- Jul 4, 2006
- 150
- 0
- 18,680
I don't know how many people I can expect to read this, but understand I am very frustrated and this is one of the few places I think I might be able to get some good support or fellow early adopters who share the same experience. I apologize ahead of time for any spelling or grammar errors, if you are a grammar nazi like I am sometimes(most of the time).
Alright, so I've had the system in my signature up and running for almost 3 weeks now. I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty damn disappointed with it. Performancewise, it's a beast. But it's hardly stable. I took the early adopter risk and got bitten, hard. Long read, but it is necessary since I've had PLENTY of problems.
First boot, I try to install windows and get tons of blue screens mid-install. Memtest reveals I have lots and lots of memory errors. In the range of 70,000+. I switch the slots, memtest checks out fine. So I have two dead dimm slots, with the remaining just happening to be the other pair I can use for dual channel operation. I decide to push on and keep the board, skipping any replacement in favor of not ripping everything apart that took me 4+ hours to put together.
Installation went great. The video card is pretty big, but fit well in my case. Lian Li A10. Had to remove the top 120mm fan because I needed about 3mm of clearance since the socket is so far up top my AC freezer 7 pro wouldn't clear it. Started with a single 500gb seagate drive for everything.
Have since added in an extra expansion bay for hard drives in the 5.25" slots. EX-34 (4 hard drive slots, filled with 3 drives). Close fit with the 8800GTX, almost doesn't fit at all. After lots of cable bending and folding, I manage to get everything in. Man does this case feel cramped now. My drive total is up to 2x250gb in Raid0, with 3 500gb drives for a raid 5.
I put the 250s in raid0 and don't have any problems installing windows. Man, raid 0 really is quite fast. First boot...windows loads before the screen completely fades in, and before the blue bars even appear to start scrolling across. This thing is fast!, I think to myself. Unfortunately, it's about as unstable as it is fast.
I plug in the 3x500s to setup my raid 5. I still had files I wanted on the old 500gb, but I figure I can just grab them off the drive after I'm done installing windows. Big mistake. Nvidia storage controller intercepts the "New hardware found" installation prompts, and immediately tells me I have 3 new drives. Sure, no problem I think. I close that and check my computer. No drives. I check storage management. No new drives. Wonderful! So I decided to go through the Nvidia storage controller. This is where I made a huge error. Apparently, selecting any drive for a JBOD setup will do a quick (about 2 seconds) format of any drive you want in the JBOD. You'd think there would be a warning, and you'd be wrong. There was NO mention of a drive format or data loss. There was NO check for data that was already on the drive. Awesome.
I email Nvidia about this issue. They refer me to my equipment manufacturer, as they only deal with Direct Sales or some other bs. Nice support! I've only just begun to scratch the surface of bad support, as I found out though. The Nvidia email response to my support ticket (exact ticket I sent in is the same as the EVGA email further below):
Hello Kevin,
This support website is designed to support NVIDIA direct sales products, such as the NVIDIA DualTV tuner card and the NVIDIA PureVideo DVD Decoder. We also address Presales questions about NVIDIA based products and technology.
NVIDIA is a market leader in graphics and digital media processors. NVIDIA does NOT build graphics cards, motherboards or PCs. While our partners and customers all choose NVIDIA's technology as a core component for their solutions, they do implement them differently and therefore it is not possible for NVIDIA to directly support their products via this forum.
To obtain support or report issues, please contact the appropriate manufacturer / vendor of your product. For your convenience, a partial list of our partners and customers can be found here.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hardware_support.html
Best regards,
NVIDIA
No problem, right? Email EVGA and get my new drivers and hopefully a way to reverse the format. Here is a copy paste of the email I sent, and the response I recieve from EVGA:
Question (12/19/2006 12:13:15 PM): I recently purchased a set of new hard drives. After installing windows xp onto a raid-0 setup on my 680i motherboard, I updated to the latest drivers for motherboard, video card, sound card and windows update. After that was completed, I hooked up the hard drive with the older winxp install on it, only to have the nvidia storage controller intercept the "new hardware found" popup dialog. It asked me if I wanted to setup a raid array. I also had 2 other drives of the same type to install on that same boot. The storage controller saw them as 3 new drives and then asked me to select an initialization type (JBOD, raid 0 or 5 - the exact terminology for the nvidia drivers I am not familiar with). I selected the JBOD option and put only the old hard drive on this setup in order to attempt to gain access to my old files. Instead, I found that it did a very quick (about 1 second) format of the drive and it is now labeled as Initialized - but empty - in both computers I have had it in. Is there a way to reverse this? Why wouldn't it have recognized my old files before formatting the entire drive with hardly a warning? I have already contacted nvidia, and they referred me to my equipment manufacturer, since they only deal with direct sales.
