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

[ChrissTi]

What helps on never ending power on power off loop?
Brand new board and so weird behavior.
Only one time I have been able to get in Windows.

Anb few tiimes into bios, but everytime I save settings it starts that reboot loop again.

Setup:
- GA-X48-DQ6 F4 bios
- 2x1GB A-Data DDR2 800+
- 200GB Seagate S-ATA
- Optiarc S-ATA DVD+-RW
- Corsait TX 750W PSU
- Geforce 7500LE 256MB PCI-e

Any help, please?

Unplug the PSU's 110/220V powercord. Leave unplugged it about 30 secs, to draw the power from the mobo, get the bios batery out, leave it about 10 secs, then put it back again. Plug the powercord again and then Power on.

Also you can try to push the power button until the PC stops, immediatly after you turned it on, And then turn it on again, and the bios will consider a boot faliure, and will reset to the bios configuration that worked before your last bios configuration.

[ChrissTi]

yes but just buy some micron stuff and give it volts
hell it won't be as good as these but i'm sure you'll get close



i don't install sisoft crap on my HDDs

I have microns , but 2x2GB only that I expect a this Thermaltake mem cooler to overclock more.

And if you do not use sisoft how do you see your memory bandwidth ?

[zicada]

And if you do not use sisoft how do you see your memory bandwidth ?

Everest

[BulldogPO]

I did manage to make that mobo work, I swithced to 480W Tagan PSU and everything works fine.
I tought that Corsair PSU´s are good ones.

[ChrissTi]

Everest

I use everest also, but it's not so acurate, because the benches are made in a short time, sisoft's are in a longer time.
With sisoft I managed to find a problem, having lower bandwidth than normal about 3,5GB (and it was observed in some music aplications by having clicks, and distorted sound. It was a software/driver related). Everest was not afected ... So I think Sisoft is a bit better from this point of view.

[ChrissTi]

I did manage to make that mobo work, I swithced to 480W Tagan PSU and everything works fine.
I tought that Corsair PSU´s are good ones.

It's good that you've found the problem, and now it works.

[HeadShotWI]

Guys i need some help. I am installing vista 32bit and have my mobo set in AHCI mode for better performance. I can't for the life of me find the ahci sata drivers to preinstall with windows. Can someone link me? Do I even need to preinstall drivers in AHCI mode? I am not doing raid and just have a single WD raptor sata drive. Thanks for the help.

[freqy]

you have to put them on a floppy and when you instal windows hit F6 during the begining of instalation.

you can get them off the main gigabyte webiste.

[HeadShotWI]

you have to put them on a floppy and when you instal windows hit F6 during the begining of instalation.

you can get them off the main gigabyte webiste.

i downloaded them from gigabyte site and it won't let me format the drive. I instlaled the drivers during installation. I can see the drive but for some reason it won't let me install windows on the drive. im not sure what is wrong.

[DStealth]

F3 bios has very good 1M SuperPi efficiency on Penryn but it is very bad in 32M SuperPi

Yup Sub 10sec
~ 45k efficient DDR2


How you is the formula for 32M ?
I've got 10min34sec @ 4620mhz with ddr2 too ...
F3 is nice bios, but slow compared to good sub-timings optimized f7 final

[BulldogPO]

Can anyone post their bios settings for running quadcore @ 9x400 or 8x450MHz?

[REVHEAD]

Can anyone post their bios settings for running quadcore @ 9x400 or 8x450MHz?

here yah go







These are my settings for 3.6 on a b3 stepping quad , I run 24/7 for gaming and browsing

You need to register to view the images sorry

[Buggalugs]

i downloaded them from gigabyte site and it won't let me format the drive. I instlaled the drivers during installation. I can see the drive but for some reason it won't let me install windows on the drive. im not sure what is wrong.

Download the Raid Floppy utility from here

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filt...4&submit=Go%21

(AHCI/RAID Drivers are in the same package.). Its the second one in the list.
Download it then extract with winrar. Double click to let it format and configure the driver on the floppy.

Make sure your sata cables are plugged into the Intel ports and not the gigabyte ones.

