Found and bought XFX 780i board @ Fry's - Phoenix, AZ

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darkjedi

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
266
For those that may be interested, I was in Fry's Electronincs in Phoenix, Arizona - the
31st Ave and Thunderbird store. Just this morning, they received (10) of the XFX 780i motherboards.

Now they have nine :)

I will report back with my experiences later this weekend. Sadly can't install it until tonight or tomorrow... too much work :(

later all
 
Was it free? (You didn't mention how much you shelled out for it ;) )
 
Sorry... It was $264.99.

It's really pretty in its Green and silver box... wish I could go home now... :(
 
Where do you work...just curious, and why did you want a MB that costs so much?
 
I thought about grabbing an EVGA 780i SLI board but I've decided to wait for the ASUS and Gigabyte solutions before I buy one.

I had too many reference design 680i SLI boards die on me to blindly jump into purchasing one now.
 
I work for myself as a computer consultant and to be honest $264.99 is not that bad a price (for me) as I have purchased boards that were $300 or more.

As to the reference boards dying, I have installed and/or currently own (6) EVGA 680i boards with absolutely no issues other then loud hissing caps on a couple during gaming.

They are all still working including mine (the one I paid $299.00 for) which is almost 13 months old.

The only 680i boards that have failed for me are two MSI P6N diamond boards. I am actually waitng for an RMA on a second failed board. First just died, the second fried its mem controller. All in all the EVGA's have been good for me.

I will keep you all informed about my luck with this one since I have never tried an XFX mobo before.

Thanks!
 
I promised myself id never buy anything from Fry's ever again, but thanks for the heads up. I'll go and take a close look at one.
 
Darkatom said:
I promised myself id never buy anything from Fry's ever again, but thanks for the heads up. I'll go and take a close look at one.
Click to expand...

The key is to make sure that what you get from them is in its' original wrapping and isn't a restocked return that someone else messed up.
 
OK all,

I got the board installed and everything is up and running. Crysis is installing as I write this.

Overall, very little difference, if any, performance wise at least based on Sandra numbers.

I haven't done any real overclocking other then changing my CPU multiplyer to 12 instead of 10 on my QX6700 (3.2GHz). I will play with more OCing later this week after I get back from vacation.

BIOS is very similar to the EVGA-nvidia P31 BIOS - same menu options and such.

I will say that the overall construction of the board is a lot nicer then the 680i. The heatsinks and Heat pipes are attached wtih actual screws, not pushpins, and there does not appear to be any of that thick white crap used for thermal compound. Not actually sure without taking it apart, but it looks like a thin layer of something metallic. Maybe AS or equivalent?

Other then that... No proplems or issues to speak of in the last three hours or so.

Will keep you updated..
 
farfromhome said:
What, EVGA isn't going to send you one to play with and review? ;)
Click to expand...

Well Kyle actually decides what boards I review. They have sent him a 780i SLI board as far as I know, but even so that doesn't mean I'd get to keep it or even that I'd want it. Chances are I may purchase a 780i SLI board before I actually review one. Even if I don't I'm in good shape. I've got two 680i SLI boards and they are handling my 3-Way SLI just fine.
 
I saw a bunch of these at Fry's too. I'm thinking of getting this board since I want the extra SATA, USB and firewire headers for my case. Also, my Abit Fatal1ty board has no firewire, the NIC doesn't even work and I think only does 8x8 pci-e lanes in SLI. It was still cheaper than the Asus boards there that don't do SLI
 
OK... got it all up and running.

It took a slight bit of tweaking, but I am now stable at 10*333 for 3.33 GHz. I had to bump the CPU voltage to 1.375 and bumb the chipset up .1 Volts to get it stable.

Also, seems to work absolutely flawlessly with 8GB DDR2 (4x2GB) which is nice.

Benchmarks are all good and within spec compared to similar systems/clockrates. Again, not amazing, but it is a damn solid board so far.

