Gigabyte rocks

[swiftynz]

well after seeing the "Iwill rocks" thread in the Iwill motherboard forum and the good discussion it generated i thought i'd post one in the gigabyte forum...

what are people's opinions of gigabyte? i know some of their older boards were really crap but they seem to have got their act together for the DIY market. i'm really happy with the GA7DXR+ that i just got off JB, it's a really nice board. the ONLY complaint i'd have with it is that the multiplier has to be adjusted dip switches, and that can actually have its advantages if you are dropping the multiplier back and running a very high fsb...

in summation... blue... mmmmm

*awaits comments from wibber*

[Solid Snake]

Agree on this one, I have just read the new GB-7VRXP is the fastest performing KT333 motherboard at this moment. So I went out and bough it ... will be testing that baby in 2 weeks time

[Humantuckshop]

Gigabyte GA60X (Intel 815 chipset ) = unparalleled crapness.

Haven't bothered with another GA product after that experience. :mad:

[paul rhee]

its not Gigabyte that rocks.. it rocks because its CHIPSET rocks! amd761.. a short-lived chipset, but the only Athlon Chipset that i truly trust.. hehe and once overclocked.. it can perform close to KT266A and it outperforms ALi MaGiK and likes :-)
welcome to AMD761 dude :-) say goodbye to 4n1.. (well.. if u r using XP that is)

[SilverPriest]

I remember my Fic mobo with the 750, or was it the 751 NB
Most stable mobo i have ever owned....
Athon 650, wicked stuff :D

[Humantuckshop]

Yeah - the good old AMD751 - for 100MHz FSB Athlons/Durons.

[Wibber]

*giggles*
hehe my VRXP does 180mhz fsb!...but I don't know how stable it is as when I turn the raid on to boot it gets all fuxored :(.
it has a bit of a problem with penciled bridges..they work real erraticly :(.
the F6 bios gives you access to alll teh mem timing you could want..and some more that just seem to make it not boot :(.
alot of people have been having toruble with getting it running @ 133fsb, something wrong with a whole batch of them, seems confined to the us tho, but have your RMA stick and blanket ready anyway :D

[Humantuckshop]

Originally posted by Wibber
*giggles*
hehe my VRXP does 180mhz fsb!...but I don't know how stable it is as when I turn the raid on to boot it gets all fuxored :(.
it has a bit of a problem with penciled bridges..they work real erraticly :(.




Well of course the RAID will go ape it works on the PCI bus remember so 180/4 = 45MHz PCI clock. Alot of HDD's (on Raid arrays especially) don't like the PCI clock that high. S**t my IBM 60GXP can't handle anything above 37MHz! :mad:

[Agent 86]

I always thought of Gigabyte as a board I'd get if I was putting a pc together for me nana but I must admit I've been reading a lot of good reviews on gigabyte boards the last few months. I will defintely compare what they have to offer when I'm upgrading next.

[Solid Snake]

I reackon Gigabyte have always been good & stable boards, well the ones I bought anyways, but they aren't really for overclocking.

[Humantuckshop]

Apparently the newer Socket A Gigabyte boards are pretty good overclockers, but I still would go for an Epox or Abit.

[Mr ABIT]

another vote for solid stable boards, but if u want a REAL board go abit :cool:

[Mr ABIT]

no bias of course.......

[Scorched]

I've had the 7VRXP for a few months now and had no problems whatsoever, one of the best boards I've ever owned. Just ordered some new Kingmax DDR400 and a XP2100+ which should turn up tomorrow, Will see how high I can push the FSB, My system shouldn't be limited by the PCI cards or HDD as I run off a 64Bit/66MHZ SCSI card and use Dual Intel Nics which I have had running at over 50MHz in another system.

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by Humantuckshop




Well of course the RAID will go ape it works on the PCI bus remember so 180/4 = 45MHz PCI clock. Alot of HDD's (on Raid arrays especially) don't like the PCI clock that high. S**t my IBM 60GXP can't handle anything above 37MHz! :mad:
Does't the 7VRXP use the KT333CE chipset, so 180/5 = 36

[Geek4Life]

I'm probably gonna get the GA-7VRXP when I get round to it. From the reviews it sounds all good, it's packed with features and is a healthiesh price.

[Wibber]

the cipset can, and the board can do it,
but the is no setting for it...I need a multimeter so I can check some stuff out and try to mod it :)

[Wibber]

tis actully slower than the VTXH at low fsb,but goes higher so it ok

brr cold

[GooGlo]

Mmmm cold :D

The newer GB boards have been really good. Wouldnt buy one myself but the have improved a lot since I last had one.

