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

[Richard Dower]

I will try a different strap setting, i use 2.50A as it gives me the closest to 1066MHz on the memory, the 2.40B strap will gove me 1020MHz.

[zsamz_]

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.

richard when running 4 sticks is a performance killer "lucky if it boots lol"
best performance i seen @2.2v was 5-4-4-9 @ 1100+ 2 sticks

on my p35 i lose 400 in bandwidth with 4 sticks on x38 its extreme 30%+

[DStealth]

F6B is same sh!ft as everything else except f5h. It gives me perf.level 6 with C strap and made my latency under 50ns and read ~10k, but it makes on/off constantly, with every combination i'm fully stable with f5h

[Richard Dower]

richard when running 4 sticks is a performance killer "lucky if it boots lol"
best performance i seen @2.2v was 5-4-4-9 @ 1100+ 2 sticks

on my p35 i lose 400 in bandwidth with 4 sticks on x38 its extreme 30%+

It's not four sticks, just two...2x2GB...in the primary yellow DIMM slots.

[Richard Dower]

I just ran a 10 hour Prime 95 stress test using the latest 25.5 build...passed. So at least my memory can handle 1063MHz with 2.1V.

[dominick32]

I hope they release a F4B fast for this X38T because I was honestly going to pick up Yorkfield on release day, not to mention my Corsair Dom's still will not run higher than 1700 mhz on this board....

The new bios for X38T is a complete disaster. Nothing works, and it will only boot at 2.00 GHz 6 X 333 ....
Thinking it may have been a corrupt download from softpedia, I downloaded direct from Gigabyte-usa.com and the same issues presented themselves.

[dinos22]

yorkfield works with this board
Team.AU has already tested it

i read many posts now & to be honest i see very little in constructive criticism and why do people flash to every bios they see.......if you're happy with say F3 on DDR2 just stick to the damn thing....

you are only supposed to flash if you have a specific issue and you know that the new bios is supposed to fix it.

We provide a lot of input to engineers and they've done a lot of work to integrate features we and others required. The board needs tweaking to get the most out of it. Hell that's normal and all boards are about the same. We benched both DDR2 and DDR3 with earlier revision bioses to bench PAST 600MHz FSB

I have the DDR2 version here and it still has F3 bios and everything is top notch >> i did try F4x something bios and it was very spotty and had FSB holes. I didn't like it and went back to F3 which is great. The reason i tried the other one is because of the strap selection we required but it wasn't liking my components.....F3 on my setup was rock solid >> just dig around my started threads and there will be something on E6850 benching at 4.9GHz on SS with this board...really stable setup with components i had with it

i will try and get some time and test the latest ones as we've had a meeting last week with them to change the way the bios reset loop works as it was leaving the multi as it was set and only resetting the FSB....there were a number of other issues that we tried to sort out so just need to get it all tested

i am getting the DDR3 board and i am planning to push some new 2GB CAS7 DDR1800 Corsairs and some 4GB CAS7 DDR1600 Corsairs to see how they go.

i'll pop in and report on my testing as i get a chance

the best way to get engineer attention is to report on bugs which can be replicated by numerous users.......after that the quirky one offs i guess

[dominick32]

i am getting the DDR3 board and i am planning to push some new 2GB CAS7 DDR1800 Corsairs and some 4GB CAS7 DDR1600 Corsairs to see how they go.

i'll pop in and report on my testing as i get a chance

the best way to get engineer attention is to report on bugs which can be replicated by numerous users.......after that the quirky one offs i guess

Dino,
I will be eagerly awaiting your DDR3 results. Because there seems to be an inherent problem with the DQ6T (ddr3 version of the giga X38 board). I have been through two sets of DDR3-1800+ sticks:

Patriot Extreme 2X1GB 1866mhz (8-8-8-20, 1.9v)
Corsair Dominator 2X1GB 1800mhz (7-7-7-20, 2.05v)

Both sets of sticks had the exact same issues. They run absolutely flawless up until around 1740 mhz when memtest produces errors and vista/xp will not run stable. Tried 1T, 2T, different voltages, different primary/secondary timing adjustments. MCH/CPU skew adjustments. The board just cannot handle the high frequency. The odds of two seperate sets of sticks from seperate manufacturers not working at rated speed/timings on this board only tells me 1 thing: Either the mobo needs a revision, or we need a bios that works.

