Do you think its worth getting the new 780i over the 680i ? If so what advantages would i get ?

The 680i was the best board I had for dual core - even better than the highly regarded P5Bdlx. 4ghz P95 stable on an E6600 is nothing to scoff at! Shame it couldn't clocks quads for squat tho, even the A1 revision which had the GTL reference modification (the only difference afaik) which was supposed to help with quad core overclocking.

They are buggy sure, show me a mobo that has no problems. The memory overvolts, the vcore drops and droops (easily fixed with a pencil mod). The major problem with the boards reputation is that alot of novice overclockers bought it in the hope for an easy overclock, regardless of what cpu/memory/cooling they had and when they couldn't reach the hoped for levels it was all too easy to brush it off as a poor board by jumping on the 'I hate 680i' bandwagon. Half the forums who give it a bad name also use Ntune as the primary means of overclocking which just goes to show the level of enthusiast we are dealing with here tbh.

I know I would happily use one again for dual core but would deffo give it a miss for quad core.

you improve that and generally the board is alot more reliable.

imho 780i is a rip off, unless you need 3 way SLI get 680i and save 100quid

The 680i is limited by its cpu selection and many problems with things like raid and i beleive even the memory controller burning out? Silly things which plague it.

The 780i doesn't follow in its foot steps down it? been out the loop, trying to catch up on all the info lol.

Asus are getting aound the Intels " must have Vdrop/Vdroop" though.

They add " Loadline Calibration " on top mobos, its up to the end user if they enable it or not.

i agree with you to a certain extent about 680i in general, i still have an original reference 680i like you which i'm about to put to use as my media server.

i've always had good clocks from it, equal to my p5k-dlx with dual cores and generally very reliable.

poor vreg and nb cooling is the killer on 680i.

the biggest problem the vanilla 680i boards had was a massive vdimm overvolt and of course loads of newbs blew plenty of sets of sticks like you have said because it got a fast reputation for high memory overclocks, so they wanted to oblige w.out having any regard for ddr2 voltage limits and killed sticks left right and centre.

can't agree with you about all asus boards though, the maximus has less than .01 vdroop under load and is the most stable board i've used for ages.

fair enough.

AFAIK, Intel make Vendors do that for safety reasons, Im not 100% sure on it though.

You aint making any sence.

All Asus Mobos I owned from 2001 till recently on AMD's CPU's all overvolt, it is ONLY Intel that make them build Vdrop/Vdroop into the Mobos/Bios, same for any Mobo running an Intel CPU.

2.4v is on the limit of any Memory, the story was the Memory was being overvolted not sure if true.

Every 680 mobo aint bad, some get lucky, some get better mated Heatpipes, better Silicon etc etc.

Overall though they have a bad rap and thats freely available to read on any major forums, myself and a few others here will class them as POS and advise anyone not to buy one who asks about them.

I do not want anyhow to have to go through crap with a mobo.

What i'm trying to say is that no motherboard is perfect, They all have their ups and downs. The Asus boards do clock well but they have bad vdroop and are very fussy about memory.

It's only in the last year or so that they have allowed a higher scale of voltages in their bios', Before you were limited to the max safe amount.

The 680i isn't as bad as your making out, You have probably heard 50 bad comments from people who either got a bad motherboard or just didn't know what to do.

Remember the guy who kept frying his memory with 2.4v+ and just kept sticking more in till it fried again. Then all the rumours started that the eVGA 680i kills your memory?

It's noobs like him and people that believe his word as gospel which give the 680i it's bad rep.

I still have a first revision board and havn't had a single problem, I can't be the only one.


(I don't know why i'm typing this, Just bored sitting in on a Saturday night lol )

eh?

Because I wanted to give it a try, both can be returned, Striker E has dead NIC since new and all same bugs as others, I can legitly RMA it.

Least I have tried both, you cant comment fully unless you have and if you dont know the 680 is overall a POS, you aint done much reading as forums are full of peeps with issues, mostly all the same as each other.

