Well I have had two experiences. One with the 680i and it went a little something like this..
Firstly my E4500 was clearly documented at doing 3.2ghz. Which when you consider it's a 2.4ghz stock is at least what you could expect from any core 2 duo. I tried that on an MSI (little red one) and got it stable @ 3ghz. Problem was I needed 1066 ram to take it higher and didn't have any.
So I put it in the EVGA and stuffed the bus to 380mhz with the ram split and divided. It went to 2805mhz on the EVGA but that was it. I tried to push the FSB higher but then read that EVGA had a brick wall of about 385 and there was no getting over it. The most I could get was 2.9ghz but my CPU was really hot (and this was with the dual fanned Noctua NH92 on).
So I wound it back to 2.8 and left it there because at that time I had 6 SATA drives and needed to use all of them. That was the ONLY reason I did so.
Then a few months later I thought about upgrading my CPU. I mean, that's not too much to ask with a £350 motherboard is it? I then came to find out that my board was a Rev A and did not support 45nm quad core. So, I was left with either the E8400 (which wouldn't overclock as it should)or the Q6600.
E8400 was £120, Q6600 was £150. At a time when I could get a 3ghz 940 45nm for £120 that was far faster and cooler than the Q6600. I poked into it some more and it seems my board would support a QX6700 but all that was was a better die Q6600 with an unlocked MP, for £400. Haha ! yeah right !.
So that's when I decided the EVGA had to go. Oh, BTW, I did email their CS to see if there was anything I could do about it but they didn't even bother to reply. I emailed them three times and in the end I gave up.
So I sold it for £70 with the E4500 on because I felt bad and didn't want to rip off a mate.
And then there was my mate's 790i experience, which quite frankly was
disgusting.
$450. Yes, you saw that right, $450 for nothing but a pile of BSODS. The poor bastard bought it on release (waited months for it, saved for ages) and right out of the box it was BSOD like mad. It took him three days of continually trying to install Vista OVER AND OVER before it finally stayed stable for long enough to get Vista on. Now I said back it so he phoned EVGA (who deal with all of this). They said it was his ram. Infact, they blamed it on everything BUT THE BOARD. So after many hours on the phone and setting up his ram (why doesn't the bios do it?) it was finally almost sort of somewhat stable. It still treated him to BSODS on a daily basis though.
About a year later (because he never bought a GPU because the machine was just too unreliable) I said that maybe now that it had been out for a bit we should try and get it stable. I dug around and found a bios for it that supposedly sorted all the ram issues. Wicked ! Tried to install it and got -
Sorry, the serial numbers do not match. Setup will now close, please remove all discs from the drives and reboot your machine. Setup will reboot in 10 seconds.
Eh? WTF? So we tried again. And again, with numerous bioses (there were no less than 12 by this stage) and every single one, even 1.1 said the same thing. Now *I* was at the point of forcing the bios on, but it's a good thing in hindsight I didn't.
I went off to EVGAs forums and asked in the bios release thread (posted by them) why this was happening. No response. Then three other people all had the same problem so they posted the same. No response. In the end I phoned EVGA personally (at international rates) and asked them what the fudge was going on.
And you will never, ever in a million years guess what they said !
We are sorry to tell you this, but that board is a Rev A board. There were numerous problems with this and so we ended up replacing them.
Ah cool ! so my mate can get a nice spangly Rev B !..
We are sorry to inform you but your friend's board is no longer in warranty or supported, have a nice day.
But hang on a moment, every time he called you blagged him and told loads of lies..
So there. That's the two experiences I have had with EVGA, and both are utterly attrocious. The second one though? well, how I ever posted all of that without a single curse word is nothing short of a miracle.
