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Can't Hear Jack

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:45:04 -0600

I finally took the plunge and built my own rig. Everything worked fine until I plugged my Boston Acoustic Digital BA735 speakers into my EVGA 680i motherboard’s onboard outputs: Nothing happened. I received no sound at all. I tried the same speakers with a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer card and got the same result: zilch. Am I missing something here?

—Rich M.

The BA735s can’t be used as digital speakers—at least not with your hardware. The Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer supports optical out, not coaxial digital audio. And your EVGA 680i also supports only optical SPDIF out. The Doctor believes that the BA735 speakers support only coax SPDIF in for its digital mode. You can’t run optical digital-out to a coaxial input.

Fortunately, the speakers have an analog port. You should buy a standard 1/8-inch cable and connect the analog-in port on your speakers to the green audio-out of your soundcard or motherboard.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

Daily News Brief: EVGA Responds to Gripes Over 680i's Broke Penryn Support

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:20:27 -0600

EVGA Offers 680i Upgrade Promotion

Enthusiasts who built their system around the 680i chipset were hit with a curveball after learning their boards would not play nice with Intel's 45nm Penryn quad-core processors (Yorkfield), but EVGA is stepping up to offer their customers an inexpensive consolation. As part of their 680i Motherboard Upgrade Promotion, for the next 59 days, those who registered their 122-CK-NF68-XX motherboards can opt to upgrade to the 780i 132-CK-NF78-XX for $89.99. The new iteration supports Yorkfield processors, PCI-E 2.0 and comes with a 3-way SLI bridge.

RIAA Says 'No' to Ripping CDs

After the Jammie Thomas verdict, the RIAA must feel as though they're on top of the world, and now it appears they're trying to make ripping CDs a punishable offense. In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA claims that "once the Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies." Does that mean ripping itself is unauthorized, or the act of putting the ripped files into a shared folder? Because of how the RIAA worded the supplemental brief, no one knows for sure. Stay tuned...

Apple Releases Slew of Patches

Apple has issued several security fixes to the Max OS X and Safari browser yesterday, with a staggering 31 updates going towards the OS. Both 10.4 and 10.5 (Tiger and Leopard) are affected, with fixes targeting a slew of exploits in everything from the Address Book component to iChat and more. The latest round of patches highlight the Mac's rise in popularity, marking the 35th and 36th security update of the year, compared to just 22 sets of patches in 2006.

DS Thrives, Nintendo Frowns on Bundles

In the wake of extremely high demand for the Wii console, Nintendo's DS handheld units have been selling like hotcakes, recording 1.5 million units moved in November. And according to Nintendo's president Reggie Fils-Aime, some retailers have even "voic[ed] concerns about DS inventory going into the holiday." Nintendo has some concerns of their own, namely the practice of retailers forcing expensive Wii bundles onto consumers hoping to pick up the friendly priced gaming console. Asked if Nintendo would threaten offending retailers with fewer shipments, Fils-Aime responded "we are simply making an observation and that reinforces our point quite nicely with retailers." Point taken.

Ruiz's Raise Raises Questions

It's no secret that AMD's found themselves in murky waters ever since Intel awoke from their long Netburst slumber, so it came as a surprise to learn that Hector Ruiz, AMD's CEO, would be receiving a raise. Or is he? According to AMD, it turns out a senior public relations staff member erred when confirming the story, and the reported raise was in reference to Ruiz's bump in salary during 2006 (from $950K to $1,124,000). So while Hector can't claim a big bump in salary, he can still claim to be the highest-paid CEO in semiconductors.

IE Update Blocks Internet

Microsoft's cumulative security update MS07-069, marked as critical, has caused some critical problems for some. Users around the web are complaining that the update breaks IE to the point of not being able to connect to the internet, which would be like installing airbags in your automobile only to find out the ignition no longer works. Affected browsers include both IE6 and IE7.

Daily News Brief: 680i Rejects Penryn?

Paul Lilly — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:13:06 -0600

680i Future-Proof?