I think your talkng a bit on nonsence there, Asus NF2/3/4 Chipsets were fine from Nvidia for AMD and also Intel, it has nothing to do with Asus in the fact thats the Nforce 5/6/7 dont perform aswell as others. (5 was not that bad though).

I may end up on a X48, not sure as my 3D/Game performance aint right on this Mobo, may be to do with that PCI-E 2.0 Bridge Chip no clue.

Someone here got a gain over his older hardware at lower CPU/GPU clocks, well I did once while running 3DMARK06 but then it wandered from 7000-13000, instead of my normal 14500 or that 1 time only 15100 (all Vista64 scores lower than XP), games that normally run 60-80FPS drop to 20FPS at times.

Asus told me to redo the TIM on Pipes, that helped but something aint right yet, could be not sitting right flush as needing bent or such or just a buggy Mobo.

The 680i is not a POS, well not my EVGA A1. It may have a few annoying things about it, but once it works it's a really nice board. I know not everyone has had a good experience with them, but it doesn't mean to say that to everyone it's a POS.

Go for the 780i, since it supports the newer CPUs.

Most are crap, I have already stated the Rev was no more than a few changes to items on the PCB for running Quads (infact you can do it yourself if you can solder"

You either got lucky or dont clock.

I was getting at " steveo's " "LOL's".

I aint even sure I want this 780I yet, Ive done what Asus said and its bit better but still weird at times.

I bought a Striker Extreme no where near launch, it had the revision to the heatpipes and still was buggy crap, its the same Chipsets on all the Mobos, nothing was changed.

So your bought the Striker Extreme which you thought was a POS then you bought a Stricker Extreme II. Why? Thats like buying a Geforce FX5800, finding out it sucks and buying an FX5900. Asus motherboards with Nvidia chipsets will always suck.
Even most of the Intel chipset boards have terrible problems with voltages and what not.

I've only ever owned one Asus motherboard though lol Asus CUV4X-D (dual PIII)

All 680's are POS, the Revisions makes no real diff only a few SMD's on the PCB changed for running Quads better.

They are buggy but some get a good Mobo but most get what you read about on countless forums = POS.

The EVGA is simply a Nvidia Ref Mobo even the bios, same as XFX.

lol at some of the posts here yes the early 680s where pretty bad thats why they released new revisions i current have a a1 revision of the evga 680 and its a bloody great piece of kit, had a asus p5k premium before this and i had to rma it back and that was a POS just had nothing but problems with it glad i went with the evga

at this stage avoid 680i its old tech, the new 780i seems to be a lot better, as for 790i it is a ddr3 board which wont be out for a while plus ddr3 is very expensive at the minute

How do you work that out ?.

The 780 is DDR2 and the 790 is to be DDR3, there is a Manual for the Striker II Extreme on the Asus site inc Photos and its DDR3.

I think a 790 DDR2 will appear same as the current X48 DDR2 on preorder from Asus, DDR3 is still to £££.

I thought that only some of the 790i mobos are using DDR3? Seems stupid for NVIDA to use only DDR3 when DDR2 is still the dominate ram being used today.

Advise you do some reading, the 680I is a POS.

I advise you do not touch it esp Striker Extreme's.

780i is the better platform, avoid 680i

Hi,

I don't know that much about the 680i compared to the 780i, but on the Inquirer the 790i seems to make the 780i seem pointless.

Sorry but that's the limit of my knowledge, I'd have to just advise research and look for reviews from real people, not just review sites

Regards,

Banjo

680i are horrendous boards... if you get lucky and get a good clocking stable board they are amazing - very featured, very fast... however for 9/10 people they will be unstable, prone to bricking themselves with various random errors and very fiddly to get working...

I have owned and had 1 or more replacements for both the P5N32-E SLI and the Striker version of that board - I've also had hands on experience with the EVGA 680i - more than one of my friends have bought them and regretted it.

The only 6 series board that seems any good is the Gigabyte N650i SLI DS4L and unfortunatly thats only dual x8 PCI-e in SLI mode and support for new 45nm CPUs is undecided...