** OFFICIAL ** Intel DX38BT & DX48BT2 BoneTrail Thread

[xMrBunglex]

i'm 100% with you on that Steveo. i didn't dig as deep as you, but i noticed that the CD driver has a higher number and claims to be newer, but the 1010 version on the website appeared to be the one i wanted. it took me a month to figure that out. my last install of Windows was using the CD version (1016) and it wasn't stable. i started getting frequent (almost daily) crashes and reboots for no apparent reason. i think it took anywhere between two and four weeks for the problems to begin to manifest.

now i'm on a fresh install. i reformatted and reinstalled yesterday and i'm running 1010. i still don't trust this board any farther than i can throw it. Internet Explorer locked up me tonight and i just about bought a Gigabyte or Asus. i'll stick with it though, and let you guys know if it starts crashing again in the coming days/weeks.

and good work, Steve. thank you for posting that info. i've been pulling my hair out trying to figure why i'm 100% stable in Orthos and Memtest and this crap keeps happening.

[Randy]

i'm 100% with you on that Steveo. i didn't dig as deep as you, but i noticed that the CD driver has a higher number and claims to be newer, but the 1010 version on the website appeared to be the one i wanted. it took me a month to figure that out. my last install of Windows was using the CD version (1016) and it wasn't stable. i started getting frequent (almost daily) crashes and reboots for no apparent reason. i think it took anywhere between two and four weeks for the problems to begin to manifest.

now i'm on a fresh install. i reformatted and reinstalled yesterday and i'm running 1010. i still don't trust this board any farther than i can throw it. Internet Explorer locked up me tonight and i just about bought a Gigabyte or Asus. i'll stick with it though, and let you guys know if it starts crashing again in the coming days/weeks.

and good work, Steve. thank you for posting that info. i've been pulling my hair out trying to figure why i'm 100% stable in Orthos and Memtest and this crap keeps happening.

If the reboots aren't accompanied by a BSOD, don't you think it leans toward being some hardware item just failing ? I mean, in my years of working in repair, the PSU or memory has been the problem in the majority of random reboot situations. But replacing those items doesn't seem to resolve the issues here.

Has Intel ever recommended a brand/model of memory for this board ?

[Manel]

Back again
Mr Steveo, I had also noticed the different versions available, although only the CD and download versions. I installed the CD one, although not too convinced, because it was the higher version but the dates issue puzzled me also. Anyone contacted Intel regarding this issue yet?
Funny, when in regedit I can see 2 lines with:
InfVer: 8.3.1
Version: 8.4.0.1016
This in fact confirms 8.4 although InfVer says 8.3.1.
Regarding stability, I can't say it's unstable but not oc'ing yet, haven't had much time to test the rig yet anyway. Been installing everything as I can so now testing begins...
I have some issues with the sound though. I hear some weird noises from the speakers whenever a sound starts to play, kind of crackling, have to dig deeper into it. Man, remindes me of old Audigy PCI issue!!
Also, xMrBunglex, how did you get the Dolby tab in your audio drivers? I have the latest driver v5713.6 for Vista HP 32 and I have no such option. I did install the Dolby Home Theater Control Center, but it's a different application, stays in the tray and only let's you select 5.1 speakers in my case and to enable Prologic II. The IDT drivers, as shown in your screenshots before, have no Dolby tab.
The IDT Audio interface is ugly as hell. Also, and it's p... me off, is the fact that it automatically chooses the display language, according to the control panel language settings, specifically the current format. I had to set it to english instead of portuguese so that I could have it display all text in english (I prefer having everything in english instead of localised). I have to try in the config file to comment out the language section and see if it works, anyone tried yet? Intel Audio Studio is not included they say, what is exactly this IAS?
Randy, Intel, as far as I can tell, has no tested/recommended memory to run with this board. I asked support, they always redirect you to memory specifications, but no memory tested available.
Kingston has had they KVR tested and it works fine. Wrong info, just went to their mem page and they have finally added a table with vendor (not Intel) tested mem.
Link: http://www.intel.com/support/motherb.../CS-028330.htm
Funny, Elpida seens to have a compatible module and I can't get my Elpida based OCZ Platinum to boot without using other module to set voltage to 1.8V first. Maybe based on different chips.
1513 is out but nothing really new for the time they took to release it. I guess they are busy now with the DX48BT2.

[Manel]

Another issue that might be related to INF files I noticed: my SATA ports in Device Manager show up as being ATA ports in IDE/ATAPI controllers, using ultra DMA modes and IDE channels. My HD and DVD are SATA, I have the PATA controller disabled in BIOS so this sounds strange to me. Is this normal, you guys have it this way also?

