Gigabyte, overclocking, rude tech support

[Schmo]

Well, I just got off the phone with the tech support person from Gigabyte regarding the shutdown problem when having a FSB greater than 125MHz or so. Well, he said and I quote, "We don't care about overclocking". When I asked if it might be fixed in a future BIOS, he said, "Hey, I seriously doubt it". Then I asked, if you don't care about overclocking then why do you provide all the options and advertise it as a great board for this purpose. He said, "I don't know, thats that marketing people not me, we don't care about overclocking".

I love this board except for that weird problem. When I select restart from windows in shutsdown and hangs and I have to hit the power to restart it.... then it is fine.
If I shudown from windows, the next time I boot it hangs and I have to turn it off from this state using the powersupply switch, then it boots fine.

Is that annoying or what?!? Don't have to do any of this at normal bus speeds.

I am about to send this thing back and maybe take the restocking fee and get a P4S333 or P4B266. Both of which don't seem to have these problems and overclock well, maybe even better since I need about 1.75V to get to 2.4 stable with my 1.8a. They don't have the USB2.0, RAID, or onboard LAN but they are cheaper.

Any advice, rude remarks, flames are welcome.... ok, maybe I would settle for just advice. I purchased from MWave, I consider this board defective but will they and will they credit me the full amount if I buy a different board off of them? I still have a few weeks to decide based on their 30 day return policy.

 

[Duvie]

have you truly been able to nail this down as an issue every board owner has faced??? Did annadtech have some special sample board? They got it higher thenthat in the comparison chart at the end...I would assume they meant stable and restarting issues like yours are not only annoying unstable...My biostar mobo did that when I oc'd a bit too much....

Is it a chance the pci is too high for the harddrive and it is having issues clearing the cache behind it?? I don't know just a guess...


If you get another one get the MSI Ultra ARU...it has raid and usb 2.0 liek you had and it is about 20 bucks cheaper...

 

[Schmo]

Nope, all three of us have this problem with the shutdown issue... only at FSBs above 125. Everything else about the board is stable and the Gigabyte guy knew about the problem but just didn't care. It is easy to get around now but annoying when I do have to shutdown... luckily not that often with Windows XP... with 9X I would have been going crazy. LOL

I am running at 133FSB with the divider so my PCI/AGP is 33/66 respectively and the memory divider is set so the DDR memory is 266.

How much did you spend in the MSI? I spent 149 for this Gigabyte board. I heard the MSI only lets you go to 1.6V or something like that on the processor... that isn't so nice.

 

[Duvie]

From the review I read at ocworkbench that is not right...the agp only goes to 1.6v....

Also both anandtech, and ocworkbench had this board as there top i845ddr mobo for ocing they have tested....Now they haven't done the asus yet.

I am hoping for 133fsb and not going above 1.6v anyways...I think my sparkle most likely in the actual will out out slightly more...Thugsrock cpu just actually died at 1.6v, and I read that over 1.65 v could drastically reduce the life of the cpu...


I guess I would love a the board to do great at default and maybe I wont mess with it.........nay!!!

 

[Schmo]

<< From the review I read at ocworkbench that is not right...the agp only goes to 1.6v....

Also both anandtech, and ocworkbench had this board as there top i845ddr mobo for ocing they have tested....Now they haven't done the asus yet.

I am hoping for 133fsb and not going above 1.6v anyways...I think my sparkle most likely in the actual will out out slightly more...Thugsrock cpu just actually died at 1.6v, and I read that over 1.65 v could drastically reduce the life of the cpu...


I guess I would love a the board to do great at default and maybe I wont mess with it.........nay!!! >>



Well go to this thread and this guy, plus one other has the MSI and it only does 1.6V with a Northwood.
Link

Edit: My bad, this is the MSI Ultra 645 not the 845 that limits you to 1.6V.

Anand didn't test the Gigabyte with a Northwood did they? Since then, a new BIOS was released to support them and they may have mucked something up in the overclocking area.. and they just don't care.

