GA-MA790GP-DS4H (790GX) Megathread

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oldpablo

Supreme [H]ardness
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This being the first 790GX board out of the gate (by like 30 minutes :p), I know several people jumped on it and should have it in their hands now. I'm going to detail my travels with it so far, and hope anyone else will pitch in their information since I have a few questions (this being my first AM2+ proc).

I picked up the processor and board for my wife/family machine, and the RAM I had left over because I couldn't for the life of me make it work in my P35 board. I'm not necessarily sticking with 8GB, but I was curious if I would have trouble making it work.

Phenom x3 8450
GA-MA790GP-DS4H
8GB TWIN2X2048-6400C5DHX

I made a post in the other thread, but I was very tired and it's missing some information so I'll flesh it out a bit. Having heard there were some issues with Vista and AMD's southbridge's working in AHCI, I installed Vista x64 SP1 with the SATA controller in AHCI mode and it worked fine (no need for giving drivers during setup). At least one review site mentioned having trouble with it in AHCI mode, but I don't know what they were referring to. I then installed the latest catalyst drivers I had downloaded from AMD's website, though I had to install the onboard video drivers from the gigabyte CD because for some reason the latest download from AMD wouldn't detect it. I then installed AOD 2.1.2 and started poking around since I've never used/seen it. I found where it shows ACC, however it was greyed out and I couldn't do anything with it. Further investigation on the web revealed I had to hit ctrl-f1 in the bios to enable the hidden options, one of which is the ACC enable. I then had auto, 2%, 4%, and so on available to me.

Let me stop here and mention that the gigabyte manual says absolutely nothing about ACC that I can find, let alone what the different percentages mean. I found a review of the same board where someone said gigabyte recommends +2% for the 9950/9850, +4% for the B2 9600, and +6% for extreme cases. Now I have an x3 8450 so I don't know what I should throw in there, and I have no idea where they got this recommendation from gigabyte, unless of course it was a direct line kind of thing. So I tried auto and +2%, and neither of them made a difference, ACC is still greyed out. I intend to try different options, but I noticed I'm having some trouble in windows and I'm guessing it's related to the fact that I'm running 8GB of RAM (errors on unzipping stuff, can't launch some programs). Long story short, I drop to 4GB of RAM all set to auto and memtest it for 6 passes and it passes fine. I find out the reason I can't unzip or install stuff is because I've downloaded it and my guess is they are getting scrambled on the download (I'm using a USB wireless card since I'm banished to the kitchen for this work). I downloaded the exact same apps on a seperate computer and transferred them via USB thumbdrive and they work fine. Stupid non-related issues.

Then out of curiosity I reinstalled Vista x64 (non-sp1 original disc) and it also installed fine in AHCI mode. I then decided to only install drivers from the gigabyte cd, however I noticed those drivers only install the VGA and not the northbridge filter nor southbridge SATA driver. I leave it for now on the basic vista drivers. ACC however is still greyed out. I then downloaded the catalyst drivers from the gigabyte site, and they install the north bridge filter and ahci compatible SATA RAID driver hoping maybe ACC requires the southbridge driver to be installed to work. No dice. Am I missing something incredibly simple here or is it the x3 processor? I even updated to the latest BIOS via the gigabyte online update program (even though I was pretty sure it was the same one.

So any of you that picked up this board, please feel free to post screenshots of your BIOS settings or any other snags or success stories you have.
 
I ordered this board on later afternoon Monday but didn't receive it until Friday. I ordered parts for an entire new system including a Phenom 9950 and 4GB (2gbx2) OCZ Platinum 1066 memory.

After getting the system built I didn't even install a hard drive and am testing the system with memtest 3.3. I ran into a lot of errors with the default settings (running the memory at 1066). I re-ran the test at 800 and it seemed a lot more stable. When writing this post I just checked and realized that 3.4 is the most current version of memtest. I might have to re-test with that. (This is my first dip into ddr2 memory since this is an upgrade from the Socket 939 platform so I've got a lot to learn when it comes to finessing ddr2 memory. I've heard 1066 speed can be a bit of a bear to get right.)

Anyway, Anandtech's review made it sound like there has been a lot of furious activity with bios updates and driver updates in the last week or so for the 790gx platform. I expect we will start seeing those updates made public soon. For example, the BIOS for this motherboard is dated 7/18/08 which is over three weeks ago so a BIOS update will presumably improve stability/memory compatibility.
 
