680i - Opinions?

M

michael.pa2

2[H]4U
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Dec 26, 2006
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I'm planning on getting a new system soon,and really can't come to a decision on a motherboard.My main concern is an SLI board with stability and upgrade potential.I'm not planning on overclocking immediately,but might get into it later on to extend the life of my system.There seems to be as many bad reviews of the 680i platform as good ones,it almost seems as if it's performance and problems varies from one individual board to another,regardless of the manufacturer.At this time,is this a reliable board,or is it a flawed platform with problems that still need to be addressed?And which manufacturer has the best version?
 
If you're going to get a 680i board, i'd go with eVGA's one- that's what i'm getting. It seems to be one of the most popular, plus their customer service, from what i hear, is second to none.
 
If I can be sure it's the new revised model,I might go with eVGA,if it seems they've solved all the past issues with the platform.ASUS doesn't seem to rank very high in support.
 
the new revision only fixes issues people were having when trying to OC a Quad-core processor. as far as I know, the revision fixes nothing else, nor do I understand why the revision is sold seperately from the previous verson. thats somewhat fishy to me, why not just replace the current version with this revision all together? will the revised version have problems with core 2 duos?
 
There is still stock of the old version. Thats probably why there are two atm. Even the "older" version of the AR has the heatsink problem fixed afaik (removed resistors on the back).
 
My EVGA board was shipped from newegg, and it was bad. In the middle of an advanced RMA from EGVA. Great customer support so far.
 
heatlesssun said:
What about the Asus Striker Extream?
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I have owned many Asus products over the past few years. My biggest issue is that they are never refrence based. This opens up a new can of worms.
Their support, if you cann call it that, stinks. eVGA on the other hand has support 24/7. The eVGA support is outstanding! I called them this morning at 2:45 AM and I spoke with an English speaking person within less than 40 seconds and my problem was resolved within 4 minutes. It is just my 2 cents, but I will always buy eVGA when I am offered the option.
 
I never really think about a companies in house support when buying a product. I pretty much rely on sites like this for that.

I really like Asus motherboards. I too have owned a few, and the last one I bought, the A8N32-SLI has been rock solid.

However, eVGA does seem to be a crowd favorite, especially their support. Never owned an eVGA product, but if I go with a GeForce 8900 over an ATI card, that's who I'll go with, might even get one of their motherboards.
 
kirbyrj said:
I thought you wanted an A1 revision with the quad core fix.
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Yep.

680i boards are fairly new. same stuff we went thru with P965 boards when they were new.

I have to vote new Evga 680i if you want SLI, mainly for their customer support, if something is horribly wrong, they fix it, I have NEVER in 15 years heard of another company giving new for old to fix an issue, they did it with some video cards not long ago as well.

Love my Gigabyte but Evga get my next high dollar buy.
 
I think I’ve owned motherboards from about every manufacture and I used to swear by Asus. Not these days, bad website, worse support and the last time I looked they were number one on the hit parade as far as referbs go.

No company has ever given me the service eVGA has, it’s almost scary. As was mentioned their 24/7 tech support is unrivaled as is their cross ship exchange policy.

I love my 680i and I don’t see it being replaced for quite a while. Same goes for their video cards.

Luck and enjoy
 
I saw a huge pile of open box 680i's at Fry's due to returns. Guy says they are very popular, (to buy and return).
 
i wish i'd evga'd my sys. im seriously gonna want an 8900gtx but it will break the bank. unless id got step up. mobo too would be good but theres nothing wrong with my striker, only the price tag.
 