Glad I got it.
 
darkjedi said:
OK... got it all up and running.

It took a slight bit of tweaking, but I am now stable at 10*333 for 3.33 GHz. I had to bump the CPU voltage to 1.375 and bumb the chipset up .1 Volts to get it stable.

Also, seems to work absolutely flawlessly with 8GB DDR2 (4x2GB) which is nice.

Benchmarks are all good and within spec compared to similar systems/clockrates. Again, not amazing, but it is a damn solid board so far.

Glad I got it.
Click to expand...

Got mine. Amazingly everything booted right away! My Vista old load worked, but seems unstable so I'll just go ahead and reinstall again.

My main concern is the temperature of the MCP. I am a silent pc fan so I wanted to run passive on the NB, but the damn thing shot up to 95C when I got around to looking in the BIOS. I put the MCP fan on at 5v and it dropped to 73C with the case open! I may have to run it full blast and forget about making this a quiet PC. My case has excellent airflow as everything else runs cool. I can' believe they advise to put the fan only if you watercool.

Can you check what your MCP temperatures are?
 
rm19 said:
Got mine. Amazingly everything booted right away! My Vista old load worked, but seems unstable so I'll just go ahead and reinstall again.

My main concern is the temperature of the MCP. I am a silent pc fan so I wanted to run passive on the NB, but the damn thing shot up to 95C when I got around to looking in the BIOS. I put the MCP fan on at 5v and it dropped to 73C with the case open! I may have to run it full blast and forget about making this a quiet PC. My case has excellent airflow as everything else runs cool. I can' believe they advise to put the fan only if you watercool.

Can you check what your MCP temperatures are?
Click to expand...

You need to pull the NB cooler and re-apply the thermal paste after a thorough clearning.
 
Dan_D said:
You need to pull the NB cooler and re-apply the thermal paste after a thorough clearning.
Click to expand...

1. Is this based on your experience with this board?
2. After some AS5, do you think I can run passive?
3. What's a decent temp for this thing?

Thanks for the advice.
 
rm19 said:
1. Is this based on your experience with this board?
2. After some AS5, do you think I can run passive?
3. What's a decent temp for this thing?

Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

1.) It is based on my experience with motherboards in general, especially the 680i SLI chipset based reference boards. The 780i SLI board uses the same MCP as the 680i SLI boards do so the advice should still apply here. The thermal paste was poorly applied on the reference 680i SLI boards. Since those MCP's are all still the same, they shouldn't run over 55c or thereabouts most of the time. You've got something wrong if your board is running as temperatures as high as you've stated.

2.) No. AS5 isn't a magic bullet to better performance. At most it helps 1c-3c compared to normal thermal interface materials. However the factory tends to glob on the paste and good thermal transfer isn't as good as it should be. So I recommend re-applying thermal paste not because AS5 is better than standard materials but because the factory does such a shitty job of applying the paste to the stock chipsets and coolers. In any case you won't likely be able to run your chipset without some type of active cooling. Especially not while playing games or heavily taxing the memory controller.

3.) It varies based on a number of factors but you shouldn't see anything above 55c or so under load. Idle you should see temperatures in the 30c range.
 
cool thanks. I guess I'll have to rip out all that awesome wire managing that I did. At least it works. I'll update after I get a chance to do this.
 
I bought this motherboard around the same time as the original poster - been having problems left and right with my setup.

The raid sata device doesn't like SATA DVD drives connected at the same time - couldn't get any OS to install (got BSOD instead) - even though I had bios configured to enable the sata port but disabled raid usage on that port. in bios, the SATA DVD never showed up on the port number it was actually installed in (put it in port 6 - Raid SATA stuff was in ports 1 and 2). [edit] showed up in bios as being in spot 3 and 5 a few times, though it never moved physically. [edit 2] Funny thing is these sata ports are meant to be disabled/enabled for eSATA - not just raid. Switched to IDE DVD drive and XP and Vista install fine (no other change in configs).