[Randy]

Another issue that might be related to INF files I noticed: my SATA ports in Device Manager show up as being ATA ports in IDE/ATAPI controllers, using ultra DMA modes and IDE channels. My HD and DVD are SATA, I have the PATA controller disabled in BIOS so this sounds strange to me. Is this normal, you guys have it this way also?

I have an all SATA configuration.
-2 150GB SATA WD Raptors in RAID 0
-1 250GB Maxtor SATA
-2 Plextor 810 DVDRW SATA

The IDE Controller is disabled. I am using the chipset drivers that are currently available at Intel, as well as the 1507 bios.

Here is what mine looks like:

[xMrBunglex]

Manel, i just installed the 5762_5713_v68 audio driver from the website and it had the Dolby panel in it.i didn't do anything special.

Randy, i agree with you that my power supply or memory would be the likely culprits, but that doesn't seem to be the case. the PSU works fine on my other motherboard and i use my sound card in my other mobo, so the power draw should be at least as high. as far as the memory is concerned, i don't know what else i can do to test it beyond Memtest and Orthos. i've run both tests for long periods of time with no errors. i appear to be fine this time, aside from last night's hiccup. i really want this to work.

[xMrBunglex]

i really like the IDCC. i haven't tried to use it to change my overclock, but it's a beautiful program that has the basic features i demand. i ran yet another stability test with no errors... again. all my hardware appears to be tip top. i'll be going back up to 450 FSB in a week assuming i'm still stable with no issues. and i can't believe how cool the north bridge and memory run. check my screenshot - 30° ambient temperature.

LINK

[Manel]

Randy

Thanks for checking. Here's what mine looks like, see attach.
Regarding the sound issue, I sort of figured out the crackling problem, it only happens when I set 48kHz sample rate in the sound format in sound properties->advanced, no matter what bit rate. Now I have it at 44100Hz and it's ok.

Mr xBunglex
Regarding Dolby tab, well I guess I have to install it once again and see if it appears. It never showed in mine. See attach.

[Randy]

Randy

Thanks for checking. Here's what mine looks like, see attach.
Regarding the sound issue, I sort of figured out the crackling problem, it only happens when I set 48kHz sample rate in the sound format in sound properties->advanced, no matter what bit rate. Now I have it at 44100Hz and it's ok.

Mr xBunglex
Regarding Dolby tab, well I guess I have to install it once again and see if it appears. It never showed in mine. See attach.

What's under Storage Controllers ?

[xMrBunglex]

What's under Storage Controllers ?

strange. i checked the driver for my SATA RAID Controller and it still had the July, 2007 driver. i told Windows to automatically update the driver and it installed 7.8.0.1012 dated 9/29/2007. then i tried to manually install the latest 8.3.1.1010 driver by creating a shortcut for the installation program and adding the "-overall" tag to the command line, and i still have 7.8.0.1012. which version of the driver should i have for my RAID controller?

[s0lid]

New bios: 1521

E: Flashed it,
Results:
Waayyy more mem timing settings in bios

[xMrBunglex]

i wonder what they mean by "updated support for DDR3 1600 memory." at any rate, that's the kind of memory i have. i'll be trying this BIOS out.

[xMrBunglex]

my computer rebooted on its own last night while i was playing CoD4 again and i decided to bite the bullet and buy a Corsair 750 Watt power supply. my only concern is that my Zalman PSU is only a year old and should have more than enough power to run this system - it has a combined 64 Amps on four +12V rails and 600 total Watts. i don't like the idea of spending money to replace a part that i'm not certain is bad. i know my CPU and video cards are good because they worked fine on my old Asus P5W Deluxe motherboard. my RAM has passed all synthetic tests i've run with no errors.

i'm just worried that i'll buy this expensive new power supply and my problem will continue. does anyone else have a high end CrossFire system with this motherboard? does anyone think it's possible that the motherboard's voltage regulators or caps are struggling under this load? all my specs are in my sig. if anyone can think of anything else that would be causing my reboots, please speak up before i drop more cash into this stupid box.

i've gotten no BSOD's or error messages of any kind. the computer simply reboots as if i had hit the reset button. according to Everest and IDCC, none of my temps are anywhere near their threshold. all my heatsinks are cool to the touch under load as well. the only thing in my sig that isn't accurate is the speed - i have the CPU running at 400*9 and the memory at DDR 1600 @ 7-7-7-18 2T until i get this sorted out.

