*** Official GIGABYTE K8NXP-SLI nForce4 Thread ***

[SunSamurai]

^

 

[eddo26]

updated

 

[dababus]

Would this be our official K8NXP-SLI thread or shall I start a new one.

 

[eddo26]

it could be
let's hear from rest of the members

 

[dababus]

eddo26, can you change it to official thread.

 

[eddo26]

sure
i can only change title
but i can't stick it to the beggining

 

[dababus]

Where is the advanced chipset feature in the bios.

I am running the updated bios, version F6.

I don't have those advanced ram timings that the reviewers had in their bioses.

 

[dababus]

just find out that you need to do ctrl+f1.

 

[dababus]

Am using k8nxpsli.f7h bios. I don't know where to check the pci lock in the bios.

Clockgen shows that an increase in HTT does increase the PCI bus speed.

Does anyone know if this mobo has an effective pci lock?

 

[dababus]

I haven't o/c the cpu yet but both everest and speed fan report cpu temp to be 70 degree C and mobo at 90 degree C.

 

[dark fiber]

How are things running with the k8nxpsli.f7h bios? I am running with F6 which is what came with my mobo when I got it last week.

How stable is this board been for you folks? What nforce4 drivers and what video (forceware) driver do you use?

 

[Robowang]

just as a precaution, you should read this thread.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1531758&enterthread=y
You should really consider actively cooling your MOSFET array, especially if you are going to SLI and overclock.

 

[Roomraider]

Robowang, this is quite an interesting and with all due respect ;loooooooooooong story.
This is the first real Gigabyte beating that i've really seen so please forgive me if I seem a lil biased. It has always been my opinion that you build a rig with enough CPU & Memory speed so overclocking is not a real factor to enjoy the benifits of the new system. Having said such, I do understand the OC itch that most of us just can't ignore and desire to scratch. These boards are all new and i have yet to see any reviews that have really made radical OC changes. The Gigabyte board is like the, oh how can i say it without offending anyone who may have went on the cheap and grabbed an MSI,DFI or ASUS?? It's the Elite board on the market. If you just went to your local sports car empourium and brought home a next years model bright red Ferrari would you try to drive it as fast as you possibly could on the way home????? Hmmm I don't think so. Again with all due respect, between your choice in power supplies for SLI boards and overzealous desire to tweak the daylights out of a new board without research, well I'll have to sum up your problems not as a Gigabyte problem but a user problem and if i were the retailer you would have to sue me to get a refund.












MOBO Gigabyte Ga-K8NXP-SLI
CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
Cooler Gigabyte 3D CoolBlue Ultra Gt
PSU Thermaltake Purepower 650 Watt
MEMORY 4xCorsair 512Mb 3200XMS PRO Tracer Ram/Dual channel 2-2-2-5
Video 2xBFG 6800GT OC PCIE W/Serials in order
HDD 2xWD-74 GB Raptor HDD/Raid(0)configged
2xMaxtor 300 GB SATA HDD
OPTICAL 2xPlextor PX716SA-SATA 16xDual Layer+-DVDRW-48xCDR
CASE Lian-Li P60 W/clear side panel
MODS 4 Blu 80mm/1 Blu 92mm(roof/exh)& 4 Blu Cold Cathode Lite Strips
MONITOR Sony SDM-P234 23" 1920x1200 native
SOUND Creative Audigy-4 Pro,YamahaDSP-A3090 7.1ch amp/Boston Micro90 spks/Bose AM-5 W/Sub

ADD-ON MSI TV@nywhere Personal Cinema FX5200 TV/FM tuner

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Have they fixed the MOSFET problem?

 

[Roomraider]

Still the best SLI board on the market.

 

[Roomraider]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
Have they fixed the MOSFET problem?

There is no mosfet prob.
That guy just burned up his board(user abuse)thats all.
I've had the same board since the release in Dec. and i have not had prob. 1.

 

[Roomraider]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
Have they fixed the MOSFET problem?

 

[subcpo]

Hiyo!
Just saw this last night
null

 

[Roomraider]

Here is a lil secret i found.
If you install NFORCE chipset drivers DO NOT!!!!!! install the Nvidia IDE drivers.
Huge conflicts with data transfer rates.
Blue screen (Machine Exception) when transfer rates are reduced by the Nvidia IDE drivers.





MOBO Gigabyte Ga-K8NXP-SLI
CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
Cooler Gigabyte 3D CoolBlue Ultra Gt
PSU Thermaltake Purepower 650 Watt
MEMORY 4xCorsair 512Mb 3200XMS PRO Tracer Ram/Dual channel 2-2-2-5
Video 2xBFG 6800GT OC PCIE W/Serials in order
HDD 2xWD-74 GB Raptor HDD/Raid(0)configged
2xMaxtor 300 GB SATA HDD
OPTICAL 2xPlextor PX716SA-SATA 16xDual Layer+-DVDRW-48xCDR
CASE Lian-Li P60 W/clear side panel
MODS 4 Blu 80mm/1 Blu 92mm(roof/exh)& 4 Blu Cold Cathode Lite Strips
MONITOR Sony SDM-P234 23" 1920x1200 native
SOUND Creative Audigy-4 Pro,YamahaDSP-A3090 7.1ch amp/Boston Micro90 spks/Bose AM-5 W/Sub

ADD-ON MSI TV@nywhere Personal Cinema FX5200 TV/FM tuner

 

[weshuang]

Roomraider,

I noted in your sig that you have a SATA optical drive on this board. I have been having no luck after a month of back and forth with Gigabyte getting the Plextor 712SA DVD to work with this mobo. (It works fine with another system running the 8IPE1000Pro.) I have a SATA HDD on the SiL Sata ports and no floppy. I have RAID disabled in the BIOS.