[Glorfindel]

Got mine Yesterday. So when i power it up, it last about 5 secs and died...I didnt even get in the bios...So it look like a shorted board, i always made clean install, i dont see how i shorted it, i hope Gigabyte will rma it...

So now i have to go back with my 'trusty' ( lol!!!!) evga 680i....

[REVHEAD]

Got mine Yesterday. So when i power it up, it last about 5 secs and died...I didnt even get in the bios...So it look like a shorted board, i always made clean install, i dont see how i shorted it, i hope Gigabyte will rma it...

So now i have to go back with my 'trusty' ( lol!!!!) evga 680i....

Man thats bad news ,what a bummer, You wont be dissapointed when you get one up and running ,no fsb holes like 680i ,and another thing that really impresses me with this board is the intel matrix raid,heaps faster and allmost flawless compared to Nvidias.

[Glorfindel]

I did a rma request this morning and i've got the rma number about 4 hours later!! Great custumer service by DirectCanada!!! thx guys! Should make some tests next week! Hope i will be luckier this time!

[Supershanks]

i read many posts now & to be honest i see very little in constructive criticism and why do people flash to every bios they see.......if you're happy with say F3 on DDR2 just stick to the damn thing....

Have to agree, my last board p5k 0311 was great, couldn't run as well on any of the others until 0601 , doesn't mean the board is crap.

Like Alcibiades, i'm running a quad which is great with F5G. Thanks, to his tips i'm running well.

Only issue i do have atm is running anything other than 2(1:1) on x8 multi.

[jbloggs]

What 3rd party CPU coolers (air) will fit the X38 DQ6 without having to remove any of the cooling pipes?

It would be used with a Q6600.

Thanks.

[mjb1206]

H2O it!!

[Richard Dower]

Scythe Ninja Rev B. and the Infinity models fit, stock Intel coolers fit...not sure what others are using.

[Smy]

when running 4 sticks ca 4gb ram is normal go get low read speed mb/s in test like everst readtest. geting 7000mb/s -+ on 400*9 on my q6600
And crossfire is just to instal second card and putt it on at driver meny?

[mjb1206]

I will be lower than 2 memory modules!

[Smy]

so if ta out 2gb memory til wil go up to 9000mb/s ?

crossfire = install card nr 2 and enable in driver?

[jbloggs]

Scythe Ninja Rev B. and the Infinity models fit, stock Intel coolers fit...not sure what others are using.

Thanks for the reply...

[century child]

Thanks for the reply...

I'm currently using the OCZ Vendetta with mine. I've found it to be a great little cooler.

[Glorfindel]

What 3rd party CPU coolers (air) will fit the X38 DQ6 without having to remove any of the cooling pipes?

It would be used with a Q6600.

Thanks.

My Tuniq Tower fitted very well even more space than on my EVGA 680i

[DStealth]

I have time today, so benched my 1year old GTX with the new set of drivers, they are miracle )
GB booted straight @ 466 fsb from BIOS my quad Q6600 on water and finished all tests real good ~ 4200mhz
17844


I like that board

[thefiddler]

DStealth how is your GTX cooled?

I wonder if mine could reach such an overclock :p

[chrisbarham]

Hey new to this post and in fact overclocking...got my x38-dq6 about 2 weeks ago and been happy with it till now.

I am not looking for major overclocks..but would like tp get it to about 3.0ghz.. which seemed easy till now.

basicly i had my CPU host clock control set at 400 and my multiplier set too 7.. which gave me a speed of 2.8, on bios F3

however.. whilse playing STALKER it all frooze and rebooted itself.. and reloaded all the default BIOS settings, now i cant touch the host clcok contol, otherwise the damn thing wont boot..even if i set it to the default of 266 or below....any ideas....????

[turtletrax]

DStealth how is your GTX cooled?

I wonder if mine could reach such an overclock :p

x 2???

I am on an EK FC block on a spereate loop and all I can get is 710/1050. Pretty impressive