Dedicated Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 thread

[Jor3lBR]

Hey guys,

Anyone can post CPU Reference, CPU Reference2, and MCH Reference for 45nm Quads?

Would be nice to get the settings for 1.20vtt as you can then manually see them adjusting as you go higher.

[ceemic]

I have a problem with my EP45-DQ6. It says "Storage policy is changing, please wait..." on POST. After that it reboots, then appears Gigabyte's POST logo and board reboots again. Then appears that "policy" text again and so on. I can't enter BIOS. Also can't enter to Q-flash to try overflash BIOS.
What might that be?
I have tried two CPUs, lots of RAM, removed all drives etc...

[OC Nub]

This is an old thread but I just got this board. I am not having much luck getting any kind of stability with my q9650. Was able to get 4500mhz stable on the UD3P but so far not on this dq6. Also cant find any extensive threads on it for overclocking. Anyone know of any other threads or have any suggestions on this board? Or is it really that bad?
Thanks

[andressergio]

Does anyone has any voltmod to this board, it has a big drop of vcore

Any help will be apreciated

Cheers all
Sergio

[Jor3lBR]

Guys check if it's the same vdroop mod as my EP45-Extreme. Sergio received your mail mate, I'll see if I can get into msn again.

[andressergio]

Guys check if it's the same vdroop mod as my EP45-Extreme. Sergio received your mail mate, I'll see if I can get into msn again.

Thanks Jor im trying to help Tom as that mobo has a heavy vdroop.

Cheers
Sergio

[ceemic]

andressergio, I may have posted Vdroop mod to this thread allready. Here's the thread where You can find my mod: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=204968
Good luck!

[OC Nub]

I will try the mod, thanks.

So far my opinion of the board is CRAP! but maybe the mod will help. I am sure it is a good board for benching but for stability it is a real pita, requires more vcore than the UD3P. I haven't given it a fair chance I guess. My first prime run at 4500mhz passed 1 hour of small fft's but now I cant get it to repeat with the same settings. I know Napalm had some great results with this board so I will keep trying.

Has anyone else noticed that the cpu temp readings are not accurate? It says cpu is 55c load in prime blend small fft but on 3 other boards at 1.392v load it normally runs 65-72c. I doubt a a motherboard can reduce the core temp especially by that much, have tried everest, real temp, core temp, and speed fan to check temps, also in bios it reads lower than normal for this chip.

[OC Nub]

Hope I am finally getting the hang of this board. 4400mhz prime blend 1.344vcore, same as with the UD3P. Ref's take some work to try and figure out.

[OC Nub]

Looks like 4400mhz is as high as it will be going until I try the volt mod. At 4400mhz idle, vcore is 1.392-1.408, load is 1.344v. For 4500mhz it will be idling at 1.424-1.440v which is higher than I am comfortable running 24/7.

[therat]

hey guys,
Has anyone noticed that Gigabyte has recently posted the F11d beta bios on the GA-EP45-DS3R webpage? I doownloaded it today (4 times actually) but every time I try Q-Flash to update the bios I get an error "Invalid BIOS image".

Anyone else tried this?

Suggestions please?

cheers

[therat]

anyone tried the new F11e bios for the DS3R on the Gigabyte site?

[chenxuwen]

I have bought the board about 2 weeks ago. One reason for chosing the board was presence of 10 SATA channels onboard. This would suit my purpose: building linux-based home file server (raid6 etc).

However, I was disappointed quickly, having found no way to use the 4 SATA channels attached to GSATA independently. The Silicon Image 5723s -- used as 1-to-2 port multipliers on each of GSATA's (aka JMicron 363) SATA ports -- support a bunch of RAID modes (RAID1, RAID0, combination of the two, and JBOD) according to Silicon's website. I was planning to put them in JBOD mode, and let the linux raid functionality take care of the rest. However, this is not possible right now. Gigabyte has decided that RAID1 is that we all need, and hard-wired the 5723s into RAID1 mode.

I have had conversation with Gigabyte support techs regarding this, and their reply was quick and disappointial:

"(SiI5723 RAID chip) supports RAID 1 mode only. When you connnect four SATA HDDs, GSATA controller chip will able to connect them with RAID 0 mode."

Well, RAID0 consisting of 2 RAID1s was not what I was looking forward to when buying the board, although I understand there are users who find it useful.

I would venture into "un-hard-wiring" the 5723s to allow them to be used in any mode configurable with SteelVine Manager. This could probably be achieved by unsoldering some of 5723s' pins and reconfiguring the chips into soft-config mode. Unfortunately, so far I have not found which are the configuration pins. Apparently, obtaining the datasheet from Silicon Image would require an agreement to their NDA. I would appreciate any help in this field... [Update: I _have_ contacted Silicon Image for the datasheet, and indeed, I was asked to begin the NDA process. When it turned out that I am the single individual (end user) and not a manufacturer, I was politely but definitely informed that they disclose that kind of information only to manufacturers. Anyone out there being a manufacturer that would qualify?]