It is cold :D
*looks at CPU temp*
*laffs*

32 degrees :p

[Joshsti_NZ]

I like the sound of a Dual Bios :D

[swiftynz]

i've never encountered a board with a dead bios, so whether i'll ever need the dual bios feature is yet to be seen...

i suppose its good for peace of mind :)

[Scorched]

Wibber
You mentioned you had this board running round the 180MHz range. Can you let me know your Bios settings. IE runnig top performance, ultra, Cas2 or 2.5 etc.
I just put 2 sticks of Kingmax DDR400 in and am getting lockups anywhere after about 152MHz. Currently using Multiplier of 11 as dosn't seem to boot if I set it lower. Just recieved my XP2100+ also so will try with that once I've unlocked it.
Cheers

[Humantuckshop]

Originally posted by swiftynz
i've never encountered a board with a dead bios, so whether i'll ever need the dual bios feature is yet to be seen...

i suppose its good for peace of mind :)



On a few boards reviewers have found that the Dual BIOS feature doesn't work! ie: If the Primary BIOS fails then the Secondary doesn't kick in! :eek:

[swiftynz]

Originally posted by Humantuckshop

On a few boards reviewers have found that the Dual BIOS feature doesn't work! ie: If the Primary BIOS fails then the Secondary doesn't kick in! :eek:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

*withdraws previous comment about peace of mind*

[Scorched]

I can vouch for the fact that the Dual Bios works on the 7VRXP - even worked a couple of times when I didn't want it to.

[Wibber]

It deos work alot..mostly when you don't want it to..would be better if you could fip i jumper and boot up off the secondary, rather than it trying to work it out itself.

hey scourched, gotta burn the thing in first.....very organic! would'nt run async very well when I first got it ! it requires alot of pissing round to get it working well. get the F6 bios and press Ctrl-F1 in the main bios screen, this enables all the 'advanced settings' in the submenus
I go write my settings down for you aren't I nice

[Scorched]

Cheers Wibber

I've tried the F6 bios but after updating, booting into XP would give me a BSOD stating that the Bios rev is not fully ACPI compat so went back to F4. Will download again and retry.

[swiftynz]

i was using the F6 bios (GA7DXR+) but i've since obtained an F7b bios that allows you to use the RAID controller as another ATA controller. very handy except i'm short an 80 pin cable at the moment, lol.

[Agent666]

I am currently setting up a box for my brother based on the 7vrxp and I think I have run into the 133 fsb thing .... works fine at 100 but as soon as you change it to 133 it all goes to poo ..... wont even work stably with the failsafe defaults enabled
....

wibbler I wouldnt mind getting the bios settings you use to try just incase it is me being stupid :D ...pm sent

[Agent666]

bugger your pm box is full :(

[Wibber]

check your Vcore! wooooo! bad..bad batch finaly made it to NZ :P your Vcore prolly will be 1.72 :P dumb huh?

[Wibber]

you wanna download the F6 bios and after flashing, go into bios load fail safe defaults then save and reboot.
then go back into bios, press CTRL+F1 in main bios screen and go into advanced settings chipset settings whatever its call you know the one.
and use these setting, feel free to play then post back, but most of the settings on the right hand column will make you machine not post at high fsb
anyway settings:
top performance: disabled
Fast Cmd: ultra
SDram freq: 266
Cas:2*
prechage to active: 2t*
active cmd to precharge: 6t*
active to cmd: 2t*
cmd rate: 1t*
AGP mode:4x
AGP comp drv:auto
AGP fastwrites:enable
AGP apeture size:128mb
AGP read sync:disabled
PCI delay transaction:enabled
sperad specrum :disabled
sb uplink:82
write recovery time: 2t*
dram access time: 2t*
page active: enabled
burst refresh: enabled*
PCI master read buffer:dissbaled
probe next tag: disabled
P2C pipeline: disabled
md hd 1t: disabled
agp performance: enabled

phew
:D

[Artifice]

dont forget to turn out the lights and let the hello kitty out...

[Agent666]

Originally posted by Wibber
check your Vcore! wooooo! bad..bad batch finaly made it to NZ :P your Vcore prolly will be 1.72 :P dumb huh?

cool thanks for that.........

yeah with a 1600xp its at 1.74
with a 1.2 tird it wont run below 1.81


will try those settings and let you know how I get on

[swiftynz]

hmm funny you should say that wibber. i've noticed that on my board that the voltage is always 0.1V above what it should be. it was set to 1.75 and i noticed that the cpu was running a little hot. then i looked at the actual VCore and discovered it was nearer 1.85! so now i've set it to 1.65 and its nicely sitting on 1.75... weird. :confused:

[Wibber]

yeah GA normally make the Vcore + 0.01 for stability, mine is + 0.02, which give me luvly max Vcore of 2.05v..

oops the settings with a * are just ram timings, and depending on your ram you might have trouble there, not if you aint OCing of course, but then the ram should be set to 333