Does that version of memtest recognize the chipset? There's two popular memtest programs out there and I know memtest+ does recognize the k10. I used 2.01. I've been told regardless of support, if you run four sticks it stresses the northbridge or memory controller more so you need to add some voltage. Since the memory controller is on the processor, I don't know if that just means add voltage to the processor or what. Having four sticks at 1066 makes it even harder and I've seen a lot of RAM rated at 1066 not really following jedec standards which is 1.8 voltage at CAS 7 as it says here:

http://www.ocia.net/articles/k10overclock/page5.shtml

So maybe relax your timings and go from there. Hit up the memory section of the forums for more pointers. I did find it interesting that at Newegg only two sets of RAM are listed at 1.8 only, and sure enough they are also CAS7:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=2010170147+1052420643+1259916288&name=1.8V

Also I see people hitting 3.2/3.3 on this board without too much fuss, so get on it.:D
 
As for the memtest errors, I know from recent experience with Gigabyte that they can be rather unstable if your RAM running at 1066 is not from their QVL. If you want to run 1066 then check for compatibility.
 
I've always used memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) since you can boot right into it. 3.4 is the latest version but it does not seem to recognize the chipset or cpu correctly.

Anyway, I tuned the memory down to run at 800 last night and re-ran my testing with Memtest86 3.4. So far over night it's run 5 consecutive passes without any errors.

I did see Gigabyte's recommended list and my memory is not on it.

It does have this note about 1066 memory:
"Note: Due to AMD AM2+ CPU limitation, DDR2 1066 is only supported by 1 dimm per channel." Does this mean that 1066 memory should go in slots 1 and 3 as opposed to slots 1 and 2?
 
agentk7 said:
I've always used memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) since you can boot right into it. 3.4 is the latest version but it does not seem to recognize the chipset or cpu correctly.

Anyway, I tuned the memory down to run at 800 last night and re-ran my testing with Memtest86 3.4. So far over night it's run 5 consecutive passes without any errors.

I did see Gigabyte's recommended list and my memory is not on it.

It does have this note about 1066 memory:
"Note: Due to AMD AM2+ CPU limitation, DDR2 1066 is only supported by 1 dimm per channel." Does this mean that 1066 memory should go in slots 1 and 3 as opposed to slots 1 and 2?
Click to expand...

It possibly means you can't run more then two dimms at 1066, at least with defaults. And try the other memtest, you can boot right to it as well http://www.memtest.org/.
 
Yes, the memtest86+ seems to be what the software I've been using "memtest86" is based on but is much better updated and maintained, I'll stick with this from now on. It detected the CPU and memory timing exactly correct. I'll run a pass with that at DDR800 and then test it at 1066.

I did try putting the two memory sticks in separate channels but then the bandwidth at 1066 was less then at 800 in the same channel.

Anyway, back on topic with this thread have you noticed the northbridge heatsink getting very hot? I've mainly been testing with the memtest so far, I can't imagine what I 3D game would do to it....
 
The stock cooler that comes with the x3 8450 is pretty standard but it does the job since the processor runs at 1.2 something anyway. It idles at around 30 without cool n quiet. A friend of mine just picked up a 9950 and gave me his stock cooler which is bigger, but I haven't had much time to mess with the system lately to see how far I can push an overclock on it.
 
agentk7 said:
Anandtech has a followup to their article from last week with some updates on the 790gx:

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=476

The main reason for posting this article is that it includes an updated beta bios for this board.
(Please read their disclaimer before attempting to install).
Click to expand...

Ah nice catch, I checked their site today but didn't see it below. I'll flash it and see what changes there are. I still haven't been able to get ACC working (that I know of). I can set stuff in the BIOS, but it's always greyed out in AOD in Windows which makes me wonder if it's in fact working or not.

EDIT: Flash was successful. I didn't notice any new BIOS options offhand, but it did hang when I tried to open the C1E menu. I just rebooted and was fine.
 
Thanks for the review link gigaxtreme1.

Anyway, where is the official BIOS update for this board? Anandtech had that beta bios dated from early August. It's now nearly September, it seems like a good new stable BIOS should be out soon.
 
Sorry, rushing before work and didn't even check the link. Du-oh! A speaking of the newer BIOS, WHERE THE HELL IS THE FINAL REVIEW FOR THE GX CHIPSET BOARDS FROM ANANDTECH!!!! No promised update, blog and preview get buried in the archives by IDF and Nvision BULLSHIT! I am officially calling bullshit right now.:eek:
 
I finally finished "project upgrade home network" and moved my big HSF from my previous build to the 9950/Gigabyte (knocked off 10 degrees). I swore I wasn't going to mess with overclocking, but I think I'll play with it a bit since just upping the multiplier is pretty easy. I'll post results, but it won't be too exotic since I plan on doing the "safe overclock" and not the "bleeding edge stability threshold" one.
 
I guess these guys don't remember how to do a failsafe install with new host controllers. Even if Vista or XP sees the drive you should load the drivers anyway. I haven't tried a RAID 0 boot drive yet, but was planning to. The drivers will get better, the BIOSs will get updated and we'll see. Currently @ 3Ghz 1.3625 Vcore. Got ACC at +10 but AOD doesn't recognise ACC. Any time I try to set anything in AOD it disables ACC.
 
Just an update. I've flashed to the new beta BIOS F2a and installed AOD 2.14 which resolved my not seeing ACC available in AOD issue. Time to start messing with the overclock. :D
 
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