Official GIGABYTE X38-DQ6/X38T-DQ6 Info/BIOS Thread

[dominick32]

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT USE THE NEW GIGABYTE F4A bios on the DQ6T.

Multipliers and FSB are no longer adjustable. It forced me to boot at 6 X 333 - 2.0 GHz and 1333 mhz frequency. And I am stuck there.

I flashed back to F3i and everything is fine again.
I AM SO PISSED OFF WITH GIGABYTE RIGHT NOW

[E.R]

I AM SO PISSED OFF WITH GIGABYTE RIGHT NOW

You are not alone, i was pissed of until i trade X38.-Q6 for Maximus SE X38, and like magic i CAN ran my Flex XLC at stock and higher speeds with tighter timings and lower vdimm even counting in the overvoltage without any problems or even begining to tweak the performance.
DQ6 did not wanna do better than 550 on slightly looser timings then Maximus when using 4 dimms and at poor memorystrap along with poor memoryperformace i general on the X38-DQ6.

[Richard Dower]

My OS keeps crashing!....IRQ not less or equal to BS, it's not my drivers or my hardware. They all played fine with an early beta like F5g...F5i and up...all hell is breaking loose!

F6a is a total dud, GB did add one nice feature not in any previous final or beta bios, it shows "CPU Frequency 3400MHz 425x8"...it's a nice little addition under the M.I.T. section.

Can i also add something less i spotted, you know the Gigabyte splash logo screen that shows up (if you enable the option in bios)...well, thats also screwed up as it says hit F9 to enter QFlash...um hello!

This is like wrong!...it's supposed to read F8, yet another botched item within these bios.

Is anyone reporting these issues to Gigabyte?....Bingo, you've got some contacts, can you like pass this info onto the engineers or get someone to read this thread?

[Richard Dower]

Thats another thing i noticed, if you input say 2.2V on the memory the bios actually overvolts!...it's not massive over voltage but i would think when you enter a voltage it should be either bang on or a very minor fluctuation plus or minus.

[thefiddler]

Hey people,

I read almost this entire topic.

I currently own an ASUS P5K Premium motherboard which gives me a lot of headaches (harddrive errors, time outs, sometimes BSOD - mainly when copying/moving large files from one partition/drive to another).

FYI, please see: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=163183


Now, I'm going to RMA my P5K Premium, and I thought about getting a Gigabyte X38-DQ6 to replace it. Though, I see some of you guys are having problems with this one as well (and it looks like every motherboard released these last months or being released has issues).

Should I consider buying this X38-DQ6, or should I consider buying something else?

[andre X_X]

*** Edit ***

[~aoe~]

Well, you should certainly consider this board as an option. However, bear in mind the following:
- the x38 chipset is new, so expect some teething problems
- this motherboard is currently on it's 1st revision
- there's a few beta bios' available, but only 1 official (F3) to the best of my knowledge. Some are reporting problems with most of the beta bios'

Future bios releases may fix some/all of the current problems. However, a board revision may also be required.

On a personal note, I've managed to achieve my target of 3.6GHz on my Q6600 without problem, but need more time before I can provide a definite or (haven't tried to install raid0 yet, for example).

Most reviews of this and other x38 boards suggest that, at this time, x38 doesn't offer much over the P35. Also consider that P35 has been around longer, and is currently the more stable chipset.

In time, I would expect x38 to perform much better than it does currently, but whether this can be achieved simply by an improved bios or whether it will require a revision to the chipset, I can't say.

[Alcibiades]

thanks you again

another noob ques.

what do u mean by ( lower strap ) ?

A strap 266Mhz
B strap 333Mhz
C strap 200Mhz
D strap 400Mhz

Using a C strap to do DDR2 800Mhz will outperform the A,B or D strap doing 800Mhz with the same timings.
Each strap has it's own mutlipliers, all of them have the 2x multiplier.
For example:
Strap B has 2x, 2.4x and 3.2x
Strap D has only 2x and 2.66x

So if you set your fsb to 400Mhz
CPU multiplier x 9 gives you 9x400=3,600Mhz
D Strap multiplier x 2.66 gives you 2.66x400=1,064Mhz

[koc]

A strap 266Mhz
B strap 333Mhz
C strap 200Mhz
D strap 400Mhz

Using a C strap to do DDR2 800Mhz will outperform the A,B or D strap doing 800Mhz with the same timings.
Each strap has it's own mutlipliers, all of them have the 2x multiplier.
For example:
Strap B has 2x, 2.4x and 3.2x
Strap D has only 2x and 2.66x

So if you set your fsb to 400Mhz
CPU multiplier x 9 gives you 9x400=3,600Mhz
D Strap multiplier x 2.66 gives you 2.66x400=1,064Mhz

Thank you for explanation

Well , Im now on 3.6Mhz ( 8 X 450 )
So. i hope that i can use 2.66 D strap to overclock my ram to 1197
with new version of bios

[Richard Dower]

Right...this is MADNESS!!
I was using a 2GB kit of Corsair PC2-8500, 1066MHz, 2.2V, 5-5-5-15....i could get past 425FSB no problem, even with the betas.