Without raid enabled, I had HD (150gb raptor x 1) in sata port 1, DVD in sata port 2 and only 2GB of 6400 Corsair Twinx ram - Windows XP SP 2 installed fine and ran fast.

More important issue:

I can't get the memory that Corsair recommends for the board to run at a 1:1 ratio at 1066 mhz - I can get it to memtest without errors with 2 sticks at the advertised speed, but windows will not load (system locks up before windows load screen fully displays - bios goes into safe mode intermittently at stock speeds).

Windows Vista loads fine with 4x1GB TwinX 6400 at 800 mhz as well as the 8500 at 800 mhz - but no 1066mhz ram settings will work.

Rig in my sig probably wrong - running 3x8800gtx (BFG), 6600 quad core, 4x1gb corsair TwinX 8500c5 ram (supposed to run at 5.5.5.15-2T), 2x150gb raptors in raid-0, PCP&P 1KW power supply.
 
I appears that my "MCP Temperature" overheating problems stem from the heatsink not contacting the MCP south bridge (NF570), apparently nothing to do with the northbridge. If i push down on it, the temps start to drop immediately, but I let it go and shoot back up. The "Motherboard" temp is stable at 35C. But within seconds of letting go of the SB heatsink, it went up to 105C. I'm so pissed right now wasting my f'n Saturday doing this. I ripped out the whole board and carefully tightened the screws a little more, but no dice. If I could slap a low profile heatsink on it I would, but the whole cooling system is integrated with heatpipes. Damn it all. Never had this problem with Asus or ECS boards.

Sorry Fry's, but I have to return it. I may have a bad sample, but the blame goes to Nvidia and/or XFX for this crappy design.
 
rm19 said:
I appears that my "MCP Temperature" overheating problems stem from the heatsink not contacting the MCP south bridge (NF570), apparently nothing to do with the northbridge. If i push down on it, the temps start to drop immediately, but I let it go and shoot back up. The "Motherboard" temp is stable at 35C. But within seconds of letting go of the SB heatsink, it went up to 105C. I'm so pissed right now wasting my f'n Saturday doing this. I ripped out the whole board and carefully tightened the screws a little more, but no dice. If I could slap a low profile heatsink on it I would, but the whole cooling system is integrated with heatpipes. Damn it all. Never had this problem with Asus or ECS boards.

Sorry Fry's, but I have to return it. I may have a bad sample, but the blame goes to Nvidia and/or XFX for this crappy design.
Click to expand...

NVIDIA designed the damn things. XFX has nothing to do with the board's creation or design. They simply order them from NVIDIA who gets them from a supplier contracted to build them.
 
Dan_D said:
NVIDIA designed the damn things. XFX has nothing to do with the board's creation or design. They simply order them from NVIDIA who gets them from a supplier contracted to build them.
Click to expand...

Any thoughts regarding my problems with the ram at 1:1 ratio with this board? I opted for this board because of the tri-sli and 1333mhz fsb support - a bit bummed that PC2-8500 ram will not run at stock speeds.

My Southbridge is running at 50C idle, cpu 40C and motherboard is 31C. This is housed in a lian-li V-Silent (which inverts a standard ATX motherboard and plays havoc with heatpipes).

If I can't get this thing running at 8500 speeds soon, I'll be swapping the entire rig out for something supporting DDR3.
 
sadvocate said:
Any thoughts regarding my problems with the ram at 1:1 ratio with this board? I opted for this board because of the tri-sli and 1333mhz fsb support - a bit bummed that PC2-8500 ram will not run at stock speeds.

My Southbridge is running at 50C idle, cpu 40C and motherboard is 31C. This is housed in a lian-li V-Silent (which inverts a standard ATX motherboard and plays havoc with heatpipes).

