**Official ABIT IX38 QuadGT Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[Supershanks]

As per Pics
Load = 1.407v
Idle= =1.437v
Droop = 0.030v

[century child]

Just got mine today...
The board doesnt come with any screws n stuff to mount it which is strange cos it should be std on any board and since I dont have a spare set...I'll have to get some tomorrow.
It also doesnt come with the retention clips that according to the manual is supposed to be included....
I guess Abit sort of rushed the release of this board...hopefully my local distributor can provide me with the missing stuff...

Is this your first build? Mainboards don't ever come with mounting hardware. That is alwas included with your case. You reuse the mounting screws and standoffs after chaning boards. Just make sure the standoffs match the positions of the holes in the new board because they sometimes differ from one another.

[Ace-a-Rue]

As per Pics
Load = 1.407v
Idle= =1.437v
Droop = 0.030v

not bad at all...BUT...does it get worse as you go higher on the vcore?

[Supershanks]

does it get worse as you go higher on the vcore?

Lol let you know when i get there, it generally does but

[Ademcg]

SuperShanks,
just read your living review and this took my eye:

5) Driver installation. I was somewhat suprised when The Abit CD kicked off automatically updating virtually every driver. This was particularly suprising as my installation was already X38. It was particularly frustrating to see my install totally screwed , to the point that I reloaded my Acronis backup image, something I've done several times in the course of the last two days.

I too installed all the drivers from the Abit CD supplied, looking at the info in nvidia drivers, it is n't showing me x16 in my PCI-E slot 1...this is where I put my single 8800GT, it shows PcI Express Bus x0.....shouldn't it be X16 ??



..may this explain my very poor Futuremark 3d06 score of 7694



Oh and Ace...I took the 2 dimms out and no real difference...just for the record.


Seriously starting to annoy me.

[Supershanks]

Not sure use cpu-z it's easy to see pci-e channels use the mainboard tab.

[Ademcg]

I have just gone back to the latest nvidia drivers, It now does show the X16 Pci-e bus..however when I run 3dMark06 I get a black screen - no images, not really sure if it is carrying out the benchie or has hung, will give it a few minutes and see.
Now running on the beta 12 bios btw...not a lot seems to have changed.
Christ, its becoming painful.

[Shalamay]

Hey, I just ordered this from clubit and I have a Q6600 GO. What is the best bios to use for a high overclock (I'm on phase)? Thank you.

[Budwise]

how does this board compare to the IP35 Pro? Is it a better choice?

[ante_ante]

Will flash m board today when it arrives. I will follow ace guide with flashing bios. Flashmenu works but feels a bit scary, so i going for flash in dos.
Is this parameters correct? /e /py /sn /wb /cd /cp /cc /cks ??

[vpw]

Is this your first build? Mainboards don't ever come with mounting hardware. That is alwas included with your case. You reuse the mounting screws and standoffs after chaning boards. Just make sure the standoffs match the positions of the holes in the new board because they sometimes differ from one another.

yeah i forgot abt it, cos this is only my 3rd build ever, my last one was more than 4 yrs ago.
The mounting hardware doesnt really concern me, however the supposedly included fan retainer for PWN cooler is missing. They even have a pic of it in the manual lol...
anyways I contacted our local distributor I hope they can provide me with the retainers...
Of course main concern is bios, hopefully they'll release a fix soon....

[Booj]

The Abit distributor in Australia have these in stock from today. Nice price too for an X38 board

[Supershanks]

I flashed from my usb drive the other day, using ace's guide
Flashed to12 BTA after renaming file to .BIN. Despite editing the name in runme.bat wouldn't play, so I manually flashed using Ace's

AWDFLASH.EXE M629B_16.B01 /e /py /sn /wb /cd /cp /cc /cks

Which worked fine, thanks Ace

Luck

[Ademcg]

I flashed from my usb drive the other day, using ace's guide
Flashed to12 BTA after renaming file to .BIN. Despite editing the name in runme.bat wouldn't play, so I manually flashed using Ace's
Which worked fine, thanks Ace

Luck

Seconded, Ace's guide is excellent, also now running 12 Beta bios.

Looking at my problems, I am thinking of turning my back on Vista and installing XP Pro.

But how can a new release mobo not work with an OS that has been on the market for over a year (Vista Ultimate 64 ) ??
Not good enough Abit, must do better !!

SuperShanks....talk to me as a fellow life long Liverpool fan who actually met Shanks in person If I were to RMA this board, what would you suggest I got in its place ?? P35 product or a different X38 mobo ??