But now!...just installed the new G.SKILL 4GB kit, PC2-8000, 2.0-2.1V, runs 1000MHz with 5-5-5-15....input 400FSB, would not boot!

Simply put, with this F6a bios i CANNOT reach 400FSB let alone try go over it....running 333x9 at the moment. Can i also add that GB have updated QFlash with this new beta bios, it's now version 2.05 (as opposed to V2.02).

[mister_no]

New Bios (F6B):

http://rapidshare.com/files/66689035/X38DQ6.f6b.html

[REVHEAD]

New Bios (F6B):

http://www.jzelectronic.de/jz2/Download2/x38dq6f6b.exe

Error 404 - Not found

[mister_no]

http://rapidshare.com/files/66689035/X38DQ6.f6b.html

[turtletrax]

Right...this is MADNESS!!
I was using a 2GB kit of Corsair PC2-8500, 1066MHz, 2.2V, 5-5-5-15....i could get past 425FSB no problem, even with the betas.

But now!...just installed the new G.SKILL 4GB kit, PC2-8000, 2.0-2.1V, runs 1000MHz with 5-5-5-15....input 400FSB, would not boot!

Simply put, with this F6a bios i CANNOT reach 400FSB let alone try go over it....running 333x9 at the moment. Can i also add that GB have updated QFlash with this new beta bios, it's now version 2.05 (as opposed to V2.02).

How are these bios's getting so bad??

[GTX]

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT USE THE NEW GIGABYTE F4A bios on the DQ6T.

Multipliers and FSB are no longer adjustable. It forced me to boot at 6 X 333 - 2.0 GHz and 1333 mhz frequency. And I am stuck there.

I flashed back to F3i and everything is fine again.
I AM SO PISSED OFF WITH GIGABYTE RIGHT NOW

lol,too late, after flashed this bios , my board never boot again
debug card stops at "00"

[Richard Dower]

I'll test F6b...

[koc]

lol,too late, after flashed this bios , my board never boot again
debug card stops at "00"

just remove the CPU and reinstall it again , its work for me

[Richard Dower]

OK, so the good and the bad, F6b is flashed and i can now make FSB and ratio adjustments ok, just as one would normally. So they seem to have fixed all that stuff.

As you can see from the images i am now able to attain my standard overclock settings, with 4GB of memory. 425x8=3.4GHz.

I have done some Everest benchmarks and my scores are alot less then before, this might be the result of the memory though...being 4GB as opposed to 2GB...and my chips are not Micron based but Powerchips.

The main things is that the big bugs in F6a *appear* to be gone, but i can't honestly say if this bios is more stable or not...needs proper testing.

[Richard Dower]

It's interesting to note that Vista shows 3,582MB available...OS limitation no doubt, still better then others who show 3.2GB, it must vary with your hardware and bios. Another thing, this bios seems to undervolt the memory, input 2.1V in bios and the PC Health section shows voltage under that...it may just be a bug in how the voltages are reported though.

[Richard Dower]

I wonder why my benmarks are so poor?...same FSB and clock speed as before, the only difference is the memory...4GB as opposed to 2GB and different RAM chips.

Latency is higher, i was getting 64ns previously and memory bandwidth over 8,200MB/s.

[mjb1206]

Richard, here is mine, and I'm using F3! I'm scared to change it, after not seeing a decent new bios release..............

[Richard Dower]

Well your CPU speed and FSB are higher, your memory is 1200MHz and your timings are lower. That might account for alot of the difference.

Can i also suggest you update Everest, you're using an old version and the results change from release to release.

Try Everest 4.20.1173

[mjb1206]

Thanxs Richard I'll go take a look at the newer version of Everest!!

[Richard Dower]

Try this:

http://rapidshare.com/files/66812206....1173.rar.html

[mjb1206]

Thanks Richard, New Run, And Didn't See Much Of A Difference!