Problems with Firewall software and GA-K8NSNXP-939

[confuzzled]

Hi. New here and hoping some of you gurus may have an answer.

I just purchased a GA-K8NSNXP-939 and 3500+ CPU. After wrangling with the RAID and such, I am at the point where I would like to install the NForce3 Firewall and Network Access Manager software.

When I attempt to install it with the Nvidia Unified drivers v4.24, it says not supported and exits the installation. Has anyone been able to actually get the firewall software to work with this motherboard or was I an idiot for not doing enough research before this purchase?

Thanks for all of your help ahead of time.

System specs:

AMD64 3500+
Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939
Corsair Twinx 1024 - 3200LL
Nvidia GeforceFX 5950 Ultra
Windows XP Pro

 

[jkresh]

have you tried installing the drivers from the cd instead of the 4.24 from nvidia's site, as the board is pretty new and it is possible that the 4.24's dont properly recognize it (or any 939 for that matter?)

 

[confuzzled]

The thing with this board is, they did not include any of the Nvidia specific drivers or software on the CD. It even mentioned it in a review I read somewhere. The confusing thing to me is, the firewall was mentioned specifically in that review and I can only assume that it worked for them. Unless they never tested it and just took it for granted that an Nforce3 chipset had it builtin.

 

[confuzzled]

Anyone with this board have Nvidia firewall running?

 

[jkresh]

unless i am very much mistaken that is an nforce3 ultra board, not a 250gb so it may not have the firewall built in.

 

[Thalasi]

In the review at Short-Media they seemed to have the firewall working. Linky
My board is still in transit so I'm not able to check just yet.

 

[confuzzled]

Thanks for the replies. That is the review I am talking about. It blatantly talks about the Nvidia Network Access Manager software and Firewall. That is one of the reasons I bought the board and didn't hold off for the MSI 939 board due out soon.

Let me know how you make out Thalasi.

 

[confuzzled]

Trying to get this answered. Anyone with this board using the Nforce features?

 

[imported_Aelius]

Originally posted by: confuzzled
Trying to get this answered. Anyone with this board using the Nforce features?

For a simple answer I went to the Gigabyte website and checked the details of the motherboard, although they don't always list aboslutely everything here, and there was no mention of the firewall.

I then downloaded the massive 9MB manual and and did a search for "firewall" and "wall" and came up with nothing.

Now it may be possible that the firewall feature of nForce3Ultra, which by the way has all the features built-in that any other previous nForce3 chipset had including the firewall, are not enabled for this motherboard because it simply does not support it.

The reason why a review site might have it working is because they might be using a different BIOS (beta?) that might have enabled this feature.

Either way this board does not seem to support the Firewall feature. It has been noted in other review sites that not all motherboards support all features of the nForce3 chipsets.

Either that or you got a defective motherboard and need to RMA it.

I suggest emailing Gigabyte and getting an answer straight from them.

Let us know what they say.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. There was initial problems with several motherboards not supporting all the features of nForce3 all the time or at all. It may be entirely possible that the review site was testing a pre-release motherboard, which happend to have this feature enabled, but later Gigabyte might have disabled this feature because they couldn't run it correctly or stable on retail motherboards. This is a more likely scenario.

EDIT2: I did a little more digging. (God I'm such a research freak) As an example I looked at the MSI website at their nForce3Ultra socket 939 motherboard (K8N Neo2 Platinum) and there was no mention of the firewall on the details page of the website (typical). I then downloaded the manual and unlike the Gigabyte manual this one listed detailed instructions on how to install the nForce Firewall software on this motherboard. Food for thought.

 

[confuzzled]

So it appears the firewall is not supported with this mobo. I got a response from Gigabyte tech support:

-----
Hi,

This is not the nForce 250GB chipset, just the 250 therefore it doesn't have onboard firewall.

Thank you
-----

So much for the Nforce3 Ultra, at least with this motherboard. False advertising if you ask me.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Wow, that is a very interesting response.

All the advertising (Newegg, Gigabyte's own webpage, etc.) distinctly mentions that the board uses the NF3-Ultra chipset. According to Nvidia, the NF3-Ultra is the same as the NF3-250Gb, but with the 1000Mhz HT path instead of the 800MHz one. Therefore, it should have the Firewall, although I guess it is possible that Gigabyte did not implement that feature.

So, I think one of three things has happened:

1. You have a configuration problem and with additional research will be able to fix the problem.
2. You have a defective board and need a replacement.
3. The tech support guy was actually correct and Gigabyte has incorrect (or at least misleading) info on their site.

I'm guessing it is most likely case 1 or 2, but I guess it is possible that Gigabyte did not implement that firewall feature.

I personally like the idea of the firewall, so if I had a similar problem, I would either figure out how to fix the issue (assuming it is a bad board or a configuration problem), or I would return the Mobo for a different brand and get one that has the firewall implemented.

Good luck!

-D'oh!

 

[SpikeyNL]

It's not an sollution, but a question to make you feel better about the board. If you have a look at the specs of nForce3 family, you'll find that there are no big differences between the Ultra and GB versions. Both versions are tested very good and are recommended. About the firewall functionality in the GB versions. Think about it, why would you need a firewall communicating through the fast bus in stead of the through pci (e.g. does your firewall need to handle huge amounts of requests per second?)? You realy won't noitice any difference between the firewall of nForce3 and software firewalls. If you really want a fast hardware firewall, just buy hardware firewall.
Cheers!
Spikey

 

[tealcomp]

Hi All:

I am brand new to this forum; interesting article about which motherboards incoporate the ON-Chip Nvidia chipset; and according to the article, the Gigabyte you referenced above HAS IT. So this is really very interesting to say the least. I have been waiting on the MSI with this feature to come out but the Gigabyte was on a short list. Does anyone else have this board with the firewall feature working?

Thanks,

Dan

 

[cluster550]

Well, I just got my K8NSNXP late last week and built my first system with it. Everything has been great with it so far, although I'm not sure the CPU temperature is reporting correctly (12C idle and 21C after running maxed out UT2004 for a while). I do have a working firewall on this board, but maybe the reason some can't get it to work is because of an older BIOS? Mine came with F3 on it. Here is the order in which I installed software:

1. Windows XP Pro with SP1
2. All drivers on the disk
3. Newest Marvell LAN driver
4. nForce 4.27 driver

If I remember correctly (I did most of this work while seriously lacking sleep), when I installed the nForce driver another window asked me about installing the firewall after the main part of the driver was done installing, but when I ran the same update on one of my older computers, I did not get that window, so it must have detected the onboard firewall on my new system.

Hope this helps those who are having problems.

 

[Thalasi]

Alrighty, my board finally came... after installing the nForce drivers it does infact have everything described in the listed review reguarding the Firewall and Network Access Manager.