Gigabyte GA X38 DQ6 Blog

[supershanks]

Hi capitolray,
welcome to the forum sounds like your putting yourself a good rig together there
I'd probably start with 400x9 that 2.66 strap is particularly stable & should give you a head start. You might also find that you can get away with tras at 10 instead of 12, which will speed things a bit. Hopefully after stability testing , you'll have a solid base for moving up to try for your 3.8k

Let us know how you get on

luck

[capitolray]

supershanks,

I took your 9x400 and played with my GA-X38-DQ6 and E6850 for some time, this is where I'm at now:

MB Intelligent Tweaker (MIT)
Robust Graphics Booster: Turbo
CPU Clock Ratio: 9x
CPU Host Clock Control: Enabled
CPU Host Frequency(Mhz) : 430
PCI Express Frequency (Mhz) : 100
C.I.A.2: Disabled
Performance Enhance : Standard
System Memory Multiplier (SPD) : 2.66D
Memory Frequency(Mhz): 1064
DRAM Timing Selectable : Manual
Standard Timing Control
CAS Latency Time: : 5
DRAM RAS# to CAS# : 5
DRAM RAS# Precharge : 5
Precharge Delay(tRAS) : 10
Advanced Timing Control
ACT to ACT Delay(tRRD) : 4
Rank Write to READ Delay : 4
Write To Precharge Delay : 6
Refresh to ACT Delay : 30
Read To Precharge Delay : 4
tRD : 7
tRD Phase Adjustment : Auto
Command to #CS Timing: : 2T
Clock Driving and Skew Control
CPU/PCIEX Clock Driving Control : 1000
CPU Clock Skew Control : Normal
(G)MCH Clock Skew Control : Normal
System Voltage Control
DDR2 OverVoltage Control : 0.40
PCI-E OverVoltage Control : 0.35
FSB OverVoltage Control : 0.2
(G)MCH OverVoltage Control : 0.175
MCH Reference Voltage Control : Normal
DDR Reference Voltage Control : Normal
DDR Termination Voltage Control : Normal
CPU GTLREF1 Voltage* : Normal
CPU GTLREF2 Voltage* : Normal
CPU Voltage Control : 1.485 (shows 1.475 in CPU-Z and 1.518 in Easy Tunes 5)
Normal CPU Vcore : 1.325

Anyway, the rig runs stable with Orthos and Prime95. What I'm getting is 3.877GHz (430x9).

The max CPU load temp. can touch 57C/57C (27-28 ambient room temp). If I try 435 or higher with this strap it flunks Prime 95. A little toasty. I read up and still don't know much about the Skew stuff, any big thing on this mobo?

I tried to add two more sticks of memory (BL2KIT12865AL1065.16FD5) and it does't want to play with my [.16FE5] for some silly reason. I e-tech'ed Crucial and they said D5 was a newer batch and they should be just fine. Windows memory checker passes each set fine but together they fail (no matter how I mix and match). Oh well may have to RMA and settle for 2GB.

Any suggestions with the settings? Maybe a different strap? Lower volts? I dont want to put the hurt on that CPU.

BTW, I filled in all the other compnents in my User CP.

Thanks for any advice.

[Cosmic]

Hi,

as I knew I would be building my new system based around this board, I've been lurking here for a little while now and have found the info very useful (Thanks).

Sadly after having my new system together and running stable at stock for a few days (hardware specs are in my profile) the RAID 0 array I had set up on the 2 gigabyte sata ports has died.

Basically I was copying a file across the network to a partition on the array when I suddenly got a BSOD ( PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGE_AREA ), after which, whenever I reboot I get the same BSOD when loading windows (XP Pro) even though the hard drives are still being detected at boot as a working raid array by the gigabyte raid bios. The only way to get the system to load windows successfully is to disconnect the hard drives that make up the array.

I know that the PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGE_AREA NTFS.SYS BSOD error can be related to memory problems at times so I verified my RAM and Graphics card in another system just as a precaution.

While I have most of the data backed up which was on there, there were a few moderately important recent things which I will loose if I cant get access to the array again.

So I guess my questions are... 1). Any suggestions on how resolve this problem 2). Has anyone else had similar issues ? 3). Do you think this situation is likely to reoccur if I recreate the array (I'm reluctant to use the gigabyte ports now just incase it does). 4.) Any thoughts On causes ?

BTW I'm running the F7 bios.

The only thing I can think to do at this point is to try an alternate OS (probably start with vista) vista and see If I can get access to the array that way. (will let you know if I have any luck).

Thanks

Cosmic

[Cosmic]

Hi Again

Well trying a different OS did the trick. Borrowed a copy of vista, installed it, installed the gigabyte raid drivers, rebooted, vista came up with a "your drive X needs checking", did some repairs and voila! Ive got my raid 0 array back (both under XP and windows).

