GA-8KNXP Revision 2.0

Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

I bought one a few weeks ago from googlegear, err ah zipzoomfly.com. They
changed names the day I placed my order! Check out Captain Nobody's early
and informative post dated 9/26. Probably some small improvements over the
former version but I couldn't tell you what those might be. They still don't
include a floppy disk with the SATA RAID drivers you MUST have to install
WinXP. You have to prepare these yourself from the utility CD included with
the board. There are already newer versions of both the Silicon Image and
the Intel RAID drivers available on the web. If you get one of these boards
and install XP, watch out for the "F6 gotcha" during the early part of the
installation routine. You will be asked to press F6 if you need to install
any special RAID or SCSI drivers and you have about ten seconds to do it. If
you miss this opportunity to install the drivers, the installation routine
will continue all the way to the end only to crash on the first boot.
Another little quirk is that when you press DEL during bootup to go into the
BIOS setup, you'll find that a lot of the settings are missing. You must
press Ctrl-F1 to invoke the "advanced" settings. This version is also still
touchy about what kind of memory it will accept. I'd heard that Gigabyte
recommended Kingston so I bought a gig of HyperX PC3500 only to find that
MemTest would only run for a few minutes without locking up the system!
Bumping up the DIMM voltage 0.1 volts completely cured that problem.
Installation has been has been a frustrating learning experience for me but
I think this board is going to be a solid performer.


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

Hello Alan

Just got this tonight back from the 3rd RMA and it is now the revision 2.0
board. Loaded up fine and so far everything is running very well and solid.
Previous boards died very quickly, two would not boot up at all, so much for
dual BIOS and one gave BSOD every ten minutes or so. Was using a Aopen AX4C
Max for the last few months while this Gigabyte board was away at RMA....
This board ran fine but lacked a few of the niceties of this Gigabyte model.
I run a very loaded system so the board has to work very well.

Mark


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

Hi Kilgore

Many thanks for your input on the above. Have you been able to use tight
memory timings with the Kingston PC3500 Hyper X modules on revision 2
GA-8KNXP?

Alan
"Kilgore Trout Jr" wrote in message
ink.net...
I bought one a few weeks ago from googlegear, err ah zipzoomfly.com. They
changed names the day I placed my order! Check out Captain Nobody's early
and informative post dated 9/26. Probably some small improvements over the
former version but I couldn't tell you what those might be. They still
don't
include a floppy disk with the SATA RAID drivers you MUST have to install
WinXP. You have to prepare these yourself from the utility CD included
with
the board. There are already newer versions of both the Silicon Image and
the Intel RAID drivers available on the web. If you get one of these
boards
and install XP, watch out for the "F6 gotcha" during the early part of the
installation routine. You will be asked to press F6 if you need to install
any special RAID or SCSI drivers and you have about ten seconds to do it.
If
you miss this opportunity to install the drivers, the installation routine
will continue all the way to the end only to crash on the first boot.
Another little quirk is that when you press DEL during bootup to go into
the
BIOS setup, you'll find that a lot of the settings are missing. You must
press Ctrl-F1 to invoke the "advanced" settings. This version is also
still
touchy about what kind of memory it will accept. I'd heard that Gigabyte
recommended Kingston so I bought a gig of HyperX PC3500 only to find that
MemTest would only run for a few minutes without locking up the system!
Bumping up the DIMM voltage 0.1 volts completely cured that problem.
Installation has been has been a frustrating learning experience for me
but
I think this board is going to be a solid performer.


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

Hi Alan,
The BIOS sets the default SPD memory timing at 2.5-3-3-8. I wouldn't
normally fool with this but I checked the Kingston data sheet and found
these modules are rated at 2-3-3-7. I was able to manually change to these
settings and MemTest86 runs just fine. I also noticed that Kingston
specifies Vdd at 2.6 v +/- 0.2 volts which explains why I had to bump the
DDR voltage up 0.1 volts. I think standard DDR memory is rated at 2.5 v.
This BIOS allows you to increase DDR voltage by up to 0.3 volts if needed.


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Hi Kilgore

Many thanks for your input on the above. Have you been able to use tight
memory timings with the Kingston PC3500 Hyper X modules on revision 2
GA-8KNXP?

I have Corsair XMS 3200C2 RAM 1024 MB (2 x 512 MB) and so far I cannot seem
to get the memory to run at a decent speed. I use AIDA 32 to benchmark the
RAM. On my Aopen AX4C Max I was getting about 4600 MB/S for read and about
1500 MB/S for write. So far I have tried various RAM timings 2-6-3-3 with
DIMM voltage at 2.7 and 2.8 volts but this does not seem to make any
difference. If I push the timings to 2-6-2-2 then the board will not boot
and I have to clear the CMOS. At present I am getting 3700 MB/S for read and
1375 MB/S for write. The board has been fairly solid though but I must say
the overall performance of the Ram is disappointing. Anyone with any ideas
please let me know as I might have to put my Aopen board back in otherwise.
Also my SATA RAID 0 which is 2 x Seagate 120 MB 8 MB cache drives is also
much slower on the benchmarking than the Aopen board.

Appreciate any advice or settings that others may have used to get better
performance from this board. Also if anyone is using a different brand of
Ram that might work more efficiently I would appreciate that as I might buy
some different ram. I bought the Corsair as at the time it was supposed to
be some of the best around.

Mark

"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Hi Kilgore

Many thanks for your input on the above. Have you been able to use tight
memory timings with the Kingston PC3500 Hyper X modules on revision 2
GA-8KNXP?