Answered By Victor J (12/20/2006 7:14:44 AM): it should have given you an indication that all data will be lost if you continue to format. and NTSF (quick) was the format you selected if it was as fast as you say.
It should have given me an indication that all data will be lost, you say? Yes, it SHOULD have, shouldn't it? But I already stated that there was NOTHING close to a warning like that! If only you had read the email. Not only did you fail to read my problem, you failed to answer EITHER of the -two- questions I asked. Reading comprehension is key. No wonder we have to go through 12 years of english composition and reading comprehension. Must've barely scraped by in that area, eh?
After over 6 hours, I manage to use some data recovery software to get the data that I wanted back. There was nothing that important, as it was a fresh install of windows only a week or so old.
I am now in the third week. 2 full reformats have not solved the issues I am having. Windows will not save certain registry values. My desktop theme, which I have switched to Windows Classic, reverts back to Windows XP on reboot. My startup sound, which I have a custom wav for, also reverts back to the default windows startup wav upon reboot. The language bar keeps returning for NO apparent reason, save that someone up there must hate my guts. A reboot will kill any changes I try to make. I can't even turn off mouse acceleration with the CPL Mousefix registry key. That reverts on reboot as well. Things randomly don't work as well. Attempts to startup winamp have failed, with the process just sitting idle in the task manager. If I try to start it up again, I just get multiple copies of winamp.exe, but no winamp. My Add/remove programs list has also frozen. It just sits there all day searching for programs to add to the list. WTF?
This about sums up my experience so far with the 680i motherboard from EVGA. I have yet to try the new bios, and will probably get to doing that tomorrow. It is, however, 4:30 in the morning and I'm sick of dealing with these problems. It's been 4 days since I've gotten the new drives and the only thing I've managed to do is stick them in the case. None of them can be considered working, unless you consider spinning up working. I'm not sure if this is related to the SATA corruption issues that I've read about. I'll leave that up to you to make the judgement.
If you've read through all of this, then you probably have more patience than I do. It's not easy to read bitching. If you haven't read through it, just know that it might change your decision to buy one of these boards.
Alright, so I've had the system in my signature up and running for almost 3 weeks now. I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty damn disappointed with it. Performancewise, it's a beast. But it's hardly stable. I took the early adopter risk and got bitten, hard. Long read, but it is necessary since I've had PLENTY of problems.
First boot, I try to install windows and get tons of blue screens mid-install. Memtest reveals I have lots and lots of memory errors. In the range of 70,000+. I switch the slots, memtest checks out fine. So I have two dead dimm slots, with the remaining just happening to be the other pair I can use for dual channel operation. I decide to push on and keep the board, skipping any replacement in favor of not ripping everything apart that took me 4+ hours to put together.
Installation went great. The video card is pretty big, but fit well in my case. Lian Li A10. Had to remove the top 120mm fan because I needed about 3mm of clearance since the socket is so far up top my AC freezer 7 pro wouldn't clear it. Started with a single 500gb seagate drive for everything.
Have since added in an extra expansion bay for hard drives in the 5.25" slots. EX-34 (4 hard drive slots, filled with 3 drives). Close fit with the 8800GTX, almost doesn't fit at all. After lots of cable bending and folding, I manage to get everything in. Man does this case feel cramped now. My drive total is up to 2x250gb in Raid0, with 3 500gb drives for a raid 5.
I put the 250s in raid0 and don't have any problems installing windows. Man, raid 0 really is quite fast. First boot...windows loads before the screen completely fades in, and before the blue bars even appear to start scrolling across. This thing is fast!, I think to myself. Unfortunately, it's about as unstable as it is fast.
I plug in the 3x500s to setup my raid 5. I still had files I wanted on the old 500gb, but I figure I can just grab them off the drive after I'm done installing windows. Big mistake. Nvidia storage controller intercepts the "New hardware found" installation prompts, and immediately tells me I have 3 new drives. Sure, no problem I think. I close that and check my computer. No drives. I check storage management. No new drives. Wonderful! So I decided to go through the Nvidia storage controller. This is where I made a huge error. Apparently, selecting any drive for a JBOD setup will do a quick (about 2 seconds) format of any drive you want in the JBOD. You'd think there would be a warning, and you'd be wrong. There was NO mention of a drive format or data loss. There was NO check for data that was already on the drive. Awesome.
