Originally Posted by
theYipster
Curiosity has gotten the better of me.
My first 680i lasted 10 very nice months with an E6600 OC'd to 3.6ghz. It was a great setup with no issues to speak of. However, when I bought a Q6600 in December, the board's personality changed drastically. I tried to push the chip (an L734A currently in my sig) to 3.6ghz and it wouldn't even boot under 1.5v. At 1.55v, I could run Prime without it crashing in 2 minutes, but temps were out of control. Three days later, the board died with a "--" code.
The replacement 680i has been better, but the damage was already done. I've studied the reference 680i issues extensively and I've seen how many people have problems with them. While this new 680i seems to perform, I've lost all confidence that it will last with a demanding quad core OC. Throughout this entire ordeal, I had my sights on any 780i info I could get. After the first impressions of improved Kentsfield OCs, I signed up for the evga reference board upgrade. However, after seeing that the reference board carried over the same cheap PWM system and electrolytic capacitors, I began to wonder. News of the 780i FTW had me wondering more.
I looked at the non reference designs. The ASUS P5N-T clearly had some issues at launch, so my attention turned to the Striker II Formula. While the Striker Extreme was a very temperamental board to work with and never OC'd well for many, it didn't exhibit the NB and RAM burnout issues so often experienced by reference board owners. Perhaps if the Striker II resolved the Striker Extreme's original issues, it would be a better option than either an EVGA 680i or 780i. Unfortunately, reports on that board are very mixed -- and that's putting it mildly.
Now my attention has turned to the P7N. Even now, there is very little information about this board, but aside from one or two exceptions, the first impressions I've seen have been very positive. So I decided to take a gamble. I'm not using a 45nm chip and I don't plan in the future. SLI'd GTX 8800s have served me very well over the last year, but adding a third one wouldn't do me any good. The interest I have in a non-reference 780i is one of stability and reliability at high OCs. If the P7N Diamond delivers, I'll be recommending it to everyone looking for an SLI setup.
So, I just put together a makeshift setup. The P7N Diamond is paired with a Q6600 G0 (L737B266, VID 1.2375,) a single 8800 GTX taken from my main rig, one DIMM of 2 gig PC-6400 OCZ SLI RAM, plus an IDE DVD+-RW drive and a WD 250 gig SATA hd. I've installed Windows XP 32 to look around and do some preliminary testing. So far, everything is looking rather good. I had no problems setting up the system -- everything was plug and play! If I'm satisfied after poking around tonight, I'll do a full replace with my 680i tomorrow and hook the cpu up to my water cooling system. Then it'll be off to the races with 4 gigs of RAM and a Vista x64 install. If OCing proves easy, I'll add a final four gigs of RAM and see what can done from there.
I'm not looking for a max bench. My goal is simply to support a good Q6600 G0 at 4.0ghz stable w/ at least 4 gigs of RAM installed. If the board OCs easily to a 450mhz FSB with this quad, I'll be a happy camper.
Hopefully I'll have my testing well underway tomorrow. I'll probably start a new Official P7N Benchmarking thread and post results there. It's time we found out more about this board and perhaps raised its profile a bit. If it does well, it'll certainly be the SLI board to get.