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NVIDIA nForce 680i Chipset Problems

Out of the gate, the nForce 680i chipset from NVIDIA seemed to be the best Core 2 Duo overclocker going, that is of course when your system is not plagued with BSODs and data errors. You need to read this if you are considering a 680i motherboard.

UPDATE 12/18/06: NVIDIA has updated the situation regarding nForce 680i motherboards and the data corruptions that were being experienced by some.

Introduction

We have given the new NVIDIA 680i-based motherboards some kudos, and some pans as well. (We have a follow-up to our Striker Extreme review coming up soon as we have done some more testing.) There seem to be some serious issues with the products though that are affecting some people and not others.

Some 680i Suck, Some Don’t

I have personally used four nForce 680i based motherboards here in our test labs without any issue whatsoever. My experiences with the 680i have been great, and I have gone as far to say the 680i has been the best motherboard I have ever worked with. And I still stand by that statement, but given the issues that others are seeing, I am not so gung-ho to put one in my own system any longer. We have had boards from ASUS, BFGTech, and EVGA that have all performed well. Dan, one of our motherboard reviewers, even purchased his own EVGA nForce 680i locally and built a new system with it. Dan ran into tremendous system stability problems. After spending a good amount of time with a laundry list of things to check, Dan ended up with problems that he simply could not solve, and returned the EVGA motherboard for a refund. He was still in possession of the ASUS Striker motherboard that he had reviewed and I told him he could drop that board into his system and see if it worked for him. Dan put the Striker in and has had no problems since.

One thing I do know for sure is that Dan knows how to build a system that is solid, but the nForce 680i motherboard that he was using had issues. You can read up on this more at the EVGA forums in this thread that is over 600 posts long. There are a lot of people having problems with their 680i motherboards. The problems however do not seem to be limited to the reference design boards but rather all nForce 680i motherboards. Seeing that EVGA is NVIDIA's e-tail launch partner, they have garnered most of the attention due to them selling more motherboards. The issues seem to stem to all 680i motherboards be they reference design or not.

Hardware or Software?

To be succinct, some nForce 680i motherboards have SATA issues. Data seems to get corrupted for no reason causing BSODs and corrupted hard drive errors. Obviously there is a reason, but the problem to the end user may seem very sporadic. The problems are severe enough that they can render a new system build useless. Talking to NVIDIA about this, we came up with the answers to a few questions, but no solutions.

Yes, NVIDIA is aware of the 680i issue and has been able to recreate it in their test labs.

Yes, NVIDIA is working to fix this.

Yes, NVIDIA states it is not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue so we are all hoping for a fix.

Shooting from the hip on this, and I am no driver engineer, but this sounds like a hardware problem to me. I hate to say it, but there seems to be a chipset problem here that is not apparent in every piece of silicon. I hope I am wrong and it is just a driver issue that can be fixed through a new driver drop, but I am not hopeful of this. After seeing Dan take his 680i build that was causing him severe problems, change out motherboards, and his problems then going away, it is hard for me to think that a driver caused the issue.

NVIDIA’s track record at HardOCP with storage controller solutions over the life of the nForce brand has been poor to say the least, but has been getting better as NVIDIA has moved forward. With their recent acquisition of ULI, we expected to see all storage issues related to the nForce chipset go away, but that has certainly not been the case.

The Bottom Line

We have been holding off a week or so on addressing this in hopes that we would have some solutions or answers for you, but those have not come forth. Some of the nForce 680i motherboards have some serious storage issues that can render a system build useless. Not all nForce 680i boards exhibit this problem. The problem does not seem to be confined to certain system configurations as some motherboards will work with a specific configuration while others will not. The problem also seems to spread across all 680i motherboards regardless of brand judging from feedback across Internet forums.

I hate to say this as my personal 680i experiences have been solid and left me with a good impression of the product, but I cannot suggest you buy a 680i board till this problem has been ironed out. If you have a 680i board now and are having data corruption problems, return it if you can and get your money back. If you have already purchased a board and it has issues, I suggest you RMA it and hope you get a motherboard that does not show the same issues.

Gigabyte’s DS3 and DQ6 motherboards would seem to be much better alternatives for Core 2 Duo enthusiast builds at this time.

We will certainly update our readers on this if we get any new information.

Discussion

This forum thread is specific to this topic and I ask all of you to keep us advised of how the issues is working out for you or if you have found any fixes for the problem.

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