Gigabyte 790FX Series Thread

[wiak]

Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5
Latest BIOS: F5 [RSS]
Product: Info: Drivers : Manual



Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
Latest BIOS: F4 [RSS]
Product: Info: Drivers : Manual

[cygnus_x_1]

just had to rma my DS5. ran rock stable for two months with the 9900 ES Phemon, and seems that the PWM went, Hopefully it didnt take the 9900 with it. waiting to get the board back to see if it goes.

[AlabamaCajun]

I wish GA would fix these boards. I RMAed my first one for bad RAM sockets. The second started to act up so I dropped it back to stock with a Windsor. I;m going to try a 9850BE and hope to get 2.8G from it. The main problem I see is the RAM timings get hosed and it takes some crazy maneuvers to get it back to normal. Reset CMOS, Set Defaults, (reset) Set Optimized (reset) then check RAM voltage and settings, drop in manual if you know them or run DDR2-800 stock.

[jonspd]

Gonna be glad to see your results AC you gonna post them at OC as well?

[-= rtz =-]

I wish GA would fix these boards. I RMAed my first one for bad RAM sockets. The second started to act up so I dropped it back to stock with a Windsor. I;m going to try a 9850BE and hope to get 2.8G from it. The main problem I see is the RAM timings get hosed and it takes some crazy maneuvers to get it back to normal. Reset CMOS, Set Defaults, (reset) Set Optimized (reset) then check RAM voltage and settings, drop in manual if you know them or run DDR2-800 stock.

I hope u were just unlucky cause Im getting a DS5 as well,but it will be paired with a 5000be for starters.What do u mean xactly with the board acting up? That was happening on the F5 bios?

[wiak]

I hope u were just unlucky cause Im getting a DS5 as well,but it will be paired with a 5000be for starters.What do u mean xactly with the board acting up? That was happening on the F5 bios?

i have used DS5 for around a week now it works fine, havnt notice any BIG problems, only that manual ram settings in bios is a bit buggy as you have to set it to CAS 5 first and then go into amd overdrive to set other settings
the board is stable, only my psu is to crappy it only gives me 360W on both 12v rails lets hope Corsair 620HX will fix that

[-= rtz =-]

Is it possible with this board to just stick to the BIOS settings and crystal CPU? I would like to NOT use amd overdrive at all

[SKoob]

Got a Gigabyte DS5 here, seems rock solid stable now on bios F5.
Had issues with manual ram timimgs till bios version F4.
Enabling xpress route 2 would mess up my crossfire and cause random lockups. Overall a very good quality board.

[AlabamaCajun]

Nothing but headaches. I can game on it all night but just start folding and in about 15 minutes, reboot! Something is fuggered with this thing. I never could OC worth a fot with this thing even with a 5600. I did well with a 4600 was rock solid. I also notice the temps climb to the 57-59 range. I have not heard the warning go off which I have set to 60 so I don't think it gets there. I'm starting to suspect the VRegs or frittering off and killing it.

[-= rtz =-]

Can u really trust the board temp sensors or did u measure with an instrument?

[AlabamaCajun]

Can u really trust the board temp sensors or did u measure with an instrument?

Good point. When I get the DFI, I'm moving to a bigger case. Then I'll have a front panel reader with 3 probes.
1 - CPU
1 - VRegs
1 - NB

[keithlm]

Still no new bios update for the DS5 to stabilize it for the 9850.

Luckily I can get by without having it reboot too often with the NB and HT at 1.8Ghz. But I hate that. (And of course I've not tried overclocking too much since that's kind of pointless when you can't run stable at stock. I was almost at 3.0Ghz stable Prime95 on the DFI board... dang it.)


I'm willing to bet that some obscure setting that a user may not be able to set is what is causing my instability. Dang it.

Oh well... I made it through this week without buying the Crosshair II. Prediction: I'll have the Crosshair by next friday.

QUESTION: Anybody else notice a major difference in various motherboard speeds? To be more specific: With the DFI the system was zippy as all heck. Now with this Gigabye DS5 it is just not as zippy... it is almost as unresponsive as a C2D machine. (Oops.. did I say that in my "out loud" voice?)

