board)

Anyways, what I love is the 10 SATA ports. Already using all of them. Mmmmm....

 

[jwwill01]

Thank you very much for the help. I will give that a try.

 

[cdfire]

Thanks for the update Gary.

Since I am on XP the chipset update doesn?t affect me, although it would be nice to get a new chipset driver for XP, but I was looking forward to a new BIOS. The F5b is the best so far, but I still get the building CMOs on startup problem once in a while, no where near as much as I did with the F3 and F4 BIOS, but it still happens once in a while.

Edit: Um, I take back the, it would be nice for a new chipset driver on XP. With NVIDIAS track record on drivers, that I am pretty sure they get from the bottom of a crackerjack box in the first place, better to just leave those XP chipset drivers alone. LOL

 

[jwwill01]

I think I messed up.

I upgraded my bios from F3 to F5b to try and get all four of my memory slots to work together. That went fine. Booted into Windows with Optimized Defaults with no problem.

Shut down pc to test ram. Using all four slots still won't work. I took out all but slot 2 (the previous problem slot) and it worked fine. I added memory back to slots 3 & 4, still worked fine. Put the last one back in slot 1, won't post again (long beep).

So, I pull the one from the second slot again (like it was running on before) 3 sticks total.

Went back to a slight OC in the BIOS, then couldn't get Windows to load. I got the the Vista Logo, then a flash of a BSOD, then immediate reboot.

I loaded optimized defaults again, but still won't load windows.

So, what did I do wrong, and any idea how I might go about fixing this?

E6600, Patriot DDR2-800, Vista x32 Ultimate, no RAID, 3 SATA drives.

 

[EateryOfPiza]

If you can get Windows to reload again, make sure to force Windows to display the BSOD message. Go to Control Panel --> System --> Advanced System Settings --> Startup and Recovery --> Settings --> uncheck Automatically Restart. Then when Windows BSODs again, take a note of the errors.

 

[jwwill01]

Crisis averted ( I think). I realized I enabled AHCI by mistake, which my Raptor didn't like too well

Now if I could just figure out why I can't use DDR slots 1 & 2 at the same time!!!!!

 

[EateryOfPiza]

If you install Windows with AHCI enabled from the start, then Vista will do fine. But if you enable AHCI after installing Vista with IDE emulation, then it f-s up. Just keep it on IDE emulation, and then install the 680 drivers and then you get SMART and SATA hot plugging.

 

[jwwill01]

Actually, I'm confused now. The spot in the BIOS where I had set to AHCI was on the CTRL1 and CTRL2 ports, which I don't have anything plugged into. Would that have still caused Windows to get screwy? If not, the I don't know why it is working now and wasn't earlier.

 

[Blazer7]

Mr jwwill01, it is clear now that your mem problems are due to some kind of incompatibility between your RAM and your board. Since your update to the F5b BIOS resulted in slot 2 becoming ?operational? (regardless of the effect the same BIOS had on slot 1), it is certain that there is nothing wrong with your board.

One of the few weak spots of the 680 chipset is memory compatibility. It is well known that all 680 boards suffer from mem compatibility problems especially when working with 4 sticks. There are plenty of cases like yours all over the web. Because so many people suffer from this kind of problems it is certain that tier 1 manufacturers like ASUS and Gigabyte will continue to develop new BIOS versions and mem compatibility will improve. If nVidia's claims that 680 based boards will also be compatible with the upcoming Penryn core with only a BIOS upgrade are true, and if our board's design is good enough, then, this may give us at least another 6 more months of BIOS development for our board. (lots of ifs there).

Unfortunately nobody can warranty that your problem will be solved with a future BIOS release. There are so many different mem modules out there that it is impossible for manufacturers to make their boards compatible with all mem combinations. Still, there is hope. When the F5 official BIOS becomes available you 'll get another chance with your problem, and since Gary said that this is likely to be released early August it is a good idea to wait till then.

There is also the possibility that your 2 sets are not identical. Since you started with 2 sticks there is only one way to find out and this is to ask the manufacturer. If your DIMMs come with a serial number you can make an inquiry as to whether these are trully identical. Sometimes mem manufacturers keep the same part nos but use different chips or different versions of the same chips for all kind of reasons (we all know the story with Micron chips). Needless to say that if your sticks are not identical you are in deep trouble.

Ref your ACHI problem I also had the same issue and it didn't matter if I had any devices on these ports. Like you I also use raptors (6 x 75GB ? 3 sets of raid 0). Disabling ACHI solved my problem. You have to remember thought that I still use XP (or will start using XP again in a few days after I get my hands on that E6850).

 

[jwwill01]

Thanks for all the help. It is greatly appreciated.

FYI, I am now running with memory in slots 1,2,and 3, but get the error if I put in the 4th stick. I was not able to run with this configuration two days ago, but still a no-go on all four at the same time.