Are Nvidia boards that bad?

[IsaacMM]

Well i was seriously thinking about going SLI, but after reading some users saying that they had 3-5(wtf) boards RMA'ed and they will never buy Nvidia mobos anymore.

So are they really that bad? And i mean the recent boards like 750i 780i not the ones from a decade ago.

 

[Mega666]

The bugs have been fixed, this board rocks! I'm not sure about sli, but I just put a system together. How about a 1gig overclock with a q9450 to 3500Mhz, 450Mzh fsb solid? No RMA's and no bs. Component selection is key, so do your research. I'm also running raid 0 off this evga 790i board so definitely no corruption anymore with the new drivers.

 

[Valset]

the 750i is a good board by all accounts. but there have been issues with the others. for real the 590i was probably the best chip set they made. (JMO) the rest are overpriced for what they are. Its a shame ATI doesn't make intel boards anymore. the 790fx set is awesome with no CPU to match.

 

[LOCO LAPTOP]

I had to do 1 RMA but later found out how to fix the FF video bug, so I really didnt have to RMA it.

My 780I runs great.

 

[Dangman]

If you really want SLI, the SLI mobo with the least amount of problems, at least from what I can see so far, is this:
eVGA 123-YW-E175-A nForce 750i FTW SLI Motherboard - $190

But yes, Nvidia mobos aren't as stable, reliable or cooler running as their Intel counterparts. However I will admit that the 750i, 780i, and 790i chipsets are a lot more stable than their 600 series counterparts.

A good post by [H]'s motherboard editor:

Also I'd like to point out I've had a whopping 2 dead motherboards in my own systems in 12 years. (Excluding 680i SLI motherboards.) I know I've had a bad run with 680i SLI boards and I am overclocking the piss out of them but I've had boards run overclocked for years without trouble. So I do put a large amount of blame on the design or at least the QC of the boards coming out of the factory. I am not totally off the hook for the failures myself as I said before I am overclocking the piss out of them but with that said I do believe I know what I'm doing and I've got a ton of experience with computer hardware even outside of HardOCP. So while I do not completely eliminate myself as a cause of some of these issues I do not believe it is me that is the primary reason why these things have such a high failure rate. I've got several friends with similar problems who do not overclock and use dual core processors instead of quad cores.

To be fair the 680i LT, 650i SLI and 650i Ultra boards I've worked with never gave me a problem. The only problematic 600 series chipset based boards I've experienced were all 680i SLI chipset based boards specifically. To date the 700 series has worked well for me excluding the 780i SLI chipset which truth be told is just a re-badged 680i SLI chipset with a companion chip added to it for PCI-Express 2.0 support. I've given both the 790i Ultra SLI and the 750i SLI FTW high marks as both worked very well for me.

However Intel boards produced by good manufacturers (ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.) are bullet proof and virtually problem free. They are the pinnacle of stability and while the last two NVIDIA boards I reviewed were as good as I've ever used I still tend to recommend Intel chipset based boards because their reliability and drivers are nothing short of absolute excellence in computing hardware and are a safe bet. I do have concerns about the 790i Ultra SLI reference boards' longevity based on the design of their voltage/electrical subsystem. It still is largely unchanged from the 680i SLI reference design. The boards still use traditional capacitors and a 6-phase power design. I will say from what I was able to learn about the 790i Ultra SLI reference boards electrical components I'm somewhat confident in their longevity but I still see a few coners being cut there. 6-phase power isn't a bad thing if its' implemented well but NVIDIA's 6-phase power design has fallen short of what I'd call a "good implementation" in the past. Most companies are already using or are moving to an 8-phase setup (with admittedly varying quality) and ASUS is even claiming 16-phase power on some new models.

 

[binoman]

I have a 790i and it just errored out on a bios update. Now it cant even boot and Im getting a bad feeling I may have to RMA. I've had Intel chipsets for the longest time from abit and asus and never a problem. I will say when the board was working it was nice but having these types of problems so early makes me wonder.

