Intel 975XBX "takes 30 secons to Post"????

[OhNoPoPo]

In AT's review of a gaming rig using the the Intel 975XBX mobo:

Finally, the Intel 975XBX tends to take a lot longer to POST than most other motherboards, with a delay of over 30 seconds before the OS even begins loading

Is that true? I've never heard anyone else mention this, and it seems like a crazy amount of time to wait?

 

[phillyman36]

mines is taking about 10 to 15 seconds to post.

 

[augiem]

Wow, this is very interesting. I wonder if this is particular boards or just the 975 chipset?? Anybody with a 965 board ? How long does it take you to post?

 

[Talcite]

That's true IF you don't optimize the bios. Mine too upwards of 30 sec before i decided to tweak it. Now it's 10 or 15ish to boot to windows

 

[OhNoPoPo]

What does "optimizing the BIOS" entail?

Haven't built a system in a few years and it doesn't seem like it's gotten any easier.

 

[augiem]

10-15 sec before windows starts booting? If so, that's still very slow by any modern standard... My P4 Northwood gets past the bios in like 6 seconds, and my older 1.6GHz P4 system starts even faster.

By optimizing the bios settings, I assume you mean turning on "fast memory test" or somesuch, disabling floppy seek, etc.?

 

[OhNoPoPo]

Yea, that's what I'm thinking...my Dell 8400 P4 machine currently takes probably at most 10 seconds before the OS starts loading...and that's without me "tweaking" anything. What's going on here? You'd think people would be crying bloody murder if they're waiting Win98-level load times again!

 

[Dirt Guy]

Mine will take nearly a minuite to post with an HP USB all in one printer w/ card reader. I changed the PnP bios setting to no and now about 10-15 sec.

 

[OhNoPoPo]

So it's ALL 975X based boards (because I see you are using an Asus board in your sig)?

This is putting a damper on my day.

 

[phillyman36]

Hey if anyone reads this with a 965 mobo how long does it take you to post?

 

[us3rnotfound]

Good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this motherboard with a long POST time.

 

[Talcite]

Well I havn't actually timed post, but it's not excruciatingly long. Windows 2000 takes much longer to start up, and I've optimized that too =P.

For my XBX, I optimized it in a few ways.

1. set HDDs to boot first
2. Disabled secondary sata controller
3. disabled debug mode

There's a few others, but i've forgotten =P. I'll take a look sometime at my bios config. (probably tmr.)

But yes, this a bit longer than my old northwood. Maybe an extra 5 seconds. I don't see what's the problem anyways. Why not just leave your system on?

 

[Talcite]

got something for you guys : http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-009044.htm

 

[augiem]

Originally posted by: Talcite
But yes, this a bit longer than my old northwood. Maybe an extra 5 seconds. I don't see what's the problem anyways. Why not just leave your system on?

Hehe, wish it were that simple. The other day I was swapping between different drivers for my Geforce (SoftQuadro testing) and I had to reboot the system like 15 times in one day. That gets REALLLLL annoying FAST when you're impatient like me. (Mine wasn't slow because of BIOS, but I need a fresh reformat -- still 5-10 more seconds on bios wouldn't make me too happy.)

Hmm... Just another factor in the tough decision: 965 vs 975X, or wait for 965 c-2 which I have no idea how long that will take.

Augie

 

[Talcite]

The 975x can do crossfire/sli (hacked drivers) if you want them to in the future.

Other than that, wait for 965 c-2

 

[Peter]

Modern boards tend to take longer to boot because of the many I/O connectors. Every USB and SATA port adds at least half a second of detection delay to the POST process; every bootable LAN channel adds another two.

 

[xboxist]

My Dell 8300 (P4, 3.0 Ghz, 800 Mhz FSB) takes about 10-12 seconds to get past the Dell/bios screen before I start to see my desktop. I've never touched a thing in the BIOS for optimizing.

 

[augiem]

Not one 965 user care to comment?

 

[skriefal]

I just tested this on my Gigabyte DS3 (965P chipset). During a reboot, I measured the elapsed time from the point that my monitor loses signal to the point that the boot menu (select whether to boot Vista beta or XP) appears. 16 seconds.

But this isn't a particularly useful comparison unless you're comparing two boards with similar features enabled in the BIOS. For example, I've disabled the boot ROM on the gigabit ethernet controller, and that certainly saves quite a bit of time. Some expansion cards will also increase boot times -- especially add-in PATA or SCSI controller cards. Then there's the 'ole "quick POST" option to disable the extra POST-time memory tests. I can't recall if that option is present in the DS3's BIOS, but if it is then it would also slow down POSTs/boots by as much as 20 seconds if it were disabled ("20 seconds" figure is a guess, could be much longer).

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I know my machine takes forever to post, because it has to boot the RAID controller before it hands control over to the OS... Maybe the long post has something to do with the mobos RAID controller??