DFI: Not for the enthusiast!

[floppybootstomp]

I'll echo the sentiments of the majority of those who've replied here and say I was pleasantly surprised to see such a personal and honest answer from the DFI guy.

Most replies I've had from component supplier tech people have either been automated or gobbledegook from somebody who clearly doesn't have a great command of the English language.

I'll admit their reply was disappointing but I also have to agree it is an odd config.

All in all this instance has made me more pro than anti DFI.

FWIW DFI has long been my favourite motherboard manufacturer, superb pieces of kit, although at this moment all three of my machines have Asus boards.

[shaithis]

IMHO you want a refund plus an Asus P6T6 WS Revolution

Alas, I am coming to the same conclusion

Even though I can afford it, I have a hard time trying to justify £300+ to myself for a motherboard that will be obsolete in 12 months time.....especially when I have studied the layout of the i7 motherboards for ages and then finally jumped once I saw the DFIs PCI-Express slot layout was actually compatible with what I wanted to throw into my next rig......and was substantially cheaper then the Asus Workstation board.

Scan have offered a refund, now I just need to get myself to part with the biggest wedge of cash that I have ever considered for a motherboard :S

Also, more people applauding DFI.......as if there are only 2 options...."lie and never fix" or "tell the truth and never fix".

Ever thought there was another path these manufacturers could take? One where problems are FIXED? Wouldn't you prefer to buy from a company that didn't just presume a faulty product could not be fixed? As I said, I had Areca issues with Asus and they fixed them with a BIOS update.......hell, even ABit released a BIOS to fix the issues I reported with the 4870x2, even after they had shut half their operation.

Companies are out there that do listen, I just found out about DFI not giving a damn the hard way.

[Antagram]

I remember when paying £100 for a motherboard was a daunting step, and I've only once gone over that threshold myself.

The current prices for "enthusiast" products just seems insane, and the prices were also high before the pound decided to take an overdose. I suppose your situation, if you aren't willing to compromise, you're more swayed to take that step. And hope that Asus does what you hope for.

[TooNice]

Well, at least Scan took it back. Had they not, I would've suggested the same thing as scaryjim in post number 30. It's probably as much as you could have expected given the circumstances.

Here's my scale of customer services.

(4)<<<<<<<<(3)<<<<<<<(2)<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<(1)

1 = Customer service work with you to fix the problem even though it probably costs them more than it would cost losing you. It's not something I'd expect, but it's the only case where I think it's applaud worthy.

2= Middle ground where they apologise that the product is not suitable for you, admit they can not justify working on a fix, but offers a full refund (and perhaps a token of good will). This is the standard I expect, even though it's clearly uncommon.

3= They are honest enough to say they won't do anything. It's below the standard I'd consider acceptable, even though, from the sound of the replies on this thread, it's already a high standard given that...

4= Is seemingly the industry standard and people have grown so cynical that anything better than leaving you hanging for month is something to praise worthy.

I find this kind of sad that the approved standard is so low but to be honest, I can see where it came from. AFAIK, ASUS never fixed an incompatibility issue with the 2nd gen Raptor with one of the SATA port on their A8R-MVP even after it was reported.

[floppybootstomp]

Also, more people applauding DFI.......as if there are only 2 options...."lie and never fix" or "tell the truth and never fix".

Ever thought there was another path these manufacturers could take? One where problems are FIXED? Wouldn't you prefer to buy from a company that didn't just presume a faulty product could not be fixed? As I said, I had Areca issues with Asus and they fixed them with a BIOS update.......hell, even ABit released a BIOS to fix the issues I reported with the 4870x2, even after they had shut half their operation.

Companies are out there that do listen, I just found out about DFI not giving a damn the hard way.

Aye, food for thought, have to agree.

I think most people were so gobsmacked by the coherent reply from a motherboard manufacturer they perhaps tended to overlook the main issue, myself included.

Well, good luck with your build anyway.

[Badbonji]

Running mixed video cards for physx/cuda.....which is supported in both XP and W7.

Problem is:

PCI-E 1: ATI 4870x2
PCI-E 3: nVidia 8600GTS
PCI-E 4: Areca 1210

= No post


PCI-E 1: nVidia 8600GTS
PCI-E 3: ATI 4870x2
PCI-E 4: Areca 1210

= No post



PCI-E 1: ATI 4870x2
PCI-E 3: Areca 1210
PCI-E 4: nVidia 8600GTS

= Works but Areca not recognised once BCLK passes 175MHz (No amount of messing with QPI frequencies fixes this either and if you remove the 8600 or the 4870 the BCLK doesn't effect the raid controller any more)...also the performance of the 8600 is massively hampered.


