Intel D975XBX2 Bad Axe 2 BIOS Freezing - Initial problem solved (?)

[thebackwardsman]

A few days ago I built a new PC with the D975XBX2 motherboard, booted up initially and flashed the BIOS to version 2333, which was the latest at the time, and have since flashed to the more recent version 2395. The system (E6600 CPU, 2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 RAM, WD 250GB HD, X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty, eVGA 8800GTX) is stable overall in Windows as Orthos ran for over two hours with no errors or warnings with no overclocking and gaming has been flawless.

However, simply navigating through the BIOS often results in the BIOS freezing/locking up, forcing me to CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart. These lock-ups seem to occur most often while adjusting a specific setting, but they have happened as I just navigated through the BIOS and touched no settings at all. I have come across a few mentions of this BIOS issue with the D975XBX2 and even more reports with the D975XBX on various forums but have not found a solution. Is this problem simply an issue I can safely ignore and look for a BIOS update to fix, or is an RMA something I should consider?

Edit: Changed thread title to help anyone else experiencing this problem.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Was it freezing when you were using bios 2333? If not, then it sounds like something isn't quite right with bios 2395 and that it can be corrected in the next release. I've heard great things about these boards and even Gary (AT Motherboard Editor) uses one.

 

[thebackwardsman]

Yes, the BIOS was freezing with the version 2333 BIOS as well. Except for this BIOS issue and the constantly lit HD activity LED (another seemingly widespread problem with this motherboard related to the Marvel RAID controller) I am satisfied with the overall stability of the D975XBX2 as it has not crashed or given me a BSOD once so far. I am just concerned with the overall health of my new system and would like to resolve this problem if possible.

 

[DoobieOnline]

Hate to hear that. I have been seriously considering picking up this board to compare its performance to my 680i but i seem to be one of the lucky ones and got a really good (and trouble-free, knock on wood) 680i so I'll probably hang on to it for a while. I've been reading a really long thread about the Bad Axe 2 over at xtremesystems and have seen the bios freezing issue mentioned there. One user mentioned that he only tweaks the bios in Windows using Intel Desktop Control Center and if it hangs he just powers down for a minute and the system will start up fine without having to reset the jumper.

Good luck, and I hope Intel gets these issues resolved in a future bios release. I wouldn't mind trying out the board when they do.

 

[thebackwardsman]

I read the entire thread at xtremesystems as well. It is a pretty good resource for overclocking with this motherboard, something I haven't attempted yet but may try. Right now I just wish to resolve this BIOS issue if possible, but if I have to live with it I will as it does not seem to be system-breaking.

 

[moosey]

I read somewhere that a USB keyboard might cause this and a PS/2 may resolve it. Let me know where you stand in regards to this. I'm basically ready to order this board but want to see about this issue.

Edit: Did you try clearing the CMOS? (read that also)

 

[thebackwardsman]

Originally posted by: moosey
I read somewhere that a USB keyboard might cause this and a PS/2 may resolve it. Let me know where you stand in regards to this. I'm basically ready to order this board but want to see about this issue.

Edit: Did you try clearing the CMOS? (read that also)

I must extend my utmost thanks moosey. So far, it seems that you are correct about a USB keyboard causing this problem. I disconnected both my USB keyboard and USB mouse and plugged in an old HP PS/2 keyboard and mouse, entered the BIOS, and experienced an entirely freeze-free session of editing the BIOS. If this truly is the cause of my difficulty, it's something I can live with, but what I can't understand is how Intel could not catch such a problem.

However, after reconnecting my USB keyboard and mouse, this time to the bottom two USB ports next to the Ethernet port rather than the two upper USB ports where they were previously connected, I entered the BIOS and spent a good deal of time performing the same tasks that would cause the BIOS to freeze previously, but oddly enough it did not lock up at all. I am not sure how to interpret this result, possibly as two flawed USB ports or some BIOS issue with the USB controller? For now I am content to have made some progress in resolving this issue as I believe it has been solved, at least to an acceptable extent.

