Hello,
This is my first post to this topic, maybe to this forum. First I want to thank everybody, particularly Gary and the Beagle for all the great information here. I have had this motherboard for just over a month and there is a lot to like, but I have a few problems I need to get ironed out. So, anyone that has expereince or knowledge they want to share, please chime in.
First, my config: GA-N680sli-DQ6 motherboard, Kentsfield Q6600 quad core 2.4ghz proc. with Zalman 9700 cooling (removed the 1 coppper plate and heatpipe to install), 4 sticks of Patriot DDR2 800 2gb memory, NVIDIA 7950gt 512mb video card, 2 WD 160gb HD, 1 for Boot drive running off the Gigabyte SATA controller ch1 and ch2, 1 seagate 320gb drive on ch3 for a fall back (thank goodness), 4 Seagate 320gb drives running off the NVIDIA RAID controller in a RAID 5 array (drives have jumpers removed to ensure SATA2 performance). 1 floppy drive and two LG DVD burners, All in a Coolermaster Stacker case with a PCP&C 750W Silencer power supply. Running Windows Server 2003 x64 (primarily to run large VMWare environments). Typical setups I might need would include mutiple Win2k3 x64 servers running Exchange 2007 with each server having a unique role, or possibly an Exchange 2007 Mailbox Store server clustered along with a hub transport server, client access server and DC, plus maybe a client system or two.
On to my questions:
1. How can I be sure which rev. of the MB I have, rev. 1, or rev. 2? Is there a way to tell without opening up the case? Unfortunately, I was stupid and threw away the packaging so I have no easy way to get to a serial number to tell right away. I don't see any software utilty that will give me enough detail on the southbridge to maybe tell from that.
2. I believe the BIOS I had when I first started my build was the F2 version (although I won't swear to it). I flashed all the way to the F4 to have the latest and greatest. This caused me to not be able to process the shutdown command from the OS. I then back-revved to the F3 BIOS revision using a floppy drive and the Q-Flash utility. I now see mixed results from SysInfo and PC Wizard. SysInfo reports "BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F4, 2/14/2007" and PC Wizard says F4 for the version as well, However PC Wizard reports the OEM Signature as "NVIDIA NF68 BIOS for GA-N680SLI-DQ6 F3", Also the boot screen shows F3 as well. So, which BIOS revision do I truly have F3 or F4? I assume I should go to the F5b but I want to be sure I perform the procedure correctly to avoid another mixed versions situation. From previous post I believe I need to clear the CMOS with a jumper for a length of time, then reboot, set BIOS to optimum defaults then reboot and then go to Q-Flash and flash both primary and secondary with F5b then reboot again and load optimum defaults then tweak from there? That is pretty much what I did last time but perhaps I was not cautious enough.
3. This is the big problem I am having, I can't get the NVIDIA RAID controller to work correctly under a load. I have downloaded and applied the latest NVIDIA nforce drivers for my OS and everything seems fine with the array. I configure it from the F10 prompt and the NVIDIA utility says it is healthy. I have tried everything I know to do, I have synchronized, rebuilt (repeatedly), I have done a quick format to NTFS, slow format. I have run Seatools, check disk, Symantec disk utility etc. the drives appear to be fine. I even ran duke and nuke on the drives which took forever. As soon as I put the array under a load (i.e. load up more than two VMs at once) the NVIDIA RAID controller kicks one of the drives out of the array and shows performance as degraded. It is a different drive each time, more or less. The drives are on 2.0, 2.1, 3.0 and 3.1 channels respectively and it has dropped all four drives at one time or another. I also tried the RAID driver that came on the CD with the board. I don't know if it is the controller or the driver but something ain't right. It puts an Event ID 1006 in the system event log from a source of NVRAIDSERVICE, but I can't find anything useful about that error anywhere. There is one post on NVIDIA's forum from somebody that gets that only when they overclock. My sytem is running stock timings and voltages on everything. Any suggestions?
Anyway, sorry for being so long winded but I have tried a lot of stuff and I can't ge the RAID array to work no matter what. Oh yeah, if I run my VMWare sessions off of a single 320gb disk they work fine, in fact, I have had up to seven systems running at once. I just set affinity for the most cpu intensive sytems to specific cores and they hum along nicely.