8KNXP (std. and ultra) stories

[caseman]

I'm about to purchase this board (the Ultra version for the embedded scsi controller) and I'm looking to hear from anyone who has\had this board. How did it run for you, stable? What memory were you using (I'm looking at OCZ 4000 for a more stable over-clock with my 2.8)? If you OCed, how high and how stable, etc.. All the reviews I've read have only good things to say, but a lot of the actual posts tell at least a slightly different story, which is why I'm looking for feed back from you guys.

As the board isn't cheap, I don't want to spend the cash only to find that all the features it has makes for a flaky board.

If you despise the 8KNXP, what would you recommend as an alternative?

 

[pistov]

I think you have read my post on the problems I am having.. personally I would not buy this board again.. and if I did.. be very very sure you have memory that GB says has been tested.. I have yet to get the SATA to work at all.. and have yet to get XP to install.. got it working very flaky with 2000.. I ran memtest86.. tooK massive errors on all test.. like a guy mentioned in my post.. he go his stable by slowing down his memory.. basically wasting the $$ he spent for the fast memory.. and I dont really want to have to do that..

my set up is..

intel 2.8ghz 800 fsb
1gb (2x512) kingston hyper x 400mhz(pc3200)
ATI Radeon 9800 128m
GA-8knxp Rev. 2.0 MB
120 GB Seagate SATA HDD
80 gb WD IDE HDD
ANTEC 1040 soho case w/400w PS
1 samsung CDRW/DVD
1 nec CDRW/DVDRW

Memory only works in single channel mode..
system randomly resets(like it loses power) ever so often depending on the load on the memory I think..
SATA will detect on Sil interface, but boot hangs at the verifing pool data point.. SATA will not detect at all on the other interface..
CD's act flaky.. reads CD some of the time.. sometimes not..
so buyer beware..

I am sure if you get everything working properly and matched up.. it would be a great board.. but.. the problems I am having are not mine alone.. read some of the posts on other board..(anandtech.com and abxzone.com) memory seems to always be the root issue.. then SATA..

and after 3 emails to GB tech support.. I have yet to get even a auto response.. and no phone number to call.. that I can find.. so.. no help there either..

I am almost ready to eat my restocking fee (assuming I can return it at all) and go back to a comparable ASUS..I think I will give it a couple more tries then send it back.. I am not sure if I want to wait for bios and chipset upgrades.. that may or may not fix my problems..

well I hope this helps..

 

[caseman]

Yours was definitely one of the more unhappy posts, which is why I'm asking. I'm curious as to whether there are a ton of people out there with stable boards who aren't being heard only because their mainboards are just that..stable. Or are the 8KNXPs genuinely problematic?

 

[pistov]

like I said.. Memory seems to be a common element to most of the problems I have read about... so.. you probably would be ok as long as you get the memory that GB says to.. Plus I have the REV 2.0 board.. which has nothing on their web site support wise.. everything says coming soon..

 

[search4stability]

My system is very similar to pistov's (see my responses to his original 8KNXP post), but I was able to resolve all of my issues by setting the memory to slower delay times. Since that time I ran 24 straight passes (18 hours) of the full MemTest-86 routines (all tests 0-11) without any failure whatsoever. I spent last night loading many more utilities and applications without any problems. I also spent some time poking around within EasyTune4, only for monitoring the system except for setting the northbridge fan to always be on. The only issue I saw there was that the main bus voltages were low (3.2xx for the 3.3v bus, and 11.7x for the 12v bus). I also set the thresholds for the fan warnings to a lower value to match the speeds that my system was generating.

One more thought on the memory that I have not tried yet is to increase the memory voltage a little to see if that will allow me to get back to the 2.5/6/2/2 timings instead of the 2.5/6/3/3 timings that I changed to. But I'm happy enough now to not bother testing that at the moment.

pistov, did you try re-seating your CPU yet? I know it's a pain to remove the fan and such, but I can't think of anything else that would cause the extreme problems that you've been having. Also, the "Contact us" page on the Gigabyte website (http://tw.giga-byte.com/Company/ContactUs/contact_us.htm) lists phone numbers for various countries. If you don't feel like calling Taiwan then the US number is listed as (626) 854-9338.

I think in general that users tend to frequent the forums when they have problems, and stop posting once their boards are running smoothly. So you don't get too many posts from people saying good things about their systems, except for those posting about their overclocking successes and such.