 

[Strawberrymom]

gigabyte support more pathetic then just about anything on Earth.

they are useless and should not be trusted. they refuse to listen to anyone and need to get the blank smacked out of them.

other than this iusue the 8IRXP rocks any board out there

 

[AkumaBao]

That's just great. :disgust: I'm never buying a Gigabyte board now! What the hell do they mean "They don't care about OC'ing"!?! They put the friggin' ability to do so on there!! Geesh!! I mean, come on!! Oh, we put FSB in 1MHz intervals, becuase we think someday they might put out a chip that has to have 127FSB. Whatever!!!

Well, I guess it could be worse. You could always get a 'barely-english-speaking' support tech.

 

[Wolfsraider]

Maybe it's just me...

but spending my money at a company with this as a track record:
is not a bright idea.

gigabyte support more pathetic then just about anything on Earth.

they are useless and should not be trusted. they refuse to listen to anyone and need to get the blank smacked out of them.

other than this iusue the 8IRXP rocks any board out there =no customer support so the only rocking I can see is their rocky product(problem shutting down at a listed, supported overclock
feature. And customer service that is as perfect example of what service to stay away from.



I mean come on if you buy a part (especially a major component for a pc) you expect to be able to use it, without problems of any kind or at least get support that understands that the product was engineered to overclock.and have a reasonable solution or at least a "we are aware of the problem and we are working on a solution to fix it as soon as we have a fix we will notify you(customer who spent money supporting said product) so that you will be happy supporting our company and it's wonderful products

IMHO customer support is as important as the product as one without the other gets you many headaches and buyers remorse

this post is to let some/any who thought that the unreviewed/untested abilities of the gigabyte 8IRXP motherboard that there may indeed be problems worth mentioning that lower the value of this motherboard to a leave it and look elsewhere bargain basement level of user,unless you don't overclock or mind shutting down your computer by the power button (risky way to play if your harddrive has stuff you would rather not reload ie 30 gigs mp3 anyone?)the obviously this board isn't for you.

I do not own this board and after hearing someone defend it to all, even knowing its problems,
I would never buy it

why would you buy a product without a decent customer support team?

my .02 worth take it or leave it

 

[Schmo]

I agree with you on almost all points.

If you don't care about overclocking, the board has been flawless and runs great.

Even if you care about overclocking, the board does run great (minus the shutdown issues). As for losing data on the hard drive, no that isn't how it works... you shut down the computer normally... its the restart that hangs, way before the hard drive even starts reading or writing... at this point, turning off the power via the power switch is not harmful.

Anyway, I am really not trying to defend the board because I am quite upset with them, otherwise I wouldn't have written this thread. On the other hand, I think they have a great product that is quite nice to the non-overclocker... and would be quite nice if they gave a rats a**. It is a shame to ruin such a nice board by lousy support and the refusal to address a problem that is probably not all that difficult for them to fix.

Well, I wrote gigabyte at every email address I could find and sited they were getting bad press because of their lack of support and compassion. I am anxious to see if I even get a peep back.

 

[HendrixFan]

While they allow you to overclock, every company I have seen tells you beforehand that overclocking isnt guaranteed and that you void your warranty, which I presume would also void your tech support, certainly to the extend that tech support wont help you overclock.

Imagine you call them, and he says, maybe you should do _____. You do _____ and it fries your CPU or mobo. Then you'll want an RMA.

Now, Im not a fan of Gigabyte at all, and Ill probably never buy a component of theirs ever again, but they certainly arent in the wrong in this case.

 

[Schmo]

You are right, they probably shouldn't make recommendations, but they could certainly acknowledge the problem and fix it in the next BIOS. If they didn't want their boards to be overclocked, why bother putting in the adjustable FSB, memory multiplier, CPU Voltage, AGP Voltage and DRAM voltage adjustments. Just rip it all out.

Acknowledge the problem and just fix it. Whether they are wrong or not just doesn't matter, from what I understand, their support just sucks in all areas, even legitimate issues. I know for a fact, other motherboard makers have fixed issues with overclocking in the past when brought to their attention. So maybe Gigabyte isn't in the wrong... but there are other companies that are more in the right.