To those who think they did good, put yourself in my shoes.....you just built a system and found an issue and the manufacturer tells you "tough luck".......how the hell can you applaud them?

So this is a core i7 system? Tried flashing the BIOS? If you want physx, you should have gotten a GTX295. It can easily handle physx without any drop in performance, whilst still beating the HD4870X2. Will also be less hassle too.

[shaithis]

So this is a core i7 system? Tried flashing the BIOS? If you want physx, you should have gotten a GTX295. It can easily handle physx without any drop in performance, whilst still beating the HD4870X2. Will also be less hassle too.

I bought the ATI card a while ago, had the 8600GTS lying around from a system pull, wanted an i7 for a few reasons (mainly encoding) and didn't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money.....ergo, buying a retardedly over-priced GTX295 (plus waterblock) wasn't going to factor into my plans for physx (even though I guess I am about to throw &#163;85 more then I had planned to at this project)

Anyway, I have an RMA number for the board now and the P6T6 WS is on the way.....fingers crossed that my exuberant PCI-Express needs will soon be met....and then some.

[BUFF]

.as if there are only 2 options...."lie and never fix" or "tell the truth and never fix".

Ever thought there was another path these manufacturers could take? One where problems are FIXED? Wouldn't you prefer to buy from a company that didn't just presume a faulty product could not be fixed?

not necessarily that the problem can't be fixed just that in their opinion it's such a rare problem that it isn't worth the cost of investigating & fixing. Cheaper for them if necessary to refund/replace the very occasional mobo.

[scaryjim]

Just to get a professional POV on the Customer Service issue, I discussed this with my wife - who has held several senior customer service positions - last night and she thought DFI did *exactly* the right thing as far as customer service was concerned. I guess with your unusual requirements there was probably always going to be a bit of "suck it and see" in getting it up and running!

Good luck with the new board - I'd be interested to hear how it turns out...

[TheAnimus]

I've run nvidia and ATI cards together without issue, so I know they can work together on some boards.

To be fair there are so many things this could be, trouble shooting it would be a pain from a user point of view.

Me too, it was a total head ache, and i'd never do it again, driver updates ALWAYS ment fun and games as two monitors would certainly stop working etc.

[shaithis]

Just to get a professional POV on the Customer Service issue, I discussed this with my wife - who has held several senior customer service positions - last night and she thought DFI did *exactly* the right thing as far as customer service was concerned. I guess with your unusual requirements there was probably always going to be a bit of "suck it and see" in getting it up and running!

I would agree if I thought my requirement were unusual.

All I want to do is use the PCI-Express slots on the motherboard I purchased. No where do they state you cannot use x, y or z in certain slots or specify any kind of restriction at all. Neither have I seen any other manufacturer state such limitations.

If they want to pull the stunt they did, surely they should state that there is a risk and that only a very few combinations of cards are guaranteed to work?

[moogle]

So, bad on DFI for not giving a damn to fix the problem, but good on them for telling the truth and giving a personal response.

[scaryjim]

I would agree if I thought my requirement were unusual.

How many people do you think there are with your set-up? Your original post acknowledged that you have something "out-of-the-norm" (your phrase). So why go back on that now? Your requirements *are* unusual.

If they want to pull the stunt they did, surely they should state that there is a risk and that only a very few combinations of cards are guaranteed to work?

They already do for CPUs and Memory. I suppose it'd be nice to extend that to expansion cards, but just how many combinations do you want them to test, exactly? No mobo vendor is ever going to guarantee that *every* combination of cards will work, so why would they bother testing any? Your way, you'll either just have a dislcaimer on every mobo saying that nothing is guaranteed to work in it, or you'll get companies only recommending their own expansion cards and refusing to support anything else. Would either of those be better, really??

For example: A few years ago I bought a GeForce FX5500 and put it in a SIS-based mobo: the result was rather distressing graphical corruption in both 2D and 3D applications. I took the card back to the vendor who stuck it in their own testbed and demonstrated it running both 2D and 3D apps with no corruption. By your reckoning, my next logical step should've been to contact my motherboard manufacturer and demand that they investigate my problem and release a BIOS update to fix the conflict!

