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

[killingspreez]

hi guys i have s strange problem!
i can reach 425mhz stable with 1,51v on the chipset.
but if i increase the vchip the board will not boot up!
i've tried everything and nothing seems to help
i tried all vchipset options from 1,51 to the maximum.
everytime the same!

what's wrong with it?
also my cpu-oc seems to be very very poor! 3,2 ghz stable, everything higher than that (regardless how much v-core or which multi) will produce errors in orthos/super-pi and so on!

so dfi owners please help

mfg

[NeoGeo333]

hi guys i have s strange problem!
i can reach 425mhz stable with 1,51v on the chipset.
but if i increase the vchip the board will not boot up!
i've tried everything and nothing seems to help
i tried all vchipset options from 1,51 to the maximum.
everytime the same!

what's wrong with it?
also my cpu-oc seems to be very very poor! 3,2 ghz stable, everything higher than that (regardless how much v-core or which multi) will produce errors in orthos/super-pi and so on!

so dfi owners please help

mfg

Your not alone on this one, whenever i setup 1.54v or more on chipset it
will not boot. then i figured that in order to use 1.54v or more i need to raise mem to 500mhz or more. I guess if you have low overclock and default mem then a low voltage chipset is enough but when raising o/c it needs more volts.

[killingspreez]

hm i'll give this mem-oc thing a shot. but i suspect that our 4*1gb ram config causes this problem. did you try 2*1gb ?
i didn't

mfg

[Raja@ASUS]

turn the power off too your psu when goijng over 1.51 after the board stops booting, power back up and it will run fine..


regards
raja

[NeoGeo333]

Your not alone on this one, whenever i setup 1.54v or more on chipset it
will not boot. then i figured that in order to use 1.54v or more i need to raise mem to 500mhz or more. I guess if you have low overclock and default mem then a low voltage chipset is enough but when raising o/c it needs more volts.

I have not tried 2gb, im having a hard time trying to set it up in a Coolermaster 830 with a Thermalright 120 Extreme, it just wont fit if i use the 4 fans door. F*ck it, i think im going water. damn you 120 why you have to be so tall.

[simonmaltby]

Quick followup to my previous post about flashing USB keyboard Num lock light and system pauses. I tracked this down to the Razer Diamondback software that Vista installed via windows update... on removing this driver all is well.

No... if only i could find some Mushkin 4GB DDR2 sticks in the UK... everywhere is sold out and they seem to be unavailable

[Borgod]

I have not tried 2gb, im having a hard time trying to set it up in a Coolermaster 830 with a Thermalright 120 Extreme, it just wont fit if i use the 4 fans door. F*ck it, i think im going water. damn you 120 why you have to be so tall.

Im about to get a 120 extreme as a backup aircooling solution.

I better pull out the tape measure

[C-N]

Spent some time on the reasons why i needed a lot of NB volts.

Firstly With the OCZ 8500 SLI memory I found that I had one dud stick in the 4 1GB modules. But even using the two good ones in Dual Channel i got lockups, These reduced with nore NB volts but were always there - Even if running the ram at stock, or under clocked at 800.

Interestingly running each stick as a single module (no dual channel) windows was perfectly stable. As soon as two sticks went in Dual Channel i got lock ups.

Anyway, i have returned the SLI for a refund and put in my trusty OCZ Rev 2 Plat 6400 at 800 4,4,4,15 and no more lockups - NB volts as sugested at 1.48 and nice and stable.

Conclusion... Either the OCZ 8500 SLI chips I had were all bad or the DFI board just does not get on with these chips.

My OCZ PC2-8500 SLI play nice with my E6600 @ 3.6GHz with the DFI 680i board I think you may have just got a duff set.

http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m...03600MHz%201T/

Genie BIOS Settings:
 
Voltage Control:
 
CPU VID Control................ - 1.50000V
CPU VID Special Add............ - Auto
CPU Drive Strength............. - Weak
DRAM Drive Strength............ - Weak
DRAM Voltage Control........... - 2.30V
NB Voltage Control............. - 1.48V
SB Voltage Control............. - 1.52V
SB Dual Voltage................ - 1.52V
LDT Voltage Control............ - 1.22V
CPU VTT 1.2V Voltage........... - 1.21V
GTL REF Voltage Control........ - Disable
 
FSB & Frequency Seting:
 
FSB-Memory Clock Mode.......... - Linked
FSB-Memory Ratio............... - Sync Mode
FSB (QDR), MHz................. - 1600
=====
PCI Bus, Slot 1 MHz............ - 120
PCI Bus, Slot 2 MHz............ - 120
SPP <-> MCP Ref Clock, MHz..... - 300
LDT Frequency.................. - 5x
CPU BSelect.................... - BSel_7
CPU Clock Ratio Unlock......... - Enabled
CPU Clock Ratio................ - 9x
 
CPU Feature:
 
PPM Mode....................... - Native Mode
Limit CPUID MaxVal............. - Disabled
C1E Function................... - Disabled
Execute Disable Bit............ - Enabled
Virtualization Technology...... - Enabled
Core Multi-Processing.......... - Enabled
 
Memory Timing Setting:
 
