790 corruption issues?

[loonym]

I mean... would you release a product known to have severe issues

The reality is that this is very common and not just with motherboards. It's cpus and every conceivable type of add-on card as well. It's routine with software from os to games and productivity tools. Revs, sub-revs, services packs, patches, patches for the patches and so on are facts of being a consumer in today's market. It's unfortunate that it happens with highly anticipated and promising products (not to mention $$$) but when a group such as we have here nails it, brings it into the light, verifies, documents, and makes appropriate waves, it serves us all well. Keep up the good work.

[BenchZowner]

*BenchZowner books a flight to Taiwan to pay Asus's HQ a "friendly" visit*

Piece of ****
Won't even pass SuperPi 32M @ 400MHz FSB - DDR3-1600 8-7-6-21 2T... freezing @ loop 2 - 3...

[eternal_fantasy]

Just to be sure, anybody got OS or data corruption issues from a single drive or array connected to a third party controller (Areca, LSI, Dell etc)?

This should be a 100% no.

Please refer to my post on the first page of this thread.

[eternal_fantasy]

*BenchZowner books a flight to Taiwan to pay Asus's HQ a "friendly" visit*

Piece of ****
Won't even pass SuperPi 32M @ 400MHz FSB - DDR3-1600 8-7-6-21 2T... freezing @ loop 2 - 3...

The boards are made in china if thats any consolation...

[tekjunkie]

*BenchZowner books a flight to Taiwan to pay Asus's HQ a "friendly" visit*

Piece of ****
Won't even pass SuperPi 32M @ 400MHz FSB - DDR3-1600 8-7-6-21 2T... freezing @ loop 2 - 3...

Try running memtest from DOS. It would freeze too. That's why I think it's the SPP/memory. The funny thing for me it happens with everything @ default(1333 QDR and 1333 RAM). This is just after I did a BIOS upgrade to 0511 and then did a clear cmos. I never tested it with the BIOS that it came with.

[5010]

The freezes are from "BAD GTLREF & FSB VOLTAGES" I don't know if this is a bug in the base code or the SPP itself or what but certain types of FSB traffic trigger immediate or delayed hangs and adjusting these voltages manually and carefully/methodically COMPLETELY CORRECTS the freezing...

I did some lengthy and thorough testing and charted the problem with a Q6600 @ 1600FSB using a infinite looping 1 minute 1080P X264 file and a stop watch. After endless hours of this I found that with proper MANUAL GTLREF and FSB voltage tweaking I could COMPLETELY correct the freezing or I could also cause the freezing to happen within 2-3 seconds.

(I wonder why it seems no one is paying attention to my posts on the issue)
:facepalm:

[BenchZowner]

It wasn't the GTL REF or Vfsb in my case.
tRFC control was "stuck" and the board was overriding my value and setting up a low value for the clocks given

[Charles Wirth]

Ive corrupted the OS on nearly every platform I have overclocked.

Its when the ram starts to fail, not a 790i issue.

790i is not different, know your limits and use a program like memtest or the F8 in Vista to run the memory test, that will usually tell you if the memory is starting to fail.

[JumpingJack]

When I survey the chipset market, this is one arena I appreciate where AMD purchased ATI and brought chipset expertise in house... nVidia is slowly going downhill in their chipset arena.... they have persistent data corruption issues in thier boards. I cannot vote in the poll as I don't have a 790, but I have corrupted at stock on 680i chipsets.

[BenchZowner]

Ive corrupted the OS on nearly every platform I have overclocked.

Its when the ram starts to fail, not a 790i issue.

790i is not different, know your limits and use a program like memtest or the F8 in Vista to run the memory test, that will usually tell you if the memory is starting to fail.

I'm memtesting everytime I change a timing or clocks on my RAM ( even if running the same frequency, just using a different divider ).
40 loops test #5.

It corrupted the OS just by booting...

However... I'm getting the grips of this...nasty Asus Striker II Extreme now ( and it's buggy BIOSes ) and things got better.
Total corruptions counter = 4, 2 at relatively high clock frequencies, and two at really low frequencies ( one of these two was at 400MHz FSB and DDR3-1600 8-7-6-21 2T with the E8400 @ 3.2GHz ).

[RLM]

Had a bit of joy booting into windows using dividers. 1605 mhz 3.6 ghz on the quad and memory 1070 mhz I think it was. However immediate blend failure and OS corruption. Tried everything (well almost) including various GTL ref settings, but no go. In fact a PITA.

What's needed is comment from EVGA etc and NVidia. It's a waste of time tweaking for hours on end if it's a known issue with certain components, which needs to be addressed.

I've since swapped out the 790i for a P5E deluxe, and Oc'ing has been a breeze. Back up to 3.8 ghz @ 1.5v on the Quad and with memory currently at 1345 mhz 6-6-6-20 timings @ 1.8v. Memory passed memtest and onto further testing.

However maybe a dumb observation on my part, but as far as I can tell 3D mark 06 scores on the P5E aren't a patch on the 790i. The 790i is around 1000 points or so higher. Could be other factors involved.

Either way, will be holding on to the 790i for the time being. Here's hoping to some official answers/solutions.