Conclusion: Unless you really want RAID1s, this board has effectively only 8 SATA channels.

I originaly was going to use the Sil5723 slots for HDD's and optical drives. The Sil5723 chip does not support optical drives. O.K. I can reconfigure and use the Intel chip for the opticals and some HDD's. Fine, except the Sil5723's on this board are only useable as you indicated.

Using the Sata slots on this board has a very narrow appeal. RMA'd and going to another product. Thanks for the posting. Saved me a lot of time and trouble.

However, the manual says in the bios one can set those ports to be raid 0 ports.

[chenxuwen]

Hi.

I have a few technical question about the BIOS of EP45-DQ6.
I got a board EP45-DQ6 with F2 initial bios about a month ago. At the very first boot, it was OK. Then at the second boot, I used the tool in the BIOS to flash the new bios 13d. The board bricked in the sense that it keeps rebooting itself and shuts down without any posting. Apparently the dual bios function doesn't come into play at all. Could you tell me why? What is the safe way to flash the bios? With dos (flshspi.exe) ?
I RMAed the board and havn't got it back yet. Really want to know why this happened.

Another scenario, I was trying to put the new Intel boot rom, both the AHCI and raid rom into the stock bios F2. And I experimented these roms with ASUS P5Q PRO before. I used CBROM32. Then after flashing, another EP45-DQ6 is bricked with exactly the same thing as described above. I kept thinking how to trigger the dual bios restoration or just a boot block to recover the bios is fine.

After bricking two boards, I wonder how dual bios works, why flashing an official bios with qflash would brick the board, also why only modding the PCI rom part in a working bios would brick the board.

As Gigabyte advertised, the back up bios would take action whenever the first one is not working. Then how does it work. In both scenes, there are no action taken by the back up bioses. And the bootblock (the way we usually do to resore the bios) didn't pop up either, even with a PCI video card.

Then on the second board, I went further. I cut the power pin of the M bios. If the back up bios actually storage something and it would take action, then the missing of the M bios would trigger the back up bios, right? However, nothing happened. The second board remained what it is, keeps rebooting and no post. Then I desoldered the M bios. Still, no back up bios actions. The board remained bricked.

I got totally confused. So the next step would be desolder the back up bios and solder it on the M bios place. However, still no go. Does that means dual bios is just fake?

So why didn't a boot block show up in either case? And how to trigger dual bios?

I googled it many times. It loos like many people have the same issue as mine. Some of them tried SLIC. Some of them just flashed the official bios.
So there is some defect on the dual bios design or just the flashing procedure.
I still don't understand the dual bios and this gigabyte rebooting bug.

Could anybody give an explanation?

[OC Nub]

Hi.

I have a few technical question about the BIOS of EP45-DQ6.
I got a board EP45-DQ6 with F2 initial bios about a month ago. At the very first boot, it was OK. Then at the second boot, I used the tool in the BIOS to flash the new bios 13d. The board bricked in the sense that it keeps rebooting itself and shuts down without any posting. Apparently the dual bios function doesn't come into play at all. Could you tell me why? What is the safe way to flash the bios? With dos (flshspi.exe) ?
I RMAed the board and havn't got it back yet. Really want to know why this happened.

Another scenario, I was trying to put the new Intel boot rom, both the AHCI and raid rom into the stock bios F2. And I experimented these roms with ASUS P5Q PRO before. I used CBROM32. Then after flashing, another EP45-DQ6 is bricked with exactly the same thing as described above. I kept thinking how to trigger the dual bios restoration or just a boot block to recover the bios is fine.

After bricking two boards, I wonder how dual bios works, why flashing an official bios with qflash would brick the board, also why only modding the PCI rom part in a working bios would brick the board.

As Gigabyte advertised, the back up bios would take action whenever the first one is not working. Then how does it work. In both scenes, there are no action taken by the back up bioses. And the bootblock (the way we usually do to resore the bios) didn't pop up either, even with a PCI video card.

Then on the second board, I went further. I cut the power pin of the M bios. If the back up bios actually storage something and it would take action, then the missing of the M bios would trigger the back up bios, right? However, nothing happened. The second board remained what it is, keeps rebooting and no post. Then I desoldered the M bios. Still, no back up bios actions. The board remained bricked.

I got totally confused. So the next step would be desolder the back up bios and solder it on the M bios place. However, still no go. Does that means dual bios is just fake?

So why didn't a boot block show up in either case? And how to trigger dual bios?

I googled it many times. It loos like many people have the same issue as mine. Some of them tried SLIC. Some of them just flashed the official bios.
So there is some defect on the dual bios design or just the flashing procedure.

I have a Master in EE, and a PhD in mathematics, both from MIT. One of my colleagues is the daddy of somebody who founded google. However, I still don't understand the dual bios and this gigabyte rebooting bug.

Could anybody give an explanation?