If I can't get this thing running at 8500 speeds soon, I'll be swapping the entire rig out for something supporting DDR3.
Click to expand...

In case anyone finds they have the same problem, the RAM was at fault (not bad - just less compatible with this mobo than Corsair thinks it is) - it would memtest after finicky settings at 1000mhz, but even though Corsair said it was SLI-Ready, the bios didn't see it that way and refused to clock it at correct stock settings or load windows when I hard-set the spec values in bios.

Fry's had some OCZ SLI-Ready PC2-8500 ram with the same timings, so I bought 4x1GB sticks and the system booted just fine and saw the correct speed immediately.

Still no fix for crashes with sata optical drives at the same times as a raid array - but I'll be in touch with XFX to find out what can be done or if there is some setting I need to change, since many of the blue-ray internal optical drives are SATA, I don't this as a non-issue.
 
We'll you've cheered me up a little, I have just got 4GB of the OCZ SLI ready 8500 stuff. Just waiting for the damned board.
 
starfury6 said:
We'll you've cheered me up a little, I have just got 4GB of the OCZ SLI ready 8500 stuff. Just waiting for the damned board.
Click to expand...

Please keep us up to date with your OC'ing - the board is pretty dang good at configuring but I can't seem to get an OC that will actually work.

Using 6600 I've tried and successfully booted to windows 1600fsb 3.6ghz (9*400) on air - but crashed at desktop - all on stock voltages. 1333fsb (9*333) too - each time with 1066 ram, but crashed at desktop. No amount of voltage tweaking kept me up and running and the problem is not temperature related except perhaps the MCP which is running at 60C stock with optional chipset fan on.

I'm not getting BSOD, just system freezes. System seems solid at 1066/1066 1:1 - I just really want 1600fsb now that I've tasted Vista loading and a little navigation before lockup.
 
Yeah I will if I ever get a board. Seem very scarce over here and I just received an email from the supplier saying they do not have an eta for any more yet :(
 
ooh ooh!

If anyone from UK is after an Asus Striker II formula I just clobbered my Novatech order and ordered from scan.co.uk. They have it at £192 GBP and are expecting 20 minimum on Tuesday, they also only have 4 preorders. (that includes mine)
 
starfury6 said:
ooh ooh!

If anyone from UK is after an Asus Striker II formula I just clobbered my Novatech order and ordered from scan.co.uk. They have it at £192 GBP and are expecting 20 minimum on Tuesday, they also only have 4 preorders. (that includes mine)
Click to expand...

I can't wait until these things hit the US.
 
Update on this board - upgrade to the P02 bios!

Overclocking is a breeze - hit 1333mhz fsb, with 1066mhz ram on air rock solid with auto settings - and they've really simplified it (was this way originally) - rather than putting in 333 or 400, you put in the desired bus (1333) and bam, you're done. want to run the ram linked or unlinked, you can decided - linked you can chose 1:1, 3:2 or 5:4 or auto - which set the ram at a fourth (un-user choosable) option - not sure if that was a feature or bug with the old corsair ram, with the ocz it almost always puts it at 1066 (once or twice at 800).

to enable sli ram settings with full ability to manipulate FSB and RAM timings, just enable it and select the expert setting (offers disabled, cpu 0%-cpu 5% OC, max OC and expert settings), then you can modify ram and cpu speeds either linked or unlinked.

voltage settings are a breeze - auto does a pretty good job, but be sure to lower the voltage to reduce heat (system stays stable at 1.3v as easily as 1.38v for me).

edit 2:

update: now clocked at 1600 fsb (8*400) and running stable at 1.4v w/ 4x1 GB PC2-8500 running at 1066 (3:2 linked). Been prime stable on 4 cores for 2 hours - max core temp I've seen is 70C - mostly hitting 67C.
 
Final update for posterity - this board rocks with the new P02 bios.