 

[michael.pa2]

About the only Nvidia board that has favorable reviews is the 750i,the others still seem to have their share of problems.The latest I've seen reported is a problem with video degradation.Given the positive reviews of ATI's new cards so far,SLI no longer seems to be the only game in town for multi-card setups.Crossfire on a nice,stable Intel chipset board is looking better all the time.

 

[Deleted member 133315]

I have a 790i and it just errored out on a bios update. Now it cant even boot and Im getting a bad feeling I may have to RMA. I've had Intel chipsets for the longest time from abit and asus and never a problem. I will say when the board was working it was nice but having these types of problems so early makes me wonder.

Stick the original motherboard CD into the cd tray and then start your pc, it should then "magically" wipe the bios and install a backup thats on the motherboard cd automatically, Its there so that any corruption that happens to the bios can be fixed by the auto bios flash with the mobo cd.

now saying that, It MAY or MAY NOT work, but I have used mines a few times and it has always worked for me, albeit it was a different board, but most boards nowadays have some sort of protection so that you dont royally screw the mobo if something happens to the bios.

 

[Yeorwned]

NV boards always seem to cut too many corners. Ever tried to use an NV board's integrated RAID? HORRIBLE performance...only useful for RAID 1 stuff. Same story continues in other parts of the motherboard...those little details add up fast.

 

[Dan_D]

The bugs have been fixed, this board rocks! I'm not sure about sli, but I just put a system together. How about a 1gig overclock with a q9450 to 3500Mhz, 450Mzh fsb solid? No RMA's and no bs. Component selection is key, so do your research. I'm also running raid 0 off this evga 790i board so definitely no corruption anymore with the new drivers.

I wouldn't go so far as to say all the bugs have been fixed. They still have memory compatibility problems out the ass. This is especially true of the non-reference boards. The problem wasn't so much with bugs as it was just flat out poorly designed hardware. Yes NVIDIA has made solid improvements in their designs but they are still uncomfortably close to the 680i SLI reference design. That's NOT a good thing. Despite a good review from myself and Kyle I still think NVIDIA has room to improve on the 790i Ultra SLI reference design. NVIDIA should have used polymer conductive capacitors instead of the older conventional type. They should be on 8-phase power but they aren't. They probably need to add another phase to the memory slots as well. I never experienced the corruption problem and the NVRAID is more flexible but it isn't the equal of the Matrix RAID in the ICH9R/ICH10R performance wise or driver wise.

The 790i Ultra SLI seemed pretty good despite my complaints and concerns regarding the design. However given what I know of the 680i SLI boards and the design of the 790i Ultra I'm really hesitant to put one in any of my machines.

the 750i is a good board by all accounts. but there have been issues with the others. for real the 590i was probably the best chip set they made. (JMO) the rest are overpriced for what they are. Its a shame ATI doesn't make intel boards anymore. the 790fx set is awesome with no CPU to match.

I disagree in part. I'd say the best chipset NVIDIA ever put out was the nForce 4 SLI x16 chipset. The only 750i SLI I've ever seen is the EVGA 750i SLI FTW. Which was actually a design of EVGA's and not just a reference design with an EVGA sticker on it as you already touched on. They seemed to have corrected for NVIDIA's design shortcommings and its' a fantastic board overall.

On the 790FX being a great chipset, I'd hold off on that statement. I've had my fair share of problems and terrible overclocking experiences with those. They aren't terrible but they aren't as good as the NVIDIA AMD processor compatible chipsets are.

If you really want SLI, the SLI mobo with the least amount of problems, at least from what I can see so far, is this:
eVGA 123-YW-E175-A nForce 750i FTW SLI Motherboard - $190

But yes, Nvidia mobos aren't as stable, reliable or cooler running as their Intel counterparts. However I will admit that the 750i, 780i, and 790i chipsets are a lot more stable than their 600 series counterparts.