To sum it up, I'm happy with my GA-8KNXP (Rev 2.0) (so far), but would appreciate a technical reply from Gigabyte explaining why my CL2 memory needs to run in CL3 mode.

 

[pistov]

not yet.. but I will.. never had any peoblems puting in a cpu before.. but I guess anything is possible.. I think I have solved all but the mempory issues and SATA.. which I fail to see why I can get that to work at least as a slave..

but I think I have found my problem.. I was not sold matching pairs of memory like I thought.. =( any suggestion other than returning them to get to to fly together?

but yeah.. I found those numbers after I posted.. but I still have not received a reply to my email.. I appreciate you help.. also..

and to think I actually went out of my way to try to get all the componets that will work 100% with each other..=(

thanks again..

 

[search4stability]

Good to hear that you have worked out some of your problems. Sorry to hear that you are still struggling with others.

Regarding the CPU, the post that I saw elsewhere where the author re-seated his CPU to fix his problems indicated that not much of anything worked before he removed and replaced the CPU. So if you have most things working okay, then it probably is not the CPU being mis-socketed. Mine took a couple tries to seat cleanly, but it was obvious when it was not correct, and more so when it was. I was merely trying to think of anything that you might not have thought to try.

My own system continues to run well. I have just about finished installing software on it and moving my data files over to it. In doing so I plugged two old IDE drives from my old PC into IDE1. Everything came up fine with the new (old) drives being recognized and available, and still booting properly from the SATA RAID-1 drives. (For a moment I was wondering if the system would try to boot the Windows98 off of my old HDD's, but I was pretty sure that I had the boot sequence properly specified within the BIOS to properly boot from the SCSI devices.)

Not sure how close a match your memory must be to properly work in Dual Channel mode. One person indicated that bying two pieces of the same part number was sufficient, but that may yield two different versions of [SPD] settings embedded within the memories. That might cause problems. I did buy a single package containing a matched pair of memory boards. But then again I still had to slow down the numbers. I would tend to think that if the BIOS settings for the memory was at least as slow as the slowest individual memory board that it should work okay, even if not a perfectly matched pair.

Still nothing from Gigabyte on memory issues. I did receive an email back from them after complaining about not receiving a game-port break-out cable with the board. They told me I could purchase one for $5 plus another $5 shipping. I actually found one at a used computer store that I picked up for free when I purchased some other components for another system. That response took about 2 weeks to come from their sales/RMA department. But I won't start holding my breath while waiting to hear from them about the memory issues.

 

[svend]

If you call the number listed on the web site hours are 8:30am to 5:30pm pacific standard time zone, your only on hold about 5 mins at the most. Even though I gave them the information be prepared for english as a 2nd language in communicating with them. Ultimately they tried to say the problem was with my graphics card, but it ended up the bios settings. I had issues because my vrs 2.0 board was set to pci graphics as default instead of AGP and that would only give you the splash screen and not allow one to get into the bios. After installing a pci graphics card I was able to get into the bios and get everything working so the system could boot up normally.

my system
GA-8KNXP vrs 2.0 bios vrs (FD)
P4 3.2ghz
Kingston hyper x pc-3500 2/512 mached pair
ASUS radeon 9800xt 8x AGp 256mb
Audigy 2zs platinum pro
WD 36g raptor 10k rpm SATA
WD 120g caviar 7500 rpm SATA
antec 550 true power
plextor 708a DVD/CDRW
yamaha 3200e CDRW (from my old system)
some floppy drive I have had for 14 years now
Lian-li pc-6077 case
I would say the hardest part was getting the correct drivers to load during windows xp pro set up, but a visit to gigabytes website and faq's gave me the correct down load and information needed to boot up with the SATA hard drives. After that it was a no brainer to load up windows on the SATA 0 drive (make sure you have in bios set up for 1st boot the hard drive (bios vr FD), one other thing about memory, make sure if you have two sets they are put in slots 1 and 4 to get dual channel mode. So far I'm glad I got this mother board even though the initial problems had me sweating out what was going on, and if I had made a high dollar mistake. I think the manual should have been writen or translated for the american customers by some one who was a technical writer. I notice language issues and wanted more details on such issues as FSB frequencies, ddr freqencies but not much was writen here. May be that legal stuff but an adendum would have been nice.


when all is said and done, what you've done for your neighbor is most important