NVIDIA 790i SLI Data Corruption - Solved?
by Gary Key on June 5, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
We reported a few weeks ago on possible data corruption when overclocking the 790i SLI boards from EVGA and ASUS. As it turns out, we were not the only ones having this problem as users in various forums started or had already experienced this problem. Our problems were not always repeatable, but it occurred enough times while overclocking either board that we considered this a rather serious issue.
NIVIDIA has worked diligently the past few weeks to solve this problem and just recently released new BIOS code for the suppliers of the 790i SLI product. The updated BIOS code can be located at each suppliers website. We have throughly tested the P05 BIOS for the EVGA board and the 0704 BIOS from ASUS the last several days. We are glad to report that our problems with data corruption while overclocking are solved. The majority of our problems occurred with the FSB bus set around 1600~1800 (QDR) and memory set to Sync. We have tested other combinations in this range along with various voltage settings and so far we have not corrupted our drives again.
However, we are still seeing reports on other forums with users having problems with the updated BIOS code. If you are one of the unlucky souls with this continuing problem then we would like for you to email us ( gary.key@anandtech.com ) with your configuration and settings. We will try to replicate your problem, but more importantly we will continue to work with NVIDIA to solve any remaining issues with this chipset in regards to data corruption.
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Nfarce - Monday, June 9, 2008 - link
"I've never seen a product with a stated guaranteed OC."You keep missing the point homie. Other chipsets have had no problems with overclocking, even when "Extreme" versions cater to the HARD CORE overclocker market. Again, as someone else stated, we are not talking about someone trying to hit five freaking GHz. This is basic stuff, and CLEARLY nVidia, of which I am a strict GPU fanboi of, fails to measure up in the $300+ "Extreme" overclocking motherboard market.
I'm glad like hell I held off on going with a 790i. I'm going to get an x48 and just suck up going with a single 9800 GX2. Good enough for me for zero headaches.
warezme - Monday, June 9, 2008 - link
your darn right they are complaining, these folks are paying a premium for boards clearly advertised as top of the line overclocking and feature laden. If they weren't interested in overclocking they would buy any old cheap board and be done with it. They expect to get what they pay for.DoctorDeath - Sunday, June 8, 2008 - link
I have owned my 790i since it frist came out and have not had any problems with this board at all. Maybe i am one of the lucky ones that got a good board. i am running a QX9650 @4Ghz 6Gbs of OCZ 1600Mhz and two 9800GX2s which will be changed to two GTX280s some time next week. There will always be problems wirh new tech, its just not nVidia that this happens to, if you belive that your lieing to yourself.JonnyDough - Sunday, June 8, 2008 - link
It seems that mediashield isn't working on my nForce 4 AMD SLI board for some reason, it's like it's not even there. The latest drivers seem to be buggy. Me thinks someone at NV is messing with the software, who either shouldn't be, or shouldn't be. It's like they're sabotaging it... That same board had the raid array drop out, twice after seeming to work fine for awhile. Everyone seems to be reporting problems lately, is something amiss?Grandpa - Saturday, June 7, 2008 - link
After reading these disturbing comments about data corruption I'm glad I stuck with the x38 board. It was a very difficult decision. I read and read user comments about motherboards before my decision. But there was one comment about data corruption that reminded me of a problem I had with a previous motherboard made by ABIT with a VIA chipset. Every new BIOS revision they came out with to fix the corruption problem slowed the motherboard down. After several bios updates it still corrupted and was slow. I questioned MY ability to build computers but built another one anyway. It turned out great. I learned quite a bit from the experience. Research the parts, be conservative, and don't believe professional reviews.Racky - Saturday, June 7, 2008 - link
As the 780i chipset was basically a minor update to the old 680i, I actually thought that Nvidia would have fixed its issues by now. How wrong was I? Well I have a two 8800GTXs and 4 raptors in a machine which I CAN NOT trust. Even at stock speeds the chipset is unstable!To make matters worst I bought a Asus Striker Formula... So BIOS fixes and support are just wishful thinking.
Lessons learned:
1) SLI is just not worth the hassle of Nvidia chipsets. (ATI all the way from now on)
2) Asus make great boards, but if it's a bad one don't expect help.
3) Buying a premium board does not mean premium service or quality.
4) Read the forums more, I could have saved myself this trouble.
FITCamaro - Sunday, June 8, 2008 - link
I recently got an EVGA 680i board to run two 8800GTS 512s in SLI. I guess all the kinks in the 680i were worked out cause its run nearly flawlessy. I got one blue screen yesterday (Vista x64 Business), didn't see what from but looking at the system logs, it might have been something to do with a background task that always runs from Visual Studio 2005. Was playing Age of Conan.I haven't overclocked at all yet. Really haven't needed to.
mazzy80 - Saturday, June 7, 2008 - link
The Nvidia boards are the most expensive out, there're some cheap server board that cost less. Every new chipset have corruption issue, every. How can you trust them still ? Corrupt HDs is way a too big issue.. you lost your data, your documents, your images for what ?... only to run SLI ? Go to hell...I wish that Intel hardball to Nvidia heavy about SLI, no SLI no Nehalem license at all, so you chipset business will just die or move to second rate market AMD where you can simply forget about sell your board to $350-400 board with sub par CPUs...
tayhimself - Monday, June 9, 2008 - link
While your english sucks, I think you make a very good point. I don't trust nvidia for chipsets anymore either. Won't look to AMD/Nvidia ever again unless Intel screws up big time.akidd - Friday, June 6, 2008 - link
Is it possible this problem could also effect the 9800GX2?In stressing my new system, with this 790i EVGA board (It is an Alienware system though) if I just leave a very complicated scene on display for a few hours I start getting texture flickering and other issues that can eventually cause a lockup. When playing I have only seen it one time. As long as I am "moving" I don't see the issue. Restarting the game fixes the issue immediately
(A good place to see this is the first beach you get to with enemies, a little shack and a pier. Stand at the pier and you get a lot of rendered horizon, crabs moving all over, water, clouds, jets, etc. Just leave it there and the problem will occur after a "long" time (sometimes an hour or so, sometimes more) Heat is under 70C on both GPUs so it isn't heat (as measured by hwmonitor, max never gets over 70C while doing this)
I am using GeForce Release 175 WHQL drivers. I have a "beta bios" from alienware that has a filename EVGA_790I_P04.zip