Any decent C2D Sli boards yet?

[GSte]

Been looking recently at the possibility of doing a 320MB 8800gts Sli setup as it seems to perform better than a single GTX but costs about the same. I know there are hacked drivers available for the Intel boards, but I'd rather avoid these as they are unofficial. Also know that the 680i boards have had lots of problems. Does anyone know of/have any experience with any good Nvidia boards, i.e. that overclock well and are stable?

[staffsMike]

what problems do you know of with the 680i boards.

The 3 which i have experienced have been perfect in every way.

[aidanjt]

The 680i chipset has problems with some RAM modules, that's about it afaik.

[staffsMike]

ive heard that highly clocked RAM does have problems with some Striker Extremes.. but as you say thats about it.

[GSte]

I thought there were problems with the unlinked ram thing causing instability, overvolting dimms on some boards, hot NB and SB, not great CPU overclocks, general instability. Not read much about them for a while though, that's why I ask.

[staffsMike]

Not expereinced any of that with mine (EVGA) and i've clocked my ram FSB 200Mhz+ more than the CPU.

My mate has the Abit 680i and it also seems to be a very good overclocker.

Don't knock it until you've tried it is all i'll say.

[GSte]

Not knocking it at all, just don't want to shell out for the board and 2 gfx cards just to find out it's cack. Thanks for the help.

[staffsMike]

Yeah I understand. It is a bit of a leap of faith but I think most would be pleasently suprised at how good the board is.

I'm sure the Asus P5K etc.. are better overclockers at the very top end but the 680i's are solid for the kind of overclocks you will be running on air and water cooling.

[Clunk]

My experience of the 680 was much the same as a lot of other people.

Unstable,
Overvolted the RAM
A vast array of unusable memory options.
Horrid chipset drivers.


As mike says, he has been ok with his, but there is a shedload of people that havent.

the thing to ask yourself is why would you need an SLI board, when SLI is also problematic, overrated and pointless unless you have a screen with a truely massive resolution.

[BUFF]

I'm with Clunk - unless you have a massive screen & play at 1900x or above I would take a P35 & an 8800 GTX before a 680i/8800GTS SLI set up.

[GSte]

Well..... I wasn't really aware that there were many problems with Sli, but I was looking at it because firstly, I am getting a monitor with 1900 x 1200 resolution, and secondly I play a lot of Oblivion and even at lower resolutions, my GTS and even a single GTX (according to the benches) don't get framerates that eliminate lag when outside buildings, with the higher settings switched on.

[shaithis]

Until SLI/Crossfire/whateverothernonsensetheycomeupwith is 100% truly transparent to the system, it will always be cack.

There are way too many games that do not support SLI/CF, another bunch that work but look worse then they do if you disable SLI/CF and another bunch where enabling SLI/CF actually slow them down.

After spending a small fortune trying these systems, I would never touch dual gfx cards again.

[Clunk]

Well..... I wasn't really aware that there were many problems with Sli, but I was looking at it because firstly, I am getting a monitor with 1900 x 1200 resolution, and secondly I play a lot of Oblivion and even at lower resolutions, my GTS and even a single GTX (according to the benches) don't get framerates that eliminate lag when outside buildings, with the higher settings switched on.

Oblivion is about 18 months old now isnt it? I'm guessing that it wouldnt matter if you have even a next gen card, there would still be the lag. Buggy game perhaps?

I grabbed the dx10 demo of lost planet extreme condition, and on the GTX it runs at full everything (except 16xaa, have to use 8x) @1920x1200, and the only lag was mouse lag, and the occasional minor glitch, which I would think was down to drivers.

With full 16xAA, it was slide show esque

[StaffsKieran]

Ive got both the EVGA 680i board and the abit and both are very solid and reliable, ive not had any problems that clunk has suggested above apart from very early on with the EVGA with a dodgy bios update but now they are very stable, I have also run both with two 7800gt's in SLi as well as a single 8800GTS.

The NB and SB can get hot but thats what FANS are for

Finally discontent always has the louder voice...........

[GSte]

Oblivion is about 18 months old now isnt it? I'm guessing that it wouldnt matter if you have even a next gen card, there would still be the lag. Buggy game perhaps?

Just seems to be a beast of a game, the Sli setups get decent framerates though that should eliminate choppiness, that's half the reason I was interested because like I said it should only cost the same as a GTX. Didn't realise there were problems with Sli though, the Nvid homepage says the opposite, that most games are supported now through the profiles they have developed. Not too keen on having to frequently mess around with stuff to get it working right though, so may just opt for a single GTX. Thanks for all the help

[Clunk]

Ive got both the EVGA 680i board and the abit and both are very solid and reliable, ive not had any problems that clunk has suggested above apart from very early on with the EVGA with a dodgy bios update but now they are very stable, I have also run both with two 7800gt's in SLi as well as a single 8800GTS.

The NB and SB can get hot but thats what FANS are for

Finally discontent always has the louder voice...........

Its odd, there was a 750+ page thread on the EVGA forums about the original boards killing RAM, and they blamed Nvidia, and then Nvidia blamed them, unfortunately, last time I looked, the thread had been pruned to under 500 posts, and now its gone completely (It was a sticky).

I know several people personally that went from the 965 chipset to the 680i, with high hopes, and all but 2 of them have gone back to Intel based chipset boards, me included.

As far as the problems being bios related, well that may be so for some of them, but I feel that 5 or 6 months is plenty of time to release a stable bios for a motherboard, and that is how long these boards had been out when I first got mine, same goes for the chipset drivers, and the same goes for the overvolting RAM, which isnt just an EVGA specific problem, it appears to be all the 680i boards.

Google it, it is widespread.