Can you tell me where you have your optical drive plugged in, and if you had to do anything special to get it recognized?

 

[Roomraider]

Originally posted by: weshuang
Roomraider,

I noted in your sig that you have a SATA optical drive on this board. I have been having no luck after a month of back and forth with Gigabyte getting the Plextor 712SA DVD to work with this mobo. (It works fine with another system running the 8IPE1000Pro.) I have a SATA HDD on the SiL Sata ports and no floppy. I have RAID disabled in the BIOS.

Can you tell me where you have your optical drive plugged in, and if you had to do anything special to get it recognized?

Yes anything to help.
After your OS has been installed, hook up your sata drive to the NVIDIA SATA(Yellow)ports. Open Bios, disable RAID on the ports you select, reboot and install the latest Nforce 4 stand alone drivers from the Nvidia driver dl site, Note* When asked to install Nvidia IDE drivers select no or you will have data transfer issues on any IDE HDD.
If you have any probs. you can call me @ 734-727-1829 after 6:00 pm EST. I'd be happy to assist. And by the way If you are using a SATA HDD you should use it on the NVIDIA port as well.





MOBO Gigabyte Ga-K8NXP-SLI
CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
Cooler Gigabyte 3D CoolBlue Ultra Gt
PSU Thermaltake Purepower 650 Watt
MEMORY 4xCorsair 512Mb 3200XMS PRO Tracer Ram/Dual channel 2-2-2-5
Video 2xBFG 6800GT OC PCIE W/Serials in order
HDD 2xWD-74 GB Raptor HDD/Raid(0)configged
2xMaxtor 300 GB SATA HDD
OPTICAL 2xPlextor PX716SA-SATA 16xDual Layer+-DVDRW-48xCDR
CASE Lian-Li P60 W/clear side panel
MODS 4 Blu 80mm/1 Blu 92mm(roof/exh)& 4 Blu Cold Cathode Lite Strips
MONITOR Sony SDM-P234 23" 1920x1200 native
SOUND Creative Audigy-4 Pro,YamahaDSP-A3090 7.1ch amp/Boston Micro90 spks/Bose AM-5 W/Sub

ADD-ON MSI TV@nywhere Personal Cinema FX5200 TV/FM tuner

 

[weshuang]

Thanks for the advice, Roomraider. I think I was getting the ports backwards, didn't realize the yellow ones were the nForce. I have the HDD plugged into the nForce SATA ports. I have RAID disabled in BIOS. When I plug the DVD into the nForce ports, BIOS sees it but it hangs at the Windows splash screen. I will get the nForce drivers and try mu luck that way.

One more question, I read in another thread to check to see if both controllers could be seen in device manager. I don't see any controllers listed in device manager other than nForce. Should I see a Sil controller?

When I plug the DVD into the Sil SATA ports (red ones) BIOS doesn't see them.

 

[weshuang]

THAT WORKED, ROOMRAIDER! MANY MANY THANKS!

(Wish Gigabyte tech support was half as competent...)

 

[Roomraider]

Anytime weshuang, you'll really like that board.
SIL, you wont see in device mngr. if you dont have the drivers loaded or if you have SIL disabled in bios.
I prefer to just disable SIL, Really of no use unless you have a bunch of SATA HDD's.

 

[ViRGE]

So sorry to bump an older thread, but my friend just got a K8N Ultra-SLI, and is having the same SATA boot problem as mentioned in this thread, and I was hoping some of you with experience with the K8NXP-SLI would know what to do. Basically, his problem boils down to this:

No matter what you do, the board refuses to boot off of a hard drive, making it impossible to install a OS. His 120GB WD SATA drive is recognized just fine by the BIOS, but when you attempt to boot, it all goes to hell. If RAID mode is disabled(like it should be, he isn't RAIDing), then the system throws an esoteric error message about Windows having problems booting off of the current hardware, and this is no matter what device is selected as the first boot device(i.e. CDROM-HDD, or HHD-CDROM). If RAID mode is enabled, then it'll boot off of the Windows install CD just fine, and Windows even sees the hard drive, but when it comes time to reboot and boot off of the hard drive to finish the install, it flat out never can boot from the drive. Attempting to go in to the Nvidia RAID manager(F10) to attempt the JBOD fix just results in the system locking up as far as we can tell, none of the keys respond and we can't otherwise move around to configure JBOD. The JBOD fix also fails to work via the SI3114 controller, when you have the hard drive plugged in to that, you can't go in to its RAID configuration even though the SI BIOS reports seeing the drive, throwing an error message about an "invalide(sic) device".

At this point, I've tried everything. The BIOS was updated to F2, we've tried every combo of RAID and no RAID, trying on the different SATA controllers, but it will just not boot. The reason I'm in this thread it that it sounds exactly like the problem the K8NXP-SLI had before the F7 BIOS fixed it, but we don't have the luxury of that F7 BIOS. So other than taking the board out back to shoot it, does anyone know what we should be doing here?