Can't get NICs working on eVGA 680i.

[cronjob]

Just setup my machine with the eVGA 680i board. It has two NICs.

If I plug in my cat5 from either of the NICs to the linksys router, I have no activity light on either device. The Linksys is working and is just fine. I plug the NIC directly into my cable modem and the activity lights come on.

After installing Windows, I have no net access. I only show one connection (1394 IEEE -- why would firewire be showing up as a network connection?!). I pop in the eVGA 680i CD annd install the ethernet drivers. Still only the one 1394 IEEE shows up on the Network Connections window.

It seems unlikely that both NICs would fail on the same board from the start (especially since the activity lights do come on... when plugged directly into the cable modem, at least). I can't figure out why no connections are showing up. There should not be anything necessary to have connectivity. Any of my other machines would have connectivity simply by installing windows/linux and plugging the cable in.

Any ideas? I've been looking to see if this is some sort of known 680i issue and it's very frustrating after i just spent a long time trying to get this cramped tiny board setup. Gaaah.

Thanks.

 

[cronjob]

Finally found a thread in the eVGA forums that helped me out here. I had to power down. Turn off the PSU. Clear CMOS. Wait a couple minutes. Boot up again. Install Windows. Manually install the network drivers (and only the network drivers alone) and then continue on with installation of other drivers after a reboot.

It appears that the driver installer on the eVGA CD for the 680i does not work. And it appears that the 680i itself retains some of the configuration for awhile (not sure how exactly, since this should be OS-side stuff) unless you clear the CMOS.

Unfortunately, it also appears that a lot of people find that the networking connections/installations will just disappear later on after a number of reboots or the connection willf requently just freeze entirely. Add that on top of the Nvidia/Creative Labs audio crackling problem, inability to reliably use four sticks of RAM, inability to succesfful and reliably use RAM greater than 800mhz... and that the documentation SUCKS (the SATA controllers are mislabled, so 1, 2, 3, 4 is actually 3, 4, 5, 6 and 5, 6 is actually 1, 2 -- and the 8-pin PSU connector next to the CPU seems to be completely misrepresented in the documentation (it shows that if you only have a 4-pin PSU connector like my PC P&C 750w Silencer has, you should plug the 4-pin on the left side... but you can't physically do that and it has to be done on the right side.. which I hope is actually correct and I'm not doing any damage).... and all said and done, I can't say I'd reccomend the eVGA 680i to anyone else right now. I probably wouldn't buy another one.

The specs are awesome. But specs that don't work or with a horrible failure rate are pretty pointless.