My DS3 seems really fussy - anyone else having this problem?

[The Sauce]

Seem that pretty much anything I do in the BIOS will lead to a complete shutdown, reboot and BIOS reset roughly two thirds of the time. So for example, I have the board running Orthos for 8 hours at 355 fsb, I bump the fsb to 357 - shutdown, BIOS reset. (Even though I have had this board runnign stable at FSB 430 or so.)

I reset the vaules in the BIOS 3 or 4 times and eventually it will let me boot at that speed...then it's fine...can run Orthos there for another 8 hours. Even adding or removing a memory stick causes this problem. This also applies to multi changes, voltage changes, etc...pretty much anything in the advanced menu. Anyone else having this or do I have a defective board?

PS - I have tried many different BIOSs - F4. F7. F9 and F10

 

[Gary Key]

What board revision do you have?

 

[Cheezeit]

Like Gary Key said, it's important to say what revision you have. 1.0 seems to have problems like this, but 2.0 and 3.3 should be fine. Also, Gigabyte mobos have an automatic "feature" that resets the BIOS to tell you if you are pushing too hard on your hardware. It will restart the first time you reboot after changing any settings to write the settings, then boot. After 2 failed boots it will reset BIOS.
I remember reading this on XtremeSystems, they have a huge thread about it. Look there for more help.

 

[The Sauce]

Oh I'm sorry. Here are the full system specs.

DS3 Rev 3.3 BIOS F9 (also tried F4, F7, and F10)
Buffalo Firestix 2x1gb Micron D9
Intel E6600
Scythe Infinity HS with S-Flex fan
8800 GTS 640 mb
Corsair HX620 PS
WD Raptor 10K 150 GB
Antec Nine Hundred

 

[The Sauce]

Originally posted by: Cheezeit
Like Gary Key said, it's important to say what revision you have. 1.0 seems to have problems like this, but 2.0 and 3.3 should be fine. Also, Gigabyte mobos have an automatic "feature" that resets the BIOS to tell you if you are pushing too hard on your hardware. It will restart the first time you reboot after changing any settings to write the settings, then boot. After 2 failed boots it will reset BIOS.
I remember reading this on XtremeSystems, they have a huge thread about it. Look there for more help.

Right, exactly. I have been over there. It does just that, but even if you set to a known safe setting it will still reset and wipe the previous settings. Like, any little thing will cause it to wipe the settings - turning off the PS, swapping out memory, changing voltages, miniscule FSB adjustments....anything really. Then it resets, reboots and the previous settings are wiped...even if they were completely reasonable. Sometimes it just seems to get stuck and keeps resetting in a loop.

 

[Cheezeit]

Originally posted by: Snatchface

Originally posted by: Cheezeit
Like Gary Key said, it's important to say what revision you have. 1.0 seems to have problems like this, but 2.0 and 3.3 should be fine. Also, Gigabyte mobos have an automatic "feature" that resets the BIOS to tell you if you are pushing too hard on your hardware. It will restart the first time you reboot after changing any settings to write the settings, then boot. After 2 failed boots it will reset BIOS.
I remember reading this on XtremeSystems, they have a huge thread about it. Look there for more help.

Right, exactly. I have been over there. It does just that, but even if you set to a known safe setting it will still reset and wipe the previous settings. Like, any little thing will cause it to wipe the settings - turning off the PS, swapping out memory, changing voltages, miniscule FSB adjustments....anything really. Then it resets, reboots and the previous settings are wiped...even if they were completely reasonable. Sometimes it just seems to get stuck and keeps resetting in a loop.

Maybe the battery on the mobo is dead?

 

[The Sauce]

Eh...it's flakey though. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. It'll work 3 times in a row and then not work 3 times in a row. Also it remembers the previous settings, it just resets a few key settings to negate them. So for instance if I set FSB to 400, it will shut down, reboot and then disable manual FSB settings, but it still has 400 listed as the previous setting. So I don't think that's it.

I am betting it's either a defect or maybe a memory conflict. I heard these boards don't like Micron D9. And I'm sure as hell not going to return that.

PS - anyone out there who has this board who can lend some real world experience?

 

[Cheezeit]

The problems with D9 ram were solved in the 2.0 revision. I think you got a bad board.

 

[The Sauce]

Yah. Well I ordered an ASUS P5BDeluxe. The DS3's denoumont occurred when I tried to install a 3.5" floppy to dowload the new ASUS BIOS before the board came in so I would have it ready and guess what? Plug in the floppy and BOOM - infinite reset loop problem again. Had to reset CMOS...again.

This motherboard is like a prudish girl on prom night. You're all like "come on baby, it's just a floppy drive" and she's like "no, I don't want to" and you're all like "well how about a little FSB overclocking then" and she's like "I shouldn't..." and your like "come on, just 2 MHz" and she's all like "NO, I said no!."

I think I'm gonna put this thing back in the box and literally slap it out the door on the way to RMA. I have learned my lesson with Gigabyte once and for all.

 

[yiranhu]

Are you sure your memory multiplier is set correctly? If you set it to 2.5 then your board will refuse to boot when your FSB is too high (which is not high at all). You need to set this thing to 2.00 (or 1:1).

