Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro

[paradise]

Originally posted by: Savarak
F8

hey are you sure? it doesn't work for me (bios ver. F5)

 

[MornNB]

I have a K8NS Pro with 3400+ Newcastle with Kingston 1GB 2 512MB kit CAS 3. It failed to work with stablity at 200mhz on F4 but works ok on F5 at 200mhz even with CAS 2.
However, the CAS settings seems to make no real difference and the memory bandwidth is about 2700mb/sec according to sandra which at least is up from the 2400mb/sec at 166mhz, surely that is too low for CAS 2 what is going on here. Is the bios maybe ignoring the CAS settings? CPU-Z confirms that it's at CAS 2.
Also can someone tell me what is double stacked ram, I know quite well what double sided ram is.

 

[zmab]

Got a question, hopefully someone can help me out with an answer. I have a K8NS-Pro with a AMD Athlon 3200 processor on it. It was working great until yesterday. I powered the system up yesterday morning, it went through the POST test, finished testing the ram, and started going through the rest of the startup. About that time an audible alarm went off, the processor fan stopped (it was working fine until the alarm sounded), and the boot up process stopped.

I discovered that if I hit the reset button as soon as the alarm sounds, the system boots up just fine. I had the F3 bios, so I went ahead and upgraded to the latest bios. All the temperatures and voltages seem to be the same as before the problem began.

Anyone seen something like this before?


Zmab

 

[Marasmus]

I think it's the other way around. The alarm goes off because the CPU fan stops. Don't know why it stops, though. Sounds like you'll have to return that motherboard.

 

[kongking]

Hey, I just got a GA-K8NS Pro mobo, and i am having some noob issues. when I boot a linux live cd I get the following error "MP-BIOS bug:8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC". It also wont boot from an installation CD unless I put it in safe mode. I dont know very much about hardware, I dont even know what the IO-APIC is... Also, when I go into raid configuration my hard drive doesnt show up, and I am unable to build the array. Quite annoying because every time I boot up it gives me this message to configure raid and I am unable to. Thanks for any help you can give me!

 

[Etrnaly]

Not too sure what the APIC thing is, but have you tried turning off the RAID controllers that you're not using off? For my system, I'm using my primary IDE for my dvdr and 1 SATA for my SATA HD. I have the other SATA controller turned off and the IDE RAID controller turned off. This should help you boot faster and might take care of that RAID error you're getting.

 

[kongking]

That fixed my annoying error message and shaved a few seconds off my boot time. thanks alot for the info! Now I have to fix a new problem I discovered while in the bios settings. My pc3200 ram is running at 166 mhz, but this thread already answered how to fix that. I also looked at my advanced bios settings and the interrupt was APIC instead of PIC, maybe this is unsupported by *nix, I tried 3 kinds of live linux CDs and a FreeBSD install CD and none of them could boot without me putting it in safe mode. So now my dilemma is do I put the setting in PIC and reinstall windows (once you install in APIC it wont run in PIC) to run a dual boot like I have in the past. Thanks for your help, I greatly appreciate it!

 

[LH2312]

I just noticed Gigabyte has pulled off BIOS "F5" for the K8NS Pro from their download page.
Any information why this happened? It makes me quite nervous to run a "discontinued BIOS" ...

Lothar

 

[paradise]

Originally posted by: LH2312
I just noticed Gigabyte has pulled off BIOS "F5" for the K8NS Pro from their download page.
Any information why this happened? It makes me quite nervous to run a "discontinued BIOS" ...

Lothar

I noticed too, it's removed F5 bios no matter from which country of GA pages, what is it going on?
something serious bug?

 

[MornNB]

It still seems to be downloadable though, but the links to the download page are removed.

 

[LH2312]

Hm, dunno if this is related to the missing F5, but now there is a new BIOS version F6 on the download page. I just downloaded that and will try this asap.

Lothar

 

[paradise]

where is F6? I dont see it

 

[LH2312]

It's on their download page for the K8NS Pro, maybe you need to hit the reload button for your browser.
Anyway, I've installed this BIOS and immediately have gone back to F5. There were 2 really big problems with the new BIOS (at least for me):

- I have 2 x 512 MB PC400 RAM sticks installed, with BIOS F6 the mobo only detects 1 stick on boot up.
Maybe this is a specific prob with my RAM, one stick is takeMS, the other is a Corsair XMS-3200C2Pro.

- the GigaRAID BIOS that comes with the new F6 is back to version 1.41, whereas F5 came with version
1.70. I don't know why Gigabyte actually went back to an older release.

So, if you plan to flash to the new BIOS you better watch closely and take some care!

Lothar

 

[Savarak]

i don't see F6 anywhere either?!

 

[LH2312]

Strange. Here is the link I use:
http://global.giga-byte.com/Mo...BIOS_GA-K8NS%20Pro.htm

Lothar

 

[mdogs444]

Well i used F5 w/o any problems, in fact i think it made my overclock a bit more stable. I just cant figure out which is correct on the voltages. CPU-Z reads at .5V higher than my motherboard the Vcore.