The Inquirer reports that the 680i chipset lacks support for all 45nm processors, otherwise known as Penryn. A moderator on EVGA's forums states that a BIOS update will bring support for dual-core 45nm chips (Wolfdale), but those wanting a quad-core part (Yorkfield) will have to wait for the upcoming nForce 700 series. Do'h!

Asus Accused of Violating GPL

Asus recently released their Eee PC, an affordable $400 notebook, and initial sales figures showed strong demand, with one Taiwan TV shopping outlet selling a unit ever six seconds for the first 20 minutes. But the Eee PC has come under fire of late for potential violations of the GPL (General Public License). The dispute deals with a modified Linux kernel and Asus' failure to publish the modified source. Adding more flames to the fire, Asus could also be in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act over their decision to cover the SODIMM's access door with the warranty sticker that's forbidden to be tampered with.

Guitar Hero's Success Now Official

You'll know you've really hit it big time when the lawsuits start coming, as is the case with the immensely popular Guitar Hero. Seeking unspecified damages, 80's rock band The Romantics filed a suit against Activision Inc. claiming Guitar Hero features a sound-alike version of their 1980 hit "What I Like About You". They're also seeking an injunction that would pull Guitar Hero from store shelves. Bah humbug!

Virtual Navigation Coming to Second Life

Tired of fumbling with keyboard controls and being called a noob by Second Life Netizens? Japan feels your pain, and they're working on new technology that would allow you to navigate the virtual landscape by using your own body, or better yet, your brain waves! The system works by attaching electrodes to the gamer's scalp, which then senses activity in the brain's sensory-motor cortex, leaving software to translate the signals. But don't go throwing out your keyboard just yet; the developers said they have no immediate plans of commercializing the technology.

Data Loss Leads to Apology

After losing two computer discs containing personal data of 25 million people, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an apology. The sensitive data included names, addresses, national insurance numbers, and even bank account details. The loss occured when a junior Revenue and Customs official downloaded the data to two password protected discs and then sent them via internal mail, but the package never arrived, nor was it registered or recorded. Oops!

iPod Lawsuit Nets $10 Million

Entrenched in a patent lawsuit with Burst.com, Apple this week settled the case for $10 million, ending two years of litigation. In exchange, Apple will have access to some of Burst's patents, and Burst has agreed not to sue Apple over current or pending DVR patents. The dispute arose over patent infringement involving compressed audio and video files in iTunes, iLife, QuickTime, and the iPod. Aye caramba!

Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:03:17 -0500

Gigabyte cranks up the specsmanship for its GA-N680SLI-DQ6, which offers no fewer than 10 SATA ports and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. Yep. Four. What you’d ever need four Ethernet ports for, we don’t know.

The N680SLI-DQ6 also sports a honking heat pipe that actually wraps around to the back of the motherboard to a heatsink. Layout FUBARs are kept to a minimum, but some may squawk about the four SATA controllers on the bottom edge that could conflict with running SLI with double-wide cards.

One “feature” we will never understand, however, is Gigabyte’s insistence that it hide access to some critical system settings in the BIOS. You can’t set the RAM timing simply by going into the BIOS. You have to use the secret CTRL-F1 sequence that isn’t documented in the manual. Unless you’re Indiana Jones and you stumble on the secret you’ll never know it exists. Bah.

Using the same hardware setup we’ve utilized in our last five motherboard reviews, the Gigabyte was quite speedy in our benchmarks. In our synthetic memory tests, it squeaked past the MSI P6N SLI Platinum (reviewed in July) as well as the two other P35 boards we’ve tested (reviewed in August). The N680SLI-DQ6’s worst performance came in the hard drive section of PCMark05—it came in dead last in disk I/O. That’s odd since the 650i chipset in the MSI board sports pretty much the same SATA controller. The board also ran slower than the lesser nForce boards in our Valve Particle test. As we’ve noted, this test seems more sensitive to latency, which we didn’t expect to be a problem since the RAM was manually set for both of the boards. As with the MSI P35 board, a BIOS update may be needed, but overall, performance was quite good.

