Dedicated Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 thread

[joolz]

I've got my hands on a GA-EP45-DQ6 board, and everything is fine except for the fact I can't convince the gigabyte RAID controller to properly detect hard drives (I'm trying to get it going in RAID0). At best, I can get one drive to be detected. I have no problems getting the HDD's working off the ICH10 in RAID.

I've also noticed that there is a difference between what BIOS options the motherboard manual says vs what options are actually available in the BIOS (thought the latest version of the manual on the website does reflect my BIOS now), so this indicates to me that there might be issues.

I've flashed it to the F6 BIOS, though it didn't seem to make any changes to do with the gigabyte RAID controller options (it originally had the F5 bios).

I've got the following settings set:
Onboard SATA/IDE Device: Enabled
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: RAID/IDE
Smart Backup Function: Diabled
Smark Backup Initial: Disabled

Does anyone else have a GA-EP45-DQ6 having similar problems?

[Venom-Crusher]

FSB560MHz Blend Orthos DES Advanced Enable

[vertices]

I've got my hands on a GA-EP45-DQ6 board, and everything is fine except for the fact I can't convince the gigabyte RAID controller to properly detect hard drives (I'm trying to get it going in RAID0). At best, I can get one drive to be detected. I have no problems getting the HDD's working off the ICH10 in RAID.

I've also noticed that there is a difference between what BIOS options the motherboard manual says vs what options are actually available in the BIOS (thought the latest version of the manual on the website does reflect my BIOS now), so this indicates to me that there might be issues.

I've flashed it to the F6 BIOS, though it didn't seem to make any changes to do with the gigabyte RAID controller options (it originally had the F5 bios).

I've got the following settings set:
Onboard SATA/IDE Device: Enabled
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: RAID/IDE
Smart Backup Function: Diabled
Smark Backup Initial: Disabled

Does anyone else have a GA-EP45-DQ6 having similar problems?

I've got 6 HDDs attached to the ICH10R and they are working great. But I've got to get some opticals and another HDD on the Gigabyte ports. I've got the following settings as I don't need RAID on this controller:

Onboard SATA/IDE Device: Enabled
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: IDE
Smart Backup Function: Diabled
Smark Backup Initial: Disabled

I can't get ANY drive to show up any where on this controller. With either F5 or F6 and with every driver version I could find. The controller shows up in Device Manager and comes and goes as I disable and enable it so I know it's there. But I just can't get a single drive to show up off if it. It's highly frustrating.

[vertices]

Actually I can't get anything at all on the JMicron controller. Even removing everything else in the system and only connecting 1 HDD to the JMicron in RAID mode, at boot it just looks for drives and then says none found.

It appears that my board is dorked.

[Ace-a-Rue]

Actually I can't get anything at all on the JMicron controller. Even removing everything else in the system and only connecting 1 HDD to the JMicron in RAID mode, at boot it just looks for drives and then says none found.

It appears that my board is dorked.

1 hard drive will not show up in a Raid environment...you need two drives and then go into the Jmicron bios to set the drives to raid....have you tried that?

[Ace-a-Rue]

I've got 6 HDDs attached to the ICH10R and they are working great. But I've got to get some opticals and another HDD on the Gigabyte ports. I've got the following settings as I don't need RAID on this controller:

Onboard SATA/IDE Device: Enabled
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: IDE
Smart Backup Function: Diabled
Smark Backup Initial: Disabled

I can't get ANY drive to show up any where on this controller. With either F5 or F6 and with every driver version I could find. The controller shows up in Device Manager and comes and goes as I disable and enable it so I know it's there. But I just can't get a single drive to show up off if it. It's highly frustrating.

are your drives partitioned?...they can't be blank or brand new drives.

normally F6 key is to load a driver for Raid setup during installation of XP operating system...if you are using the IDE mode, it should show the drive if it is partitioned, and you won't need to invoke the F6 key during OS install.

[vertices]

I've tried blank drives and drives that are already partitioned. I've tried RAID mode and IDE mode. I've tried Hard Drives and SATA Opticals. I've tried in Windows and outside of Windows.

I have all 6 ports on the ICH10R filled with my system drives. I just need the JMicron ports for 1 of my Opticals and 1 other HDD. I don't need RAID on it, I just need it to act in IDE mode.

I don't understand why a drive should have to partitioned in order to show up as a disk in Disk Management. In all my experience with RAID controllers I've never seen that requirement.

