Note: updated from Very Disappointed, state to The Good & The Bad 23/11/2007 due to Ocing Performance.
Good Points
Guru - Overclocking panel - Very effective being able to tweak GTLREF & VCC Voltages in XP, saved a lot of time rebooting. Guru Changes in XP iupdate
bios.
Ocing - Has a max
FSB so far of 491, has beeten the Gigabyte X38 DQ6 on all comparisons so far tried. See Key points index in
post#1 for more info
Issues
In no particular order
1) Poor Packaging - box too big for the
mobo. Note the white marks where the board has slid and left marks in the cardboard (see top) There's about 0.5" movement.
2) USB - No Bracket, only 4 sockets in the rear panel.
Already picked up by Clunk and reported here
Hexus Abit Support - Abit IX38 Quad GT
3) The one that bugs me most - Fans & Mounting Wires
Apologies for the quality of this
pic, taken of page 1-9 of the manual.
This shows two optional
40mm fans ,
Quote:
|
Enclosed in the motherboard package you can find a pair of retention clips. This bundled accessory is used tro hold the fan itself.
|
Well I've hunted and found nothing
This gives me two issues:-
1) Frankly, I would expect to find the fans included in the package.
2) Where are the clips for the
PWM?
4) Guru
Relatively minor niggle - Guru
CPU temp -10C to Coretemp, expected this from Asus, was suprised at Abit, I thought Guru was a fairly developed programme
Status Update :
Fixed By Bta
bios But upodate lost & Official is still showing dodgy temps .
Use
CoreTemp for accurate
CPU temps.
5) Driver installation. I was somewhat suprised when The Abit
CD kicked off automatically updating virtually every driver. This was particularly suprising as my installation was already X38. It was particularly frustrating to see my install totally screwed , to the point that I reloaded my Acronis backup image, something I've done several times in the course of the last two days.
Use the latest Intel Drivers
Intel® Desktop Board DX38BT
6) I can confirm the keyboard freeze, it happens regularly & at random.
1) It often freezes at
post going straight through to loading the OS.
2) As found by Clunk, "enter
bios" key press is detected, only for it to freeze when the
bios screen opens.
3) Is not fixed by BTA
Bios 12.02
Update BTA
Bios 12.05 Fixes it but has it's own isue with default
Vcore being set on entering
bios.
Fixed By - 12.06 has no issues.
7) RAID is very flaky Probably linked to 8) Drive Detection
I'd originally planned to run with a single drive, but have connected all my drives at times attempting to get a stable OS. Normally I run matrix
RAID with 4x80gb RAID0, which has worked faultlessly with the Gigabyte X38, It doesn't now, even after breaking it , rebuilding and restoring the partition images.
Fixed By Again was sorterd using the latest
Raid Drivers
Intel® Matrix Storage Manager
8) Drive Detection
In order to prove the
raid issue tonight I thought I'd test if it was having 6 drives + an e-
SATA drive connected. So I broke the
RAID unplugged 3x80gb drives. I then went to restore my main OS image onto the 80gb. Couldn't find it. Was visible in
BIOS not in XP. I had to plug it into the jmicron to perform the task.
See Also the
DRive Detection revisited
9) PCi-E bandwidth
This might be my ignorance but i thought we had 2 x16 slots for Graphics.
But in 1-13 the Manual states:-
Quote:
|
Do not install only one pci-e card on slot [PCIEXP2], for such an act will pull it's speed down to x4 only
|
Now i'm glad to say i'm actually seing x16 using my 2nd slot, guess they just started with the IP35-Pro Mnaual and didn't do a good job on proof reading
10) Vcore & PWM temps -
NOW SORTED 18/11/2007
Have already been covered by Clunk. I can confirm I optimistically dropped my gigabyte
vcore of 1.40v for 3.6k in to see it fail. Sadly i've been trying to sort out the os & those good old BSODs to go much further. By playing around with
VTT & GTLREF
vcore issue has been solved, though it took a lot of tweaking & certainly isn't newbie friendly. Really should have some better Auto settings in
bios for quads.
11) Cas Select Screen in BTA Bios 12
Having looked forward to this
mobo after the previous Abit successes, I must admit to being totally underwhelmed. Some of the issues above aren't huge but it's the cumulative impact together with the instability, high voltage VC and heat issues. Perhaps in a month or so's time something will have been sorted, but it certainly doesn't pay to be an early adopter of Abit.
I expected a few issues with an early
BIOS, to some extent, I had braced myself for the usual delay in it's arrival.
Though, in fact the
BIOS is virtually unchanged in features from the Ip35- Pro The only addition being the
CPU Core Voltage Offset.
I have run at stock throughout the last 2 days, with the exception of my memory voltage which i put up to 2.2v
I feel more like a beta tester at the minute and will collect issues in this
post.
Key components have been running 24/7 stable and higher in my Gigabyte x38.
Other Equipment:
Silverstone Zeus 560W 12v = 38A
8500Gt
Gfx Card
Thermalright Ultima90
Abit IX38 Quad GT - Living Review II
Linear Mode
