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

[Isepick]

I dont have anything using the ide or the gigabyte sata ports atm, my optical drive is on a regular intel sata port...but I was having serious issues with the optical drive plugged into one of the GB sata ports, every time I'd load a dvd xp would just stop for about 15 seconds or so, or go to my computer, or anything that would cause it to access the drive...The jmicron is on the same irq as the video cards though, which is why I disabled it initally, tho it seemed to only help temporarily, I've since reenabled it, and the system is ok, but I dont have anything plugged into it, either. Something with that X38 NB is odd tho, or maybe its the bioses, not sure, be interesting to see if anybody else is having problems on similar (non GB) X38 boards...

Sobek: Oh and to clarify it was the GB RAID Controller driver I removed, which I think is the same thing anyway

[freqy]

very nice hornet ..i was like wwooooahw 4.0gig on first attempt .!!! then i saw you had the posh quad!! hahah coool and ddr3 1800 woooo!! wonder how low you can get the latencies?

have fun . keep posting your results ....and temperatures off core temp.

[Sobek]

I removed the Gigabyte Raid Controller drivers, restarted, but no difference. Guess it lies somewhere else

[freqy]

i just scraped half of the heat transfer paste off my q6600 and the temps have gone down 5 degrees. i still need to lap the cpu tho...one core is 3-5 degrees lower all the time. also i've noticed that core temp. changes its mine as to which core is which ..sometimes 1 is 3 and sometimes it is 2...weird.. it happens when i reboot once in a while.

[freqy]

sobek and isepick you should post your intelligent tweaker settings with your components so we can all see where you might need to change parameters.

even me with a month or 2 on this board might spot a problem area.

there is a template some where on this thread copy and insert your settings.

peace

[Hornet331]

the difference is normal on my "old" E6600 i had a difference of 3°C between the 2 cores, now on my quad thers also a difference of 3-4°C.

[Sobek]

sobek and isepick you should post your intelligent tweaker settings with your components so we can all see where you might need to change parameters.

You'll have to forgive me, this is my first Intel board in a long, long, long, LONG time

Intelligent Tweaker would be the menu in which you adjust all of your voltages and such, right? Pretty sure I've adjusted just about everything there that could possibly account for problematic Crossfire, but I'll try anything at this rate.

[Isepick]

Freqy: I have the ddr3 board, my settings are different in places.

Sobek: Hmmmm, I did remove the Easy Tune software at the same time, so perhaps that was the conflict. The actual error that I got that led me to start disabling everything was "Gpcidrv could not start" or some such, and it wouldnt recognized the 2nd card in device manager, but it took a while for that to show up....Settings for me in the MIB page of bios that helped stability before the removal of the drivers/software was to set the GMCH overvoltage to +.05 instead of the recommended +.15, and the G(MCH) clock skew to +900 ps...interesting note on that, it seemed that in tweaking that setting that the board was 'more' stable on increments of 300 ps (300,600,900,1200 and 1500) with sort of like a bell curve of those points...most other values would not even boot for me there....But I have the ddr3 board and memory, so your mileage may vary on that setting....My settings are still at what I said above, and I havent adjusted them since I got the board stable, since I was so freakin happy to run prime for >15 minutes without a lockup...btw I ran it for 24 hours with no problems. Gonna spend my free time this weekend seeing how fast we can go and will post screenies accordingly

Good Luck

[Caped Crusader]

damn, I just wish gigabyte solved this cold boot bug... imho is the most annoying bug of this revision. it's great that they put out a new pcb revision in the future, but with the x45 delayed and all that... :P

[century child]

What ended up solving the cold boot problem for me was a new power supply. I had an Enermax Infiniti 720 Watt and with it I could not overclock at all without encountering the cold boot bug and I needed to pump loads of volts to the CPU to get any kind of speed out of it. I popped in a PCP&C Silencer 750 Watt and all my problems went away. I can overclock without cold boot bug and I need way less VCORE than before. This seems to be one of those boards that is very picky about power supplies.

[Richard Dower]

Is station-drivers sill down?