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Snatchface
Yah. Well I ordered an ASUS P5BDeluxe. The DS3's denoumont occurred when I tried to install a 3.5" floppy to dowload the new ASUS BIOS before the board came in so I would have it ready and guess what? Plug in the floppy and BOOM - infinite reset loop problem again. Had to reset CMOS...again.

This motherboard is like a prudish girl on prom night. You're all like "come on baby, it's just a floppy drive" and she's like "no, I don't want to" and you're all like "well how about a little FSB overclocking then" and she's like "I shouldn't..." and your like "come on, just 2 MHz" and she's all like "NO, I said no!."

I think I'm gonna put this thing back in the box and literally slap it out the door on the way to RMA. I have learned my lesson with Gigabyte once and for all.

LOL @ the middle part. Sorry you had a bad experience with your board. It seems like when the DS3s work, they work great, but I felt safer with Asus myself and decided the P5W or P5B would be worth the extra money to me. I went with the P5W but if I have any problems with it, I'll probably pick up a P5B Deluxe as well.

 

[Conky]

Sounds like a bum board. I have a Revision 1.0 version of the DS3 and it is incredibly stable month after month. I've had it running my E6400 at 3.2Ghz nice and cool 24/7 since I got it. :thumbsup:

That's the thing about overclocking... there are no guarantees. I'm very happy I got lucky with my cpu, mobo, and ram combo.

 

[dopee123]

Did you know the P965 chipset has a FSB hole around 350-400 FSB mark? Try lowering the multiplier for you rprocessor and running at 401-403 FSB.

Instead of manually resetting cmos, which is a royal pain in the ass, try holding the reset button for 5 seconds, I found this out when I was pissed my DS3 wasnt stable, turns out the heatsink backplate was shorting out the MB. I have a revision 1 btw with firestix as well. running stable 450 FSB 1:1 at all stock voltages.

 

[The Sauce]

Yah yah, tried all that...all different multi's, bus speeds, memory multi's...sometimes it liked 'em sometimes it didn't. No rhyme or reason to it. I could be running stable at 420 FSB, change to 415 and get a infinite loop reboot scenario. The board is in its box, slapped around roundly, and on it's way back to Newegg.

 

[The Sauce]

Originally posted by: dopee123
Did you know the P965 chipset has a FSB hole around 350-400 FSB mark? Try lowering the multiplier for you rprocessor and running at 401-403 FSB.

Instead of manually resetting cmos, which is a royal pain in the ass, try holding the reset button for 5 seconds, I found this out when I was pissed my DS3 wasnt stable, turns out the heatsink backplate was shorting out the MB. I have a revision 1 btw with firestix as well. running stable 450 FSB 1:1 at all stock voltages.

BTW, that is not a hole for the P965 chipset. You are talking about the MCH latency straps. The only motherboard maker who publicizes their straps is ASUS - and on the ASUS boards the strap resets at 401. It changes from board to board and Gigabyte did not publish their straps. This has become kind of an urban myth about the P965.

 

[The Sauce]

P5B-D up and running. It's a beautiful thing. Overclock up to 3.1 so far.

 

[SilverBack]

DS3 easiest OC I ever had
running at 3.2 at default voltage.
Planned on running mine at 3.6 however the cooler for my Northbridge didn't come in.

I will up it once it gets here and I can throw some heavy duty voltage at it.

 

[classy]

I have a revision 1 and with no tweaks at all except voltage, I've had my 6300 at 2800 without any fuss at all. This board has truly become of one my alltime favorites and I have had about 40 different boards over the years.

 

[buffpinoy]

I have both the DS3 rev 3.3 and Badaxe 2 rev 505 boards and I can tell you this... DS3 is a lot better for overclocking from my experience. DS3 is so much easier to overclock and I can have 4 1 gig ram in each slot and still overclock my E6600 to 3.3ghz @ 1.325V, whereas the Badaxe, it wont even boot! I also found to be very stable. It doesn't lock up or restart unlike the badaxe. DS3 rev 3.3 is a very good board!

 

[The Sauce]

Well I have to say that in a few ways the DS3 was easier to set up and run. The P5B BIOS is much trickier to navigate but you also have a lot more options to tinker with. I think that in all honesty I probably had a defective board or there was some sort of hardware conflict that I couldn't figure out.

I can say that for a fact, with all the same hardware otherwise, including processor, the P5B is overclocking better so far. I am up to 3.2 stable on this same chip. On the DS3 it got no higher stable than 3.1. When I could get the DS3 to even run at certain FSB settings it was usually stable at them so I have a rough idea of its CPU overclocking potential. The P5B seems better in that way.

I think other board mfgr's should adopt Gigabytes color coding on the mobo, that made install a lot easier. And other board makers should start using ASUS's Q-Connectors - that also made things better.

 

[buffpinoy]

Yeah, the layout on DS3 is also better than the badaxe 2.

 

[Bozo Galora]

While I have not had this happen, and does sound like some mobo prob if even a FLOPPY install screws things up - thats just crazy. I would reflash bios just for starters. Then set CPU Fan control on "disabled", and CPU fan warning on off.

And slightly off topic, does everyone with the 3.3 revis have those slight frequency variations constantly showing in CPU-z?? Looks like some kind of spread spectrum thing.
PC been running stock voltages nice and stable for about a month now at 400 X 8 (E6400)
Easiest overclock there is
Set host clock to 400
Set ram multi to 2X (1:1)
Add .1V to RAM