Gigabyte Boards and DPC Latency

[GigabyteColin]

Hey Guys,

Sorry about the late reply, as I was out of the office on Mon and Tues. The reason why we haven't released an official BIOS, is that some of you guys are still reporting some spiking with the beta fix. The engineers are still testing and I'll let you know what they find. They are confident they will be able to resolve through BIOS, so I ask for a little patience.

 

[laezyre]

Thanks for the info woodie. My last test I had 8 or 9 1000 us spikes in a row. I think that's my record. I have to wonder what this does to my performance, especially after hearing about your athlon outperforming your core 2. That's hard to believe. What did you tell Newegg to get your refund? I got mine from ClubIT. Ideally I'd like a BIOS fix.

Thanks for getting back to us Colin. I left a message on the gigabyte support site. Do you have any idea if this latency will affect online games? Here's hoping for a new BIOS soon.

 

[DarkRogue]

Thanks for keeping us updated, Colin. I am also waiting anxiously for a finalized BIOS to fix this issue.

Edit:

I just installed XP SP3 and re-ran the DPC checker, and it seems that I'm hitting spikes more regularly now. I'm also hitting 1k microseconds about once a minute now too. If you need a screenshot I can provide one. Right now it's not affecting anything yet, but I hope it won't develop into something worse. I don't know if installing SP3 had anything to do with it though since I didn't run it immediately before the install. I've only run it twice previously with the results I posted earlier.

 

[cactusdog]

Thanks Colin, i have replied to your PM.

Dont give up yet guys. Gigabyte are taking this seriously and are working hard to try and fix it completely.

@Darkrogue it will happen on XP or Vista with or without service packs and with or without any drivers installed because its a motherboard issue. If the latency is really bad, sometimes a reboot can improve it a little. Anyway,lets hope they can fix it.

 

[j0j081]

If this is a problem with the DS3L I certainly don't notice anything wrong with mine performance wise.

 

[DarkRogue]

j0j0, there's an easy way to check, just download the small DPC checker linked on the first page and run it for about a minute. There's no installation needed so it's just run and close. But as long as it doesn't affect anything you do, you don't have to worry too much about it and can just sit tight and wait for an official BIOS.

cactusdog, I figured as much as I ran the DPC checker before and saw I was spiking a bit. It's just that it suddenly got a bit worse (still not disrupting anything I do on my PC yet though) and I'm not sure what triggered it.

 

[WoodiE55]

Originally posted by: laezyre
What did you tell Newegg to get your refund? I got mine from ClubIT. Ideally I'd like a BIOS fix.

I called Newegg last night, told them the problem I've been having and that it seems to be a known issue. I've saved the email I received from Gigabyte when they sent me the beta BIOS and this thread, both are printed and will be sent to Newegg to verify that there is a known issue.

I ordered my new motherboard from them this morning, once I receive that in the mail the gigabtye will be going back to them.

Ideally I'd like to keep this board if everything ran like it should have. Just erks me that I ran just as much or more on my AMD CPU with no problems with stuttering while playing music or video games. Things might have slowed down a bit, but never once stutter or almost like it freezes up for a second or two like I'm having with the dual core.



-WoodiE

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
j0j0, there's an easy way to check, just download the small DPC checker linked on the first page and run it for about a minute. There's no installation needed so it's just run and close. But as long as it doesn't affect anything you do, you don't have to worry too much about it and can just sit tight and wait for an official BIOS.

cactusdog, I figured as much as I ran the DPC checker before and saw I was spiking a bit. It's just that it suddenly got a bit worse (still not disrupting anything I do on my PC yet though) and I'm not sure what triggered it.

well looks like mine is doing it to. This is on the DS3L with the F6 Bios (one it came with) if anyone else is interested. I wonder if this is why I hear crackling from time to time when gaming with headphones on. I always thought it was the normal interference onboard audio picks up.

 

[laezyre]

I just made the mistake of flashing my bios to the most recent version: F8f. Before I was getting very frequent spikes of 1000 us but never more. Now I'm getting alot of spikes over 2000 and some up to 9000 us. What a mistake. I wonder if I should flash back to my old bios. Send the board back is starting to look better....

 

[laezyre]

How can I get the F9 bios? I tried all the other beta bios patches and things got alot worse. Now I'm back to using the original f7 non beta bios and my latency is TERRIBLE. All I see is constant 1000 us latency with almost nothing else. I have about 80% 1000+ us latency at ALL times. I still get regular 2000 us spikes and even a few over 20,000 us. This is looking like a defective product at this point.

 

[GigabyteColin]

Hi laezyre...The BIOS online do not include the fix. I sent you the F8g, which does.

 

[laezyre]

Colin,

Thanks for the reply. I failed to mention that my board is the ga-p35-ds3l rev 2. If there is a bios fix for that, I would be very greatful if you would send it to me. Thanks alot.

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: laezyre
Colin,

Thanks for the reply. I failed to mention that my board is the ga-p35-ds3l rev 2. If there is a bios fix for that, I would be very greatful if you would send it to me. Thanks alot.

same here. otherwise as it doesn't seem to be effecting performance at least noticeably I won't mind waiting for one to be posted on Gbs site.