After flashing the bios restart and load optomized defaults. Doesn't sound like a bricked board, just a boot loop, kill the power switch and unplug for a minutes then boot back up. Its common on the p45 gigas.

Or clear cmos, I forgot that board has cmos button. Also the backup bios should only kick in if you corrupt your bios, not for a boot loop, if I'm not mistaken.

[chenxuwen]

After flashing the bios restart and load optomized defaults. Doesn't sound like a bricked board, just a boot loop, kill the power switch and unplug for a minutes then boot back up. Its common on the p45 gigas.

Or clear cmos, I forgot that board has cmos button. Also the backup bios should only kick in if you corrupt your bios, not for a boot loop, if I'm not mistaken.

Actually, the screen is absolutely black.
Here are three cycles it had
1. Power On->Shutdown it self-> Reboot
2. Power On ->Reboot ->Reboot->Reboot
3. 1 and 2 combined.

And one could not see anything on the screen during the whole procedure.

Clearing cmos, try many time, use the button, use the jumper, remove battery or combining the above. No go.

The most important part, the M_Bios was gone, but no back up bios came in. Also, after the back up bios is moved to the m_bios position, still no go. Is it true that, back up bios contains samething as in M_Bios. Or Back Up bios depends on the functionality of M_Bios? What if M_Bios has nothing inside? Then Back up bios just won't go?

Also I tried to wait for 24 hours before putting hands to my tools. No go either.

"kill the power switch and unplug for a minutes then boot back up" this has been tried, no go.

I can assure you that, if there is any boot block looking thing or just anything poped up on the screen, I would have recovered the Bios. But the screen got nothing, and the board kept resting itslef.

[chenxuwen]

After flashing the bios restart and load optomized defaults. Doesn't sound like a bricked board, just a boot loop, kill the power switch and unplug for a minutes then boot back up. Its common on the p45 gigas.

Or clear cmos, I forgot that board has cmos button. Also the backup bios should only kick in if you corrupt your bios, not for a boot loop, if I'm not mistaken.

I just really really doubt dual bios actually works in the things they are selling us.
Could you try this? Flash something not a bios, say absolutely "0"s for one megabyte or some other bios (ASUS AMI) into the cmos, and see whether dual bios kicks in? If it doesn't work either, I believe the back up is just a fake or it can't stop bad flashing actually.

[OC Nub]

During the loop the screen would stay black and continue to reboot/loop, but clearing cmos would always allow me to get back into the bios. This is a shame, despite it have some bugs it is a very good board, especially for overclocking.

Maybe someone else will have some better suggestions. You may have just had very bad luck and received 2 bad boards.

The backup bios works on Gigabyte boards, I have corrupted the bios several times and it reverts to the backup bios, allowing me to reflash. I have the UD3P also and that backup bios works as well.

I upgraded a while back to i7 and no longer have this the board installed.

[chenxuwen]

One update:
Before trying the soldering iron, I've tried shorting pin1 and pin 8 of the M_Bios when press the power button to see whether it boots as many people said. No go.
No backup bios.

[OC Nub]

Have you tried a single stick of ram, or a different set? On my UD3P rev1.1 board I could not use the gskill pi's, I had to remove a stick and boot with a single stick to set up the bios, even then it was limited to 1:1/2.00D memory multiplier. On the rev1.0 board i had no issues with the same kit of ram.

[chenxuwen]

Have you tried a single stick of ram, or a different set? On my UD3P rev1.1 board I could not use the gskill pi's, I had to remove a stick and boot with a single stick to set up the bios, even then it was limited to 1:1/2.00D memory multiplier. On the rev1.0 board i had no issues with the same kit of ram.

I've tried that too. One stick in all four dimm. Two stick. 3 stick. All the combination. I even seted up a combinatoric arguement to check and make sure I've tried all combinations.

The ordinary methods are not working.

[Jor3lBR]

That sounds like a bad CPU mount to me. Take the heatsink out, check all the socket pins and cpu contacts see if everything is clear and no pins are bent. After you mount everything together make (make sure you do not over-tighten the heatsink screws) check if the backplate and heatsink are not making contact with the mobo's back pins > Multimeter on ground setup > black lead to ground > red lead to heaksink and backplate if it grounds it's shorted somewhere and mobo will boot loop.

[chenxuwen]

That sounds like a bad CPU mount to me. Take the heatsink out, check all the socket pins and cpu contacts see if everything is clear and no pins are bent. After you mount everything together make (make sure you do not over-tighten the heatsink screws) check if the backplate and heatsink are not making contact with the mobo's back pins > Multimeter on ground setup > black lead to ground > red lead to heaksink and backplate if it grounds it's shorted somewhere and mobo will boot loop.

It boot up correctly before flashing the bios, the CPU booted up. So no socket problem.
The cpu works fine on my P5Q-PRO.

[chenxuwen]

I am getting back my first DQ6 RMAed next week. Will check the bioses again.

[zoran555]

I'm only able to control 2 fans
ATM with speedfan 4.42.
Is there a way to get more fans under control?