GA-8IRXP Issues

[theozbc]

Background: I finally built my first computer from scratch. I've always purchased from DELL. This machine's built to my spec. Here's what I have:

Gigabyte GA-8IRXP - BIOS REV F6
P4 2.0A
Kingston ValueRAM PC2100 512MB
2 - Maxtor D740X (40GB) Hard Disks
Creative Audigy Gamer
PNY TI4400

Problem 1: When I increase the FSB to 133 and up the voltage to 1.65, 1.70, 1.75, etc. the system will not boot the OS. My only option is to get into the BIOS and default the settings back. When I increased to 1.8 and 1.85, the system is totally locked-up on reboot. I have to unplug the ATX, take out the battery and short the battery termals to restore the out of box BIOS settings. I purchase the 2.0A in conjunction with the 8IRXP to overclock my CPU. I'll try a FSB of 120 tonight and leave the voltage alone. Any comments are appreciated!

Problem 2: When I use the default mobo settings and have the mobo working (without trying to overclock), I cannot get the Promise RAID to work. I can create my stripe set (RAID 0) then when I go into WinXP, I press F6 during the load to use the Promise drivers for this chipset (20276). WinXP load states that the driver will be used, the install continues, then when "Windows XP Startup), I receive an error that no hard disks can be found. I cannot get WinXP during installation to see either the RAID or disks. Any thoughts here?

Stressed in Saginaw...

Thank You,
Brian Chapman

 

[F155mph]

Many people are having the same problem with that board. I would read all the thread about this board. I personally don't have the 8IRXP but I do have the 8SRX from giga. When I increase the voltage to the max, mine will not boot up neither. So this lead me to believe that this is a issue with Giga boards.

 

[Bingo13]

Hi,

Problem One- The board will have reboot issues at voltages greater than 1.7 with the F6 bios. However, it is very rare to find a 2.0a that will boot at 133. I have three and only one will boot at 128 with the other two around 125 max. My 1.8a systems will make it to 140 easily.

Problem Two- I did not have this issue with my Raid 0 setup. Did you format the drives first on the Promise controller after creating the raid 0 setup? Also, are you loading the Raid133 drivers or the Ultra133 drivers during the F6 XP driver setup?

 

[theozbc]

The good news: I have the Promise RAID controller working. The Gigabyte tech guys in CA are very helpful. I had to use a newer set of drivers to get the RAID to work properly.

The bad news: I can set the FSB to around 115. Anything much over that and I get an error (Corrupted File Message) when the system tries to boot WinXP. Next I try to increase the CPU's voltage (i.e. 1.6, 1.65 or 1.7) I also receive an error when trying to boot Windows. I have the wonderful 2.0A NW and I can only get it to 2.29GHz. The baby was made to OC! Why am I having these problems? Is there anything else I could try? Something conserative (I'm new at this stuff). Memory voltage? PCI/AGP voltage? etc.

Regards,
Brian

 

[F155mph]

Try taking everything out except for your video card and see how high you get. Run your computer on IDE. Don't run it with the video driver, just use you OS system driver for now and see. I couldn't get my computer going with my video driver(ATI). It kept rebooting when I get into winXP.

 

[Duvie]

like mentioned before 2.0ghz don't often make it to 133fsb...

I also contend as I have in the past that most of the 1.6 and 1.8's are chips that were marked down to meet market demand and often would have passed at either 2.0 or 2.2's...

my 1.8 does 2070 at default voltage...My 1.8 does 2.52ghz (140fsb) stable at 1.775v....it will post into windows at 2.610ghz (145fsb)


for memory make sure you use a 1:1 for safe settings....I think there may be a problem at 129 in the sense with a 1/3 pci divider the pci is 42mhz and way out of spec...hence the errors with the harddrive...

The prolems with these chips (higher ones) are, unless you can get them to 133 to lock a 1/4pci divider you may run too far out of spec. Get a board that offers a pci and agp lock...

 

[RalfHutter]

Let me reiterate the boot/reboot issues with this board when you set the Vcore at ANYTHING but default. Search the Mobo, CPU and General Hardware forums for 8IXRP posts and look at the trouble everyone is having with this board.

I started my P4 OC thang using this Mobo so I'm not talking out my ass. I got rid of mine as fast as I could and got an Asus P4B266. The Asus OC's stable with only a few minor bugs (divider locked at 1:1 above 133FSB and wierd temp sensors).

 

[Bingo13]

RalfHutter,

The F6 bios fixed the reboot issue unless you run the vcore past 1.7. His biggest issue right now is that his 2.0a will not overclock very far.

 

[rockhard]

Send the board back for refund IMO.
Ive just done this with my GA8IRXP as i dont feel like rewarding Gigabyte with my money when they try to patch up a motherboard with design problems by bios updates.
JMO FWIW

 

[theozbc]

Thanks to everyone for the information. I read a few reviews on the net regarding this mobo and it received excellent reviews.