Go into BIOS to "integrated peripherals" and set to AHCI (on the first line)

Save and exit

Whack in the disc and when you get to the "load driver" part put in the floppy and press enter.

[DStealth]

OMGoodneeeees
F7 and Wofle + ddr2

[Huigie]

You need to register to view the images sorry

[zicada]

dstealth:

Wow, really nice!

What sort of cooling ?

What numbers did you get from 1M ?

Also, what sort of Ram is that ? ocz 9200 flex's ?

[Caped Crusader]

wow!

[BigDK]

i downloaded them from gigabyte site and it won't let me format the drive. I instlaled the drivers during installation. I can see the drive but for some reason it won't let me install windows on the drive. im not sure what is wrong.

Hi, are you sure your HDD that you intend to use supports NCQ? if not I don't think you can't use AHCI option.
Every drive I've tried to use AHCI on has failed if it does not support NCQ, whereas all NCQ drives I have used did allow me to set AHCI as the option in BIOS.
I've tried to confirm this observation, but have never found anything that 100% agrees or disagrees with it.

[BulldogPO]

Here we go...
http://www.aijaa.com/v.php?i=1477187.png

[jimmsch]

So I will be using this board as my first bed for a new 45nm CPU soon. I am not sure yet if it will be the E8400 or 8500, I might even go with Q9450. What BIOS are people recommending for these CPU's?

[Teccxpert]

I have flashed my X38-DQ6 board to F7 bios and it was running fine while testing O/C on E8400. But today I go just a little higher for CPU clock speed and now the board refuses to boot. Pulling out the Cmos battery and shorting the pins does nothing, even leaving the battery out for over an hour while the pins are shorted still does nothing. The board just boots then reboots in a continuous cycle alternating every few seconds... After having this board through several bios upgrades from Gigabyte starting with F3 original I am left with little choice but to RMA... and I'm not waiting around for it to return. Changed to Asus P5E Vanilla.

[2DIFF]

I have flashed my X38-DQ6 board to F7 bios and it was running fine while testing O/C on E8400. But today I go just a little higher for CPU clock speed and now the board refuses to boot. Pulling out the Cmos battery and shorting the pins does nothing, even leaving the battery out for over an hour while the pins are shorted still does nothing. The board just boots then reboots in a continuous cycle alternating every few seconds... After having this board through several bios upgrades from Gigabyte starting with F3 original I am left with little choice but to RMA... and I'm not waiting around for it to return. Changed to Asus P5E Vanilla.

Welcome to the club. The GB X38 boards seem to have a self-destruction mechanism, pretty cool stuff.

[radical]

Anyone else out there try to set up RAID 5 on this board? I am replacing my second one today - I have tried everything and nothing has worked so far:

Board 1:
- Would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. Installation is XP SP2 VLM. When the installation gets to the part where it actually loads the disk driver - Blue Screen.
- Could not get the array to boot up on one of my existing disks with an installation already on it. I installed the disk on the Gigabyte controller, loaded all the drivers and got it running, but no way would the Intel controller boot off of it. It would get to "Verifying DMI" and get no further on boot.
- The board came with F3 BIOS rev, I updated it to F7 and still got the same results.


Board 2:
- Again, would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. I even used the same floppy I did with the Gigabyte controller (which would Pre-Install). Same results as before.
- I did get this Intel controller to boot off of the existing disk after configuring Windows XP on it with the Gigabyte controller.
- However, when I was actually building the RAID 5 array (and this took waaayyy too long - it was still going after 6 hours), something screwy happened (hey! wasn't me, I wasn't even touching it), I had to hard boot and then it showed one of the disks in the array as failed and kept beeping. Now I know that the disk is good, because I took it out and remirrored it on my old Gigabyte board RAID controller - RAID 1 (the old board is the GA-8INXP). This process worked 100% positive, so hence, a good drive. Then when I tried to go to BIOS on boot to see what was going on there, the crazy thing just started scrolling the settings without me doing anything - it looked like a slot machine.
- This board came with F6 BIOS rev, I left it alone.