I took the rather more pragmatic approach of swapping cards between a couple of computers, and presto everything worked fine. It just happened that something conflicted between that particular implementation of that particular chipset, and that particular implementation of that particular graphics card. The same could be true of your set up 11 times over, as you have 4 components (3 cards + chipset) of which any combination of 2 or more could be causing the issue - without even considering whether the problem lies with any other peripherals (PSU springs to mind fairly rapidly, for instance). Yes, it must be hugely frustrating for you that your setup doesn't work on this motherboard, but be sensible about your expectations, please. DFI is a business, it is essentially there to make money. It cannot do that by investing huge amounts of time and money diagnosing problems with unique systems that may not even be caused by the DFI component. I'm sure if any one component individually wasn't working on the board they'd've been more than happy to help out, but there is simply no profit in them dealing with an issue they will almost certainly never see again. You you received a prompt personal response to your enquiry, have your RMA and you're going to try a different board. That *should* be sufficient, really...

[TooNice]

I would expect a PCI slot to work with all PCI devices that is not faulty and follows the specifications. I would expect the same for SATA, PCI-E devices.

The reason I would not be happy doing a plain RMA is because postage is not likely going to be refunded, and by that time, I'll would probably have spent 10 hours rebooting, trying different drivers and doing other tests to make sure that the fault lies on that particular component. Whereas I am expected to accept that the company only invest 3 minutes of their time on a short email? That's why in my previous post, I said that I would expect a token of good will (even if it's money off *their own* products).

The message that'll send (to me) would: 'Alright, sorry this didn't work out for you. To be honest, we don't think it's economical for us to look into it, so we'll give you back your money. Since we do somehow value your custom though, and appreciate that our product has wasted a lot of time, here's a little something too'. Failing that, I would interpret as 'Sorry this product didn't work for you. We do not think that's economically sensible to fix this, we'll give your money back to get you off our back, but we don't really care if you no longer come back'.

-------------------------------------------------------------

By your reckoning, my next logical step should've been to contact my motherboard manufacturer and demand that they investigate my problem and release a BIOS update to fix the conflict!

You make it sounds as if it would've been unreasonable. We expect games with glitches to be patched (or at least I do, YMMV). Why shouldn't we expect the same on a &#163;100-200+ hardware?

Whether the issue can be fixed via BIOS update, I'll treat it as a separate matter. What I find important is whether they make an honest attempt.

I recognise that it may not always make the most sense from a financial perspective in the short term. But this is a good test to see whether a company care a little bit about their customers, or simply sees them as pound signs. Of course, it is going to be necessary for the business to be sustainable - can't exactly spend &#163;1000s on every customers - but if they have a decent product, that should not be necessary. And by fixing the issue, they may learn a little more about what went wrong, and ensure (or improving the odds) that future products will be void of that problem.

[scaryjim]

hmmm, I would expect a PCI-e x16 card to work in a PCI-e x16 slot, yes. But the board specs will specifically state how the slots re-nogtiate in multi-card setups, and I wouldn't assume that the same card will also work in an electrical X8 or X4 slot. Plus, in this instance we're not talking about *a* card not working in *a* slot: we're talking about three different cards operating differently depending on which slots they are each placed in. This isn't as simple as "this slot doesn't do what it's supposed to".

How can you "expect" a token of goodwill? Surely if you're only getting what you expect it's *not* goodwill? I wouldn't disagree that it would've shown significant goodwill on DFIs part to offer some form of refund or credit, and it would've made their service *brilliant*, but you can't *expect* goodwill...

As to my graphics card, I think *demanding* a solution would've be unreasonable. I could reasonbly have asked, but I would have expected the answer shaithis got: very sorry but it's not worth us investigating this. The motherboard was clearly not faulty, as I used several other cards with it without issue. Similarly, the graphics card was not faulty as I used it in several other motherboards.

I think the fact that shaithis got a personal reply is a good indication that DFI do not see their customers as pound signs (or euro signs, since the response came from the netherlands ). Presumably they have other issues which also need addressing, and they *have* to address the more common ones first. This particular combination of cards is no doubt considered sufficiently rare that they assume none of their future customers will encounter this issue anyway...

[CrazyMonkey]

In the current climate, with the uniqueness of your configuration i am not suprised to see a company put it plain and simple. DFI most likely cannot afford to pour money and time into what is considered an isolated case.

If there were other similar cases i'd expect DFI to jump on and get it fixed. But in the current economical climate there actions arent suprising.