I just finished 15 hours of Prime95 stable at 1600mhz FSB, 3.2ghz (8x400) at 1.4vcore and ram at 1066mhz (OCZ 5-5-5-15 2T at 2.3v / 3:2 linked).

This thing is a beast - I was so troubled because it would boot to windows and pop off, but no amount of voltage would work to keep it stable. After the bios update, it's rock solid and I've been able to really trim the voltages. I can run at 1333mhz fsb / 3ghz(9x333) with 1.27vcore with 4 gigs of memory at 1066mhz (OCZ 5-5-5-15 2T at 2.3v / 3:2 linked).

I hope other people aren't scared off from the launch difficulties that accompany these mobo's.
 
sadvocate said:
I hope other people aren't scared off from the launch difficulties that accompany these mobo's.
Click to expand...

I'm scared off by the experienced I've had with NVIDIA reference designed 680i SLI motherboards. Hopefully the 780i SLI boards are much better. We won't really know that for some time however.
 
Dan_D said:
I wasn't ignoring anyone. :cool:
Click to expand...

Oh, so I'm a nobody, huh? ;)

Were there long term stability problems with the reference 680i SLI boards? Or was the it a driver fiasco?

I have noticed some problems with Nvidia's NVMonitor not working right (the one installed with ntune) in Vista. It started working correctly after I installed the beta control panel drivers, but that installation didn't work completely correctly (failed on the system monitor install) due to the presence of the ntune nvmonitor. The UI was much in the ntune nvmonitor than the system monitor (which throws up a flashy 3-d circle of temperatures, it's pretty...inconvenient).

edit:

or were they problems like the bios issue I had with the 780i board? The new bios rocks, but it was two weeks of complete hair-pulling frustration before that
 
sadvocate said:
Oh, so I'm a nobody, huh? ;)

Were there long term stability problems with the reference 680i SLI boards? Or was the it a driver fiasco?
Click to expand...

Originally there were SATA corruption issues, BIOS problems, stability issues, memory compatibility issues and sound issues with the onboard sound and Creative X-Fi cards. The memory issues still persist to this day but everything was solved overtime. However later on when quad core CPUs became more common it turned out that the 680i SLI reference boards wouldn't overclock them past 1300MHz FSB. EVGA resolved the issue by creating a revised A1/T1 revision boards however I am unsure what BFG, ECS, and XFX did to resolve things with thier customers. Those companies also sold the same board EVGA was selling with different packaging and a different name stickered on the board.

The main issue which only reared its' ugly head over time was that the boards themselves would cook the memory to the point of frying it. This is usually caused by voltage fluctuations or automatic settings in the BIOS overvolting the memory modules. Running automatic I've seen several boards (all using the same memory, OCZ Flex XLC PC2-9200 DDR2 1150MHz modules) run the memory at 1143MHz when EPP values were used at either 2.1v or 2.3v variably. I've burned up 10 out of 11 of those reference boards and I've heard of several people on other forums who burned up more than I did. Several of mine were DOA or would die in less than 30 days. Occasionally some of them would last two to three months before dying. Recently I burned up an EVGA 680i SLI Black Peal Edition part # 122-CK-NF69-A1. That is a very expensive board. At that point I swore off those damn reference designs and my search for a good reference board. (They do exist as I already have one in another machine that is unfortunately an AR version of the board which doesn't do well overclocking quad core CPUs.)

My ASUS Striker Extreme which I've used for 5 months solid has never failed me. Mine overclocks dual core CPUs to mediocre levels and quads don't overclock hardly at all on it but the damn thing is totally stable at stock speeds 100% of the time. Running at stock speeds any system I've had the Striker Extreme running in has never crashed or locked up for any reason ever. I've had mixed results with non-reference design motherboards but I've had consistently bad results with reference boards as I've watched so many of them die the same way over a long period of time. At this point I'm afraid to try 780i SLI reference boards in my own machine and as a result I eagerly await the Striker II Formula and P5N-T boards. I'd buy a P5N-T board but with only one NIC and a lack of other features I now enjoy on my Striker Extreme I don't think that it is the board for me. The Striker II Formula looks like it will be my next motherboard.
 