[Schlomster]

Thankyou everyone for the great forum. I have read the thread from front to back, and tried many of the suggested bios setting only to find more BSOD than before. On stock settings I can surf the internet, do basic stuff, but when I try to play Supreme Commander (really the whole reason I built this system...and of course to try to learn to do this sort of thing) It crashes..."supreme commander has stopped working" I believe I have narrowed down to memory management issue (I have the 1066 Corsair Dominator) as this is a common BSOD error. My specs are below. UTD with latest drivers. Any help would be appreciated

Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6, rev. 1.0, bios F6b
Sapphire Radeon HD 2900XT 512MG, 5512 bit, GDDR3 (have two for
crossfire, but now only using one)
PC power and Cooling 750W crossfire edition PSU
Intel Conroe E6850 CPU
Corsair Dominator 2GB (2x1GB) Twin2X2048-8500C5D
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200RPM 32mb cache SATA
HD
Samsung 20X DVD+/-R Burner, SATA
Windows Vista Home premium 32 bit (should have probably gone 64...)
Gigabyte GH-PCU22VG 105mm CPU cooler (this fits great...don't have to mod
the copper heat sink on back...temps <30 ALL THE TIME)
Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound
Aero cool ZeroDegree ATX Case (nice 25cm fan on the side...but have to
work upside down...)

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

[Caped Crusader]

What ended up solving the cold boot problem for me was a new power supply. I had an Enermax Infiniti 720 Watt and with it I could not overclock at all without encountering the cold boot bug and I needed to pump loads of volts to the CPU to get any kind of speed out of it. I popped in a PCP&C Silencer 750 Watt and all my problems went away. I can overclock without cold boot bug and I need way less VCORE than before. This seems to be one of those boards that is very picky about power supplies.

hmmm, that's interesting... I'm using an Enermax Liberty 500, maybe I should change to a more powerful one.

[century child]

hmmm, that's interesting... I'm using an Enermax Liberty 500, maybe I should change to a more powerful one.

That would be a wise move. I can whole-heartedly recommend the PC Power & Cooling 750 Watt. It is a very fine product. Too bad it's not modular like the Infiniti and your Liberty but the quality is second to none. If you can't live without a modular supply, one of the Corsair units would be an excellent choice.

[burton610]

Hey, slightly off topic, but thought this was the best place to post.

I am about to build my first pc in a long time.
Planning to buy the x38-DQ6 and QX9650, but I would really like to here what memory everyone recommends or has used with success. I want to run 4GB...but still deciding on a 32-bit or 64-bit OS.

I was considering Corsair Dominator 9136C5 which is on Gigabyte's approved list, but there appears to be some general issues with compatibility at the moment if you fill all 4 slots with any given memory. Perhaps I need 2Gb modules in 2 slots.

Any recommendations/ what has worked for you (4GB)?

Thanks

[Caped Crusader]

That would be a wise move. I can whole-heartedly recommend the PC Power & Cooling 750 Watt. It is a very fine product. Too bad it's not modular like the Infiniti and your Liberty but the quality is second to none. If you can't live without a modular supply, one of the Corsair units would be an excellent choice.

Funny, I was thinking precisely on the Corsair Modular, because now I'm spoiled and can't live without a modular one
So, you think the Corsair will do a good job? Sorry for my 'noobiness' but I'm no expert when it comes to PSU's...

[century child]

The Corsair units have an excellent reputation and would be a good choice. Check out the TX750. It should do you right. It's not all that much more expensive than the lower wattage units so unless you are on a really tight budget, you should probably get the strongest one.

[century child]

Hey, slightly off topic, but thought this was the best place to post.

I am about to build my first pc in a long time.
Planning to buy the x38-DQ6 and QX9650, but I would really like to here what memory everyone recommends or has used with success. I want to run 4GB...but still deciding on a 32-bit or 64-bit OS.

I was considering Corsair Dominator 9136C5 which is on Gigabyte's approved list, but there appears to be some general issues with compatibility at the moment if you fill all 4 slots with any given memory. Perhaps I need 2Gb modules in 2 slots.

Any recommendations/ what has worked for you (4GB)?

