GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9 experiences

[jterrell]

Originally posted by: gsparesa

Originally posted by: Angry Kid
^^^^ What Rand said.

I wasn't to the point yet where I was going to tweak anything. I just wanted to get the %!@$%!@!!! thing to work. =(

Everything in BIOS (I tried both F1 &F2 versions) was set to the default. I even tried running both graphics boards I tried at the lowest in-game graphics settings (8x6), no AA/AF, no nothing.

BAH! BAH x2!!

Maybe by spring, someone, SOMEWHERE will have a non-SLI AMD/PCI-e board . . . >=(

I don't understand. I assumed it was operational because you said,
" I plug everything in, load XP, boots up fine. Everything is running smoothly -- until I try to play Call of Duty or Battlefield 1942. On average, about 3 minutes after I load either game (sometimes immediately after the respective splash-screens), the video freezes."
The 3 minutes thing is what I found interesting with the C of D and Battlefield. I was thinking it might have been a timing issue with an aggressive setting in the BIOS. Are both of these games DirectX dependant? How did your DirectX installation go?

Ya that sounds to me like a video card issue.
From the AT review of the 6600Gt line they stated mnay of the cards had issues with their heatsinks that could lead to overheating. An overheated vid card could lock up.

He says he tried 2 cards tho so maybe its the cpu overheating or the psu not offering enough power.

 

[Angry Kid]

Originally posted by: gsparesa
I don't understand. I assumed it was operational because you said,
" I plug everything in, load XP, boots up fine. Everything is running smoothly -- until I try to play Call of Duty or Battlefield 1942. On average, about 3 minutes after I load either game (sometimes immediately after the respective splash-screens), the video freezes."
The 3 minutes thing is what I found interesting with the C of D and Battlefield. I was thinking it might have been a timing issue with an aggressive setting in the BIOS. Are both of these games DirectX dependant? How did your DirectX installation go?

Not sure what you mean by "How did your DirectX installation go?" I installed DirectX 9.0c, so I guess it went OK. I checked everything via EVEREST and received no warnings. I think maybe you need to work on your basic comprehension skills -- how could you assume "it was operational" when it freezes up any time I try to use the board for its intended purpose (i.e. gaming)?

And if both an nVidia 6600 and an ATI 800XT overheat and lock up in precisely the same manner - - - I think that is just TOO much of a coincidence.

My CPU temp (at least according to my logs) never exceeded 42C; I set my alarm threshold to 50 and it never alarmed once.

The PSU shouldn't be an issue, either. The Antec Neopower 480W should handle just about anything I could throw at it. Just because I' a belt-and-suspenders kinda guy, I also swapped out the PSU with the Chieftec 420W I have on the PC I'm using now while my uber-box sits collecting dust. Just wanted to cover all the bases.

I'm convinced I just got a bad board -- it only took me 2 weeks to convince GiGHEYbyte of the same thing. >=(

FWIW, it has been RMAed. I'll keep y'all posted.

 

[PascalT]

Hmm this board is ~30.00 CDN cheaper than the MSI/DFI ones. Are those that much better than this one?

 

[Sqube]

I'm sorry if this question was already answered and I just missed it, but does your case support audio/USB/IEEE-1394 on the front? Did you test them out to see how it worked?

I do a lot of gaming (USB joypads), listen to a lot of music (headphones), and do a lot of music swapping on my iPod (Firewire)... it'd be great to know that they work properly.

For what it's worth, my next case will be a CoolerMaster Wave Master Aluminum.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: PascalT
Hmm this board is ~30.00 CDN cheaper than the MSI/DFI ones. Are those that much better than this one?

I'm not sure price is necessarily a very good indicator of quality but this board is definitely not intended as a high end nForce4 solution.
I do feel it's a fine board though, and I'm quite pleasantly surprised with it.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Sqube
I'm sorry if this question was already answered and I just missed it, but does your case support audio/USB/IEEE-1394 on the front? Did you test them out to see how it worked?

I do a lot of gaming (USB joypads), listen to a lot of music (headphones), and do a lot of music swapping on my iPod (Firewire)... it'd be great to know that they work properly.

For what it's worth, my next case will be a CoolerMaster Wave Master Aluminum.

Front USB/IEEE 1394 on my case, both connected and working fine.
My case doesn't have front audio, though I have briefly tested the integrated audio and it works adequately for a basic sound solution.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Sqube
I'm sorry if this question was already answered and I just missed it, but does your case support audio/USB/IEEE-1394 on the front? Did you test them out to see how it worked?

I do a lot of gaming (USB joypads), listen to a lot of music (headphones), and do a lot of music swapping on my iPod (Firewire)... it'd be great to know that they work properly.

For what it's worth, my next case will be a CoolerMaster Wave Master Aluminum.