Hardware VZone Review
Motherboard Org
Tom's Hardware - Overclock a 2.2GHz to 3+GHz using GA-8IRXP

So many good reviews and this thing doesn't overclock a 2.0A worth a s&^%. I'm my case anyway. I'm stable at 1.55V and 110FSB, that's as far as I can take this baby.

I now wish I would have come into this forum first. I may be sending this back to googlegear and ordering an ASUS.

 

[hnic2k]

this board is the s%#t...check my 1200MHz overclock air cooling....

<EDIT>

More Pics...

GA-8IRXP
P4 1.6A @ 2800Mhz
KINGMAX DDR333 @ 350MHZ 2-5-2-2
AVC Sunflower
300Watt Sparkle PSU

 

[cobrasvt]

Hey don't give up yet on that 2.0A! I see you purchased Kingston Value PC2100 DDR. Try uping your DDR voltage... My Crucial PC2100 wouldn't run at 133 either. The board would not post and would lock. Try changing the memory speed to 200. I bet she'll boot up then! I had to run my DDR at 2.8 volts to get it running at 133 (I have a 1.8A @ 2.4). My systemwould still lock up occasionally, so I sold my Crucial and bought Kingmax PC2700 and it hasn't hiccuped since! My board is rock stable and flies! I was going to RMA because of the soft reboot issue,, but decided that I love this board too much (no, the F6 bios didn't solve the problem for me and I am running at 1.65volts). Gigabyte seems to be working frantically now to fix this problem so the future does look good! Let us know what you find out with the RAM timings and voltage requirred...

 

[rockhard]

When you up the voltage to your ram you are also upping the voltage to your chipset IIRC.
This may explain why people are having trouble doing the 133fsb thing with the i845D chipset maybe, yeah?
I too could not get near 133 fsb with my Crucial 512 PC2100 Dimms, yet they run fine @ 2.65v on my Asus A7V266E.
Guess we will find out whether it is the chipset that isnt able to do 133fsb when the 533 fsb Northwoods appear.
Going to be interesting to see which i845D current motherboards offer support for these chips via a bios update.
I hope im wrong, but ive a feeling theres going to be a lot of dissapointed i845D chipset owners in the future.
Grrrr, yet another motherboard upgrade needed maybe?

 

[cobrasvt]

Actually, the new F6 bios already has somewhat support of the new "B" Northwoods. With my 1.8A @ 2.4, it shows 2.4B as the processor type when turning on in the bios post screen!

I am pretty sure that most of the 845D motherboards that are capable of runnnig 133 now will be okay with the new processors....

I the past 1.5 months, I've had a chance to test 3 different 845D motherboards. Without a doubt, my 8IRXP has been the most stable (other than the soft reset issue) and fastest!

- Asus P4B266 - nice board, overclocked excellent, stupid 1:1 RAM timings at anything over 132 FSB, not as many options as the Gigabyte 8IRXP, ugly brown/goldish color PCB, nice onboard sound chip solution (for being on board sound), no RAID, system monitors seem to be a joke using included monitoring software, I personally feel the board is overpriced...

- Soyo P4I Fire Dragon - nice looking red PCB (screams give me a clear window mod), excellent feature least (- USB 2.0, + IEE1394), wouldn't overclock worth a crap (thought it was my Crucial at the time, so I ordered another 1 when I got my Kingmax PC2700 but wouldn't boot above 120 FSB), smartcard reader included (not that there are many smartcards out there), nice onboard sound chip solution (again for being onboard sound), not able to overclock (did I mention this already ), seems to have no support on the USA Soyo website other than the information page, Highpoint RAID, WAY OVER PRICED!

- Gigabyte 8IRXP - cool looking blue PCB (screams give me a clear window mod), excellent feature list, works like a champ at 133 FSB, Creative on board sound chip (basically a Sound Blaster PCI 128) not as powerful as the CMI chip, Promise RAID, mediocre manual (you have to D/L the BIOS manual from the web site - don't know what marketing PR moron at Gigabyte thought this up), soft reset issue has been solved on many systems with a new bios update (F6), seems to already have support for the new 533 FSB Northwoods coming out (bios reports "B" on bios post screen when running at 133 FSB now), stable and very fast!

I personally do not feel that any motherboard out there on the market has "no" issues. Hell, I remember when I first bought my MSI KT266 motherboard and the having to do the R121 or whatever it was resistor mod to get the board to perform better than a 80 year old horse trying to plow a field! Of course that motherboard took a crap after about a year, so who knows! I think that in this new age of technology, the companies try to be the 1st on the block with the new hardware (seems MSI has a habit of this), and will patch the bios (or in the case of the MSI KT266, do a resistor mod) as we find the quirks for the testing departments.... However, remember that there is thousands of products out on the market in which the motherboards have to communicate with and I am sure that the companies cannot test each and every 1 of them in every combination... So quirks are bound to happen!

Well, enough said, I'll get off the rock now and let someone else talk...

 

[SuperRob]

The only issue I have with my 8IRXP is that it can only see half my stick of 512MB OCZ PC2700.