NOTE: what I'm talking about can't be explained by the NB at 1.8Ghz versus 2.0Ghz... besides... I can run and benchmark at 2.0GHz on the NB... it just won't Prime95 blend at that speed. In addition I think the memory at DDR2-1066 on the DFI was like about 9500M/s and it's about 7500M/s on this machine with the 2.0Ghz NB. Same memory... same speed... much slower on the DS5. (And even slower when I go to 1.8Ghz NB.)

Oh well. I ramble. I'm bored at work. Had a release last week.. waiting for user response... so nothing going on. Besides... everyone is gone for the long weekend so I'm the "boss".

EDIT: Their web support just sent me a response. No new bios yet... but they are checking with their tech support team. Might mean nothing... but hey... who knows.

[keithlm]

New BIOS F6 installed.

They increased the NB VID from 1.1375 to 1.1875 as the default.

BUT for me the BIOS F6 appears to be less stable than F5.

F6 reboots if you run Prime95 with a NB speed of 2.0Ghz... and memory at any speed. (The old F5 bios didn't reboot immediately it gave Prime95 errors... and then rebooted after a few hours.)

F6 also reboots in Prime95-blend at 1.8Ghz NB at DDR2-1066 almost as fast as it does with a 2.0Ghz NB. (F5 went for 6 hours in Prime95-blend at 1.8Ghz and 1066.)

It also reboots at 1.8Ghz NB at DDR2-800 using Prime95. Not as fast... but within a few minutes.

So far I am not impressed. So no matter what memory speed... or whether you use 2.0Ghz or 1.8Ghz it will reboot when running Prime95 within a few minutes. (I ran the F5 bios with DDR2-1066 and 1.8Ghz NB ganged and it usually worked for about 7 hours before rebooting. With F6 that happens in 3 minutes.)

Ganged seems to help out a little bit... but not much; it still reboots.

I can't rely on Gigabyte. They took forever to get a new bios... that is worse than the last one. (And although the new bios mentions adding CPUID for the 9950... it seems they still don't "officially" support either the 9850 or the 9950 on this motherboard. Go figure.)

[keithlm]

UPDATE:: BIOS F6

If I use the following after selecting an "OPTIMIZED DEFAULTS"
GANGED
AUTO SYSTEM VOLTAGE
DISABLED TWEAKS
1.8/9x NB/HT

The system seems as stable as the F5 bios with 1.8Ghz NB/HT. (I.e., both BIOS can run Prime95-blend for about 5-6 hours before rebooting.)

================
NEW ADDITION TO BIOS: They added 5.33x to the memory multiplier. The F5 only had 4.0x and less. (800MHz, 667Mhz, etc etc.) But in the F5 bios you could get to 1066Mhz by setting the EPP ENABLED option... IF your memory is EPP friendly. (Same screen as the CPU/ROUTE tweaks.)

With F6 you can disable the EPP memory but still manually set the memory to 1066Mhz by using this new 5.33x multiplier. The timings ARE a bit different if you use EPP versus using regular SPD settings. (5-5-5-15-42 for EPP versus 5-7-7-20-33 for SPD.)

I'm now trying the non-EPP or SPD 5.33x speed. (So timings of 5-7-7-20-33). I have also manually changed the tRFC from 127ns to 195ns as OCZTony has suggested might be better for AMD.

SO NOW I'm testing to see if using this is more stable than the EPP settings.

(But I'm STILL not happy with Gigabyte at this time.)

EDIT: It might be my imagination... but even with the "looser" timings... the system just seems a bit more responsive. Prime95 seems to be faster.

EDIT2: I can run the AOD "Stability Test" for over a day with no problem. Prime95-blend will still reboot in about 6-8 hours. SO F6 is no better OR worse than F5.

[Majmac]

Has the default memory controller voltage been reduced in BIOS ver F6? I am pretty sure the default was 1.3 in F5, but it is 1.187 in F6. Can anyone confirm the F5 default for the Memory Controller Voltage? B.T.W. I took the measurement off AMD Power Monitor. The reason I am asking is that I routinely undervolted it in F5 and earlier by 0.200 volts, but when I did this in F6 it would not get through POST. However when I reset it and then undervolted it to 0.100 volts I got it to boot cleanly.

[Sadhiq]

Has anynone had problems with USB ports using this board ? A friend of mine cannot have his USB mouse working on it Maybe to be linked with bios version ?

