Upgrading the BIOS of GA-7VAXFS?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

I am trying to look about ways to upgrade the BIOS of my Gigabyte
motherboard (to fix video card issues I outlined in
this
thread), but I cannot seem to find the exact motherboard on the
Gigabyte website. This worries me somewhat, since I most definitely
don't want to make a mistake here. Unfortunately, my current BIOS is
revision F5, and it seems the GA-7VAX (which seems the closest fit to
my mobo) is already at revision F13 (and I am having some problems
with AGP 8x which I hope a new BIOS might help me with).

So, my question is if anyone knows which BIOS images I can use to
upgrade my GA-7VAXFS motherboard? Will the BIOS images for GA-7VAX
work, or should I aim for something else? Please tell me I'm not out
of luck here.

Computer setup:
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3000+
Front Side Bus Frequency 166.6 MHz
Bus Speed 333.3 MHz
Motherboard model GA-7VAXFS,
BIOS vendor Award Software International, Inc.
BIOS revision F5
BIOS release date 01/09/2003
Chipset VIA KT400 (VT8377) rev. 0
Southbridge VIA VT8235 rev. 0
RAM Type DDR-SDRAM
RAM Size 1024 Mb
RAM Frequency 333.3 MHz

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

I found a BIOS image from last summer on Fujitsu-Siemen's website; my
BIOS is now upgraded to revision F7 (from F5) but it
still does not allow me to configure any
AGP settings. This is ticking me off; using Sandra, I've been able to
ascertain that my card has FastWrites disabled and AGP aperture size
set to 128 Mb, which I hope is all right. However, Sandra also tells
me that the card is limited to AGP 4x, yet my new Nvidia FX 5900 XT is
telling me it is running on AGP 8x (for those few times I even manage
to boot it). This seems bad, especially since I heard the voltage is
different for the two standards?

Anyway, I need some way to manually force the motherboard to use AGP
4x and I am open to any suggestions. Is there any other way I can set
the AGP parameters than using the BIOS (which does not support this
option)? Or does anyone know of a BIOS upgrade I can use for my
GA-7VAXFS that is newer than revision F7 and which allows me to
configure this?

 

[Jason]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

with regards the bios update:

didnt your m/b come with gigabytes own bios update prog? (qbios or
similar).

I have GA7VA ver 1.0 (KT400) and although i havent used it, came with
a windows prog that automatically downloads and updates bios within
windows?

I assume it reads what ver m/b you have, finds the correct latest bios
automatically from gigabyte, and should install it for you also.

 

[Jason]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

...also with regards to your agp8x problem, you didnt mention that you
have tried the latest via 4in1 hyperion chipset drivers. Installing
these solved a similar problem i had with my 9700pro running in AGPx8.

...but running a agp8x card in x4 mode WILL NOT cause any problems
however.

hope this will help...