I just noticed that the F7 BIOS came out today for it so I'm gonna try that when I get home. Hopefully it might do something.

[Richard Dower]

New review: http://www.cpu3d.com/content/view/5141/54/

Beta drivers for the Jmicron controller: ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/W....39.01Beta.zip

[vertices]

Interestingly, I sitll have the same problem with the F7 Bios. However they have removed all ability to switch between RAID and IDE mode on the JMicron controller. It now only has the following 3 settings:

Onboard SATA/IDE Device: Enabled
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode: (Deleted with F7)
Smart Backup Function: Diabled
Smark Backup Initial: Disabled

[Richard Dower]

Realtek 889A drivers version 1.97: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&GetDown=false

F7 bios is now available from the official website.

[rubenfreitas]

Did this board run CF 2x16x or only 1x16x and 2x8x?
This question is because i will buy 2x4850, and i want to have the best performance!

[JZ58]

EP45-DQ6 F8 Final ;-)

www.jzelectronic.de

[Supershanks]

Just took delivery of this yesterday Gigabyte GA-EP45-EXTREME Looking forward finding out what it's capable of.

lucl

[Richard Dower]

New Intel Matrix Storage Manager, WHQL dated June 11th 2008, version 8.2.3.1001: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...%2032&lang=eng

[Supershanks]

New Intel Matrix Storage Manager, WHQL dated June 11th 2008, version 8.2.3.1001:

Cheers Richard

[JZ58]

[Richard Dower]

New version of EasyTune 6 dated July 3rd: http://www.giga-byte.com.tw/Support/...lity&FileID=86

[Ace-a-Rue]

the P45 chipset affords cpu's to reach high FSB's but not super high read, write and copy speeds.

i expect a 10K read speed from 500 FSB not 550 fsb.

[Leeghoofd]

Just for ya info Ace, on my P5Q Dlx I only have probs with Read and Latency, Write is about the same as my P35. And this P45 completely blows my P5K Dlx away with Copy results... and that with a higher Performance Level than the P35... The Bios engineers need some more time on these chipsets... already good to see the Gigabyte has got low latencies...

[Ace-a-Rue]

that's better because you are using the 1:1.20 strap...i presume JZ58 score would look better if he was using the same strap.

[Polypenko]

need some help / guidance.
i bought the ep45 dq6 last friday with the standard F5
bios.
hesitate to update it to version f8 with my floppy disk, my last x38 dq6 board went in the continuous loop after updating the bios.
what ever I tried removing the battery clearing the cmos,
nothing worked.
brought it back and it was replaced since they had no idea
that a bios update had caused the problem.
the ep45 is working fine only on some restarts my Arctic
cooler pro7 does not start resulting in the alarm going off.
since a Bios update is performed at your own risk, I would
like to know what the savest way is? floppy drive or @BIOS
tks. kindly.

[Leeghoofd]

that's better because you are using the 1:1.20 strap...i presume JZ58 score would look better if he was using the same strap.

Well 1.0 is not good on this chipset (yet)... here's a 600Mhz bandwith test on the Asus... this chipset will be fab with DDR3 for sure



That's PL 13 for Christ sake

[pjskeet]

I've tried blank drives and drives that are already partitioned. I've tried RAID mode and IDE mode. I've tried Hard Drives and SATA Opticals. I've tried in Windows and outside of Windows.

I have all 6 ports on the ICH10R filled with my system drives. I just need the JMicron ports for 1 of my Opticals and 1 other HDD. I don't need RAID on it, I just need it to act in IDE mode.

I don't understand why a drive should have to partitioned in order to show up as a disk in Disk Management. In all my experience with RAID controllers I've never seen that requirement.

I just noticed that the F7 BIOS came out today for it so I'm gonna try that when I get home. Hopefully it might do something.

Everything works on the 6 ICH10R ports (optical, HDD., Etc). Nothing on the other 4 Sata 2 ports. I've tried working the bios (F8) with no success. If you find a solution I'd be a happy camper.

[vertices]

Everything works on the 6 ICH10R ports (optical, HDD., Etc). Nothing on the other 4 Sata 2 ports. I've tried working the bios (F8) with no success. If you find a solution I'd be a happy camper.

The only solution I found was to RMA the board to NewEgg and try the Asus Maximus Formula II board. I really wanted the Gigabyte board but support could only tell me that they think my board was bad. But with so many others having the same problem I doubt it's a bad board.

So off to Asus I go.

[Supershanks]

Bios Template if any one wants it.