Thanks

Look into the G.Skill f2-8000CL5D 4 GB set. If you look here in the memory foum you'll find plenty of posts about it. It's some good stuff. In my opinion, if you're going to go 4 GB, you might as well go 64-bit so you can use it all.

[Richard Dower]

The G.SKILL 4Gb kit is the best price/performance value right now. $115 for a 4GB with free shipping from newegg. The memory runs cool, uses low voltage...default is 1000MHz but many are running higher such as 1066MHz+.

[freqy]

Schlomster have you ran memtest ? and prime95? can you post your intelligent tweaker bios settings on this thread so we can see?


you need a stable system to run anything...even at stock values your machine can be unstable....sounds wild but true..
progs needed

coretemp
prime95
memtest86
cpu-z helps too

[Caped Crusader]

The Corsair units have an excellent reputation and would be a good choice. Check out the TX750. It should do you right. It's not all that much more expensive than the lower wattage units so unless you are on a really tight budget, you should probably get the strongest one.

Maybe I'll go with the Silencer 750 from PCP&C instead, because the price difference from the Corsair at the same wattage is irrelevant. It's not modular but since I have a Corsair CM690 case, and since the unused cables rest at the bottom of the case, they won't get in the way of the components.

I understand it's one of the best PSUs around... and since you said it solved your cold boot problem, I might give it a try. Maybe i'll get lucky with that too.

[Richard Dower]

Hornet, how many fins does the Rev 1.1 X38T heatsink have on the NB?, is it 22 or 30?

[dominick32]

Guys, are we looking at physical limitations on our original 1.0 boards compared to the 1.1 revision?

Because I could never get my memory to overclock decently on this original board.

Dom

[Sambe]

can somebody post "right" bios setting to my. Because i had strange problem with my 8800GTX and X38-DQ6,E6600. With Basic settings i get 3dmark06 about 10000pts. But if i overclocking my system example 8x400 1:1 mem (mushkin XP2-6400) my 3dmark score dropping to 6000-7000pts. I tried reset bios, update it etc. I test 8x400 stability 41h with orthos.

[Sobek]

Freqy: I have the ddr3 board, my settings are different in places.

Sobek: Hmmmm, I did remove the Easy Tune software at the same time, so perhaps that was the conflict. The actual error that I got that led me to start disabling everything was "Gpcidrv could not start" or some such, and it wouldnt recognized the 2nd card in device manager, but it took a while for that to show up....Settings for me in the MIB page of bios that helped stability before the removal of the drivers/software was to set the GMCH overvoltage to +.05 instead of the recommended +.15, and the G(MCH) clock skew to +900 ps...interesting note on that, it seemed that in tweaking that setting that the board was 'more' stable on increments of 300 ps (300,600,900,1200 and 1500) with sort of like a bell curve of those points...most other values would not even boot for me there....But I have the ddr3 board and memory, so your mileage may vary on that setting....My settings are still at what I said above, and I havent adjusted them since I got the board stable, since I was so freakin happy to run prime for >15 minutes without a lockup...btw I ran it for 24 hours with no problems. Gonna spend my free time this weekend seeing how fast we can go and will post screenies accordingly

Good Luck

Not sure what else to do now. I've removed those Gigabyte raid drivers, disabled all unnecessary SATA and IDE ports (even tried using a SATA PCI card to bypass the onboard completely - no change), don't have EzyTune installed anyway. Interesting, too, that clock skew setting you've changed to +900 ps only goes to a max of 750 ps on mine...

Any other ideas? I know my videocards aren't faulty (unless by some mind boggling chance all four of my Crossfire interconnect ports have all become damaged or something), my ram is A.OK, my CPU is stable and solid (stock or overclocked), and I've got the latest BIOS installed. My PSU is more than enough for my setup (and I've got a second one spare that I've now tested just to be sure).

I'm at a loss. I'm so sure it's something with the motherboard, but what more can I do?

*edit* It's either the board, or I'm somehow playing ALL of the most problematic and anti-crossfire games around (including all Source based games? I know TF2 has had it's issues with HD cards and Crossfire, but I was sure everything was fixed now).