Description of my system :
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (ADA3200DIK4BI)
MB - Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 (nForce4 4x)
GPU - MSI GeForce 6600GT 128Megs PCI-EXPRESS
MEM - 2 x 512 Megs DDR400 (Infineon HYB250256800BT-5, CL2.5)
HDD1 - Seagate 7200.7+ 160Gigs SATA (Not in RAID)
HDD2 - Seagate 7200.7+ 160Gigs EIDE (Not in RAID)
SOUND - Sound Blaster Live!
PSU - Antec TruePower 380Watts
CASE - Standard "no name" case
What I will do with this thread is to put all the good information needed for GA-K8NF-9 owner. I choose to buy this board, because I don't need all the bells and whistles of nForce4 ULTRA or SLI mobos. The price of this board was very attractive too (155$CA - March 2005).
And if you ask me why I choose Seagate HDD instead of WD or Maxtor, my answer is short : noise. My Seagate drives are barely audible, but I noticed that the SATE drive seems a bit noisier than the EIDE. I choose to not use onboard audio to offload my CPU of the audio processing.
My first impression are very good, the system is quiet even with a CPU overclocking to 2.4GHz. The HDDs, psu, gpu and CPU are all very silent, which please me.
THE IMPORTANT STUFF STARTS HERE :
<b>.-= Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 owner's FAQ =-.</b>
The FAQ is based on my experience with the GA-K8NF-9 with bios release F1, F2, F3j (beta) and F3k (beta).
1. Questions
1.1 General
1.2 BIOS and drivers
2. Problems / Solutions
<b><font color=blue>SECTION 1</font color=blue></b>
<font color=blue>1.1.1 Where can I find the detailed specifications of the GA-K8NF-9 ?</font color=blue>
Detailed specs are available <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_Spec_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">here</A>.
<font color=blue>1.1.2 Where can I read reviews of the GA-K8NF-9 motherboard?</font color=blue>
You can read reviews there :
<A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gbnf44x&page=1" target="_new">GamePC</A>
<A HREF="http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1489_1.html" target="_new">Motherboards.org</A>
<font color=blue>1.1.3 Is there other good source of information about this motherboard?</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
The best source of information I found so far, is the Rebels Haven forums named : <A HREF="http://www.rhcf.com/sis-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=41" target="_new">"The Gigabyte 64 Bit Motherboards"</A>. There is another <A HREF="http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/Hardware/-Topic-unique-Gigabyte-GA-K8NF-9-le-Nforce-4-4X-Update-Drivers--sujet-657631-1.htm" target="_new">good thread (in French)</A> about this motherboard in <A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr" target="_new">Hardware.fr</A> forums.
<font color=blue>1.1.4 I see a fan on the chipset in pictures of the board, but my board don't have it.</font color=blue>
Effectively, it seems that Gygabyte do not put active cooling anymore on GA-K8NF-9 boards, probably for an economical reason. Passive cooling gets hot. If you plan to overclock or have stability issue, consider fixing a small fan over the chipset heatsink to improve airflow.
<font color=blue>1.2.1 How do I access advanced configuration in the BIOS?</font color=blue>
When you are in the BIOS, type <b>CTRL-F1</b>.
<font color=blue>1.2.2 Where can I find the latest BIOS for the GA-K8NF-9?</font color=blue>
You can download official BIOS from Gigabyte <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">here</A>. Unofficial BIOS (beta) are available <A HREF="http://www.lejabeach.com/Gigabyte/k8nf9/k8nf9bios.html" target="_new">here</A>.
<font color=blue>1.2.3 Where can I download the latest nForce4 4x drivers?</font color=blue>
The nForce4 4x chipset is nearly identical to the nForce4 ULTRA or SLI. You can get the latest drivers for the nForce4 chipset series at nVidia's website in the <A HREF="http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp" target="_new">drivers download</A> section. Make sure you get the nForce4 drivers and not the "Unified Driver".
<b><font color=blue>SECTION 2</font color=blue></b>
<font color=blue>2.0.1 Windows XP don't detect the PS2 keyboard correctly.</font color=blue>
In the BIOS put <b>both</b> USB keyboard and USB mouse support to DISABLE.
<font color=blue>2.0.2 I hear a weird beep when I cold start my PC, the PC boots normally then the beep stops after a while (~15 seconds).</font color=blue>
It's a "normal" behavior if you have SmartFan turn ON in your BIOS. Since the CPU is cold, the CPU fan is not spinning until the CPU temp reach 20 Celsius, then the fan starts and the alarms goes off. If you want to keep your CPU fan alarm, you will have to live with this problem until Gigabyte fix their BIOS to warns user of CPU fan failure only if CPU temp is over 20 Celsius. Or you can deactivate SmartFan in the BIOS, the fan will always spin (at full speed) regardless of CPU temperature.
