Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[justinburton]

Well my celebration was short lived. When I go to the New nVidia Forceware ver 169.28 beta for WinXP, they changed the "add increased SLI & 3SLI performance for Crysis" to "Adds increased SLI performance in Crysis when used with the official Crysis Patch v1.1". Must have been a typo. Maybe I can hope in the official driver, they will enable 3-way SLI.

 

[Blazer7]

Here is an interesting one for you guys.

Google this -> ASUS and DFI Add Penryn Support to 680i Boards

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Morning Everyone.

Hindsight is most always 20/20, and in that respect, I think we now know "why" the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 board cannot be effectively "adjusted" by means of a BIOS upgrade to utilize the latest Quad-Core (1333 FSB) CPUs. As we all will recall, Gigabyte was rather late to the table with releasing their N680i board (ver. 1). At first, GB was saying that this delay was due to the R&D needed to produce the board with all the extra features to be coordinated onto the board.

However, it now appears that GB needed the extra time due to the fact that they were deviating from the nVidia prototype in significant ways, and had to re-engineer various portions of the nVidia reference system in order to get all those extra features to work (some still don't work right - i.e., NIC Teaming). In the course of that re-engineering, GB strayed so far from portions of the nVidia reference board design, that when the issues associated with the compatibility of the 1333 FSB Quad-Core CPUs surfaced, there was no way that the GB N680i board could be "adjusted" through a BIOS revision to accommodate those needs.

In essence, GB's over-reaching to produce the killer all-in-one board in the first place, left them unable to rectify the Quad-Core problem when it arose. The physical layout and electronic design of the board has not (at least up to this point) allowed a feasible path to fix the problem. It's really that simple an answer to this ongoing problem. And unless somebody figures out a BIOS revision remedy, 1333 FSB Quad-Core support is very unlikely. And further, since the N680i board has been considered by GB to be EOL for at least the last six months, they are not dedicating much, if any, R&D resources to look for a fix to this problem.

I know that the foregoing is not necessarily what a lot of members on this Thread wanted to hear, but I'm giving it to you straight, as best I can. Hope that helps everyone to know where we stand on this issue.

Best regards to everyone. TheBeagle :beer:

 

[Kaptdeath]

Hi Y'all,

Has anyone tried the "official" F5 BIOS yet? I installed the latest NVIDIA drivers (169.21). They seem to be ok. (Didn't fix my problem with Crysis, but I think I'm expereincing a game bug that is not really graphics related.) I can't get the latest Realtek audio driver to install (1.80). I get an error -5009 during setup.

Overall it's been fairly stable of late. I am of course dissapointed that it won't work with the Q9XX chips and I'm not really surprised that Gigabyte will do nothing about it. Unfortunately I sunk enough money into this system that I am stuck with it for a while.

It's been a month since I've gotten one of the dreaded "JRAID" timeout errors. I think that I'll go ahead and update to the latest one from the Gigabyte website anyway 1.17.28 (Interestingly Jmicron has a 1.17.31 available...)

Dang, same error from the GRAID setup as the Realtek setup... Am I doing something wrong here?

The Kapt'n

 

[cdfire]

http://www.ftc.gov/

 

[Kaptdeath]

Mkay, the JRAID drivers have to be installed through the device manager. The Realtek drivers are installed with kb888111xpsp2.exe (I think). I guess that "setup.exe" is not the answer.

cdfire,

Sorry, I didn't find anything about the N680 there. Has someone actually started legal poceedings on this matter?

The Kapt'n

 

[cdfire]

It's just a thought for those of us who are rather upset about this board and gigabytes false advertising, without the cost of class action lawyers and such.

 

[rt182]

hey guys just a quick question i got a Zalman CNPS 9700 NT just wondering if anyones knows of a good functional fan controller for this i have vista 64bit thanx

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: cdfire
It's just a thought for those of us who are rather upset about this board and gigabytes false advertising, without the cost of class action lawyers and such.

That?s not a bad idea but I?m afraid that this will turn out to be just a waste of time. GB and their army of lawyers will dig up and exploit some technicality and make it home free.

Originally posted by: TheBeagle
Good Morning Everyone.