[keithlm]

Has the default memory controller voltage been reduced in BIOS ver F6? I am pretty sure the default was 1.3 in F5, but it is 1.187 in F6. Can anyone confirm the F5 default for the Memory Controller Voltage? B.T.W. I took the measurement off AMD Power Monitor. The reason I am asking is that I routinely undervolted it in F5 and earlier by 0.200 volts, but when I did this in F6 it would not get through POST. However when I reset it and then undervolted it to 0.100 volts I got it to boot cleanly.

With what processor? The 9850 you have in your sig?

For me and my 9850 the Voltage goes from 1.3V in Bios F4 to 1.1375 in F5. It is now at 1.1875 in bios F6.

(Sadly F4 wasn't any betterfor me though... it crashed a lot. So far F5 was the "best".)

Sadhiq: I have no problems with my USB keyboard or mouse.

[Majmac]

With what processor? The 9850 you have in your sig?

For me and my 9850 the Voltage goes from 1.3V in Bios F4 to 1.1375 in F5. It is now at 1.1875 in bios F6.

(Sadly F4 wasn't any betterfor me though... it crashed a lot. So far F5 was the "best".)

Sadhiq: I have no problems with my USB keyboard or mouse.

Yeah. It is with the 9850. Perhaps it was the BIOS F4 in which the voltage was at 1.3V and I just did not notice the change in the F5!
Also, I do not have any problems with my USB keyboard. Perhaps the USB settings in the BIOS need to be re-examined?

[keithlm]

Yeah. It is with the 9850. Perhaps it was the BIOS F4 in which the voltage was at 1.3V and I just did not notice the change in the F5!
Also, I do not have any problems with my USB keyboard. Perhaps the USB settings in the BIOS need to be re-examined?

Sometimes when the F4 rebooted or booted... I got weird "stuff" on a few lines of the bios boot up screen and it would lock. That never happened in F5. It is now back for F6.

Sadhiq: Your friend might have to turn on the legacy USB keyboard stuff in the bios if you use the Windows boot loader and have more than one... or it won't "see" the keyboard until after windows totally boots up. Although you said mouse. I do think I've heard of various motherboards having issues with USB wireless mouse. (Mice?) I use a Razor Deathadder which is wired. (High resolution.)

[bowman]

Guys, my 9850 arrived today. I have a DS5.

Is it worth bothering or should I just send it back right away? I have the X2 6000+ now.

[Sadhiq]

Sometimes when the F4 rebooted or booted... I got weird "stuff" on a few lines of the bios boot up screen and it would lock. That never happened in F5. It is now back for F6.

Sadhiq: Your friend might have to turn on the legacy USB keyboard stuff in the bios if you use the Windows boot loader and have more than one... or it won't "see" the keyboard until after windows totally boots up. Although you said mouse. I do think I've heard of various motherboards having issues with USB wireless mouse. (Mice?) I use a Razor Deathadder which is wired. (High resolution.)

Ok, I'll take a look Thanks !

[-= rtz =-]

My board has an issue with Logitech MX510 mouse connected via USB. Not sure if its the case with all USB mouses or just logitech mouses,or simply my board/bios is flakey. If I plug-in the mouse before I plug in the PSU cable in the PSU,the mouse sensor starts to glow immediatly and cannot be recognized in windows. Re-plugging the mouse works. If I go by "first psu,then mouse" connecting method it works without problems. As u can assume,this only happens when pc is turned off and u need to reconnect all the cables so really not a big deal,but it is annoying to experience for the first time

[Sadhiq]

Thanks for your exprerience, I hope I'll be able to solve his problem, he's a real noob and doesn't understand anything apart from mp3 and sound mixing :p

[-= rtz =-]

Update: Today it was a major thunderstorm where I live so i plugged out the power cable from the power socket,same thing happened after re-plugging the power cable - the mouse wasnt recognized in windows,but the logitech usb keyboard worked with no problem. Really annoying cause I have to crouch and get behind the table to re-plug the mouse cable

Not sure if this was mentioned to gigabyte or not,but I might send a question to their tech support

[keithlm]

but I might send a question to their tech support

Good luck. You are going to need it.

PREDICTION: Their final solution will be to use a PS2 keyboard and/or mouse. Those newfangled USB devices are just too picky.