<font color=blue>2.0.3 Cool'n'Quiet is not working in Windows XP.</font color=blue>
If you follow carefully the steps below, Cool'n'Quiet should work fine. Note that this procedure is applicable to any motherboard that supports Cool'n'Quiet.
1. Make sure the CPU multiplier is set to "default" in the bios.
2. Make sure your CPU fan control is enabled. Because why would you want Cool'n'Quiet activated if the CPU fan is always running at full speed? Note that Fan Control is "buggy" in BIOS F2. See section 2.0.2 of this FAQ for details.
3. <A HREF="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/cpudriver.EXE" target="_new">Download and install</A> the "AMD Athlon 64 Processor Driver for Windows XP" from AMD's website.
4. Set the "Power Schemes" to "Minimal Power Management" in Windows XP control panel - Power Options.
5. Cool & Quiet should work! To see it in action, <A HREF="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/PowerNowDashboard_setup.zip" target="_new">download and intall</A> the "AMD Cool'n'Quiet / PowerNow! Dashboard" from AMD's website.
<font color=blue>2.0.4 I experience disconnect when I play games.</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
It seems there is issue with the onboard nVidia NIC. Some people solved this problem by flashing the BIOS to version F1. I personnaly tried 3 different BIOS and it didn't solved my problem. To solve the problem I changed the "Checksum Offload" value to "DISABLE" in the advance nVidia Ethernet Controller options (Control Panel / Network Connections).
<font color=blue>2.0.5 I have high voltage reading for my CPU when I overclock and I didn't change the vCore in the BIOS.</font color=blue>
The BIOS F2 automatically overvolt the CPU to 1.6Volt if you change the FSB value and let the vCore to "auto/default". If you want to fix the cpu voltage value, change the vCore setting to what you want (anything but "auto").
<font color=blue>2.0.6 I see BIOS screenshots that don't have the same options than mine.</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
Effectively, between BIOS revision Gigabyte changed some menu, some features were not in F1 but are present in F2 and vice-versa. For example F2 gives less informations about Voltage than F1 (reports only "OK" instead of the actual Voltage readings). On the other hand F2 have the M.I.B.2 settings, which offer an "easy overclocking" tool. You choose your memory brand and it overclocks the system automatically. For "Infineon/Infineon" type it overclocks the FSB do 210MHz. The latest beta BIOS F3k don't offer advance memory timing options anymore.
<font color=blue>2.0.7 I have a mix of IDE and SATA HDD (no RAID setup) and I can't boot from my SATA drive.</font color=blue>
By default the Gigabyte BIOS will try to boot on the IDE the main IDE drive only (primary controller, master drive). You must enter the BIOS deactivate all RAID options and force the boot order to use the SATA drive as the bootable HDD. It's an annoying issue. Because every time you flash your BIOS and/or clear your CMOS data, you must reconfigure the BIOS to be able to boot your PC.
<font color=blue>2.0.8 My network become unusable after a couple of hour of intense networking activity (usually Bit Torrent downloading).</font color=blue>
It seems that the actuel nVidia Firewall software is far from perfect. I started noticed this network problem when I tried to download huge bit torrent files that requires many hours to download. I suspected my LinkSys router, since I updated the firmware not long ago and I had to reboot my PC and router to solve my "network is not working after a long period of uptime/activity" issues. Then a couple of days ago, I shutted down the nVidia Firewall software and started massive bit torrents D/L for days... Since then no issue at all. I don't know if it the the combination of Linksys + nForce4/nV-Firewall or only the nV-Firewall that cause the problem. But anyway, I'm back to Zone Alarm! I hope nVidia will fix is Firewall issue.
<font color=red><b>OVERCLOCKING</b></font color=red>
<b>My current overclocking BIOS settings are :</b>
FSB : 240
CPU Multiplier : Default (10x)
vCore : 1.5 Volts
Memory ratio : 166 (83%)
Memory timing : 2.5-4-3-9 (Stable fastest timing of my memory modules)
HTT multiplier : 3x (4x not tested yet)
<b>Resulting speed</b>
CPU 2.4GHz (3800+ speed)
MEM 200MHz
HTT 720MHz
GPU 500MHz/1000MHz (default)
-
GA-K8NF-9 / <b><font color=green>Athlon 64 3200+</font color=green> @ 3800+</b>
Infineon DDR400 (CL2.5) 2x512Megs
<font color=green>GeForce 6600GT 128Megs</font color=green><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheRod on 04/25/05 04:07 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (ADA3200DIK4BI)
MB - Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 (nForce4 4x)
GPU - MSI GeForce 6600GT 128Megs PCI-EXPRESS
MEM - 2 x 512 Megs DDR400 (Infineon HYB250256800BT-5, CL2.5)
HDD1 - Seagate 7200.7+ 160Gigs SATA (Not in RAID)
HDD2 - Seagate 7200.7+ 160Gigs EIDE (Not in RAID)
SOUND - Sound Blaster Live!