Hindsight is most always 20/20, and in that respect, I think we now know "why" the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 board cannot be effectively "adjusted" by means of a BIOS upgrade to utilize the latest Quad-Core (1333 FSB) CPUs. As we all will recall, Gigabyte was rather late to the table with releasing their N680i board (ver. 1). At first, GB was saying that this delay was due to the R&D needed to produce the board with all the extra features to be coordinated onto the board.

However, it now appears that GB needed the extra time due to the fact that they were deviating from the nVidia prototype in significant ways, and had to re-engineer various portions of the nVidia reference system in order to get all those extra features to work (some still don't work right - i.e., NIC Teaming). In the course of that re-engineering, GB strayed so far from portions of the nVidia reference board design, that when the issues associated with the compatibility of the 1333 FSB Quad-Core CPUs surfaced, there was no way that the GB N680i board could be "adjusted" through a BIOS revision to accommodate those needs.

In essence, GB's over-reaching to produce the killer all-in-one board in the first place, left them unable to rectify the Quad-Core problem when it arose. The physical layout and electronic design of the board has not (at least up to this point) allowed a feasible path to fix the problem. It's really that simple an answer to this ongoing problem. And unless somebody figures out a BIOS revision remedy, 1333 FSB Quad-Core support is very unlikely. And further, since the N680i board has been considered by GB to be EOL for at least the last six months, they are not dedicating much, if any, R&D resources to look for a fix to this problem.

I know that the foregoing is not necessarily what a lot of members on this Thread wanted to hear, but I'm giving it to you straight, as best I can. Hope that helps everyone to know where we stand on this issue.

Best regards to everyone. TheBeagle :beer:

The GA-N680SLI-DQ6 is for sure the most feature-rich 680 board out there and the implementation of some of the extra components, namely the 2 extra LAN ports and the 2 extra SATA controllers, must have made the lives of the GB engineers extremely difficult.

The Striker Extreme is not a simple board also and like the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 it doesn?t follow nVidia?s reference design. It sports 2 less SATA ports and 2 less LAN ports but its sound solution is much more sophisticated. Various other components like the LCD poster add to the complexity of the board. ASUS feature a clean 8-phase cap-less power design against GB?s 12-phase which is basically a 6-phase design.

I don?t know if all these features were worth it for GB to deviate so far from nVidia?s reference design. A couple of LAN ports are not worth sacrificing penryn compatibility for sure. If this is indeed the case then GB?s engineers overestimated their abilities and we?re taking the fall.

No matter what?s the cause of the problem one thing is for sure. GB screwed up bigtime.

 

[Blazer7]

M$ SP1 Release Candidate for Windows Vista, Vista Business 64, Vista Enterprise 64, Vista Home Basic 64, Vista Home Premium 64 & Vista Ultimate 64.

 

[Ava1anche]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
M$ SP1 Release Candidate for Windows Vista, Vista Business 64, Vista Enterprise 64, Vista Home Basic 64, Vista Home Premium 64 & Vista Ultimate 64.

Also from the site you posted.

Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems. Microsoft recommends that you have a backup of your data prior to installing any pre-release software.

Just to let other know. Sometime people skip the reading.

 

[The-Noid]

GB 680i never really took off.
680i that was done by third parties never really took off tbh.

Even the boards that have added support only added it for stock. I can run 333 fsb with QX9650 and Striker, 334 mhz = bSOD, 335 mhz == no boot.

Same thing happens with P5N-T.

 

[Blazer7]

@ Ava1anche,

You are right. This is a Release Candidate not an official SP. The official SP for Vista is expected for release on March/April.

@ Yoxxy,

I would love to be able to run a QX9650 even @stock. Most 3rd party mobos won't even boot with this cpu. Oc may not be an option right now but ASUS is still to release an official BIOS so things can only get better for you.

 

[justinburton]

Ignore, please read next post.

 

[justinburton]

I'm not sure if someone already posted about these but if you have Microsoft Vista and you're a gamer, download these hotfixes to improve performance: http://www.vistax64.com/gaming...le-sli-cpu-memory.html.

As for an update on my PC, I am now dual booting XP and Vista Ultimate 64-bit. XP is on a Raptor 36GB and Vista is on a RAID 0 setup of 2 74GB Raptors. I got 3-way SLI to work on Vista! I haven't tried any games or benchmarks yet. I am still working on finding a stable overclock in Vista. XP has no troubles with overclocks but for some reason Vista is sensitive to memory overclocks.

