[First Look] DFI 680i LT NF-680i LT SLI (56K Warning~~~)

[Roger_D25]

dogchainx,
I was thinking the same thing as nugzo, glad you meant "After Rebate" intead of the AR revision, lol! So when are you going to get the motherboard, early next week hopefully? Now did something happen to your motherboard or are you just now making the switch over to C2D from AMD (s939)? I ask becasue your specs say your runnnig a DFI Expert (the same board I had before the switch to Intel) but you have tons of C2D hardware ready to go!

[dogchainx]

dogchainx,
I was thinking the same thing as nugzo, glad you meant "After Rebate" intead of the AR revision, lol! So when are you going to get the motherboard, early next week hopefully? Now did something happen to your motherboard or are you just now making the switch over to C2D from AMD (s939)? I ask becasue your specs say your runnnig a DFI Expert (the same board I had before the switch to Intel) but you have tons of C2D hardware ready to go!

Yeah...I should have specified eVGA 680i A1 for $215 AR.

I'll be getting the eVGA motherboard around Wed/Thur next week. I'll be going out of town during that weekend though (MYTHBUSTERS is coming to Salt Lake City! Woohoo!) so I might not be playing with the hardware until this next Sunday.

I am just now making the switch from s939 to C2D platform. Honestly, my opteron 165 is very snappy, but I need 4GB of RAM for Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign running at the same time. So, i'll be upgrading to Vista x64 as my main workstation OS and have WindowsXP Pro as my gaming platform. I didn't want to spend more $$$ on DDR1 RAM, especially since if i add more RAM to the opteron, i wouldn't get the overclock needed to stay at 2.8GHz. That, and I'm an enthusiast at heart.

Look for a mini-review of my eVGA 680i A1, e6600's, e6420, OCZ and Patriot DDR2 RAM in a week or two. By that time DFI might be out in full force, so I might add that into the mix. Whatever hardware is left over from my "perfect build" I'll either sell on eBay or here locally.

Actually, there's a 15yr old kid who usually buys all my old crap, no matter what it is for retail prices (I never pay retail prices...i always find a deal). So, i'll hopefully break even on selling my extra equipment to him. He is an odd kid, lives in the basement of his parent's house with a huge rack of blade servers running, doing nothing, and computer parts strewn all over. Of course, that might be describing some of the people around here!

[Roger_D25]

Yeah buddy, you better watch what you say, lol! Just kidding around but are you being serious about this kid having a bunch of blade servers? Very interesting.....

[dogchainx]

Yeah buddy, you better watch what you say, lol! Just kidding around but are you being serious about this kid having a bunch of blade servers? Very interesting.....

Yeah, like 15 of them stacked in his closet. But they looked old. Maybe not considered blade servers per see, but they were rackmount servers. He was just running them...not doing anything at all. I told him about distributed computing and that peaked his interest.

Anyways, any word on DFI's reputation lately? I've read NUMEROUS things about the company, but not sure what to believe.

This Lanparty EXPERT has been a dream to work with, the best motherboard I've ever had. I just don't know about DFI's support. RMAs, BIOS updates, tech support, etc. The best thing about the DFI's was that so many had them back in the s939 days. Now in the C2D DFI is late to the game, so the very few of us that will have the board might not be vocal enough for DFI to fix any horrible problems the board might have regarding compatibility. I know NVIDIA does the drivers, but the BIOS is DFI's responsibility.

[Jobeo]

I just don't know about DFI's support. RMAs, BIOS updates, tech support, etc.

you should check out the official DFI forums... i was browsing them a bit tonight, for boards that have already been released, and honestly it didn't look so good.

apparently RMA's are a big problem ... if you can't do it through your retailer you're basically S.O.L. gotta ship the thing to taiwan ...

i'd browse their forums a bit and see what people are saying

[nugzo]

As much as i want this DFI, I'd jump on a MSI P6N Diamond if it was to beat DFI to retail. I sure could use the extra 16x slot as is i have the other 3 full. The onboard X-Fi would free up room for a nice TV Tuner or DVB card as well

[Praz]

apparently RMA's are a big problem ... if you can't do it through your retailer you're basically S.O.L. gotta ship the thing to taiwan ...

I'm not sure how you got that impression. RMA's in the U.S. are handled through the California office and for Europe though the European office.

[Jobeo]

I'm not sure how you got that impression. RMA's in the U.S. are handled through the California office and for Europe though the European office.

well thats great if its true cause i'm considering the 680i board myself... i only read a couple posts yet two of them mentioned RMA issues:

http://csd.dficlub.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2346

http://csd.dficlub.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2350

[RealTelstar]

Still the guys at DFI dont answer to people question in a timely matter. There are a few question unsolved over there (for the P965-S board).