RLM

[saaya]

The freezes are from "BAD GTLREF & FSB VOLTAGES" I don't know if this is a bug in the base code or the SPP itself or what but certain types of FSB traffic trigger immediate or delayed hangs and adjusting these voltages manually and carefully/methodically COMPLETELY CORRECTS the freezing...

I did some lengthy and thorough testing and charted the problem with a Q6600 @ 1600FSB using a infinite looping 1 minute 1080P X264 file and a stop watch. After endless hours of this I found that with proper MANUAL GTLREF and FSB voltage tweaking I could COMPLETELY correct the freezing or I could also cause the freezing to happen within 2-3 seconds.

(I wonder why it seems no one is paying attention to my posts on the issue)
:facepalm:

hmmm very interesting!
could you post some more details about this?
did you adjust the voltages in bios or with a mod?

Its when the ram starts to fail, not a 790i issue.

i think there are a few dozen people in this thread who wouldnt quite agree with that

i had a chat with mike, quite interesting!
it seems 790 always corrupts during windows shutdown.
from what i understood he can boot at a certain speed that is stable for dual 32m, he can bench etc, without any issues, but when he reboots, when windows shuts down, it corrupts and the next time he boots most of the time the install is busted and wont work or he gets corruption issues once hes in windows.

maybe this helps nvidia to fix the issues, it seems the corruption happens when the system shuts down, not when it boots.

[lopri]

Ive corrupted the OS on nearly every platform I have overclocked.

Its when the ram starts to fail, not a 790i issue.

790i is not different, know your limits and use a program like memtest or the F8 in Vista to run the memory test, that will usually tell you if the memory is starting to fail.

Overclocking-related corruption will usually tell you at the boot, unless you try to change the parameters in Windows.

I don't have a 790i board but I have been following this issue. Thankfully I haven't encountered a corruption issue on my 780i, but it was a nightmare on 680i. (with the same memory sticks) I could even reproduce the corruption by very small stress on the disk controller. Sometimes a few repeated defragment sessions, or cross-copy of large data files/folders were enough to cause the entire OS to go south on early 680i.

[BenchZowner]

it seems 790 always corrupts during windows shutdown.

My corruptions are 3 to 1.
3 during boot, and 1 after shut down.

[SureShoot]

Is this a problem that can be fixed with a bios update or is it hardware related?

[BenchZowner]

Is this a problem that can be fixed with a bios update or is it hardware related?

Can't tell for sure yet.

[SureShoot]

One thing i do not understand , i was just looking at the new 750i FTW and i noticed that it has all solid capicitors.
I know a board does not need all solid capicitors to perfrom well, but why would evga put all solid capacitors on the 750i and not on theyr 400$ top of the line 790i?
Makes no sense to me.They are just rushing all this motherboards on the market to make money and looks like they are not testing them properly.They know the 790i has porblems but still does not stop them from working on another motherboard instead of fixing this first.
I think i am going to buy GIGABYTE GA-X38-DQ6 or a DFI x38 chipset instead.
Sucks because i really wanted this board


PS if i am not mistaken this data corruption problems was also present on the 680i at release, how can they possibly make the same mistake twice in a row.

[Pedro Rocha]

I must say I'm a bit astounded with all this problems reported about the Nvidia 790i chipset

With Air Cooling and with Cascade I run this board for many hours without a single corruption problem or any other..

I did not pass 107Mhz PCIe because with higer PCIe speeds the 9800GX2 lose OC capabilities ..

Just see this:



Even at 580Mhz FSB, DDR3 @ 7-6-5-18 1T the Retail EVGA 790i Ultra SLI (rev. B1 like any other EVGA retail) does not give me any problem and was in fact one of most satble new motherboards that I ever test (and tested near 100 mobos in the past)..

So maybe the problems are related with earlsy samples of the chipsite or revision of the motherboard (B0??), but the Retail EVGA 790i Ultra SLI it was one of the less problematic new motherboard I ever tested!!

[BenchZowner]

Pedro, can you do a system files verification check ?
open a CMD window and type sfc /scannow

[slim142]

Pedro

I dont know if this helps at all but I would like to know this as well, are you using XP or Vista? Are you using windows default drivers for SATA? Did you install nForce drivers?

[BenchZowner]

Pedro

I dont know if this helps at all but I would like to know this as well, are you using XP or Vista? Are you using windows default drivers for SATA? Did you install nForce drivers?

I had data corruption with the default windows drivers, and with nVIDIA's nFORCE 6.94 as well.

[RLM]

Comment from EVGATech_JacobF on the evga forum regarding bios update

The Q6600 OC issue will be resolved in the next BIOS release.

Also, the CAS7 memory issue will be resolved in the next BIOS release as well.

BIOS is scheduled for release very early this week.

Fingers crossed

RLM

[slim142]

Comment from EVGATech_JacobF on the evga forum regarding bios update

Fingers crossed

RLM

Nice!, lucky eVGA owners, like always eVGA supporting their customers. Now is time for asus to respond.

[BenchZowner]

The major issue here now, is the data corruption.

And people, please try to keep things on topic.

[slim142]

The major issue here now, is the data corruption.

And people, please try to keep things on topic.

Who knows, maybe that BIOS is the miracle evga users are waiting for and it deals with the corruption too.
But now that I have seen the poll results and with that many people NOT having corruptions at all, I would REALLY like to try this board on my own and test it myself.