Long story short - I can't recommend this board to anyone, I have had issues with two now. I have tried everything I could think of and its now going into week 3. Screw it, spent way too long on it, I am trading for a 780i board.

rad

[ChrissTi]

Anyone else out there try to set up RAID 5 on this board? I am replacing my second one today - I have tried everything and nothing has worked so far:

Board 1:
- Would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. Installation is XP SP2 VLM. When the installation gets to the part where it actually loads the disk driver - Blue Screen.
- Could not get the array to boot up on one of my existing disks with an installation already on it. I installed the disk on the Gigabyte controller, loaded all the drivers and got it running, but no way would the Intel controller boot off of it. It would get to "Verifying DMI" and get no further on boot.
- The board came with F3 BIOS rev, I updated it to F7 and still got the same results.


Board 2:
- Again, would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. I even used the same floppy I did with the Gigabyte controller (which would Pre-Install). Same results as before.
- I did get this Intel controller to boot off of the existing disk after configuring Windows XP on it with the Gigabyte controller.
- However, when I was actually building the RAID 5 array (and this took waaayyy too long - it was still going after 6 hours), something screwy happened (hey! wasn't me, I wasn't even touching it), I had to hard boot and then it showed one of the disks in the array as failed and kept beeping. Now I know that the disk is good, because I took it out and remirrored it on my old Gigabyte board RAID controller - RAID 1 (the old board is the GA-8INXP). This process worked 100% positive, so hence, a good drive. Then when I tried to go to BIOS on boot to see what was going on there, the crazy thing just started scrolling the settings without me doing anything - it looked like a slot machine.
- This board came with F6 BIOS rev, I left it alone.

Long story short - I can't recommend this board to anyone, I have had issues with two now. I have tried everything I could think of and its now going into week 3. Screw it, spent way too long on it, I am trading for a 780i board.

rad

As BigDK said, does your hdd's support NCQ ? cause it seems that Intel's AHCI/RAID works only with NCQ drives ...

[Hornet331]

Anyone else out there try to set up RAID 5 on this board? I am replacing my second one today - I have tried everything and nothing has worked so far:

Board 1:
- Would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. Installation is XP SP2 VLM. When the installation gets to the part where it actually loads the disk driver - Blue Screen.
- Could not get the array to boot up on one of my existing disks with an installation already on it. I installed the disk on the Gigabyte controller, loaded all the drivers and got it running, but no way would the Intel controller boot off of it. It would get to "Verifying DMI" and get no further on boot.
- The board came with F3 BIOS rev, I updated it to F7 and still got the same results.


Board 2:
- Again, would not Pre-Install (F6 on install) the Intel RAID driver. I even used the same floppy I did with the Gigabyte controller (which would Pre-Install). Same results as before.
- I did get this Intel controller to boot off of the existing disk after configuring Windows XP on it with the Gigabyte controller.
- However, when I was actually building the RAID 5 array (and this took waaayyy too long - it was still going after 6 hours), something screwy happened (hey! wasn't me, I wasn't even touching it), I had to hard boot and then it showed one of the disks in the array as failed and kept beeping. Now I know that the disk is good, because I took it out and remirrored it on my old Gigabyte board RAID controller - RAID 1 (the old board is the GA-8INXP). This process worked 100% positive, so hence, a good drive. Then when I tried to go to BIOS on boot to see what was going on there, the crazy thing just started scrolling the settings without me doing anything - it looked like a slot machine.
- This board came with F6 BIOS rev, I left it alone.

Long story short - I can't recommend this board to anyone, I have had issues with two now. I have tried everything I could think of and its now going into week 3. Screw it, spent way too long on it, I am trading for a 780i board.

rad

im not running a raid 5 array (i run a raid 10 array), but it worked flawless. Imho raid 5 is way to slow on a none dedicated hardware controller.

Anyways i havent used any floppy drive to install the raid driver, i just integrated the raid driver into the windows install disk, no f6 or what ever needed.

Also why do you want to build the raid array after installing windows? why not use the intel raid bios (ctrl-i).

I even had no trouble getting my array moved from the ICH-8R to the ICH-9R.