PSU - Antec TruePower 380Watts
CASE - Standard "no name" case
What I will do with this thread is to put all the good information needed for GA-K8NF-9 owner. I choose to buy this board, because I don't need all the bells and whistles of nForce4 ULTRA or SLI mobos. The price of this board was very attractive too (155$CA - March 2005).
And if you ask me why I choose Seagate HDD instead of WD or Maxtor, my answer is short : noise. My Seagate drives are barely audible, but I noticed that the SATE drive seems a bit noisier than the EIDE. I choose to not use onboard audio to offload my CPU of the audio processing.
My first impression are very good, the system is quiet even with a CPU overclocking to 2.4GHz. The HDDs, psu, gpu and CPU are all very silent, which please me.
THE IMPORTANT STUFF STARTS HERE :
<b>.-= Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 owner's FAQ =-.</b>
The FAQ is based on my experience with the GA-K8NF-9 with bios release F1, F2, F3j (beta) and F3k (beta).
1. Questions
1.1 General
1.2 BIOS and drivers
2. Problems / Solutions
<b><font color=blue>SECTION 1</font color=blue></b>
<font color=blue>1.1.1 Where can I find the detailed specifications of the GA-K8NF-9 ?</font color=blue>
Detailed specs are available <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_Spec_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">here</A>.
<font color=blue>1.1.2 Where can I read reviews of the GA-K8NF-9 motherboard?</font color=blue>
You can read reviews there :
<A HREF="http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=gbnf44x&page=1" target="_new">GamePC</A>
<A HREF="http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1489_1.html" target="_new">Motherboards.org</A>
<font color=blue>1.1.3 Is there other good source of information about this motherboard?</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
The best source of information I found so far, is the Rebels Haven forums named : <A HREF="http://www.rhcf.com/sis-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=41" target="_new">"The Gigabyte 64 Bit Motherboards"</A>. There is another <A HREF="http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/Hardware/-Topic-unique-Gigabyte-GA-K8NF-9-le-Nforce-4-4X-Update-Drivers--sujet-657631-1.htm" target="_new">good thread (in French)</A> about this motherboard in <A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr" target="_new">Hardware.fr</A> forums.
<font color=blue>1.1.4 I see a fan on the chipset in pictures of the board, but my board don't have it.</font color=blue>
Effectively, it seems that Gygabyte do not put active cooling anymore on GA-K8NF-9 boards, probably for an economical reason. Passive cooling gets hot. If you plan to overclock or have stability issue, consider fixing a small fan over the chipset heatsink to improve airflow.
<font color=blue>1.2.1 How do I access advanced configuration in the BIOS?</font color=blue>
When you are in the BIOS, type <b>CTRL-F1</b>.
<font color=blue>1.2.2 Where can I find the latest BIOS for the GA-K8NF-9?</font color=blue>
You can download official BIOS from Gigabyte <A HREF="http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-K8NF-9.htm" target="_new">here</A>. Unofficial BIOS (beta) are available <A HREF="http://www.lejabeach.com/Gigabyte/k8nf9/k8nf9bios.html" target="_new">here</A>.
<font color=blue>1.2.3 Where can I download the latest nForce4 4x drivers?</font color=blue>
The nForce4 4x chipset is nearly identical to the nForce4 ULTRA or SLI. You can get the latest drivers for the nForce4 chipset series at nVidia's website in the <A HREF="http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp" target="_new">drivers download</A> section. Make sure you get the nForce4 drivers and not the "Unified Driver".
<b><font color=blue>SECTION 2</font color=blue></b>
<font color=blue>2.0.1 Windows XP don't detect the PS2 keyboard correctly.</font color=blue>
In the BIOS put <b>both</b> USB keyboard and USB mouse support to DISABLE.
<font color=blue>2.0.2 I hear a weird beep when I cold start my PC, the PC boots normally then the beep stops after a while (~15 seconds).</font color=blue>
It's a "normal" behavior if you have SmartFan turn ON in your BIOS. Since the CPU is cold, the CPU fan is not spinning until the CPU temp reach 20 Celsius, then the fan starts and the alarms goes off. If you want to keep your CPU fan alarm, you will have to live with this problem until Gigabyte fix their BIOS to warns user of CPU fan failure only if CPU temp is over 20 Celsius. Or you can deactivate SmartFan in the BIOS, the fan will always spin (at full speed) regardless of CPU temperature.
