I just upgraded bios to the new one. Worked fine. I even got one more power managemnet option.... Didn't help the stability problems I have been having one iota but the upgrade went well.
I just purchased this Dragon Plus along with a pile of other new hardware and built my new home system.
Hardware List:
XP 1900+
1gb Crucial PC2100 (2x512)
ATI AIW Radeon (It was my home choice last year and the GeForce 4's are still rare and expensive... soon though)
Santa Cruz: Turtle Beach - sound - (It was my home choice last year and an Audigy is next)
20gb Maxtor ata100 hd - with WinXP Pro - clean install
Plextor 40x CDRW
Sony DVD ROM
2 x 60gb Deskstar 60GXP's - RAID 0
3Ware Escalade 7000 4 port RAID controller
3Com Firewire
El Cheapo 56k Lucent Modem
Antec 1080b SOHO case w/430w TruPower
BIG BOTTLE of Headache Medicine
All Retail Parts
I'll get to my point about the BIOS after I vent...
The Dragon seemed like a good idea... Fastest chipset, lots of features, blah blah blah except not only did I have some serious IRQ issues (you might say 'Well Duh... look at all the stuff you've got in there' but Isn't that why I wanted the best. To avoid problems) but any time I try doing any really intensive work while running at 133 on the FSB, which happens to be what a 1900+ should be runnning at, I get the mindnumbing contrast of a BSOD. All I wanted was a MOBO that I could get some good gaming perf from for off hours and that I could do some of my work (Vid editing and graphics) on from home. The Dragon Plus Seemed like the perfect choice. WRONG. Very few games have been stable and no heavy editing apps last more than thirty seconds. Sure I can render a three hour clip in 19 hours at 100 FSB but half that time or less would be much the preference since I just paid all that money to do just that.
The new BIOS version (kvxa2ba3.bin) has done nothing to fix this. Neither did it fix my IRQ issues. To fix those I had to hack reinstall XP Pro to limit the ACPM control it utilizes so that the Dragon's power management (which is not addresses as something you should be alowed to disable in the BIOS itself) are no longer in conflict. It still isn't truly fixed but by some form of voodoo it works (not when I am running at 133... nothing works right then)
Sorry Double L This board is a pile of sh1t. Any MOBO that costs that much (no matter where you get one they are still expensive) should be able to handle all that.
TORBO
