ABIT IX38 QuadGT bios 13 and 14 and HD4870X2 is incompatible

[Marlowe]

Hi

I just wanted to share the information that bios 13 and 14 (the two newest as of writing) for the otherwise excellent abit IX38 QuadGT is not compatible with the ATI Radeon HD4870X2 card. I didn't try 12 myself, but restored back to 11 as soon as I found out about the issue.

I spent close to two days pulling my hair out about this one, so I thought I'd help anyone else with this hardware combination. So it won't take them as long. I had never heard about graphics cards not beeing compatible with a bios before this.. well at least I was glad that I had not broken my motherboard with a unlucky flash or anything like that. And putting the huge HD4870X2 in and out several times during the last days has been a big pain in the ass for sure. My cabinet has about 2 mm clearing for this graphics card and I've managed to damage a P-ATA cable in the processs, silly me.

I hope, but to be realistic really doubt, that ABIT will do anything about this problem. The latest bioses fixes a lot of things with newer cpu's wich is great but wich we now can't take the advantage of. It makes the life cycle of the motherboard shorter for me at least.

Well, take care all

[Ket]

Sadly, abit these days =

A great alternative mobo would be a P5Q of sorts or the DFI P45 board.

[HamidFULL]

Thank you very much for information!

[Carsten]

Bios version 12 works with 4870X2 too....

Kindly
Carsten

[shaithis]

There is a tiny 2-bank switch on the back of the card, you can move one of those switches and the card will boot but system stability isn't great.

I had to go back to BIOS 12 myself, not the greatest fix as there are issues with that BIOS and certain newer CPUs

Supposedly ABit are looking at this, they sent me the latest beta BIOS a few weeks ago (which didn't fix the issue) and have said that they will look at the 4870x2 issue again.

[vvulture]

Any more news on this Shaithis ?

I think you were right when you said they were giving you the run around....
@ Abit

[VIctorj]

Any news on this guys...my 4870x2 is arriving tomorrow.

[shaithis]

No, after sending me that BETA bios, they then released it generally a couple of weeks later "as is"....obviously not very concerned about my feedback.......

here is the thread where they posted the latest betas, you can see my (none too happy) comments in the thread :P

Again, they say they are feeding that info back, I just have a bad feeling we won't be seeing a new BIOS that corrects it.......
I actually emailed ABit tech support on 22 Sept to tell them that the BIOS in that thread didn't resolve the issue, yet they still did nothing about it in the 2+ weeks in between

Just how difficult is it for their engineers/programmers to look at the v12 and older BIOSes and work out what the differences were? My guess is that those "new" BIOSes where sat around on a hard drive and there are no BIOS programmers left at ABit.

[VIctorj]

What are the main differences between the 12 bios and the latest one?

[shaithis]

13 & 14 have better support for the 45nm CPUs.

[Lvcoyote]

DFI is have problems with a board or two and the 3870's causing a no boot issue as well.

[VIctorj]

shaithis, what is the bios rev that you're using on your ix38?

[shaithis]

Now running the new m704b_16.bin and it has everything

E0 code + 4870x2 fixed.

[TuKo]

Can you share this BIOS with us ? I've a 4870X2 waiting on my desk

Thanks in advance

[Ket]

I really hope you guys get a half decent BIOS, but don't count on it. Honestly the last decent abit boards I owned were the NF7-S v2 and the AN7. BIOS support even way back then for the AN7 was sparce at best. Since then I also gave abit a few more chances, their NF4 Fatal1ty board (biggest POS I ever owned.. don't even get me started on this) and a AW9D-Max, which had a tendancy to commit suicide during BIOS updates. Very poor.

[Lvcoyote]

I have the bios hosted..... check the thread at the raptor pit forums for all the beta BIOS's that used to be at the abit forums.... I moved them all to TRP.
http://www.theraptorpit.com/forum/in...showtopic=2629

[TuKo]

Here is it !

http://rapidshare.com/files/170811754/m704b_16.bin.html