Ga-k8n51gmf-9 (onboard 6100 Gpu) User Notes

[Acer]

just got this board....this what i have on it:

3800 X2 w/AMD HSF (changed out to AS-5)
G.Skill PC3200, 2.5-6-3-3 (purchased at newegg, $37 per stick)
80G WD sata-1 drive (8mb cache)
NEC dual layer optical drive
550W PSU (no name) that came with an inexpensive case (supply seems to be working good)
WINDOWS XP PRO (SP2)

i would like to post my experiences and anyone else who has this board please post here...

comments and suggestions are welcomed.

i had to learn the "ctrl + F1" trick...finally read it somewhere...this is my 1st giga board...i started intel and then went to cyrix; then onto AMD and then intel!...now i am back to AMD...they look to have a winner here in the X2 (plus the other single core A64 cpu's)

without knowing about the ctrl F1 trick, i could only go dual channel up to 220-ish...windows could work fine up to 227...memtest86 was down around 220.

now that i discovered the memory options i am up to 240 using memtest86+ (continue to go up) in dual channel mode using the 166 memory speed mode at 2.5, 5-3-3 (2T)...i am running memtest86+ for 10 passes on test number 5...that seems to be the real stress test for the memory.

this board even without voltage options has overhead room for a moderate overclock.

more to come...

 

[Acer]

looks as if 230 fsb is the max using 166 memory ratio, 1T, 2.5, 6-3-3, row to row delay at 3.

i tried a high speed fan (6.3K) on the AMD hs and it lowered the temp like 4-5C (42C vs 47C) when running sandra burn-in-wizard running (high or normal) cpu, multimedia and memory/cache benches simultaneously.

the onboard GPU is hideously slow (when running Aquamark3) when compared to my ATI 9800 Pro (128 mb) Aquamark3 scores...i used 64 mb sharing off the memory...i up that to 128 mb and the score did not change...

r u ready for the score comparison......the 6100 scored a little over 12,000 (total) compared to my intel 3.2 EE@220 fsb which scored 49,000+...it was like watching things in slow-mo

but hey! what did u expect for an onboard GPU....aquamark seem to be seamless, no jerkiness..it was just slow as the scenes/action were displayed for each phase of testing.

sandra score for cpu (@230) was 20,658......multimedia score was 43256......memory score was 5284.

 

[dingetje]

thanks for the input acer, the 6100/6150 suck indeed at 3d
nothing that cant be fixed by slapping in a brandspanking new 6800gs card tho

 

[Acer]

sorry to report but this board is a bust...it will not post any video after changing out a PSU...went back to the same PSU and no video...i had this problem when i first got it but thought i had done something incorrectly during the setup...

noticed over at newegg for this board several reviews showing the same problem...i guess gigabyte has quality control problems with mass production of this board...or...just bad parts...either case, i am writing this board off and no more purchases for gigabyte boards...biostar is my next option.

 

[Krumm]

I got this board about 2 weeks ago.

Got AMD X2 3800+ with 6600GT & a PCI wireless card. 2 x 160Gb Samsung SATA drive in RAID 0.

I got it to overclock to 230Mhz frontside bus and ran dual prime95 stable for 6 hours. Ran Memtest and was stable. (2 gigs of ram)

But when I run 3d games (World of Warcraft) I get blue screen of death (Check_Sum Error). Seems to happen anywhere from 1 min to 2-3 hours. I tried it at default setting without any overclocking and its still happens. Anyone have similar problems?

I'm going to reload a fresh version of windows xp pro this weekend to see if it will clear it up.

 

[NaughtyGeek]

I've installed two of these boards now and both have failed. The first one ran fine until I moved it from my shop to the customers home. When I first plugged it in and hit the power button, it didn't start up. I unplugged it and put it into another surge suppresor and it powered right up. Within a week, it wouldn't POST at all. I had another board overnighted, installed it and again it lasted about a week. My customer came and saw me this morning and let me know he's having problems powering up his machine again. I'm torqued cause I haven't even got the other one back from RMA yet. I guess I'll send it back to CV and eat the %15 restocking fee. This bites