[Ace-a-Rue]

I flashed from my usb drive the other day, using ace's guide
Flashed to12 BTA after renaming file to .BIN. Despite editing the name in runme.bat wouldn't play, so I manually flashed using Ace's
Which worked fine, thanks Ace

Luck

glad it worked....i put in the manual way for just in case's like you had

[Ace-a-Rue]

Seconded, Ac'e guide is excellent, also now running 12 Beta bios.

Looking at my problems, I am thinking of turning my back on Vista and installing XP Pro.

But how can a new release mobo not work with an OS that has been on the market for over a year (Vista Ultimate 64 ) ??
Not good enough Abit, must do better !!

SuperShanks....talk to me as a fellow life long Liverpool fan who actually met Shanks in person If I were to RMA this board, what would you suggest I got in its place ?? P35 product or a different X38 mobo ??

thanks for the thumbs

you can install XP and then run setup for vista from DOS and just pick another partition on your drive to put in vista...i always break my drive up into 2 or 3 sections just so i can put in an extra OS.

[Supershanks]

@Ace

glad it worked....i put in the manual way for just in case's like you had

yep i appreciated that, did that as it was quicker than troubleshooting why the bat files didn't work. It's only the run.me that has the bios target file that needs changing ??, which i did.

@Ademcg

SuperShanks....talk to me as a fellow life long Liverpool fan who actually met Shanks in person

OMG Respect

Depends entirely what your looking for. Having got over the high vcore issue i'm reasonably happy, as i 've shown there are a few niggles. Only major item for me is the Drive detection issuer i mentioned. Have seen it recur today, whilst i'm testing my drives & rebuilding raid arrays.

If you want a solid mobo built like a volvo, which oces well then Gigabyte,

The Abit has a more feature rich bios. Guru is great for changing voltages on the fly, is great, used it to tune my gtlref. It's more boy racer i think.

To be honest I haven't been able to decide yet, need to play a bit more on the abit to see what i can get.

P35 wise Abit IP35-Pro or the DFI LP UT P35-T2R would probably be my choice, but haviung had neither , there are other pps with 1st hand experience.

luck

[Ace-a-Rue]

supershanks: did you type in after the "C:" prompt the syntax: RUNME.BAT to get the abitfae.bat to run?...that's about the only thing i can think of for the auto program to not work.

[Supershanks]

id you type in after the "C:" prompt the syntax: RUNME.BAT to get the abitfae.bat to run?
Yep

[ante_ante]

I have now installed my new fresh Quad GT. Feels really good right now
I switched from my GB X38 DQ6 without reinstall vista for the moment. Will do a fresh install later this weekend. The only problem i have now when i launch Uguru it shows nothing. Only the general tab. Is it a Vista X64 compability problem? Will also flash bios soon !!

[Ademcg]

I have now installed my new fresh Quad GT. Feels really good right now
I switched from my GB X38 DQ6 without reinstall vista for the moment. Will do a fresh install later this weekend. The only problem i have now when i launch Uguru it shows nothing. Only the general tab. Is it a Vista X64 compability problem? Will also flash bios soon !!

UGURU or at least mine doesn't seem to like Vista Ultimate 64..it would lock every time, so I dissabled it from start up, plus the temps were way off.

[strange|ife]

uguru in 64 vista is bugged. It reads my temps usually fine, sometimes not at all. Other times i get a BSOD with uguru in the error dump, although changing voltages/fsb works fine, just when your done turn it off, sucks to have a uguru bsod during gaming.

hmm hopefulyl this board will shape up with some bios updates Or a revision, looks pretty good so far, but not as solid as ip35 pro out the gate. Will be keeping an eye on it, i def want to get something with pcie2.0 when the new 9 series cards come out though.

[Supershanks]

Cpu temp is way off, about 8~10C below core centre, but the voltages vcore , vdimm & vtt that i measured with mm proved guru voltages suprisingly accurate. As i said the OC panel is great in saving time rebooting while tuning.

Moving mobo with the same chipset shouldn't require a fresh install, just a change of things like sound & mobo utilities

[strange|ife]

ya the cpu temp reading is always off in guru by at least 3-5c or more. Makes ya wonder about the pwm sensor, i usually had 5c to it. But yes voltages are very close, as tested with my dmm for vdimm on my p35 board. memory droop on my ip35, i have to give my 4gb 2.125 to be stable, with droop its about 2.1, and 2.085 under hevy load

[Ademcg]

Has anyone managed to solve the whole "no boot after idle for a few hours" ?

I had power plug in PSU all night and today while at work, come to boot it up and no boot, had to clear CMOS.