This may be isolated to certain USB peripherals I suppose, and I am using a Logitech G15 keyboard and a Logitech G5 mouse, so I guess my issue is isolated as well and definitely not a substantial system instability. I will post an update if I suspect some other cause of the BIOS lock up problem, but as of now I believe the issue has been pinned on the two upper USB ports, for whatever reason, and I consider it resolved. Thanks again moosey.

Now, on to the meaning of the upper USB ports causing the BIOS to lock up, and the constantly lit HD activity LED, I hope Intel discovers both issues and releases a BIOS update soon...

 

[DoobieOnline]

Good stuff, moosey! Nice to see some of the USB ports don't seem to cause the freezing, too. My interest in the board has definitely been rekindled, especially after reading a post in another forum with a response one user received from Intel about the HD LED:

"We have a BIOS fix pending for the Marvel HD LED issue. It will roll out in an upcoming BIOS release (either the next BIOS or just after depending on our ability to validate the BIOS in time)."

 

[moosey]

Originally posted by: DoobieOnline
Good stuff, moosey! Nice to see some of the USB ports don't seem to cause the freezing, too. My interest in the board has definitely been rekindled, especially after reading a post in another forum with a response one user received from Intel about the HD LED:

"We have a BIOS fix pending for the Marvel HD LED issue. It will roll out in an upcoming BIOS release (either the next BIOS or just after depending on our ability to validate the BIOS in time)."

Yeah, that's exactly my thought. I've been going back and forth between this and possibly an Abit AW9D-MAX or a P5W-DH. I haven't seen too much on the Abit and the Asus reviews seem to be mixed. The BX2 really seems solid except for the 2 issues mentioned here and now it looks like they both may be alright.

Edit: This is kinda off topic, but on the board, do you need to plug in the additional Molex (1x4) power connector on the mobo (in addition to the ATX and EPS12V)?

 

[thebackwardsman]

Originally posted by: moosey
Edit: This is kinda off topic, but on the board, do you need to plug in the additional Molex (1x4) power connector on the mobo (in addition to the ATX and EPS12V)?

"Use of the 1x4 power connector is required with ATX12V power supplies with 2x10 connectors when using PCI Express cards that can consume up to 75W." Straight from the D975XBX2 manual, which I suppose indicates the additional 1x4 Molex is not necessary if a 2x12 main power connector is being used because the motherboard supports backward compatibility with 2x10 main power connectors. I am using a 2x12 main power connector, so I suppose this additional Molex is redundant, and so far nothing has gone wrong with the system in this regard.

I do have it connected to the motherboard currently, and, as I have seen most other people say about this same question, I'd rather be safe than sorry and have the additional power connector plugged in regardless to avoid any potential power issues with the 8800GTX.

 

[hox]

Hi I have finished building my system around a bx2 board. Qx6700 cpu, evga 8800gtx,
4 crucial ddr2 ram sticks. I had the exact same problem with the usb keyboard and mouse working and then not working during my install of the operating system. I switched to ps/2 mouse and keyboard. Very odd. The board seems very stable and I have modestly overclocked the cpu to 3.0 ghz with no problems. I am not a skilled overclocker so I simply modified the front side bus to 300 and the machine seems very stable.

A few quirks, The raid was very much a PITA to set up. Intel Tech support was helpful but not very knowledgeable about this board. The best thing I did was update the marvel driver from intel's website. After this update the raid set up was very smooth using the marvel controller. Intel tech support told me that the marvel sata controllers 3 blue 1 red were exclusively for raid. After updating the driver the blue sata connectors worked as raid or stand alone drives. I also updated the bios so I am not sure what the issue was in the beginning where no drives were recognized.

A second quirk is the Intel desktop utilities is a very flaky program, it works fine about 50% of the time, whereas on other occasions it stops responding and I have to end the program through windows. The hardware report for the drives is also buggy, it shows an error on the 6th hard drive, swapping the 6th for the 5th drives shows the same error for the 6th drive, thus it is incorrectly reporting an error for drive 6. I am using the latest revision of this software as well.