 

[chriskwarren]

Got the DS3P and I have the issue as well. I can wait for the next official bios to see if it fixes this without any of the loss of voltage settings I have read about here (and I believe I read about that bug in the TweakTown Gigabyte forum as well).

 

[DarkRogue]

Chris, just wondering since you have the same mobo as me, what do your spikes look like?

 

[sprok]

i have the p35-ds3l and getting spikes up to 900 us. I get about 600us every 4 to 2 intervals.

haven't noticed any stuttering or problems.

 

[laezyre]

Sprok, I would be happy if I had that latency. I have very frequent 1000 us spikes with frequent 2000+ spikes if I use a program. I may get 7-9 1000 us spikes in a row looking like a solid block at times. I flashed my bios to the one Colin sent me and then to another bios gigabyte customer support sent me. I have noticed improvement when my system is idle, but when running cpu-z I get constant spiking.

Interestingly, before I flashed my bios(I had F7), I had better latency than I do now with the beta bios patch. So flash at your own risk.

I appreciate gigabyte working on this issue, but clearly work still needs to be done.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
Thanks for keeping us updated, Colin. I am also waiting anxiously for a finalized BIOS to fix this issue.

Edit:

I just installed XP SP3 and re-ran the DPC checker, and it seems that I'm hitting spikes more regularly now. I'm also hitting 1k microseconds about once a minute now too. If you need a screenshot I can provide one. Right now it's not affecting anything yet, but I hope it won't develop into something worse. I don't know if installing SP3 had anything to do with it though since I didn't run it immediately before the install. I've only run it twice previously with the results I posted earlier.

A lot of people are having all kinds of problems with XP SP3. It is all over the net. Lots of random blue screens on previously rock stable systems, drop outs, hang ups, etc... I would stay away for a while, or just ignore completely.

 

[DarkRogue]

Well, unless those issues were caused by the couple new features that were added, I basically already had the bulk of SP3's updates when I built my PC with XP SP2. Had to sit there for an hour downloading 104 updates lol.

Anyway, I'm sure it's largely a coincidence for me, and my latency still isn't high enough to cause any stuttering problems thankfully, but I wanted to see if that information would be of any use/help in determining why this is happening.

 

[chronox]

I have a E8400 running on a GA-P35-DS3L with Vista Ultimate 64-bit here and get a cyclic latency pattern: 56-275-55-58-650-50-1000 (values vary but are within this range).

I had actually noticed that Windows Media Player was giving me occasional "skips" when I played .mp3 files ripped from my CD. I wonder if this is due to this DPC latency...

Edit: I have hit ~2000 several times but so far it's been pretty infrequent. Also, I'm on the F7 revision of BIOS

 

[cactusdog]

Originally posted by: chronox
I have a E8400 running on a GA-P35-DS3L with Vista Ultimate 64-bit here and get a cyclic latency pattern: 56-275-55-58-650-50-1000 (values vary but are within this range).

I had actually noticed that Windows Media Player was giving me occasional "skips" when I played .mp3 files ripped from my CD. I wonder if this is due to this DPC latency...

Edit: I have hit ~2000 several times but so far it's been pretty infrequent. Also, I'm on the F7 revision of BIOS

It can cause audio stuttering. You can try the checker while playing audio/video ( or a youtube clip or something) and if it goes over 1000 you can have problems with stuttering or skipping audio. If you dont notice any serious problem just wait for the final bios.

 

[fallsroad]

I have the GA-EP35-DS4, and the DSC tool shows spiking like this:

2us/900us, 23us/665us, 102us/1028us and so forth. Every other interval spikes to over at least 400, and sometimes over 1000.

I am running BIOS F2.

Lately I've noticed some issues when playing videos of stuttering and the audio buzzing loudly during the stuttering. Also have had some weird Event Viewer errors, like the following:

Event ID 9
Source: JRAID
The device, \Device\Scsi\JRAID1, did not respond within the timeout period.

This occurs randomly, but the drives all check out with diagnostic software.

Should I try the beta BIOS for a fix?

 

[laezyre]

I've tried the most recent bios releases from colin and the gigabyte tech support. My latency is probably worse then when I started.
I will use this computer for online gaming(age of conan, warhammer, etc). I can only imagine what this latency will do to for online gaming. By the way, I have constant 1000+ us spikes and many 2000+ us spikes.

I was wondering if anyone has been able to get gigabyte to replace their motherboard for this reason. I bought mine over a month ago and can not return it to the reseller at this point.

 

[DarkRogue]

Wait, so you're saying the beta BIOS didn't work for you?

 

[Fallen Kell]

I am constantly above 200-300, with a stable pattern of 900-1000 spike every 3-4 readings, with a max spike of 7548, which happened during video playback (as well as several 4000 spikes during the playback). It may be what is keeping me from being able to do more live steam processing on the video (FFDShow, AviSynth, ReClock), but I think my first step is reloading the OS as I went from an Nvidia board to the Intel board with this same Windows install (surprisingly stable in the sense of no blue-screens and been up over 28 hours now).

I'll get to the update bios after I have redone the OS (and run tests again).