Other than that, I've got the F6 BIOS, and my 1.6 Northwood is running perfectly stable at 140MHz FSB at DEFAULT voltage.

Now, if only it could see the full 512MB ... D'oh!

 

[Barrei]

How high FSB can you run on this mobo with just a p41.6 not 1.6a?

 

[Barrei]

Got my 1.6 not an 'a' to 133 fsb had to lower cpu temp to 1.675 and increase ddr voltage .3 seems to work fine.

 

[JCDenton]

hi,
does anybody know if one day a bios appears wich solve the boot issue???

 

[Barrei]

Make sure you have the f6d bios then set cpu power to 1.675, them increase .3 volts to ddr and agp, this might help, I hope, it worked great to get mine to run stable at 129fsb and my p4 1.6 is a lousy williamette

 

[JCDenton]

I have the f6 final bios. I think there s no difference to the f6d.

I have a p4 2,2 ghz. I can put the fsb to 122 (2,68ghz) without getting the bootproblem. Only 1 fsb more and i get it!

 

[benjamat]

I have the 8IRX and like some others purchased this mobo on the strength of anands glowing recommendation of the Ga9IRXP thinking that i would have a board that suited me as I had no need of raid or USB2

Like others I was extremely dissapointed when I got the board and discovered that even though it had voltage settings for dimm and Agp as well as ratio adjusters for fsb overclock it had no CPU core voltage overclock.

Now let me say right away that this board clocked to 138mhz and therefore 2.2 ghz with a Northwood 1.6A processor so it isnt all bad but as the temp was only 35c at this rating I had high hopes for more. Rock stable with intel cooling and no voltage adjustments, ratio set to 2 to bring AGP back to 68.

With no discoverable fixes i took a gamble with flashing the bios with the GA8Ixrp version thinking that with the gigabyte dual bios backup i might get away with it and I did, disabling raid and usb2 in the bios and hurray I now had CPU core voltage in the bios or so it seemed.

While I am of course happy with a 600mhz overclock I find I cannot get to the 2.4ghz I was hoping for and indeed it seems that my overclocking is identical to the overclocking capabilities without the cpu core voltage adjustments although i did get further than before before windows failed to start.

I wonder is this because it is all my cpu will do irrespective of the voltage, seems unlikely or is the voltage adjustment just a non functional gimmick as SiSoft Sandra does not show the voltage as changed from the recorded 1.49.

Some wisdom would be interesting.

 

[odog]

<< I have the 8IRX and like some others purchased this mobo on the strength of anands glowing recommendation of the Ga9IRXP thinking that i would have a board that suited me as I had no need of raid or USB2

Like others I was extremely dissapointed when I got the board and discovered that even though it had voltage settings for dimm and Agp as well as ratio adjusters for fsb overclock it had no CPU core voltage overclock. >>

thats the exact same position i find myself in...

all hope is not lost... i have confidence we will be overvolting our P4's sooner then later...

i thought about taking my alpha off to do the pin mod... but that would mean a jump of .35 volts kinda taking the fun out finding the sweet spot for this specific chip.

 

[odog]

<< With no discoverable fixes i took a gamble with flashing the bios with the GA8Ixrp version thinking that with the gigabyte dual bios backup i might get away with it and I did, disabling raid and usb2 in the bios and hurray I now had CPU core voltage in the bios or so it seemed. >>

i attempted that as well and failed... i tried both changing the file name and some of the data inside the bios itself.... both failed....




<< While I am of course happy with a 600mhz overclock I find I cannot get to the 2.4ghz I was hoping for >>

i as well am not "disapointed" with my 630mhz default voltage overclock.... what i am disapointed in is the fact that i will not know the true potential of this chip without more juice... thats what makes hitting 2.2 without voltage bad.. knowing you have one helluva chip that can overclock more then any other chip you've ever had...




<< I wonder is this because it is all my cpu will do irrespective of the voltage, seems unlikely or is the voltage adjustment just a non functional gimmick as SiSoft Sandra does not show the voltage as changed from the recorded 1.49. >>

i don't think that voltage took.... and i'd believe sandra... better yet check the hardware page in the bios it's probably reporting 1.5 volts.

 

[benjamat]

I flashed to 8IRXP by disabling the tag when the bios starts, it hiccupped once then flashed properly.

Wire trick on the CPU is I think the way to go and when I did it with all four pins the bios did not go to 1.85 but to 1.62 and with this I got 2400 easily.

 

[benjamat]

In reply to -

i thought about taking my alpha off to do the pin mod... but that would mean a jump of .35 volts kinda taking the fun out finding the sweet spot for this specific chip

You do not have to go all the way to 1.85 with the wire mod, search under 81RX or username benjamat and you will find plenty of details.

I have my 81RX wired with rear screen heater repair solution at 1.7 and yhe system is rock solid at 2.2ghz from a p4 1.6A.

I am now very happy with the cheaper 81RX as I dont need raid or usb 2 but as there is no voltage adjustment the wire mod must be done on thje CPU.

I see the 81RX as a great alternative to much more expensive mobos.