need some help witha a Gigabyte board

PPC

Ive a Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 motherboard and a problem.
I can't flash the bios cause it says its not the motherboard i have but according to the board its self, Sisoft Sandra and a couple of other programs it is.
Also beware this board is really s|-|ite.
Also does anybody know the best ram timings for it.
Thanks

Gerry

I think you can force the bios update with awdflash /F but don't blame me if it really is the wrong bios!

Maybe the bios is for a different revision of the board and thats why it won't let you flash it?

Look at the link I posted in the tualatin cpu thread for a bios optimization guide.

zAbbo

True the board is crap, but only flash the bios if you are
A) no other option
Bored
C) attempting to extract revenge on a poor board

Remove the pc case and search for the bios, locate all relevant numbers and revisions. First port of call is throwing the numbers into a search engine or if you recognise a keyword(phoenixbios etc.) try visiting the site or searching for the site. God help you if its a phoenix bios as i have emailed them and faxed and phoned every day for 2 weeks with the same message(you are in a line and will be accessed sequentially by an operative).

PPC

I'm using the gigabyte flasher and it says its not one of their boards.
I asked the guy at tech support what was the 3rd onboard temp sensor and he said "i think its your motherboard but i dunno".

I'm going Asus, Abit or iWill soon

zAbbo

The nice thing about the abit boards is that they are a well documented board with plenty of information and a good refrence manual. Also the board of choice is a RAID board which has 4 IDE connectors onboard meaning that you can run 2 Hard drives a CD Writer and a DVD drive all on sepearte IDE connections, this is good for "on the fly" disk writing. Best of luck with your problem

JustHalf

Originally posted by pcirl.com
True the board is crap, but only flash the bios if you are
A) no other option
Bored
C) attempting to extract revenge on a poor board

I could have left my bios as it was, but instead flashed it and got more, useful, BIOS options. Some boards will support different chips with later BIOS'.

This is one reason for flashing the BIOS... new features!

zAbbo

i agree with you in that flashing the BIOS does allow new features but i`d only flash when I need to run more RAM or a higher CPU, it`s not for the faint hearted. Iremember once when i was flashing i sorta paniced at a blank screen and rebooted, ended up losing it (luckily enuff it was only a p5-75 chip)

JustHalf

Originally posted by pcirl.com
Iremember once when i was flashing i sorta paniced at a blank screen and rebooted, ended up losing it (luckily enuff it was only a p5-75 chip)

Note to self... remember this.

Gerry

I've flashed the bios whenever it was needed. Often a bios update does not add support for faster components, but improves support for existing components, and/or improves performance and stability.

Bios flashing is not very difficult if you follow the detailed instructions provided, and don't panic during it.

For example the current abit flash procedure even gives you a premade batch file to run awdflash with the correct filename and parameters, so all you have to do is boot into dos, off a boot disk or the win98 cd or whatever, and type "runme.bat".

Theres no point in ringing pheonix or award or whoever, it is usually possible to track down the manufacturer on the net, there are many sites now holding databases of bios id strings. www.ping.be/bios being one of the originals. I have tracked down motherboards without any identifying marks on them using just the bios id string.

PPC, if it is an award bios, you can use the award flasher instead of the gigabyte one.

TacT

yer I killed one board (was a pos neway when flashing the bios with an incorrect version.

The last thing you ever want to do is reboot during a flash of the bios. Unless of course it's been sitting there for an odd 20mins plus with a black screen :rolleyes:

The_Conductor

I have a pair of the same boards to send back on Tuesday. I agree totally with you they are ****e. I mean, I've gotten some terrible hardware in my time, but this Gigabyte rubbish is something else. I cannot get graphics on either board at all (I have a third board identical to the other two which behaves exactly as its supposed to). I've not flashed the useless lumps of plastic or bashed them against the wall in frustration- but am actively considering donating both boards to an artist friend for use in a modern art object d'art. Think I'll get a few of the Elite K7S5A boards- they're cheap, cheerful, and the bloody things work. On top of being cheaper than the Gigabyte board they support up to XP2GHz, and both DDR and SDR RAM. Anyhow have the address of a Gigabyte Rep that we can harrange?

PPC

I've bit the bullet.
I'm getting a Soyo Dragon Plus an XP1900+ and 2x 512Mb DDR. So that should keep me happy for a while.

The_Conductor

A Gig of DDR RAM- nice one!
What are you using the system for?

PPC

My main pc.
I might be setting up a wireless lan for an mp3 box so it'll be the server.
It servers only 1 pc at the mo.
Also it eats ram.
ME used to run at 60% res after a boot.
XP is soo much better.
Also im not paying for it so it doesnt bother me.

The_Conductor

Nice one- at least SDR memory is on the way down again, for us poor plebs who have to pay for it
What else are you running on the system that is draining system resources? I have a similiar setup, running Windows 98SE (never bothered upgrading, because its stable), and even with almost 20 services running on 512Mb it never goes below 60% resources free. Best thing I ever came across for keeping the system rock solid stable was Ontrack- System Utilities. It rewrites the system registry and defrags the data hard-drives (2 of them) weekly. I'm still stuck in the world of SCSI hard-drives etc- but am slowly updating.

Cheers.

PPC

Run games mostly and graphics.
I also burn alot of cd's and play mp3's and stuff.
It just eats resources burning a cd and listening to mp3's.

The_Conductor

Hmmm- sounds like a little bit of tweaking with the good-old "Ms-config" utility may not go astray. If you only have 60% free after boot- there has to be a rake of odds and ends loading that you really do not need.
Lots of common programmes- e.g. Real Player, Anti-virus s/w, HW monitors all load themselves in your start up groups- can be either as a registry entry or through the regular startup folders.
Go to- "Start"- "Run"- type "msconfig" and choose to remove the ticks from the boxes in the 4th screen (Startup group items). Make sure you leave "Explorer" and "Systray" there- as you'll need them....
You can play around with the first 3 screens there too (the 3 startup files).

Note: Create a backup of your system files first- for peace of mind.

PPC

I'm well familiar with that.
But XP is great none of that low res crap.
The ram is eaten by cd-writer aswell.

The_Conductor

What CD Writer software are you using?
Most reliable I've come across and one that is perfectly happy to run in the background without killing everything else is Nero. The packet writing software is rubbish though.
One thing- if you are burning from the same IDE channel as your CD Writer it puts extra stress on the processor- don't know why....
If you pop the CD Writer onto a different channel from your other CDROM/DVD drive and hard-drive, you'll get a faster extraction rate, less under runs, and no necessity to pre-record to the hard-drive. Also set the IDE mode to PIO 3-4-5 9 (as high as possible) in the BIOS, for the CD Writer, and it all makes life easier.

Hope this gives you a few ideas.

PPC

Yeah i heard about that.
I use Nero as Adaptec just doesnt cut it.
The way i have the pc setup its too much trouble to get it onto seprate channels.