Once again... memory divider options on the GA-8IEXP?

[Urtho]

Greetings all, I've been reading up on this MB here in the forums and have yet to see the final answer to this question. My eyes are starting to glaze over from using the search function to read all the threads, so if I missed the answer a link would be appreciated.

So, the question - how do you get the 3/4 (or is 4/3?) memory divider to show in the bios for this MB? I've read speculation in another thread that it not showing up has to do with the MB recognizing you have a 133 mhz bus chip and that a jumper change will let the divider show up. Any further info on that? All I can see at present is the options for " 1.5 , 2.0 , and auto " - no other options appear. The "press ctrl + F1 while in the bios" trick mentioned in one of the threads does work, btw, but it only shows you options to tweak the memory timings, not the actual memory divider.

I picked this board on the basis of several reviews including THIS one that touted the 8IEXP's overclocking abilities. So far, I am less than impressed. Another thing, is Annand's mention on that link of EasyTune 4 - this program will not even load for me, just gives "could not load NT driver" and "could not load 2000 driver", etc. error messages. Anyone get it to work for them?

System Specs:

P4 - 2.53G
GA-8IEXP w/ bios "f8" dated 9/11/2002
512 MB Corsair XMS3200cas2 DDR
WD 80 GB SE
MSI GF4 4400 w/ latest beta drivers (40.71 I think)
Windows XP Professional w/sp1
All the latest Intel chipset drivers

I would like to get my $$$'s worth on that XMS RAM as I've tried to OC briefly and got it to 150 mhz fairly stable at default voltage (slightly under 1.5v btw) which gives a 2.85 clock for the chip. At these settings, however, my memory is only running at 300 as per the 2.0 memory preset rather than the 400+ it can probably do easily. Any help would be welcome as I didn't spend the high premium for that RAM to run it at 300 mhz and if this board can't do better, it's RMA time. Thanks.

Edit - just ran 3DMark2001SE and got 6448 3d marks :Q

Something is very wrong here. Advice?

 

[Hamburgerpimp]

I have the board and it's set to 1X and the memory will run with the FSB. Actually x2 since it's DDR. There are no other options. But, this is the first I've heard of a jumper. I'll look for that somewhere on the board. Did you look through the Manual?

 

[Urtho]

Yeah, I looked thru the manual really well. If there's a reference in there to such a jumper, it's very well hidden. As I said, it was just speculation in another thead I read on here during my searches for any solution to this problem. I've certainly never seen any mention of it in any of the many reviews I read of this board.

There is definitely something wrong with my setup's memory bandwidth in general. I just ran SiSoft Sandra's memory benchmark and got scores of 1992 MB/s and 1990 MB/s for my int and float scores. That's more than 1000 MB/s LESS than the reference system that Sandra has on file for the 845E chipset. A system I'm sure they didn't overclock! I've installed every chipset driver I could find, both on the CD and on Intel's support site as well as the latest video drivers and motherboard bios. None of it has seemed to help. So...


Anyone have any ideas what's going on here?

 

[Urtho]

bumpage...

any ideas out there?

 

[BubbaJudge]

i have pretty much the exact hardware setup as you, i too bought the board for its so called OC abilities. i am less than happy.

even the manual shows a 2.66 option, yet i too only see 1.5 and 2.0

i have searched around the net also with no luck, and have heard of the fabled 'pin trick' which i assume is the jumper setting you speak of, yet have seen no actual instructions on how to accomplish this.

the locked pci/agp divider is a nice option with this board, yet the total lack of memory OC options is a joke. i am benching almost 13k in 3dmark, but i benched higher with my 1.8a/msi 645 than this and a 2.53

i will keep looking and will post if i find out anything.