I had no trouble installing all of the drivers and such. Everything works great. At idle, system uses 1GB of memory.

 

[zogg]

Gigabyte rocks
asus is overrated
believe it or not the most stable boards I ever used are Intel of course and Aopen

 

[Blazer7]

Oooopss - Wrong post

**** deleted ****

---------------------------------------------------

ASUS Striker Extreme + QX9650@4.0GHz

 

[raisinjack]

a question:

I have been having ram issues of late where they are going bad 1 stick at a time and not allowing my rig to post. talking with corsair tech led me down the voltage path. so here is my question,

this ram uses 2.1 volts-so I up the voltage by .3 in bios and this should be the 2.1 needed. but i found out that everest(for me at least) is reporting the spd voltage which is always shown as 2.1 volts. but when I go into the bios and look at pc health status it always shows ddr2 1.8v and shows ok,is ther any way to monitor this voltage outside of a voltmeter? how do I know it is 2.1 volts?

 

[Blazer7]

Hello Mr raisinjack,

If you've increased the mem voltage by 0.3 then your mem should be operating @2.1V. If you need a 2nd utility to verify the mem voltage you can use GB's EasyTune5 utility. I've been using EasyTune5 with every BIOS I've tried on this board and it always reported the correct mem voltage.

As far as I know PC Health always reports DDR2 1.8V Ok no matter what, at least with the BIOS I'm using (F5b).

 

[raisinjack]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Hello Mr raisinjack,

If you've increased the mem voltage by 0.3 then your mem should be operating @2.1V. If you need a 2nd utility to verify the mem voltage you can use GB's EasyTune5 utility. I've been using EasyTune5 with every BIOS I've tried on this board and it always reported the correct mem voltage.

As far as I know PC Health always reports DDR2 1.8V Ok no matter what, at least with the BIOS I'm using (F5b).

Mr Blazer7;
thank you for the reply. I have dl'd the latest version of easytune and installed it,but it does not show mem voltage. How did you get yours to report dimm voltage?


Also I quite by accident discovered a fix/and or what caused it with something I posted while back.
Seems as though when I hibernate my rig,upon wake up I loose both of my nvidia ethernet adapters-as in gone and no longer in device manager either. This only happens when I hibernate. To get them back all I need to do is shutdown my rig,simply turn off my power supply's power switch for several seconds,turn it back on and upon boot up there are my 2 nvidia adapters back and fully functional. Got me why this happens or works but I been trying to resolve this since the middle of last year.
Also I have been having some memory issues of late where 1 stick goes bad and won't even allow me to post unless it is removed. yesteday I again spoke with my memory tech and they informed me of issues with this board spiking dimm voltage upon power up from an S3 state(which is what I have been using),has anybody else heard of this. they also told me to hibernate instead of using S1 or S3,that is how i discovered my ethernet issue(again) and fix.

 

[Blazer7]

Mr raisinjack,

In order to view the mem voltage you should click on overclocking and then on advanced mode.

----------------------------

Gigabyte updated their cpu support list once again. It is official now that our board does not support the QX6850 & QX9650 cpus. This applies to both rev 1 & rev 2 boards.

 

[cdfire]

This may be a stupid question but I am trading a buddy of mine some Parts + Labor to fix his furnace for a brand new in the box Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz that he has. The question is, my current processor is the E6600 @ 1066MHz FSB and my ram is DDR2 800(6400), The E6850 is 1333MHz FSB, will my ram work with this processor or will I have to upgrade that?

 

[Blazer7]

Hello Mr cdfire,

Bottom of page 12 of the board's manual :

(Note 1) To use a DDR II 800/667 memory module on the motherboard, you must install a 1333/1066/800 MHz FSB processor.

 

[eklock2000]

Has any1 tried the E8400 in this thing? The final F5 is available on Giga's website...no mention of Wolfy support tho ;-/

http://www.gigabyte.us/Support...el.aspx?ProductID=2417

PeasOut

E

 

[Blazer7]

There is a post by Mr GriMRapeR on page 91 that unfortunately doesn't leave us much hope even for the E8xx cpus. To make matters worse the folks at GB cannot put their act together even when it comes down to simple things such as updating the cpu support list for the darn thing.

You can compare the cpu support list page of their US or French site against the same page of their Taiwan or New Zealand site.

I'm sure that we customers matter a great deal to them.