Has anyone here tried OCZ's PC3200 plat, 3500, or 3700 for OC purposes w/ this board? Preferably in a 512MBx2 format>

 

[Savarak]

thanks, i was looking at the BIOS section under the www. instead of the global.

 

[Karl Norris]

Hello all,

I have been watching with great interest folks struggling to solve the 2x512 dimm issue with the Gigabyte K8NS Pro board... because I have this issue too.

With 2x512 Muskin BL2 PC3500, I can not run 200mhz htt/fsb at 1T.

My best work around has been to buy an OCZ DDR Booster and turn the voltage up to 3.0Vdc.

With this I have been able to get to 235htt and fsb at 8 2 2 2.0 but... unfortunately this is with 2T in auto. Which I assume means that it is being enabled. When I try and disable it the system won't boot. Granted the dimms are in 2 and 3 because of the DDR Booster. Without the booster, and the memory moved over to dimm slots 1 and 2 or 1 and 3, I can get 185fsb with 2.7vdc and 197mhz with 2.8vdc (using easytune4 in WinXP)... ***EDITED*** THIS IS AT 1T TIMINGS. At any frequency, 2T set to disable prevents booting ***EDITED*** WHILE THE DIMMS ARE IN SLOTS 2&3.

I have been waiting for the new bios... and it is here F6... I will try it tonight, I am not overly hopeful .


Regards,

Karl

Thermaltake 5000+, K8NS Pro, AMD64 3200+ (512kL2,2.2ghz), 2x512mb Muskin BLII PC3500
6800GT, 2xWD36 10k, 1xMax160 IDE, CDRW, DVDROM, WinTV, Enermax550W
WinXP Pro SP2, F4 BIOS

 

[Karl Norris]

Hey all,

The new bios didn't do much for me...

I removed the DDR booster and put the memory in dimms1 and dimms3. The best I can do while setting 2t disabled is to boot at 166fsb (8 2 2 2.0) and then raise the htt until max frequency and memory are reached (lucky for me) at 2.45ghz and 193fsb.

By the way, I think I figured out the difficulty with changing multipliers. I initially had nothing but grief trying to change it... then when I recently changed around my machine it was working perfectly in bios and using easytune4... then it stopped working after a failed boot, or some such.

Well I went in and changed the cpu to 201mhz and agp to 67mhz rebooted (and left them set 'up') and now I can change my multiplier in bios in a single attempt and also change dynamically in WinXP using Easytune4... cool.

My performance at 1T at 193mhz seems as fast if not faster then 2T at 235...

So I think I will camp here. Maybe try my friend 2x512mb memory on Monday night... but otherwise... try and be happy.

Karl

 

[kongking]

i was able to get my ram to 200mhz by putting the latency settings in 2.5-3-3-6. however when i was in windows it seemed a bit unstable. what should my voltages be for that setting?
here is a screen shot of the error i get whenever i try to open a big program when my ram is running at 200 mhz: http://www.uberalles.us/memerror.JPG

 

[imported_MzA]

Hi,

I was looking for reviews of this motherboard and found this thread by an accident through Google.. Anyway, I just ordered a new computer with K8NS-Pro as mobo. Graphic card will be GeForce6800LE and memorysticks will be "M-Tec DDR400 PC3200" two sticks of 512mb..

I hadn't time to read all the posts in this topic (sorry), but I noticed that some of you were having problems with two DDR400 sticks, Right?

I am not a "HC-user", and dunno much of computers at all, but would you please help me: Will I notice the difference between DDR400 and DDR333? Is there anyway to get those memorysticks work in their "natural" speeds without any weird Biosshit?

Thx..

 

[kongking]

MzA, the mobo comes with a utilities CD that has a program called EasyTune on it. you can use this to get your memory up to 200 mhz, but you can easily make your system unstable if you mess around with the wrong things.

 

[imported_MzA]

MzA, the mobo comes with a utilities CD that has a program called EasyTune on it. you can use this to get your memory up to 200 mhz, but you can easily make your system unstable if you mess around with the wrong things.

Thanks a lot kongking!

Could you, or someone else tell me a bit more about that? What should I do with Easytune? Just set the MhZ from 166 to 200 or what? And what are the "wrong things" that I can mess around with?

 

[Karl Norris]

Hey kongking,

That's the issue... some folks can make it over 200fsb at 1T timings... but it is hit or miss.

In my case I can not. Any thing over 197mhz and it coughs.

Whatever you end-up with settings... it's always a great idea to verify stability with Prime95, Memtest86, SuperPI, etc.

You can try turning up your memory voltage to see if this helps...

Regards,

Karl

 

[TaiJohn]

Kongking wrote

was able to get my ram to 200mhz by putting the latency settings in 2.5-3-3-6. however when i was in windows it seemed a bit unstable. what should my voltages be for that setting?

I had the same problem, now my dram voltages set at 2.6V (+0.1 in Bios) (200Mhz) and all works fine and stable.