Bad Axe 2 or eVGA 680i?

this is like the question of the month or something hehe..

well if you want stable and good OCing go with bad axe 2, if you want SLI istead of crossfire go with 680i. It's a good chip set for th most part and pretty OCable, it's just been plagued with driver issus that nVidia has yet to rectify.
 
I was in the exact same boat a couple weeks ago.
I wanted to build a new gaming system based around the 680i chipset and 8800 GTS's
in SLI, but after all the research I went with a Bad Axe 2 and a single 8800 GTX.
It's frankly the best motherboard I have ever owned. The one thing I was pleasantly
surpised with was the onboard sound. It is top notch. It sounds fantastic through the
digital out to my Logitech 5450's. Threw a Zalman 9700 on it with no isses either.
Good luck with your choice.
 
ctruman said:
it's just been plagued with driver issus that nVidia has yet to rectify.
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Could you elaborate on what these driver issues are please? I have the same question as the OT so I'm trying to get all the info I can.

I won't be doing any overclocking, either.
 
check the evga forums. I have the BX2 and with no SLI I see no reason not to go intel on intel.
 
I had to go with a BadAxe2 after having 0 luck with two 680i boards.

What are you guys using to monitor badaxe2 stuff, speedfan doesn't work :(
 
Well, they had a sound issue but a fix was issued supposedly. I been hearing talk of G80 SLI driver issues as well but havent really payed it much attention since I dont have a G80 card nor do I have SLI. But, yeah I have seen posts talking about these so called driver issues. XS and AT both have threads about it. Not sure if there's a thread about it here on HF or not.
 
I wanted to build a new gaming system based around the 680i chipset and 8800 GTS's in SLI, but after all the research I went with a Bad Axe 2 and a single 8800 GTX
Click to expand...
yep pretty much what i did after I did my research..no point in to SLI if something comes around in a couple years to over power the GTX, then might as well jsut upgrade..and yeah threw in a zalman 9500 and a north bridge heat sink and intel on intel was the way to go..

The one thing I was pleasantly surpised with was the onboard sound
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yep intel high def audio even has S/PDIF outputs..i still went with an auzentech card..

driver issues so far, funny i can't reall put any one finger on it. I've been looking for some of the links i had to them but they to have given me the slip. Just from memory some people where having problems with forceware drivers, slow choppy performance in game and on desktop with SLI cards. Noisy and squeky fans and voltage problems were on a list some where to, nVidia and evga assured it was not hardware based issues and driver based. Now i'm not putting the board down or anything, just right now the BX 2 seems to be a little more stable
 
i dont recall any driver issues. there were sata problems, and sound problems but the last couple bios releases fixed these. except for the p5w-dh, the evga 680i is the best board i've had in years.
 
i dont recall any driver issues. there were sata problems, and sound problems but the last couple bios releases fixed these. except for the p5w-dh, the evga 680i is the best board i've had in years.
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that being why this question is being asked over and over on many forums, both boards get the same saying beat baord they've had in years.

and it's not like i have beef with the board just saying what i read/heard, weither it be rumor or fact.
 
EVGA 680i: I've heard good stuff about it.

My 680i arrives Wednesday. Drop me a PM if you have any questions.
 
i have had the evga 680i for the past couple of weeks now... no problems here.. i put this board up with my former DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR board.... they are both very good boards and this 680i board is very stable... my e6600 is oced to 3.4ghz right now.. stable 12 hours+ orothos blend... i got it up to 3.6ghz with no problems but heat was an issue..... and i believe some reviews show the evga 680i getting 1 or 2 more frames in games....
 
the evga issues are in the past for the vast majority of people. these are reference boards and nvidia jumped right on the problems and go them fixed, toot sweet. some of the newer i680, non-ref boards are having problems, the abit in9, asus striker for example. you clould do a lot worse than the evga.
 
Unless you're really into overclocking, for overclocking's sake, why would you ever consider the 680i? The Nvidia board provides awesome flexibility and specs but is on its first rev and, as should be expected, has issues. The Intel board is well proven, stable, overclocks reasonably well, and is ~$50 less expensive.

I think the 2nd release of the 680i silicon (and the associated MBs) should be worthy of broad consideration, but for now most people should stick with Intel.

Oh, BTW, I own both.
 
MajorGN said:
What about the ASUS Striker?

Has some amazin reviews.
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And some poor ones to be fair ;)...but I guess it's that way with every board.

Personally, I'd get the BX2 out of the two boards listed in the OP. Nothing against the SLI chipset. I've used Nvidia chipsets ever since NF1. Honestly, I haven't heard anything bad about the BX2 board (maybe I'm not looking hard enough...most of the problems are small). The eVGA is more of a mixed bag. Some people love them, and some hate them. Maybe some quality control issues? Who knows.
 
If you want SLI, go with the 680i. If you don't want SLI, then go with a board based on an Intel chipset.
 
eljeffe said:
The Intel board is well proven, stable, overclocks reasonably well, and is ~$50 less expensive.
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Can you show me where? Cause if you look at the 2 links at the top of this thread they are basically the same price ~$250ish
 
MajorGN said:
What about the ASUS Striker?

Has some amazin reviews.
Click to expand...

I own an ASUS Striker Extreme and use it in my main machine. I'll be the first to tell you that it isn't worth the price premium. It's a good board, but there is little that is special about it aside from a little extra bling.
 
In the hot deals section there is a BX2 going for $175 or so from Microcenter.
 
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