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

[palese]

I hope you mean you are in Windows at 3.1GHz and not Version 3.1

Glad to hear you making progress!

For fun, I maxed voltages for a suicide run and was able to boot once into Vista x64 (a stability test on it's own) at 3.8GHz (425x9)! Not stable at all and could only get in at one set of GTL settings and even then only 1 in 3 times and doing anything would hang it. I was able to get CPU-Z and Speedfan going long enough to grab a screen



CPU VID = 1.6
NB V = 1.65
SB V = 1.62
VTT = 1.6
GTL1 = 200
GTL2 = 170
GTLNB = 100

Don't try this at home!

That was not on air right

[palese]

i went unlinked cause i had more success with it last week. ultimately i'd like to bump that to 1250 which is what my memory is certified capable of ...

as far as the PCIe clocks go i should probably just bump that down. i read a report somewhere that it barely even affects FPS anyways... i'm not sure what effect it has on an OC but its probably a good idea to bump it back so there's no chance for it to interfere...

On Asus boards the PCIE frequency bumps were needed for OC to keep the FX cards stable while ocing.

[palese]

Another review up.

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/...80i_LT/?page=1

[virtualrain]

That was not on air right

No... CPU cooled by water (Apogee GTX / Thermochill 120.2 / DDC Ultra)

[virtualrain]

Another review up.

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/...80i_LT/?page=1

I notice their comments on OC'ing echo alot of our own...

Our sample board was able to hit 1800 MHz FSB at stable levels, a solid overclock for a 1066 MHz FSB based dual-core processor, although not quite to the stratospheric levels which were claimed to be possible. DFI certainly does provide the tools for heavy overclocking, and their custom cooling systems do an excellent job of keeping the chipset cool. However, every board will overclock to different levels, ours simply didn't fare as well as expected. For the record, the Nvidia reference / eVGA nForce 680i LT reference board we tested a few weeks back was able to overclock slightly further, hitting up to 1933 MHz, although it too was only stable in the 1800-1866 MHz FSB range. However, we did find overclocking to be far easier on the eVGA platform compared to our DFI board.

[virtualrain]

I'm happy to report that my quest for an 8hr PRIME stable overclock at 3.6GHz on my X3220 has been fulfilled!!! Last night I ran some new GTL settings with very aggressive voltages and was rewarded! Finally!



I'll post BIOS screens with settings after I get a bit of work done

For now, here's proof...

[palese]

I'm happy to report that my quest for an 8hr PRIME stable overclock at 3.6GHz on my X3220 has been fulfilled!!! Last night I ran some new GTL settings with very aggressive voltages and was rewarded! Finally!



I'll post BIOS screens with settings after I get a bit of work done

For now, here's proof...

Congrats

[MikeMK]

Nicely done! At least you have been rewarded for all your hard work in the end. What do u recon stabilised it? Just chucking lots of voltage at the chip, or was it to do with the GTL settings afterall?

[vincey2kr1]

Question on the northbridge heatsink: ARe you guys taking the white square sticker/pad off to get better contact with the heatsink or just leaving them both on?

[palese]

Question on the northbridge heatsink: ARe you guys taking the white square sticker/pad off to get better contact with the heatsink or just leaving them both on?

I learned from my Tuniq Tower never use a stick pad , I change boards alot and when you try to remove the pad its a mess.

[virtualrain]

Nicely done! At least you have been rewarded for all your hard work in the end. What do u recon stabilised it? Just chucking lots of voltage at the chip, or was it to do with the GTL settings afterall?

I think it was definitely both Vcore and GTL that was holding me back... I couldn't have reached this stable OC without tweaking both.

Originally, I stayed away from high Vcore because it was making the board shutdown. I didn't realize until yesterday that this was because I was exceeding the thermal shutdown setting in the DFI BIOS (nice feature!). I thought it was just crashing. As you all know, a Quad on high OC running small FFT's generates a ton of heat - even on good water. To compound this problem of the board shutting down, the BIOS thermal sensor is always 10-15-deg above CoreTemp so that's why I was tripping the thermal shutdown. Once I realized this and reset the shutdown threshold, I could use higher Vcore.