A good post by [H]'s motherboard editor:

Absolutely, the EVGA 750i SLI FTW is an excellent board I wanted to hate but found no fault with. I'd say that's true of the 750i SLI and the 790i Ultra SLI but the 780i is more of the same if not worse than previous 680i SLI boards. While they don't burn up and die they seem to be more problematic. The 680i SLI reference boards were usually great until they got close to death. I've seen quite a few problems with 780i SLI reference and non-reference boards alike. Kyle's own initial experiences with those boards weren't good either and my own personal experience with the 780i SLI board wasn't great either. I used one during the writing of the Skulltrail Preview article and I had random instability, hard locks and even BSOD's once in awhile. Overall I was quite dissappointed with the board.

About the only Nvidia board that has favorable reviews is the 750i,the others still seem to have their share of problems.The latest I've seen reported is a problem with video degradation.Given the positive reviews of ATI's new cards so far,SLI no longer seems to be the only game in town for multi-card setups.Crossfire on a nice,stable Intel chipset board is looking better all the time.

Agreed.

 

[Dan_D]

NV boards always seem to cut too many corners. Ever tried to use an NV board's integrated RAID? HORRIBLE performance...only useful for RAID 1 stuff. Same story continues in other parts of the motherboard...those little details add up fast.

I've used NVRAID extensively. It isn't that bad. If you had horrible performance I'd say that something was wrong with your setup. I benchmark them all the time and the NVRAID isn't that far off from Matrix RAID. Plus NVRAID is actually more flexible than the Matrix RAID is.

Yes, NVIDIA certainly cuts corners with their reference designs, but companies like ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, and others don't cut near as many of those same corners and still the boards aren't that great and are sometimes worse than the reference boards. The chipsets themselves (on the Intel side) and the drivers are what need the most work I think.

 

[Yeorwned]

I've used NVRAID extensively. It isn't that bad. If you had horrible performance I'd say that something was wrong with your setup. I benchmark them all the time and the NVRAID isn't that far off from Matrix RAID. Plus NVRAID is actually more flexible than the Matrix RAID is.

I bought 20 bulk SATA drives and spread them across various motherboards designed for specific tasks. Any large reads/writes at all and the NVRAID was dead in the water, especially in RAID5. ICH6R+ delivers the same results regardless of what board you purchase, almost always reaching speed capacity. Of the three NVRAIDs board (all in 2006-2007) I've used, none have even come within 25% of the performance of Intel's solution.

 

[Dan_D]

I bought 20 bulk SATA drives and spread them across various motherboards designed for specific tasks. Any large reads/writes at all and the NVRAID was dead in the water, especially in RAID5. ICH6R+ delivers the same results regardless of what board you purchase, almost always reaching speed capacity. Of the three NVRAIDs board (all in 2006-2007) I've used, none have even come within 25% of the performance of Intel's solution.

This is interesting to me. I've used the same performance tests on the two solutions and they are always within 10% of each other. Regardless, how large a file are we talking about here? Were all these tests conducted in RAID0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 or RAID 5? If it's RAID 5 we are talking about here your comments certainly make sense and we don't generally test RAID 5 performance. I hate to say it but all onboard solutions I've ever used were abysmal.

 

[Yeorwned]

I didn't test RAID 1 on the NV systems at all, but I'd assume the obvious there. RAID 5 is the biggest loser for NVraid because any sustained file transfer 500MB+ chokes.

I got frustrated with the NV boards because I specific bought two to act as cheap NAS devices so I even went through the trouble to time a large transfer (greater than 100GB) from the same workstation to each NAS. An Intel ICH7R completed the transfer in 14 minutes while the NV raid solution rolled in at 37 minutes.

Those are my only recorded personal benchmarks, both on RAID 5 running Linux. A majority of my tests are network based so there is room to play with other factors on the boards, including network interfaces. Always run on Cisco switches on gigabit ports with no load. Since these are network based, I may be getting false positives due to a problem with the onboard network controllers found on the NV based boards. I wouldn't publish anything from my results but other sites agree with what I'm seeing, showing drastic differences at sustained reads/writes.