A Reason To Finally Use Vista

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:45:34 -0500

Owners of motherboards based on Nvidia’s reference design probably didn’t notice one feature tucked into the recent P29 BIOS update but it’s something big disk owners should take note of: support for partitions greater than 2TB.

But getting past 2TB isn’t just a BIOS update. To finally break past the 2TB limit, you’ll need Windows Vista and an additional drive to boot your system from. Why not use XP? To get beyond 2TB, you need to run a GPT or GUID Partition Table. XP does not support GPT and can’t even read or write to it. Windows Vista can, but it cannot boot into a GPT partition. So you’ll need an additional drive besides your array to get it to work.

To test out the functionality, we took four 1TB Hitachi Deskstar drives, an EVGA 680i SLI motherboard, a Western Digital Raptor drive and Windows Vista Ultimate to build our 4TB array.

First, we made sure our nForce board was updated to the latest BIOS. In this case, we actually used the P30 BIOS which was just released a few days ago. Besides also including the Release 9 RAID ROM, it includes a slew of other fixes and tweaks to the BIOS.

We first installed Windows Vista Ultimate on the Western Digital Raptor drive and left the other drives disconnected so as no to confuse the OS install process. We then downloaded and installed the latest nForce drivers and graphics drivers and powered down the system. We plugged the four Hitachi 1TB drives into the respective SATA ports, and booted the box. We then go into the BIOS and enable the RAID functionality. You’ll also need make sure you know which ports the Hitachi drives are on and only enable those ports in RAID. If you've already buttoned up your system, you may have to enable/disable the ports to be included in the RAID until only the Hitachi's are on it.

Now go into the RAID ROM and add the four Hitachi drives to your RAID and select whether you want RAID 0 or spanned. Save your changes and boot into Windows. From Windows, Go to Start and right mouse click on Computer and select Manage. Now select Storage and then Disk Management. It should ask you to initialize. Click yes, and when given the option, click the GPT option

Format the array and voila, you’ve got 4TB of space (well, it depends on how you define 1TB doesn’t it?) ready.

We ran two basic HD Tach tests in compatibility mode to see how the four 1TB Hitachi’s would do. With no redundancy, the 1TB drives gave up an average read speed of about 156MB/s – a little disappointing considering that two spindles wouldn’t be too far behind that. In spanned or JBOD, performance was an expected 74.5MB/s in reads.

Who’s Killing Your RAM?

Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:28:52 -0500

Getting ready to build that kickass Core 2 rig you’ve been lusting over? If so, chances are you’ve been eyeballing nVidia’s 680i chipset as a foundation, and with good reason. NVidia knows a thing or two about chipsets, just ask last generation’s legion of socket 939 adopters how they felt about their nForce4 X16 SLI based setups. Even I’m admittedly reluctant to fully retire my now aged MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum / 4400+ X2 rig. But alas, it’s a dead socket, and I too have considered pairing my sexy Core 2 processor with a 680i based motherboard capable of scorching through the benchmarks. But is that all it’s scorching through?

You won’t find this unappetizing entrée at your local bistro, nor would you want to, as it's been known to cause serious heartburn.

Users across the web are logging complaints of their RAM dying prematurely when paired with 680i based motherboards, particularly EVGA’s iteration. And this isn’t the cheap (read: generic) stuff either, but enthusiast level kits capable of high frequencies and rated up to 2.4V. The problem garnered so much attention that nVidia recently released a press report (posted on EVGA’s website that reads:

NVIDIA has investigated end user reports of high performance DIMM failures on the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI-based platforms. During this process we have been in close contact with DIMM manufacturers and the DRAM manufacturers they rely on to understand the failure scenario. By working with our community, we believe that the observed failure is a breakdown of the silicon in the DRAM caused by the prolonged application of 2.4V on the voltage rails of the DIMMs.