First off, thank you for the very thorough reply. I now have a much better idea of what to look for in failures on this board. I've heard the 780i is extremely similar to the 680i.

Did the failures with the SATA devices have to do with SATA RAID drives mixed with SATA optical drives? Or did a single SATA drive fail to operate normally? As I mentioned before, I'm currently unable to use a SATA optical drive simultaneously with RAID-0 150GB raptors. A single raptor worked fine with the SATA optical drive, but when RAID was enabled, I couldn't get an OS to install for anything. I'll be upgrading the current IDE driver to a blueray drive after I do a little research on models, so SATA optical + SATA RAID-0 is pivotal.

I also experienced problems with the X-Fi Fatality card preserving digital optical out settings; meaning I had to reconfigure it every time windows rebooted to get digital SPDIF out. That problem sort of solved itself when I switched to tri-sli as I no longer had room for any additional cards besides the graphics cards, and I was fed up with turning it back on every time.

Now that I've got a stable overclock, I'm going to lay into a few games for a while, but the last time I played it (stock settings on q6600 with 1:1 ram timing) I was really bothered by jumpiness present in the graphics and the long hang-ups with frame rates / sound with Vista (and DX10) that weren't there at all in XP.

Chances are my upgrade with the new 97 series cpus will prompt a mobo upgrade - what is your impression of the waterblock on the northbridge on the Maximus Extreme boards? If they have an SLI version with the attached waterblock that could simplify my life some (if it worked).
 
sadvocate said:
First off, thank you for the very thorough reply. I now have a much better idea of what to look for in failures on this board. I've heard the 780i is extremely similar to the 680i.

Did the failures with the SATA devices have to do with SATA RAID drives mixed with SATA optical drives? Or did a single SATA drive fail to operate normally? As I mentioned before, I'm currently unable to use a SATA optical drive simultaneously with RAID-0 150GB raptors. A single raptor worked fine with the SATA optical drive, but when RAID was enabled, I couldn't get an OS to install for anything. I'll be upgrading the current IDE driver to a blueray drive after I do a little research on models, so SATA optical + SATA RAID-0 is pivotal.

I also experienced problems with the X-Fi Fatality card preserving digital optical out settings; meaning I had to reconfigure it every time windows rebooted to get digital SPDIF out. That problem sort of solved itself when I switched to tri-sli as I no longer had room for any additional cards besides the graphics cards, and I was fed up with turning it back on every time.

Now that I've got a stable overclock, I'm going to lay into a few games for a while, but the last time I played it (stock settings on q6600 with 1:1 ram timing) I was really bothered by jumpiness present in the graphics and the long hang-ups with frame rates / sound with Vista (and DX10) that weren't there at all in XP.

Chances are my upgrade with the new 97 series cpus will prompt a mobo upgrade - what is your impression of the waterblock on the northbridge on the Maximus Extreme boards? If they have an SLI version with the attached waterblock that could simplify my life some (if it worked).
Click to expand...

Well I don't remember the exact problems with the SATA corruption but as best as I can recall it was a general data corruption problem that existed on RAID and non-RAID arrays alike. I know for a fact that the problem was present in RAID configurations as I experienced those first hand. I too was using a SATA optical drive at the time but I don't know if that had jack to do with anything.

As far as using a Maximus Extreme board with SLI it won't happen. Only NVIDIA chipset mobos are SLI capable. This is not a fact of hardware but rather NVIDIA drivers not giving you the option to run SLI on non-NVIDIA chipset based motherboards. So you will have to stick with the 680i SLI or 780i SLI chipset for 3-Way SLI. As far as the water block goes it isn't all that impressive. It keeps things reasonably cool but don't bet on it matching a real waterblock.
 
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