[ccokeman]

well thats great if its true cause i'm considering the 680i board myself... i only read a couple posts yet two of them mentioned RMA issues:

http://csd.dficlub.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2346

http://csd.dficlub.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2350

Neither of those threads have nothing to do with the new board. 1 for the rd600 chipset and 1 for the NF4. I dont see any rma issues with this board yet.

[Isaac MM]

What FSB can you get with quads?

[OldGuy]

Ya'll think yer gonna be any better off with an MSI? I'd wait for the DFI. Aside from their ATI chipsets I've enjoyed every one of my DFI's based on Nvidia chipsets. They just seem to do em' better than everyone else...

[dogchainx]

As much as i want this DFI, I'd jump on a MSI P6N Diamond if it was to beat DFI to retail. I sure could use the extra 16x slot as is i have the other 3 full. The onboard X-Fi would free up room for a nice TV Tuner or DVB card as well

The MSI looks nice, and I know you get a lot for $399...but its $399!

That and the last MSI board I had had horrible support from MSI. I sent numerous emails, and never got any answers. I finally sent the board back due to stability issues and got the DFI and its been stock stable since.

The things that worries me about eVGA is
1) build quality (ie, noisy caps)
2) board layout (go SLI = only one PCI slot. Horrible SATA location. onboard reset/power/wipe CMOS crappy location, etc)
3) Other oddities of the eVGA 680i. RAM being killed, NV4 errors, etc.

But, I want to build ASAP. And by the time i'm done building with the eVGA and testing things out, the DFI might be out in abundance with more people using/tweaking/fixing things.

[Isaac MM]

The things that worries me about eVGA is
1) build quality (ie, noisy caps)
2) board layout (go SLI = only one PCI slot. Horrible SATA location. onboard reset/power/wipe CMOS crappy location, etc)
3) Other oddities of the eVGA 680i. RAM being killed, NV4 errors, etc.

I thought they had fixed all these probs?

[RealTelstar]

They havent fixed prob #2 for sure

[dogchainx]

I thought they had fixed all these probs?

I'm hoping that my eVGA 680i board thats coming has the noisy caps solved. I have read a few "unofficial" things from eVGA saying it might have been a bad batch from Foxconn.

As far as RAM being killed, I'll have to hope for the best. It seems RAM running beyond 2.3v kills RAM *fast* on the eVGA for some boards.

The N4 error (dll related) seems to have happened on other 680i boards, but nVidia has no idea, nor does eVGA about how to solve it.

DFI seems to be the sweet spot. I just wish I would know how stable, compatible and problem free they will be as well as how good of support DFI can muster. But, I'll get one as soon as I see one in stock.

[Roger_D25]

Just to let you know dogchainx, I ended up RMA'ing my last board because of the horrible electrical buzzing noizse, it was just too much! In anycase eVGA happily sent me a cross-shipped replacment A1 with no problems (just make sure you register your board ASAP after getting it on eVGA's website)! If you end up having any questions about RMA'ing just send me a PM as I've done it many times through eVGA!

[fordf250]

Neither of those threads have nothing to do with the new board. 1 for the rd600 chipset and 1 for the NF4. I dont see any rma issues with this board yet.

You should look up all the 875p-t problems and no support .

[Jobeo]

I dont see any rma issues with this board yet.

hrmm ya it would be kinda disconcerting if there were RMA issues with an unreleased board..... mass RMA's from tech reviewers and whatnot

[Isaac MM]

Just to let you know dogchainx, I ended up RMA'ing my last board because of the horrible electrical buzzing noizse, it was just too much! In anycase eVGA happily sent me a cross-shipped replacment A1 with no problems (just make sure you register your board ASAP after getting it on eVGA's website)! If you end up having any questions about RMA'ing just send me a PM as I've done it many times through eVGA!

You can only register if you buy from EVGA's website?

[OldGuy]

Nah...you just need to register via their website...

You can only register if you buy from EVGA's website?

[elsupremo]

I'm hoping and praying DFI will do a banger up job on a real 680 board. All the current 680 boards stink, in my opinion, for anyone looking for a ~4 ghz or higher 24/7 stable OC, with the RAM being faster than ~700 mhz.

[Makubex_GB]

I'm hoping and praying DFI will do a banger up job on a real 680 board. All the current 680 boards stink, in my opinion, for anyone looking for a ~4 ghz or higher 24/7 stable OC, with the RAM being faster than ~700 mhz.

LoL holy crap man, you sure have some demanding requirements. By your standards all C2D boards are crap.

[GAR]

I agree, i never had this much trouble buying me a AMD 939 board, man those were the good days.

[mrcape]

No crap. There are too many friggin chipsets for these core2 cpus. I'm just hoping that the reason this dfi 680 is taking so long is because they're smart enough to make the thing bulletproof.

It's a no brainer with all of the "best MB for Core2" posts. People are dying for a great board. This RMA business is bull!