[Forsaken1]

xMrBunglex,
4pin molex plugged into mobo?Have to ask.Had 2 2900xt on this board for a week or so.Never had reboot issue,during that week about the only game i played was 3dmark .Scores were off .Was running dual psu at that time.If you have a spare psu,maybe try running two psu to check.

[Randy]

Update on 1517 bios. I flashed and my RAID array became corrupt. Make sure you have your critical files backed up before playing with this one. Could be fluke, but too much of a coincidence to not mention.

[xMrBunglex]

did you enter the BIOS after the flash to make sure RAID was still enabled? i've heard you can corrupt your RAID data if you try to enter Windows without having RAID set in the BIOS.

my OS and much of my data is on a RAID-0 array, so i think i'll hold off on the new BIOS until i hear from a few other gineau pigs

[xMrBunglex]

sorry for spamming this thread so much. i'm going to hold off on a new PSU purchase because i still think my problems might be caused by software. i checked the Windows Event Viewer and saw some error messages pointing towards the IDCC, so i uninstalled that and rebooted (i was running the latest Beta).

then i left it running for a while, checked the Event Viewer again, and found this mysterious error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date: 3/23/2008
Time: 1:04:14 AM
User: N/A
Computer: BUNGLEMOD
Description:
The IOCBIOS service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the path specified.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

IOCBIOS? Google turns up nothing. i don't know what it is, but it certainly sounds like it could be part of the IDCC. maybe the uninstall missed something. i'm a hardware junkie, not a software guy, but i'm still trying to nail this down. Intel software would explain why my problems started when i got this motherboard and why i'm rebooting even though all my hardware appears to work perfectly.

[Randy]

Another update on the 1521 bios. I cannot roll back the bios at this point. Even the emergency recovery does not work. I have tried about every option/combination to get it to roll back and it is stuck.

Well,
at this point I am pretty dissapointed with this board and Intel. Seems like whenever I have come across a bad board it has been really bad. This one was pretty close to perfection(at times), but there must some some fundamental issues with this chipset. Being that Intel has released multiple bios updates twice within 5 day periods, they look like they are in trouble here. With summer on the way here in Michigan it looks like it's part out time, as I don't get much time to play with my own machines and I'll really take it up the rear on value if I wait until fall to upgrade. I may pick up an old Badaxe to get me by or throw a quad core Phenom together just to see what AMD has been up to lately.

[gtj]

1521 BIOS: I had to boot to maint mode and reset BIOS defaults to get a successful boot. No issues with my RAID 0 or RAID 10 arrays.

@xMrBunglex: What are your vFSB and vMCH set to? Try increasing your vMCH a notch or 2 and see if that helps with the reboots.

[xMrBunglex]

i'm a trooper! i'm gonna work through this. i'm pretty sure all my volts are higher than they need to do because i haven't reached the voltage reduction stage in my overclocking yet. i think my vFSB is 1.35 and my vMCH is 1.45.

[Manel]

Randy
Under Storage Controllers there's only Microsoft iSCSI Initiator, whatever that is for.
These disk controller issues is way weird.

S0lid
What new options do we have now for mem? New timings? I there the option to mess with tRD (performance level some call it) yet?

Seems I missed a lot these few last days. You guys speak of 1517 BIOS but I can't find it anywhere. After 1513 there's only 1521 the latest, even in the previous versions download page there's no mention to 1517, even in the release notes it's not mentioned. Where did you guys get it from?

[Forsaken1]

1521 bios is really bad .What a embarrassment for intel,as i put board back in box and wait for a real bios.

[Randy]

1521 BIOS: I had to boot to maint mode and reset BIOS defaults to get a successful boot. No issues with my RAID 0 or RAID 10 arrays.

@xMrBunglex: What are your vFSB and vMCH set to? Try increasing your vMCH a notch or 2 and see if that helps with the reboots.

I tried everything. Where did you machine hang, loading windows or before the bios ?

Just got done with another clean install here - couldn't leave the damned thing alone.

[gtj]

I tried everything. Where did you machine hang, loading windows or before the bios ?

Just got done with another clean install here - couldn't leave the damned thing alone.

After loading 1521 my board went into a repeating cycle of powering up for a split second, then powering off for a few seconds. It took maint mode and a load of defaults to break it out. I think it had to do with the new memory settings not being initialized correctly. Once I set defaults then re-set my OC settings, everything's fine.

[BadNizze]

Hi!

I´m thinking of bying this board but before I do I need to know if Intel fixed so Eist can be dissabled? Are ther any other major bug´s i need to know of. Will My STT ProdjectX work with the DX38T? This is not my first Intel rig but my first DDR3 Build.