NVIDIA’s own internal testing has observed this failure on multiple motherboards using different chipsets (both NVIDIA and non-NVIDIA chipsets). This issue is not directly related to motherboards using the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP or other chipsets.

If you are using this type of memory and are experiencing this issue, NVIDIA recommends contacting your memory manufacturer or system manufacturer for additional information and warranty information.

Sounds like a typical PR response attempting to pass the responsibility buck, but are they on to something? JEDEC, the body that issues standards for RAM technology (among other things) still specs DDR2 for 1.8V, and while they’ve never been quick to approve advances in enthusiast oriented RAM, pumping 2.4V tends to makes chips awfully warm at high frequencies, regardless of the rating on the package. I’m reminded of the short lived OCZ VX and Mushkin Redline DDR kits that required high voltages (and active cooling) to reach their full potential, but ultimately ended up discontinued after repeated failures. If we’re to believe nVidia’s in-house testing, then welcome to DDR2 déjà vu. But Mike Clements (RAM Guy) from Corsair, one of the companies offering 2.4V kits, contends that they have not seen the same problem in their lab. So who’s right?

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. Rare exceptions aside, active cooling has never been a necessity for RAM. That could be changing, as high frequency, high voltage kits outgrow the cooling prowess of a typically air cooled chassis, particularly for those running two toasty videocards. At the same time, the 680i is still an immature chipset and could very well be choking on enthusiast kits. And if it’s providing more juice than what’s selected in the BIOS (not uncommon for motherboards of any chipset), that only compounds the problem.

What this all means is buyer beware. If you insist on pairing high frequency 2.4V DIMMs with a 680i based motherboard (or any motherboard, really), be sure your cooling is up to the task.

EVGA nForce 680i

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:49:20 -0600

Nvidia’s first attempt at playing motherboard maker (with its AMD AM2 boards) was good, but there was definitely room for improvement. With the 680i, Nvidia gives the mobo game another go, and dives even deeper. Not content to just design boards, Nvidia is now manufacturing them too. These boards are in turn sold through partners, such as the EVGA board reviewed here.

The EVGA 680i has all the features an enthusiast could ask for. It offers SLI with full x16 support. It includes the outbound packet-prioritizing hardware firewall, LAN teaming, and tons of RAID options. And Nvidia’s RAID controller lets you change ports on the board from SATA mode to RAID mode without borking your Windows install.

For being EVGA’s first 680i mobo, it’s pretty well thought out. SATA ports are properly placed so you can access them all even in an SLI setup. The chipset cooler runs in two modes: By default it uses a passive solution, but water-cooling enthusiasts can add the clip-on fan for more cooling performance.

Neither the board-mounted power or reset buttons are new features, nor is the POST LED, but we appreciate the presence of all three. The EVGA board’s documentation of POST codes is more thorough than most motherboards’, explaining most of the errors you’ll see should your system hang. Of course, we still prefer the plain-language boot errors that Asus uses on its Republic of Gamers boards.

Like Foxconn’s board, EVGA’s mobo features Realtek codecs, which have issues rendering EAX audio. We brought our concerns to Nvidia’s attention and the company is looking into the problem. In the meantime, we recommend that you buy a good soundcard if you buy this board.

To judge the performance of these three boards, we used the same hardware set for each and manually set the RAM timings. Generally, with the same CPU, similar RAM timings, and same graphics drivers, you don’t see much variation, even between different chipsets. And true enough, we found that while the nForce 680i board leads the pack, it doesn’t blow away the Asus and Foxconn boards.

By offering a combination of solid performance, SLI support, and the ability to run dual and quad cores, EVGA’s nForce 680i could be the ultimate Core 2 motherboard to have. Our only real concern is longevity. We count on mobo makers to offer BIOS updates for at least two years, but will EVGA and Nvidia have the attention span to push new BIOSes for this board in 18 months? We won’t know that until 2008.

Month Reviewed: January 2007
+ GREEN LANTERN:
- GREEN GIANT:
Verdict: 9
kickass=yes
URL: www.evga.com