P35-DS3L Bios - EIST setting disappears

[Billbo]

Quick question:

Should the setting to enable/disable EIST always show in the bios of this board, or is it sometimes hidden when you make other changes? I have noticed this setting disappearing on me today in both the F6 and F7 bios but have never noticed it happening before.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

I flashed F7 BIOS the other day. I'm doing some major downloading today, but when I get the chance I'll reboot and check for you. When I was having my issues someone (you?) told me to disable EIST, and I was able to, but let me check anyway.

 

[Idontcare]

The answer is no, it should not be disappearing on you intermittantly.

I bought 5 of these DS3L boards a week ago. One died on my during a windows install with no overclocking. Real bad smell followed by a 0.2V Vdroop at stock.

Pulled the board and saw the charred black spot in the backside behind a VRM. There was nothing visible from the frontside to indicate the board went bad. Actually I thought I had a bad Tuniq fan or a bad PSU before I realized the board had gone out.

3 other boards have run like beauties thus far, no issues, no double-boots, etc.

The fifth board has given me some "quirkiness". Lost OC settings a couple time. And one time I tried to boot at 400FSB (usually I run them at 367FSB) and it booted at stock and after that it did not matter what I did in the BIOS the board simply would not overclock.

So I pulled the power cord from the PSU, cleared the CMOS for ~30s (shorted the jumper for a while) then restored power and reset my BIOS.

DON'T forget that the first time you boot into your bios after reseting it you need to select "Load optimized defaults" and save/exit to reboot before proceeding back into the BIOS to change things.

Once I got all that figured out, now the fifth board runs like a beauty too.

 

[Billbo]

Exactly what I thought.
As you know from another thread Idontcare I've also been having several issues with this board.

So now the question is, does the disappearing EIST setting point to a motherboard problem, or could it be the CPU is faulty? Considering the speedstep/powersaving functions only display in the bios if the cpu supports them this has got me worried. I was about to buy a replacement DS3L today but now I'm not so sure.

BTW, yes I know all about loading defaults etc. Left the system disconnected from power with battery out over night and thought it had fixed the problems. Then after a day of solid operation at stock, the reboot issues began again and that's when I noticed the EIST setting was sometimes there, sometimes not. Flashing two different bios and it's still doing it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You think that's bad - my Conroe865PE mobo (AGP/DDR/C2D) loses it's FSB setting, after I installed a Promise Ultra100TX2 controller card. Even pulling the card, it's still missing the FSB setting. The setting can be toggled on and off, and it's active, but I just can't set the FSB anymore. Very wierd. I'm hoping that the setting will come back after a BIOS flash, but I don't need the setting right now, it's stable at 280FSB.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Billbo
Exactly what I thought.
As you know from another thread Idontcare I've also been having several issues with this board.

So now the question is, does the disappearing EIST setting point to a motherboard problem, or could it be the CPU is faulty? Considering the speedstep/powersaving functions only display in the bios if the cpu supports them this has got me worried. I was about to buy a replacement DS3L today but now I'm not so sure.

BTW, yes I know all about loading defaults etc. Left the system disconnected from power with battery out over night and thought it had fixed the problems. Then after a day of solid operation at stock, the reboot issues began again and that's when I noticed the EIST setting was sometimes there, sometimes not. Flashing two different bios and it's still doing it.

Yeah there is definitely something "wierd" going on here. Could be something painful to track down too...like parasitic capacitance (high resistance short) between a long pin on the back of the mobo and your case.

Uhg, good luck dude, I fear you are in for a long fight to isolate this issue.

 

[Billbo]

Totally agree with you on that. And most of the computer stores are shut for a few days so it will give me time to check some things.

I was reading a post at another forum how these bios issues have been pretty much fixed on some of the P35 boards by a newer bios. I hope that's all it takes because I really can't find another decent OC'ing board for similar prices as these Gigabytes.

 

[NoobyDoo]

Are you guys using the P35-DS3L r1.0 or r2.0 ?

 

[Billbo]

I've got rev2.0.

 

[j0j081]

probably a stupid question but you know there is a both a simple/advanced view of the bios right? My ds3l rev 2 is running to perfection so far. came with Bios version f6.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

I think mine is F5, haven't noticed any screwiness yet... To get advanced options (memory timings and stuff) hit ctrl-F1 in main menu.