I email Nvidia about this issue. They refer me to my equipment manufacturer, as they only deal with Direct Sales or some other bs. Nice support! I've only just begun to scratch the surface of bad support, as I found out though. The Nvidia email response to my support ticket (exact ticket I sent in is the same as the EVGA email further below):
Hello Kevin,
This support website is designed to support NVIDIA direct sales products, such as the NVIDIA DualTV tuner card and the NVIDIA PureVideo DVD Decoder. We also address Presales questions about NVIDIA based products and technology.
NVIDIA is a market leader in graphics and digital media processors. NVIDIA does NOT build graphics cards, motherboards or PCs. While our partners and customers all choose NVIDIA's technology as a core component for their solutions, they do implement them differently and therefore it is not possible for NVIDIA to directly support their products via this forum.
To obtain support or report issues, please contact the appropriate manufacturer / vendor of your product. For your convenience, a partial list of our partners and customers can be found here.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hardware_support.html
Best regards,
NVIDIA
No problem, right? Email EVGA and get my new drivers and hopefully a way to reverse the format. Here is a copy paste of the email I sent, and the response I recieve from EVGA:
Question (12/19/2006 12:13:15 PM): I recently purchased a set of new hard drives. After installing windows xp onto a raid-0 setup on my 680i motherboard, I updated to the latest drivers for motherboard, video card, sound card and windows update. After that was completed, I hooked up the hard drive with the older winxp install on it, only to have the nvidia storage controller intercept the "new hardware found" popup dialog. It asked me if I wanted to setup a raid array. I also had 2 other drives of the same type to install on that same boot. The storage controller saw them as 3 new drives and then asked me to select an initialization type (JBOD, raid 0 or 5 - the exact terminology for the nvidia drivers I am not familiar with). I selected the JBOD option and put only the old hard drive on this setup in order to attempt to gain access to my old files. Instead, I found that it did a very quick (about 1 second) format of the drive and it is now labeled as Initialized - but empty - in both computers I have had it in. Is there a way to reverse this? Why wouldn't it have recognized my old files before formatting the entire drive with hardly a warning? I have already contacted nvidia, and they referred me to my equipment manufacturer, since they only deal with direct sales.
Answered By Victor J (12/20/2006 7:14:44 AM): it should have given you an indication that all data will be lost if you continue to format. and NTSF (quick) was the format you selected if it was as fast as you say.
It should have given me an indication that all data will be lost, you say? Yes, it SHOULD have, shouldn't it? But I already stated that there was NOTHING close to a warning like that! If only you had read the email. Not only did you fail to read my problem, you failed to answer EITHER of the -two- questions I asked. Reading comprehension is key. No wonder we have to go through 12 years of english composition and reading comprehension. Must've barely scraped by in that area, eh?
After over 6 hours, I manage to use some data recovery software to get the data that I wanted back. There was nothing that important, as it was a fresh install of windows only a week or so old.
I am now in the third week. 2 full reformats have not solved the issues I am having. Windows will not save certain registry values. My desktop theme, which I have switched to Windows Classic, reverts back to Windows XP on reboot. My startup sound, which I have a custom wav for, also reverts back to the default windows startup wav upon reboot. The language bar keeps returning for NO apparent reason, save that someone up there must hate my guts. A reboot will kill any changes I try to make. I can't even turn off mouse acceleration with the CPL Mousefix registry key. That reverts on reboot as well. Things randomly don't work as well. Attempts to startup winamp have failed, with the process just sitting idle in the task manager. If I try to start it up again, I just get multiple copies of winamp.exe, but no winamp. My Add/remove programs list has also frozen. It just sits there all day searching for programs to add to the list. WTF?
This about sums up my experience so far with the 680i motherboard from EVGA. I have yet to try the new bios, and will probably get to doing that tomorrow. It is, however, 4:30 in the morning and I'm sick of dealing with these problems. It's been 4 days since I've gotten the new drives and the only thing I've managed to do is stick them in the case. None of them can be considered working, unless you consider spinning up working. I'm not sure if this is related to the SATA corruption issues that I've read about. I'll leave that up to you to make the judgement.
If you've read through all of this, then you probably have more patience than I do. It's not easy to read bitching. If you haven't read through it, just know that it might change your decision to buy one of these boards.
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