Front USB/IEEE 1394 on my case, both connected and working fine.
My case doesn't have front audio, though I have briefly tested the integrated audio and it works adequately for a basic sound solution.

 

[emany]

My K8NF-9 fails memtest on anything over 200mHz mem speed. I have corsair 3200XL. I think the voltage options in the bios are limiting it. The VDimm only goes to 2.7V and the corsair is rated at 2.75 according to this. http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2145&p=2

 

[imperialman]

I had a similar problem when I would play Counter-strike: Source. I would get around 17 fps on a brand new, all around solid computer with this motherboard and XFX 6600 GT. It would freeze after a few minutes, too. The weird thing was that I could play Half-life 2 in single player at 80fps for hours and be fine.

Turns out that the on-board nVidia firewall was mucking it up. I disabled the app_filter service and shut down the firewall, and boom fps shot back up to 80 in CS. So, maybe check that?

I'm sad about this though, as I was looking forward to having a hardware-like firewall instead of the Windows one.

Also, I have the really crappy problem with the PS/2 Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard, where on boot the keyboard is non-responsive. You have to disable and re-enable the hardware in Device Manager for it to work. Hope the BIOS gets updated soon.

-cb


Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 nForce 4
Athlon 64 3000+
1 gb Corsair Value
XFX GeForce 6600GT PCIe
2x SATA Maxtor 300gb RAID 1
Nifty (LOUD) Window'ed Case "Tsunami Dream" (oops), 400w PSU
DVD+-RW, Natural Elite, MX510

 

[hafa]

I've had many problems with the N-vidia hardware firewall on both the Gigabyte (NF4) and Epox (NF3) boards. The configuration options are limited, the interface is cludgy and hard to set up and it has many performance and compatibility issues. I'll just stick with the DLink 804HV hardware router/firewall with stateful packet inspection, true routing tables, a flawless interface and multiple configuration options including router-to-router VPN, all for a whopping US$43.

 

[javdan]

Thanks for your intresting information about GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9. Maybe you can suggest something about overclocking that board, I run a AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester on it, but all I can do is to increase the CPU FREQ to 225. It doesnt want to go higher than this... (the os loading fails...) Have I missed something? I´ve understod that you need a memmory divider but from where? is it something that you have in bios? All I can find is these in the bios:

CPU FREQ
CPU SPREAD SPECTORUM
K8 CPU CLOCK RATIO
CPU VOLTAGE
CORE POWER V
HT.LINK V
DDR VOLT


Whould be thankful for any help...

 

[NeoeN]

These are my SPECS :
AMD 64 3200
ATI (BBA) X800XL
256MB RAM(will upgrade later)
80GB IDE HDD
Gigabyte K8NF9 MoBo

I too have (or had) the same problems as mentioned by most of the users about 1) the keyboard not being detected and 2) The video-hang-crash-related-problems. At start i didnt have any problems everything went alright. But once i updated my BIOS to the F2 Version, my Keyboard wouldnt respond, (it responds in the "press delete to enter setup" but once into windows it wouldnt respond) Am not sure how i got it figured out, working perfectly fine now(think i disabled and re-enabled them at the bios,not sure tho).

As for the Video crash-hang-lockup, the problem i had,is exactly as what AngryKid had stated, the game (ROME TOTAL WAR) would load, and after loading around 10 to 15 mins of gameplay my monitor would go blank (switch's itself off) But i can hear the sound (it just loops itself,depending on the file size of the sound it just keeps playing till it reaches EOF then starts back from the start) TFS(Three finger salute) doesnt work, even NUM Lock has no effect. I did not overclock my system or anything, everything is at default, so that shouldnt have been any problem. I uninstalled the latest drivers provided by ATI (5.12 Catalyst drivers) and installed the 4.12 Final. And now everything is going perfectly well, My systems been up for three days now and played Rome TOTAL war for more than 4 hours without a break and i have no problems with the graphic card hang up. Am not sure if this provides a viable solution since (angrykid) tried 2 completely different brand GPU's yet the problem still occurred.

One funny issue that im having is with the Built In network Adapter, after updating to the F2 bios, with WIN XP running, i could not connect to my network (Hostel), but this could be because of the network config. The way i fixed this issue was to Uninstall(format) Win Xp and Load Windows 2000. And same problem. I had to play around with the settings in windows 2000, And found that there was this one service called Network Load Balancing(local area connection), Played around with it and POOF i could connect to my network and the gateway.

Since F2 is giving problems why did i update it? Well just wanted to see EasyTune 5 work! ! !

 

[DrCrap]

I also have some stability issues with this board...
now, how do I set the nVidia firewall option?
do I have to install somthing in windows from the cd that came with the mobo, or is it from the BIOS, and if so, then where?
Thanks.