 

[Urtho]

Man, still no other ideas as to what's wrong with this MB out there? That's pretty discouraging considering this was Anand's Gold medal award winner in the MB roundup he did in mid-August. Getting close to RMA time as I'm getting nowhere with alternate bios versions and Nvidia driver revisions and my 30 day window with Newegg is up in about a week. Benching ~2000 in memory bw in Sandra and under 10K in 3dmark seems downright pathetic given my hardware setup. And here I thought building an Intel system this time would be hassle free. Sigh...

Anyone care to recommend an alternative MB for my other current hardware? Was looking at an Abit IT7-Max...

BTW, anyone care to speculate on my 3dmark issues? I'm going to post over in the Video forum but I guess it can't hurt to ask here as well.

Here's the thead in video if you're interested: LINK

 

[mikeg]

Ok one thing about the memory is that you only get the extra 2.66 option when you are running a 400Mhz FBS P4. Also did you check to see if you have the High performance option enabled. One thing about the board is that it reverts the memory to c2.5 even though your memory should be able to run cas2. The other thing I also noticed is that you also get better benchmark scores if you just set the PCI/AGP to auto not to a fixed speed. Just try using a bios editor or reg. editor to set your memory to cas2 and tht will help your memory scores a whole lot.
Just my 2 Cents
Mike

 

[oldfart]

Gigabyte has odd ways of doing things. The way they have the BIOS options:
1.5 = 4:3 (FSB x .75) x 2
2.0 = 1:1 (FSB) x 2
2.66 = 3:4 (FSB x 1.333) X 2

On a 133 FSB CPU such as the 2.53 P4
1.5 = DDR 200
2.0 = DDR 266
2.66 = DDR 354

From what I know, the Gigabyte is one of those boards that remove the 3:4 (2.66) option once you get to 133 and above FSB. ASUS boards are like this, but there is a trick to force 3:4 @ 133 and above FSB on the P4B533. EPOX and ABIT 845D/E boards allow it with no trick.

If you are not overclocking your 2.53, lower the FSB 1 MHz to 132. This should make the 2.66 option available. This would get you to:
2.51 GHz
DDR352

This would be your faster than 2.53 GHz DDR266. Your SiSoft mem scores should be ~ 2600 or so.

 

[Urtho]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Gigabyte has odd ways of doing things. The way they have the BIOS options:
1.5 = 4:3 (FSB x .75) x 2
2.0 = 1:1 (FSB) x 2
2.66 = 3:4 (FSB x 1.333) X 2

On a 133 FSB CPU such as the 2.53 P4
1.5 = DDR 200
2.0 = DDR 266
2.66 = DDR 354

From what I know, the Gigabyte is one of those boards that remove the 3:4 (2.66) option once you get to 133 and above FSB. ASUS boards are like this, but there is a trick to force 3:4 @ 133 and above FSB on the P4B533. EPOX and ABIT 845D/E boards allow it with no trick..

[/i]

Was just reading in the Gigabyte newsgroups this morning and saw similar comments. Very discouraging that no one ever mentioned this little fact in all the reviews I read on this MB. Not very happy right now, but thanks for the information. Time to look at an Abit or Epox board it seems. Any suggestions given my hardware? Was looking for some 3G+ and 400+ mhz bus possibilities.

If you are not overclocking your 2.53, lower the FSB 1 MHz to 132. This should make the 2.66 option available. This would get you to:
2.51 GHz
DDR352

This would be your faster than 2.53 GHz DDR266. Your SiSoft mem scores should be ~ 2600 or so.

I tried this and it didn't seem to work. The option just doesn't seem to appear with a 533 processor installed in this MB. Looks like it's time to RMA this board with Newegg - luckily I'm still within my 30 day window. Besides, I DO want to try to overclock at least a little bit.

 

[oldfart]

Very discouraging that no one ever mentioned this little fact in all the reviews I read on this MB.

Most review sites dont do a good job pointing out the good overclocking/performance features. They seem to pick the board that has the longest laundry list of features instead. That 132 FSB trick should work. I dont know how exactly you would set it though. People seem to like the Abit IT7, but it has no serial/parallel ports if that matters to you. The EPOX 4BEA is supposed to be good, but I haven't seen too many people running them. The EPOX 4BDA 845D that I have is great. The ASUS P4B533 is also an excellent board.

