SCX (My at-X Box)

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Jim · Posted: Oct 24, 2009 - 06:35 AM Post subject:

No, I am pretty sure that Gigabyte F--Ked Up, when they decreed that the Q6600 does not need the F8 bios on this board. The F7 bios undervolts the processor like crazy. It claims that NORMAL voltage for the processor is 1.25v. when it says 1.35v. right on the box the processor comes in. Worse than that, if you use the automatic settings you windup getting anywhere from 1.17 to 1.22v according to Sandra, and the "System Health Monitor" in the bios. You either have to be an expert who knows exactly what to set all the various voltages at, (THEN use the F7 bios), OR UNDERCLOCK the stupid thing to get it stable enough to flash the bios to the F8.

Jim · Posted: Oct 25, 2009 - 12:35 AM Post subject:

Well, I've manged to get it working somewhat better than it was by disabling the "HPET Support" function (High Precision Event Timing) in the "Power Management" section of the bios. Apparantly you are only supposed to use that with "Vista". Thoughtfully Gigabyte had it enabled by "De Fault". I also moved the 2 800Mhz DDR2 sticks from slots 1&3 to slots 2&4. One other change I made was to change "Performance Enhance" in the "Intelligent Tweaking" section of the bios from "Standard" to "Turbo". You would think THAT would make the machine LESS STABLE; but Since Gigabyte enables it in the bios "Failsafe" "De Faults" when running an Intel Quadcore Q6600, I am led to conclude what it does is jackup the voltage for the faster processors that the board can support with this version of the bios. I actually have my soundcard software working for the first time in weeks; and all this clocked back at 9x266, with the voltages, except for the processor voltage set back to normal.

I tried to flash the bios to the F8 version; but the flash program that came with the board, 1) is incapable of finding the new bios's at any of the Gigabyte download sites, (Though it is supposed to be able to), and 2) Claims that the bios's that I downloaded myself from the Gigabyte site are the wrong ones for the board. All in all, I think I can get it working; but in future I will take a pass on "Gigabyte".

All four HDDs have built in fulltime temperature monitoring. The removable and replaceable "C" Drive which resides in the Vantec SATA Hot Swap Tray, and the Removable Storage Drive which resides in the Vantec IDE Hot Swap Tray are shown in the next pic.

And the two Internal Storage SATA Drives are monitored by the 3.5 inch bay Scythe Fan Controller, see next pic.

stevenaaus · K6'er Joined: Aug 30, 2004 Posts: 60 Location: Australia

That's some serious bios tweaking ;>
Temperature displays look good.

Jim · Posted: Nov 09, 2009 - 02:39 AM Post subject:

Well now I have the bios flashed, thanks to the help over at Clunk forums. Thanks Kinnsey. Funny thing is no more black screen boots or blue screens or Checkdisk runs, but I am still getting program errors, and the FSB is running faster than it is set to run according to both everest and sandra. That with a lower than set multiplier! i.e the multiplier is set at 9x and the FSB is set at 266 Mhz, but Everest is reporting 7x343Mhz and sandra says the FSB is set above what the processor will support. Wierd !

Jim · Posted: Feb 19, 2010 - 02:25 PM Post subject:

Defective RAM was the issue. Would run if the timings were slacked off but not at its design speed. Fixed now, replaced the RAM.

Jim · Posted: Mar 29, 2010 - 04:29 AM Post subject:

Welkl now that SCX is working ok finally, I have tackled another problem. Superpuppy 4. This has an Intel board, which has been the worst board I have ever tried to work with. Not that it dioesn't work alright, it does, except that the shutdown is rather flakey, if windows is not installed or operative. The problem has been drivers and bios settings and things like that. Very few bios settings in it, does not seem to want to support a 1.4 Ghz Tualatin, worry about that later I guess, for now it has a 1.2GHz P3. Having an enormous amount of trouble setting up my 98SE - XP PRO dualboot, thyis being complicated by the fact that I bought a used 9800 All In Wonder for it that didn't come with a driver disk. AMD / ATI are complete @@@ holes where their DVD decoder is concerned. So what I have had to try doing is setting it up with my All In Wonder 9000 to get the software in, (I have the factory disk for the 9000), then using the DVD Decoder from the 9000, switch cards to the 9800, and reinstall the other drivers. Fun ! Fun !! Fun !!!

KenB · Junior K6'er Joined: Oct 30, 2007 Posts: 44

Jim · Posted: May 21, 2010 - 02:59 AM Post subject:

Oh I got it done Ken. Some of it I had to do myself , but the parts that I could not do I finally found a place to handle. Actually the problem was not the size of the job, lots of places do custom work. The problem was the complexity of the bends required to fit in the convoluted space available.

Sep 08, 2010 - 03:54 AM