Now you all have me second guessing the choice of my next board for my upgrade. I was going to go with a ASUS P5N32-E, but now may look into an evga board.
Is this a thing with the boards or the chipset?
I'm not bashing intel on this, but I haven't owned an intel product since a P II. It may be that we're advancing in computers but I don't recall it ever being so confusing, can you say 4 diff versions of an sli board with two chipsets all with similar names, or any one chipset having so many issues with boards. I guess I liked the days of having only a couple of major vendors and them only rolling out one chipset and working on it rather than this whole 650i vs 680i debacle.
I just don't recall this being so difficult with my AMD cpu's but then again I wasn't concerned too much with sli at that point. I just wish they would roll out one stable chipset/board and not 50 versions using two similar chipsets with minor diffferences like one has dual gigbit lan but another has that and and extra sata connector. It seems that with every new thing that comes out they release a new board for it without fixing the previous versions. I can't wait for some new revisions to come out just to accomodate e-sata, and then they can rename the board and call it the ASUS P5N32-E-SATA.
STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
GEt the asus p5n32-e sli....evga is junk. they need to stick with just video cards. I have owned both and the asus mobo owns the evga hands down with the lack of bugs and overclocking
 
You are right EVGA has the best support bar none, and if you get a 680i board from them you are gonna need it most likely.
 
I had to RMA my rev 1 board through eVGA, and course, their support process is second to none. Since getting the rev 2 board, I have had zero issue. It's rock solid stable. No sound crackle, no crashes, no anything. It just runs.

Now that the kinks are worked out, the 680i is shaping up to be the chipset we all hoped it would be. I am really glad I took the plunge, even if it took a while to clean up the issues. It's been worth it, and I now have a rock solid, stable, overclockable system based around the C2D and with SLI capabilities. I don't plan to upgrade for quite some time.
 
yep. unless you plan on going sli 680i doesnt really offer anything over intel chipsets, but the boards are amazing :)
 
When I picked up my evga 680i and 8800gts at frys I also saw plenty of open box returns. I grabbed an open box for my 8800gts due to the $40 discount. It was faulty, called support got through in about 30 seconds, tech said it was bad after about 5 minutes of troubleshooting. They gave me the option of RMA or return to store since it was only a day old. I went back to the store and spoke to some of the folks in the return department.

They said that most of the 8800 and 680i returns were due to wife arguements over cost etc. :D

Not sure if i beliebve that or not but I went ahead and got a new one after the return and have had no problems at all since. I love the board and the video card, and the support is amazing. top that off with the step up and active forums and its hard to beat evga.
 
have 2, one since first week november. only better board ever made was the ultra-d. after i blew one up, i used e.a.r. program to rma. i had a new sealed retail box in my hands 54 hours after my initial rma request. during christmas week. (overnight shipping) with a return shipping label for my bad board. for $16. both boards run 24/7 most weeks, i cant remember ever having a crash or hang, both are heavy oc'd, running high vdimm/vcore, with all other voltages dimed. no heat probs. this is why the board still goes for $225 and up, and still is insanely popular even after commando, new rev gigabytes, striker, new abit boards, other 680i ref boards, etc, etc. have been released. you should be able to pin down an a1 at newegg. if not, evga will cross ship you one. only competition for this board in the foreseeable future would be a dfi version (?) or the upcoming dfi lanparty 965 board.
 
msg1285 said:
To bad the reference boards have been the ones with most of complaints.;)
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Just to set the story straight. I was a big supporter of ASUS for a very long time and a very loyal customer up until about six months ago. Unfortunately, their CS is nonexistent and the non-refrence approach is baloney. I build two to three systems every year for my own entertainement. I truly enjoy building my own systems. Having said that, I have to admit that my system are always H2O cooled. A non-refrence system causes many problems for H2O coolers and for driver support as well!
I was one of the first to own an A8N-SLI MB and it took three MB's to get it right. The third MB worked but it was a horrible tweaker so I jumped ship and went to DFI. The DFI MB was incredible. I believe that eVGA has caught on to the enthusiasts way of thinking with the 680 AR MB. I have had one problem with this MB and it was solved within a total of six minutes on the phone with eVGA at 2:45 AM. IMHOP, ther is no company that can compete with eVGA, period.
Lastly, the eVGA MB is incredible out of the box, however it does require a bit of know how if you want to take it to the extreme. It is by far the best 680 Mb on the market, end of story.
 