 

[rbbnet]

FWIW,
I own both the Abit IT7 and the Giga 8IEXP. I had a 1.6A in the IT7 mobo oc to FSB of 150 stable as a rock under Prime95 and 3DMark looping for 24hrs. Although I figured out my test results were better if I clocked it down and pushed the DDR up. At a FSB of 150 I was forced to set my DDR on the 1:1 ratio giving me 300Mhz using Corsair PC3000 ram (rated at 370Mhz). I clocked the FSB to 138, set the CPUDR divider back to 3:4 clocking my ram to 368Mhz. The IT7 would run this setup perfectly. However the Gigabyte 8IEXP won't even boot at these settings. I appears to be the dreaded "cold boot" issue. Sometimes the 8IEXP is capable of running this setup through their "Easy Tune4" program. But there's no way it will boot overclocked. I found that it would boot overclocked at FSB of 112. After ~ 2 weeks of FSB112, something went wrong, bad wrong. I had shut the PC down earlier and all seemd fine until I attempted to restart it a few hours later. I got a black screen with the following error:
Invalid boot.ini
I assumed the overclocking had scrambled the HD. I took it out and put it into my IT7 system. Upon boot XP found the drive messed up and fixed it. The 8IEXP system is back in order now, but overclocking it is not a safe option like it is on the Abit IT7 system. IF< I MEAN ONLY IF, that darned Easy Tune4 app would work as advertised. More often than not, it screws up the AGPCI divider and overclocks my PCI devices, causing an ugly BSOD. ASYNC...more like "a sink" as a sinking boat. Look out Newegg....RMA request coming. Maybe they'll allow me to swap it in on another IT7.

 

[oldfart]

No more Gigabyte for me. My last 815E board was a Gigabyte GA6OXET-C. Decent board, but it was also plagued by cold boot issues. It also had these funky "PLL" dividers instead of normal PCI dividers. I could never get them to work right. I've seen complaints of cold boot issues on many different Gigabyte boards. The lack of a 3:4 ratio on the 845 boards is another reason I dont like them. BTW, that Corsair XMS3000 should be able to run DDR400. Even my plain old Samsung PC2700 can do DDR400.

 

[BubbaJudge]

well i gave up, and sold my 8iexp, but the board was so nice and stable i decided to go for the gigabyte ga-8sg667 as a replacement, it has more memory timing options and its lacking voltage adjustments but thats coming in a bios fix

i didnt need half the bells and whistles of the 8iexp, i just needed a good OCable board, so that i could use all this samsung ddr333 i got cheap at CC

also sold the 2.53 533 and am getting a 2.5 400 with the new C1 stepping

it was and even change for me since the 8sg667 is only $87 at newegg


this way i also dont feel guilty blowing cash before the legendary dual channels arrive, lol

 

[rbbnet]

In reply to "oldfart",
"BTW, that Corsair XMS3000 should be able to run DDR400. Even my plain old Samsung PC2700 can do DDR400. "

That may be true. But I do know this. I ran a 512Mb stick of Corsair to it's death on my Abit IT7 last week. I was running it at 368Mhz with 2-5-2-2 timings. According to Corsair that RAM can handle that speed all day long, but maybe not at those timings. My replacement stick should be in today or tomorrow if they hold true to their RMA claims. If I'm lucky they will have upgraded the XMS3000 to the newer XMS3200 module. I asked them to do so and gave them contact numbers so we could arrange cost differential payment. I even threw a 3 Musketeers in the returned module's box for good measure. Hopefully the RMA person has a sweet tooth although they never contacted me for payment. Maybe that's because the two modules cost relatively the same price. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[oldfart]

If you have to slow down the timings, its no big deal. The increase in CPU and ram MHz will more than make up for it.