Memory Timing Setting.......... - Expert
CAS Latency Control (TCL)...... - 4
RAS# to CAS# Delay (TRCD)...... - 4
Row Precharge Time (TRP)....... - 3
Min RAS# Active Time (TRAS).... - 8
Command Per Clock (CMD)........ - 1T
=====
Bank To Bank CMD (TRRD)........ - 4
Row Cycle Time (TRC)........... - 8
Write Recovery (TWR)........... - 6
Write -Read Commad............. - 9
DRAM Refresh Rate.............. - 7.8uS

[C-N]

hi guys i have s strange problem!
i can reach 425mhz stable with 1,51v on the chipset.
but if i increase the vchip the board will not boot up!
i've tried everything and nothing seems to help
i tried all vchipset options from 1,51 to the maximum.
everytime the same!

what's wrong with it?
also my cpu-oc seems to be very very poor! 3,2 ghz stable, everything higher than that (regardless how much v-core or which multi) will produce errors in orthos/super-pi and so on!

so dfi owners please help

mfg

I get exactly the same but I can jump over 1.54v i.e miss it out a boot at the next voltage up if I increase the CPU VTT. I just used 1.6v vtt to test this yesterday. One last thing I notice the SB voltage also effects what NB voltage will boot without any CPU VTT.

As for the overclock try your 6700 on its native multiplier & see what happens.

[Jobeo]

im having a hard time trying to set it up in a Coolermaster 830 with a Thermalright 120 Extreme, it just wont fit if i use the 4 fans door. F*ck it, i think im going water. damn you 120 why you have to be so tall.

with the stacker 832 i have experience mounting it both horizontally and vertically... either way i've gotten it to fit without any permanent case modifications I.E. dremeling. . . . . there are a couple tricks, PM me if ya want help.... unless the 832 side-panel is significantly different than the 830 it should work for you too...

[Grinch]

any new bios updates coming up?

[virtualrain]

I'm not sure I want a new BIOS... I'd feel compelled to tweak again and end up wasting hours doing stability testing, likely only to find that I couldn't increase performance measurably at all.

What would you be hoping for in a new bios?

[Jobeo]

if they do release another update i'll wait until the stable version is released.... i'm kinda hesitant since that "load last working settings" causing the DRAM overvolt . .. .

[killingspreez]

well i fixed the v-chipset problem.
switching to 2*1gb didn't help.
the old bioses suffer from the same issue.
but if you load defaultsettings and than increase the v-chip it works.
it just doesn't work on a overclocked bios -setting

mfg

[xTr33m sammich!]

Hey guys, have you seen or experienced the 680i lt solid caps version with wifi yet? just wondering if it has any improvements over the original, the one that ate my ram? specifically regaurding the overclock. I've been playing around with the abit ip35-pro and the p5k-d, both are great boards, directly compared to the dfi 680i lt stabillity on my e6400@3.6GHz is greatly improved, memory performance is close, and raid performance is better ten-fold. unfortunately I had to sell my pair of 8600gt cards and purchase an ati 2900hd for the same/better video performance.
still, I enjoyed the DFI bios much better than these other two.
uguru is something else.. I like it.

[Grinch]

have not seen....but I would imagine it to be about the same

[Jobeo]

and raid performance is better ten-fold.

ya this is something not talked about much in recent times... but i'm really let-down by the raid performance on the DFI board.... its just no good. i guess cause people who really care about raid perfmance just buy an areca card or something... but i'm tired of throwing money at this board to deal with its various problems.

[Grinch]

ya this is something not talked about much in recent times... but i'm really let-down by the raid performance on the DFI board.... its just no good. i guess cause people who really care about raid perfmance just buy an areca card or something... but i'm tired of throwing money at this board to deal with its various problems.

how are you let down? how is it no good? bench pics?

[Grinch]

I would say this is about spot on for my 2X150 raptors in raid-0

[Borgod]

I went from 2x320g seagates in RAID 0 in an Abit QuadGT ICH8R, to the DFI 680i in RAID 0 and although I have no screenshots or facts, the difference in performance was extremely noticeable.

Enough for me to now have 2x 150g Raptors sitting at home ready to go.

[virtualrain]

I would say this is about spot on for my 2X150 raptors in raid-0

That is indeed excellent performance. There were/is some issues with 680i RAID on the EVGA for sure... I haven't seen many results posted with respect to DFI besides this and Raju's... and Raju's results were not looking good.

[xTr33m sammich!]

Thats really nice for this board with 2x raptors, had mine with 2x 36GB raps in R-0 scoring mid 80's, 3x 500gb raid5 samsungs on the same board were mid 90's. on the ICH9R the same 3x 500GB drives in R-5 mid 160's. but the burst is what I'm talking about, not sure how much difference it makes except I can tell when CS or HL2 or any other app is loading.

[C-N]

I would say this is about spot on for my 2X150 raptors in raid-0

Wow that is nice whats your setup stripesize/clustersize ?

I only get about 100mb/s average read 13.? random access & 330mb/s burst from 2 x Hitachi 80gbs sata 2's in raid 0 with either a 32kb or 64kb stripe using XP's default 4kb cluster size & thought it was ok until I saw your figures.

[Grinch]

there is a way to get more performance out of you raid arrays....I have been doing this:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...3&postcount=66

C-N I am using 16K stripe and 4K cluster

[Grinch]

I went from 2x320g seagates in RAID 0 in an Abit QuadGT ICH8R, to the DFI 680i in RAID 0 and although I have no screenshots or facts, the difference in performance was extremely noticeable.

Enough for me to now have 2x 150g Raptors sitting at home ready to go.

you will love those drives for sure