So it seems that the gigabyte raid drivers under xp can be a bit flakey

Hope gigabyte improve them in the future. Well Im still left with the problem that I'm not real keen using the gigabyte ports for an array under xp if its going to potentially fall over. Wonder if its worth sending them an email ? Ive not had a gigabyte Mobo before so have no idea what their service is like.

Anyway, least my little headache and solution may prove usefull if anyone else has a similar issue.

Kind regards

Cosmic

[supershanks]

Originally Posted by capitolray

I read up and still don't know much about the Skew stuff, any big thing on this mobo?

i had a play but to be honest didn;'t find anything ogf use. As i mentioned in my Overview

Bios features are the disappointing feature on this board. Compared to other X38s the Maximus or the QuadGT there aren’t as many options, some of the features that are there aren’t particularly useful.

If anyone does find a use please share:lOl;

you've got a great clock going there m8 nice one

running with 4x1gb rather than 2x means a little tweaking, you need to either nudge your vdimm up a touch

DDR2 OverVoltage Control : 0.40 --> +a notch

and/or slacken tinings a bit

Precharge Delay(tRAS) : 10 --> 11 or 12

might swing it.

and/or

Refresh to ACT Delay : 30 ---> 35

and/or

(G)MCH OverVoltage Control : 0.175 --> 0.200 though i think the above should do it

BTW, I filled in all the other compnents in my User CP.

Cheers it helps a lot , can answer faster , don't need to go searching earlier posts


Luck

[supershanks]

Hi cosmic,
welcome to the forum

think you opted for wrong raid , the gigabyte raid is only the rebadged jmicron which exists on all other x38 & p35 boards , that is generally hated bt all for being as you say flaky. Your far better off using the Intel sata ports & using matrix raid. see Matrix RAID it's identical whichever mobo you use.

luck

[capitolray]

Thanks supershanks,

I'll give it a whirl.

That Easy Tune reporting 1.518 on my CPU makes me a little nervous though. Is it right or CPU-Z or just trust the BIOS voltage? Can you recommend another CPU voltage monitor or does it not really matter by your take?

Thanks,
Ray

[Cosmic]

Hi, supershanks and thanks for the welcome

I'm actually setting up 3 raid 0 arrays and 2 single drives on this system at the moment (I use it primarily for video editing, and a little gaming) and I thought I'd set one up on the gigabyte ports and then run Sandra or something and compare the performance to the ICH9R RAID 0 array.



I was interested to know as well if copying files between 2 arrays on the same chip would incur a performance hit compared to copying between the gigabyte array and ICH9R array.


But your right, if the jmicron and associated driver is this flakey then I'll just hang my 2 stand alone drives off it and put all the raids on the ICH9R. Down the track I would like to install an 8 or 12 port PCIe Hardware RAID 5/6 card anyway.



I seem to be able to reproduce the problem that caused the RAID to go bad. I just tried copying the same file across the network to the array, and again system died with PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGE_AREA NTFS.SYS BSOD. Yet if I copy the same file to the ICH9R array or one of the stand alone drives everything is fine ?!



Still waiting on my ‘Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme’ at the moment, once it arrives would like to get this thing up to about 3 GHz. As a matter of interest, are people interested in stock timings/settings ? I’ve got my four 1 gig corsair 6400C4 sticks running fairly stably at 4,4,4,12 now but still have a lot of settings on auto, so I’m sure I could do better.


Thanks


Cosmic.

[supershanks]

hi ray
I must admit not used the easy tune, most mobo companies do something like that , with varying quality. Think abit guru is the best.

CPU-Z even with the newer versions are mainly inaccurate. It is nice to see vcore bios is the key one , have you tried Everest or speedfan/mbm Software section The last 2 take a bit of effort to set up, but can give great results. My own favourite of the 2 is MBM, oh yes their free as well


luck

[supershanks]

I'll just hang my 2 stand alone drives off it and put all the raids on the ICH9R

is exactly right., i think.

HDtach
HDTune
are 2 hd benching utilities, that are widely used.

i've got a few bench pics i can dig out if you want to compare benches.

I was interested to know as well if copying files between 2 arrays on the same chip would incur a performance hit compared to copying between the gigabyte array and ICH9R array.

Not as much as it used to do, there will be some hit but not that noticeable. there are background tasks accessing other drives a lot of the time in any event, swao files etc.

It may be that the error is memory based the page file error is a classic symptom.

I'd run prime blend maybe overnight to check the stability
as capitolray is finding , you might need to slacken tinings or up vdimm if needed to get memory stable. See Earlier


luck