Another issue is that you really need to overvolt to get good voltages as what you set is NOT what you get. Set your voltages, reboot back to BIOS and look at the values at the bottom of the Voltages setting screen. As you get to more extreme voltages, their reluctance to track your settings seems to increase.

My Board definitely uses some strange GTL settings to be absolutely stable but I could boot at 3.6GHz a very large range of GTL settings. Getting it stable takes some tweaking though. When I was playing around trying to boot Vista x64 at 3.8GHz last night, I tried every GTL setting I could and only a couple would allow Vista to fully load. I could actually get further into the startup routine before it crashed as the GTL values were tweaked. It was a great way to see what settings were warmer/colder so to speak.

Final settings:



There's definitely something not right about the droop on the NB core voltage.

There's a bit more info on my blog if you are interested and I've also updated the "Tips, Tricks, and Known Issues" article... http://virtualrain.blogspot.com/

[whoodiestyle]

anyone know if the danger den maze4 chipset block would work on this?

[virtualrain]

anyone know if the danger den maze4 chipset block would work on this?

They made one for the DFI RD600 board that should fit this board... http://www.dangerden.com/store/produ...&cat=46&page=1

[nugzo]

I'm happy to report that my quest for an 8hr PRIME stable overclock at 3.6GHz on my X3220 has been fulfilled!!! Last night I ran some new GTL settings with very aggressive voltages and was rewarded! Finally!



I'll post BIOS screens with settings after I get a bit of work done

For now, here's proof...

Awesome. What batch?

[palese]

They made one for the DFI RD600 board that should fit this board... http://www.dangerden.com/store/produ...&cat=46&page=1

virtualrain, question for you I down loaded OCCT and it shows my X3220 as a clovertown but yours shows as a Kentsfield.

[virtualrain]

Awesome. What batch?

L640F058

@palese... Mine shows as Clovertown on OCCT as well.

[MikeMK]

Looks good... but that is indeed one hell of alot of droop on the NB. Do u recon it could be reporting incorrectly? Dont think ive ever seen so much droop.

BTW, has anybody heard anything about the reported in compatibility with Enermax Galaxy PSU's? I really need to know if this board works ok with them before i jump on one.

[palese]

Looks good... but that is indeed one hell of alot of droop on the NB. Do u recon it could be reporting incorrectly? Dont think ive ever seen so much droop.

BTW, has anybody heard anything about the reported in compatibility with Enermax Galaxy PSU's? I really need to know if this board works ok with them before i jump on one.

It seems to be case by case as some run fine of the same model and some do not.

[MikeMK]

Bit of a gamble then. Might just have to suck it and see... switch to an EVGA if it doesnt work.

[palese]

Bit of a gamble then. Might just have to suck it and see... switch to an EVGA if it doesnt work.

I own both boards now and I could not recomend the DFI over the Evga Rev1 at this point, at least not with a quad.

[MikeMK]

hmmm... yes, well thats what it will be for. I plan on grabbing a QX6700 to mess around with shortly, and from the results ive seen, my IN9 isnt really up to the job of getting the best out of quad core.

It is a tough decision. Past DFI's have served me well, and I do wonder if future bioses will bring this board up to another level.

[virtualrain]

I own both boards now and I could not recomend the DFI over the Evga Rev1 at this point, at least not with a quad.

I would really like to try an EVGA board now to see if I could do the same OC or better... In my case, with fairly radical GTL settings required to get stable, I wonder if I would be worse off with a board like EVGA which has one-size-fits-all GTL?

I guess I could buy one from a local retailer, try it out and pay the restocking fee to return it within the alotted time.

Anyone have an EVGA A1/T1 they want to lend me?!

[palese]

hmmm... yes, well thats what it will be for. I plan on grabbing a QX6700 to mess around with shortly, and from the results ive seen, my IN9 isnt really up to the job of getting the best out of quad core.

It is a tough decision. Past DFI's have served me well, and I do wonder if future bioses will bring this board up to another level.

Oh im sure this DFI will see its day but even after you do boot into windows and find something that's stable, its a very lackluster experience. Very slow boot ups as well, I guess if I was not running my quads on the Evga board before installing this DFI I would have been fine.

[vincey2kr1]

Anyone able to run a Thermaltake toughpower1000w with this board?

[ZilverPhish]

So is this a good board for qx6700 _+}?