bigbadgreen said:
Now you all have me second guessing the choice of my next board for my upgrade. I was going to go with a ASUS P5N32-E, but now may look into an evga board.
Is this a thing with the boards or the chipset?
I'm not bashing intel on this, but I haven't owned an intel product since a P II. It may be that we're advancing in computers but I don't recall it ever being so confusing, can you say 4 diff versions of an sli board with two chipsets all with similar names, or any one chipset having so many issues with boards. I guess I liked the days of having only a couple of major vendors and them only rolling out one chipset and working on it rather than this whole 650i vs 680i debacle.
I just don't recall this being so difficult with my AMD cpu's but then again I wasn't concerned too much with sli at that point. I just wish they would roll out one stable chipset/board and not 50 versions using two similar chipsets with minor diffferences like one has dual gigbit lan but another has that and and extra sata connector. It seems that with every new thing that comes out they release a new board for it without fixing the previous versions. I can't wait for some new revisions to come out just to accomodate e-sata, and then they can rename the board and call it the ASUS P5N32-E-SATA.
STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

I know just how you feel.The odd part is it seems the problems crop up not just with one particular vendor,but with individual boards,one model from the same vendor will get positive recommendations from some owners,while others will say it has serious flaws.
To be fair,I think Intel boards are getting more complaints now because AMD is on a downswing and a lot more people are buying the Core 2 boards.I have to wonder if the past problems can be traced to flaws in the original nVIDIA chipset,and if these problems have been fixed.
 
theseeker said:
It is by far the best 680 Mb on the market, end of story.
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Not tring to start a fight with ya but I dont see how you can say that. The Stiker runs neck and neck with the EVGA and has thus far been more reliable.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=349&type=expert&pid=10

EVGA is without a doubt the best support you can find and the board is cheaper. Still you have alot of people that are getting EVGA 680i boards that have serious issues. I had one that had a bad memory controller and then one that wouldn't let you flash the bios. Yes EVGA's support kicks ASUS %^$% but that doesn't mean the board is better. IMO you are less likly to get a lemon board from ASUS than from EVGA.
 
Bob_Gates said:
I love my Evga 680i.
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ditto

watertown28 said:
GEt the asus p5n32-e sli....evga is junk. they need to stick with just video cards. I have owned both and the asus mobo owns the evga hands down with the lack of bugs and overclocking
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orly_owl.jpg


would people please refrain from making statements indicating one board is better then the other without offering at least SOME (preferably LOTS) of evidence to prove your story? Currently no one can say any board is definitively better than the other. My EVGA 680i board has been flawless. Watertown's Striker is apparently flawless, a few people i know over at xtremesystems.com have not had such luck. I have a client who has an Abit 680i board, b0rked SLI, I'm RMAing. There is someone on this forum who has a higher over clock then me on this board.
 
msg1285 said:
Not tring to start a fight with ya but I dont see how you can say that. The Stiker runs neck and neck with the EVGA and has thus far been more reliable.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=349&type=expert&pid=10

EVGA is without a doubt the best support you can find and the board is cheaper. Still you have alot of people that are getting EVGA 680i boards that have serious issues. I had one that had a bad memory controller and then one that wouldn't let you flash the bios. Yes EVGA's support kicks ASUS %^$% but that doesn't mean the board is better. IMO you are less likly to get a lemon board from ASUS than from EVGA.
Click to expand...


Did you miss this? http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI4Miw2LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
 
no problems out of mine at all, love it. bios is easy to nav, overclocks like a dream. evga support very responsive, and its purty to look at. Goes with my stacker nvidia ed case very well.
 
yeah man the evga board is a good one. got the revision A1 and the vcore tracks perfect now. the AR i had tracked a little off but the revision resolved that and now tracks perfect. love 24/7 tech support. i never have a problem from 9-5pm. mine all come from 5-9am

can't complain, 3 bad asus P532N-E sli boards cured me of the ASUS bug quick. ASUS board never clock or meet my expectations anyway
 
i have the striker. yes its nice, but so's the evga. i wish id gotten the evga and used the money id saved for a SB card.
 
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