UPDATE: I have found out that if I disable the onboard SATA (labelled "Serial-ATA 2 (Internal PHY)" in the bios), then nForce finds no drives and moves on to GigaRAID, where I can access the menu. However, with the SATA enabled, nForce displays the "Press F10 to setup blah blah blah" message, then goes straight to verifying the dmi pool, bypassing the GigaRAID menu.
Originally posted by: Keevon
UPDATE: I have found out that if I disable the onboard SATA (labelled "Serial-ATA 2 (Internal PHY)" in the bios), then nForce finds no drives and moves on to GigaRAID, where I can access the menu. However, with the SATA enabled, nForce displays the "Press F10 to setup blah blah blah" message, then goes straight to verifying the dmi pool, bypassing the GigaRAID menu.
I've been having that exact same problem, and Gigabyte said they are trying to replicate the problem in their labs.
As far as I can tell, it's because of the video card. When I had my old Radeon 64mb VIVO installed, the GigaRAID worked perfectly. When I switched to an AIW Radeon 9600, it was also working fine, but I returned the card (to get DVI support) and bought a 9800 Pro. As soon as I put that in, it stopped working. I stuck in my old Radeon 64mb VIVO and the problem went away.
So I returned the 9800 Pro and got a Nvidia 6800 instead. Same problem.
So something about newer video cards? I have noticed that the video card drivers and the ITE drivers are sharing an IRQ number, which should be fine with PCI, but maybe it's screwing things up for the detection process somehow?
Edit> Also, I am using two Maxtor drives for my IDE RAID as well. Perhaps an issue with Maxtor??
I've tried F4a and F4 final. Both don't like my setup. At first everything runs fine, then all of sudden system hangs. So I'm stuck with F2.
There appears to be a serious lockup issue with the CMOS when addressing the DDR Ram (or possible any error upon boot) for the F4 bios.
I used the advanced chipset menu in the bios (by pressing ctrl-F1)to manually configure my DDR 400 to a speed of 200MHz ... since the default speed with two sticks is underclocked to 166MHz.
Upon rebooting, the bios initialization would freeze at the memory test, and I was unable to get into the actual bios (using DEL) or the recovery feature (F9). I tried clearing the CMOS via the jumper, however... that did not work.
I believe the Bios was unable to reset the memory back to the default setting (of 166MHz)... and would keep booting at the manually set 200MHz speed.
I know that the motherboard is able to effectively run at a DRAM clock speed of 200MHz when there's only 1 stick of DDR... so I pulled out my second stick of RAM and was finally able to go into the bios. I then changed the DRAM speed back to 166MHz, put the second stick of ram back in, and reverted back to the F2 BIOS.
It appears that F4 has a problem reverting to factory default Bios settings if there's an error on boot... this problem renders the actual bios inaccessible.
I hope this information will be passed along to the Bios beta development programmers.
I am a fairly knowledgeable system developer/tester. If possible, would I be able to have the contact info (email) for the bios development team?
Originally posted by: Keevon
I'm going to try the official F4 BIOS tonight and see if anything happens.
We'll go ahead and forward this message to the correct department and will continue to run further testes. Please note that the memory controller is built within the processor itself so, if you force the system to run at 200fsb then it can cause system instability.
Originally posted by: Link
I've tried F4a and F4 final. Both don't like my setup. At first everything runs fine, then all of sudden system hangs. So I'm stuck with F2.
Originally posted by: TaiJohn
Hello,
When I start my comp. I see GA-K8NSP F2 (that's right because I updated teh bios ) , If I look in CPU-Z/SiSoft/Everest or programs like this They give Bios version F1, so i even don't know what biosversion I Have.
I thhink F2 because temp in bios is now 35C (before 70C) and Easytune do not give me the temp anymore.
But i'm not sure. Can anyone help me?
(and I doubt if CnQ is working but I don't know how to test that)