Alan
"Kilgore Trout Jr" wrote in message
ink.net...
I bought one a few weeks ago from googlegear, err ah zipzoomfly.com.
They
changed names the day I placed my order! Check out Captain Nobody's
early
and informative post dated 9/26. Probably some small improvements over
the
former version but I couldn't tell you what those might be. They still
don't
include a floppy disk with the SATA RAID drivers you MUST have to
install
WinXP. You have to prepare these yourself from the utility CD included
with
the board. There are already newer versions of both the Silicon Image
and
the Intel RAID drivers available on the web. If you get one of these
boards
and install XP, watch out for the "F6 gotcha" during the early part of
the
installation routine. You will be asked to press F6 if you need to
install
any special RAID or SCSI drivers and you have about ten seconds to do
it.
If
you miss this opportunity to install the drivers, the installation
routine
will continue all the way to the end only to crash on the first boot.
Another little quirk is that when you press DEL during bootup to go into
the
BIOS setup, you'll find that a lot of the settings are missing. You must
press Ctrl-F1 to invoke the "advanced" settings. This version is also
still
touchy about what kind of memory it will accept. I'd heard that Gigabyte
recommended Kingston so I bought a gig of HyperX PC3500 only to find
that
MemTest would only run for a few minutes without locking up the system!
Bumping up the DIMM voltage 0.1 volts completely cured that problem.
Installation has been has been a frustrating learning experience for me
but
I think this board is going to be a solid performer.


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

Hi Mark
AIDA 32 measures 4330 MB/S read and 1608 MB/S write on my GA-8KNXP. (P4 2.8
800 XP)
I'm using two 512 MB sticks of Kingston Hyper X PC3500 at 2-3-3-7 and 2.6
volts.

Using the default SPD memory timings I measured 4227 MB/S read and 1691 MB/S
write (2.5-3-3-8)

Hadn't heard of AIDA 32 before but this is a terrific utility!

This won't help you much but I have two Western Digital 120 MB SATA drives
on the Silicon Image controller in a RAID 1 array. A quick benchmark on
these measures an average read speed of 38.7MB/S

"Mark Taylor" wrote in message
...
I have Corsair XMS 3200C2 RAM 1024 MB (2 x 512 MB) and so far I cannot seem
to get the memory to run at a decent speed. I use AIDA 32 to benchmark the
RAM. On my Aopen AX4C Max I was getting about 4600 MB/S for read and about
1500 MB/S for write. So far I have tried various RAM timings 2-6-3-3 with
DIMM voltage at 2.7 and 2.8 volts but this does not seem to make any
difference. If I push the timings to 2-6-2-2 then the board will not boot
and I have to clear the CMOS. At present I am getting 3700 MB/S for read and
1375 MB/S for write. The board has been fairly solid though but I must say
the overall performance of the Ram is disappointing. Anyone with any ideas
please let me know as I might have to put my Aopen board back in otherwise.
Also my SATA RAID 0 which is 2 x Seagate 120 MB 8 MB cache drives is also
much slower on the benchmarking than the Aopen board.

Appreciate any advice or settings that others may have used to get better
performance from this board. Also if anyone is using a different brand of
Ram that might work more efficiently I would appreciate that as I might buy
some different ram. I bought the Corsair as at the time it was supposed to
be some of the best around.

Mark

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:55:30 +0100, "Alan Guest"
wrote:

Is anyone using revision 2.0 yet?

Alan

Yep, very stable for my needs. I don't O/C that much so not sure what
I can tell you about it but I'll give it ago.

Problem wise, not much wrong however a few issues which could be BIOS
related.

The BIOS for the ICH5R RAID controller doesn't like my Adaptec 29160N
controller being set as first in the boot order and doesn't
initialize, since I use a 15k SCSI as my boot drive their isn't much I
can do about it.

Memory wise I use two sticks of Crucial CT6472Z40B (512MB, PC3200,
CAS3, ECC) which run at 2-3-2-5 at 333Mhz without problems, not sure
if this is PAT or the Top Performance setting in the BIOS that is
causing these timings as the memory is meant to run at CAS2.5 at 333.

With the DPS2 card installed it also seems fine with my 3.06 no cold
boot issues (yet).

Quite happy with it overall.

Later,

CN.

The data sheet for my Kingston doesn't show the memory timing values.
Any ideas where I might find those so I can set them?
I have KVR400X64C3Ak2/ 1 G TIA

"Kilgore Trout Jr" wrote in message
news
Hi Alan,
The BIOS sets the default SPD memory timing at 2.5-3-3-8. I wouldn't
normally fool with this but I checked the Kingston data sheet and found
these modules are rated at 2-3-3-7. I was able to manually change to these
settings and MemTest86 runs just fine. I also noticed that Kingston
specifies Vdd at 2.6 v +/- 0.2 volts which explains why I had to bump the
DDR voltage up 0.1 volts. I think standard DDR memory is rated at 2.5 v.
This BIOS allows you to increase DDR voltage by up to 0.3 volts if needed.


"Alan Guest" wrote in message
...
Hi Kilgore

Many thanks for your input on the above. Have you been able to use tight
memory timings with the Kingston PC3500 Hyper X modules on revision 2
GA-8KNXP?

You've probably already seen this and I don't see any specific memory
timings either except for the CL3.

http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/K...64C3AK2_1G.pdf

This is described as a "value" product and the CL3 confirms that this is not
high performance memory so you might be best served by going with the SPD
settings. I would bump the DDR voltage up by at least 0.1 v as this product
is rated at 2.6 v +/- 0.1

"mark7dc" wrote in message
news:tf%lb.72616$La.33995@fed1read02...
The data sheet for my Kingston doesn't show the memory timing values.
Any ideas where I might find those so I can set them?
I have KVR400X64C3Ak2/ 1 G TIA