Nvidia’s High-End Chipset Under Fire for Problems.

[Anusha]

Source: Xbitlabs

Enthusiasts Report Issues with Nvidia’s nForce 680i Serial ATA Controller

Nvidia Corp., a leading designer of graphics processor and core-logic sets, is about to face criticism from enthusiasts for the problems that occur with the company’s latest premium-class chipset. Apparently, the core-logic’s I/O controller has issues with Serial ATA and RAID (redundant array of independent disks) capabilities.

Users in several forums, particularly, in EVGA and Nvidia tech support forums, report about “lock up” and “disk error” issues with Serial ATA hard disk drives and RAID capabilities of the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI core-logic that sells for $120 per two chips alone. Some end users even cannot install Windows XP operating system, whereas others could not use their systems flawlessly for long.

Even though the majority of users have stable mainboards, the number of those, who purchased mainboards based on Nvidia nForce 680i chipset and now report instabilities seems to be significant and the problem – widespread. The issues do not seem to have relation to overclocking or Serial ATA working modes. In fact, users reported problems with RAID in case of previous-generation Nvidia nForce chipsets as well, but, perhaps, earlier the problems were not faced by a significant number of users.

Nvidia Corp.’s specialists confirmed in an interview with [H]ard|OCP web-site that the company was “aware of the nForce 680i SLI issue”, had been able to recreate it in their test labs and was working to fix this. However, the company states that this was “not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue”, which is strange, as drivers cannot affect installation procedures of Windows XP. Still, the company may resolve the issues by releasing certain firmware.

This is the third time that Nvidia faces scandals with its high-end hardware this year. Back in May it transpired that certain GeForce 7900-series graphics cards may become malfunction and in early November the company had to recall the yet-unreleased GeForce 8800 GTX graphics boards due to manufacturing flaw, nevertheless, some of such boards were then acquired by end-users.

This is bad!!! Very, very bad.

 

[dpg]

However, the company states that this was “not a hardware issue, but rather a driver issue”, which is strange, as drivers cannot affect installation procedures of Windows XP.

Heheheh!

 

[Anusha]

Heheheh!

Everyone blames others for their faults, doesn't they?

 

[Anusha]

Nvidia, EVGA Fix Problems with Latest High-End Core-Logic.

Source: Xbitlabs News

EVGA and Nvidia Releases Fix for Serial ATA Issues on nForce 680i

Nvidia Corp., a leading developer of graphics processors and system core-logic, as well as EVGA, a supplier of graphics cards and mainboards, have released a new BIOS version that is supposed to fix some of the problems that end-users reported to have with mainboards based on Nvidia’s latest high-end chipset.

“Nvidia would like to thank all of EVGA’s customers who have purchased the Nvidia-designed nForce 680i-based motherboards and who have patiently been waiting for a fix to the SATA issue,” a statement posted by Joe Darwin from EVGA company reads.

Users in several forums, particularly, in EVGA and Nvidia tech support forums, reported about “lock up” and “disk error” issues with Serial ATA hard disk drives and RAID capabilities of the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI core-logic. Some end users even could not install Windows XP operating system, whereas others could not use their systems flawlessly for long and some even report data corruption. The majority of customers, however, reported no problems.

“Together with EVGA we are testing a new BIOS that fixes the SATA issue that some readers were experiencing. In the meantime, we are releasing a beta version for you to use. If you feel that your BIOS needs to be updated, we will be posting a link to download the new BIOS and instructions how to flash your motherboard,” Mr. Darwin said.

The new BIOS version, according to an Nvidia spokesman Bryan Del Rizzo, should correct the issues with Nvidia-designed mainboards supplied by other companies, such as BFG Technologies, and produced by a contract manufacturer under Nvidia’s supervision. However, the companies did not reveal what was the source of the issues reported by end-users and also did not comment on reports of similar issues with previous-generation chipsets by Nvidia Corp. It was also unclear why some users of the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI-based motherboards had the problem and other did not.

Some users in EVGA forums still report about issues with Nvidia nForce 680i SLI-based mainboards, including problems with sound, issues with TCP/IP offload PS/2 keyboards and so on.