<font color=blue>2.0.3 Cool'n'Quiet is not working in Windows XP.</font color=blue>
If you follow carefully the steps below, Cool'n'Quiet should work fine. Note that this procedure is applicable to any motherboard that supports Cool'n'Quiet.
1. Make sure the CPU multiplier is set to "default" in the bios.
2. Make sure your CPU fan control is enabled. Because why would you want Cool'n'Quiet activated if the CPU fan is always running at full speed? Note that Fan Control is "buggy" in BIOS F2. See section 2.0.2 of this FAQ for details.
3. <A HREF="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/cpudriver.EXE" target="_new">Download and install</A> the "AMD Athlon 64 Processor Driver for Windows XP" from AMD's website.
4. Set the "Power Schemes" to "Minimal Power Management" in Windows XP control panel - Power Options.
5. Cool & Quiet should work! To see it in action, <A HREF="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/PowerNowDashboard_setup.zip" target="_new">download and intall</A> the "AMD Cool'n'Quiet / PowerNow! Dashboard" from AMD's website.
<font color=blue>2.0.4 I experience disconnect when I play games.</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
It seems there is issue with the onboard nVidia NIC. Some people solved this problem by flashing the BIOS to version F1. I personnaly tried 3 different BIOS and it didn't solved my problem. To solve the problem I changed the "Checksum Offload" value to "DISABLE" in the advance nVidia Ethernet Controller options (Control Panel / Network Connections).
<font color=blue>2.0.5 I have high voltage reading for my CPU when I overclock and I didn't change the vCore in the BIOS.</font color=blue>
The BIOS F2 automatically overvolt the CPU to 1.6Volt if you change the FSB value and let the vCore to "auto/default". If you want to fix the cpu voltage value, change the vCore setting to what you want (anything but "auto").
<font color=blue>2.0.6 I see BIOS screenshots that don't have the same options than mine.</font color=blue> - <font color=red>UPDATED - 2005-04-11</font color=red>
Effectively, between BIOS revision Gigabyte changed some menu, some features were not in F1 but are present in F2 and vice-versa. For example F2 gives less informations about Voltage than F1 (reports only "OK" instead of the actual Voltage readings). On the other hand F2 have the M.I.B.2 settings, which offer an "easy overclocking" tool. You choose your memory brand and it overclocks the system automatically. For "Infineon/Infineon" type it overclocks the FSB do 210MHz. The latest beta BIOS F3k don't offer advance memory timing options anymore.
<font color=blue>2.0.7 I have a mix of IDE and SATA HDD (no RAID setup) and I can't boot from my SATA drive.</font color=blue>
By default the Gigabyte BIOS will try to boot on the IDE the main IDE drive only (primary controller, master drive). You must enter the BIOS deactivate all RAID options and force the boot order to use the SATA drive as the bootable HDD. It's an annoying issue. Because every time you flash your BIOS and/or clear your CMOS data, you must reconfigure the BIOS to be able to boot your PC.
<font color=blue>2.0.8 My network become unusable after a couple of hour of intense networking activity (usually Bit Torrent downloading).</font color=blue>
It seems that the actuel nVidia Firewall software is far from perfect. I started noticed this network problem when I tried to download huge bit torrent files that requires many hours to download. I suspected my LinkSys router, since I updated the firmware not long ago and I had to reboot my PC and router to solve my "network is not working after a long period of uptime/activity" issues. Then a couple of days ago, I shutted down the nVidia Firewall software and started massive bit torrents D/L for days... Since then no issue at all. I don't know if it the the combination of Linksys + nForce4/nV-Firewall or only the nV-Firewall that cause the problem. But anyway, I'm back to Zone Alarm! I hope nVidia will fix is Firewall issue.
<font color=red><b>OVERCLOCKING</b></font color=red>
<b>My current overclocking BIOS settings are :</b>
FSB : 240
CPU Multiplier : Default (10x)
vCore : 1.5 Volts
Memory ratio : 166 (83%)
Memory timing : 2.5-4-3-9 (Stable fastest timing of my memory modules)
HTT multiplier : 3x (4x not tested yet)
<b>Resulting speed</b>
CPU 2.4GHz (3800+ speed)
MEM 200MHz
HTT 720MHz
GPU 500MHz/1000MHz (default)
-
GA-K8NF-9 / <b><font color=green>Athlon 64 3200+</font color=green> @ 3800+</b>
Infineon DDR400 (CL2.5) 2x512Megs
<font color=green>GeForce 6600GT 128Megs</font color=green><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheRod on 04/25/05 04:07 PM.</EM></FONT></P>