I do not seem to have the Hard drive led on all the time. It blinks as expected with disk access. I have two drives on the marvell controller and 4 on the intel controller

I purchased the OEM version of the board for $219 from zzf, the manual I received was, at best simplistic. I would prefer a more detailed layout of the motherboard. Particularly to show the orientation of jumpers in the context of the board. In my manual the critical bios jumper has 3 pins which is only discussed as a picture showing the 3 pins. Since they do not show it relative to the MB and I can not see any numerical designation on the MB you simply have to guess.

Stable so far, but I feel the board really should have more maturity in its documentation etc seeing that this is the second generation of the intel bx series.

 

[thebackwardsman]

Originally posted by: hox
A second quirk is the Intel desktop utilities is a very flaky program, it works fine about 50% of the time, whereas on other occasions it stops responding and I have to end the program through windows. The hardware report for the drives is also buggy, it shows an error on the 6th hard drive, swapping the 6th for the 5th drives shows the same error for the 6th drive, thus it is incorrectly reporting an error for drive 6. I am using the latest revision of this software as well.

By any chance are you using additional monitoring programs? I experienced the exact same issue with the Intel Desktop Utilities when I had nTune installed, which I removed from my system and this resolved the freezing issue with IDU. I recommend RivaTuner for pretty much all GPU related settings and monitoring as it is much more complete than nTune, if you are using it, plus it has not caused IDU to crash.

IDU also has an issue with CPUz, which can be resolved by editing the cpuz.ini file and changing the SMBus value to OFF, which solved the problem of IDU crashing for me when using both programs simultaneously.

I recommend using Intel Desktop Control Center as well, since it offers temperature monitoring plus a host of other options to edit the BIOS through Windows and control fan speed (if you have fans connected to the motherboard), and it seems to be a stable program for me, however I have not used it to change any BIOS settings yet but the fan controlling aspect does work.

I am not using a RAID setup so I can't comment on that aspect of the motherboard, but I agree even my retail manual is a little sparse with details related to the BIOS, but the BIOS is pretty straightforward itself, even though I would prefer descriptions of specific settings in the BIOS as it seems most settings lack details regarding their specific functions.

 

[hox]

Hi backwardsman,

I figured out that the intel desktop utilities was freezing because it did not like the fact that I had set up a raid on the marvel controller without setting the sata drive option in the bios to raid, it had it set to ide. So IDU could not figure out what that "drive" was, it seemed to crash the program. Once I made the switch from sata as ide to sata as raid, which I was hesitant to do as I thought my install of winxp pro would be trashed, the problem went away.

Are you also running the intel desktop control. It was my understanding from the intel web site that Intel desktop control was not intended for 975x motherboards?

Thanks for your suggestion with CpuZ, I am running this as well but not simultaneously with IDU.

 

[thebackwardsman]

Originally posted by: hox
Are you also running the intel desktop control. It was my understanding from the intel web site that Intel desktop control was not intended for 975x motherboards?

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/dcc/download.htm

The D975XBX2 is listed for downloading the Intel Desktop Control Center, and I can confirm IDCC does work for me, so I am guessing it was meant 975X motherboards but Intel has not updated all their links related to IDCC.

 

[hox]

Thanks backwardsman, I downloaded it this morning.

 

[moosey]

Good info, I ordered mine this morning

EDIT: one more thing I read this morning, don't know how accurate it is, but apparently look out around Jan 8 for a BIOS to address the HDD LED

 

[Rike]

Excellent! That's about the time I'll be putting might together. Thanks for all the informational posts. :thumbsup:

 

[Yreka]

Back,

I also have the G15 keyboard, I haven't noticed any problems in BIOS like you have mentioned. I will have to double check on my port usage though, I may already be using the bottom set.

So far, I am very happy with this board. It replaced an EVGA 680i, that had a really crummy memory controller. I didn't feel like getting into a *board lottery* with the exchange, so I returned it and grabbed the BX2. I can't get my E6600 up to 4.0 like I could on the EVGA, but believe it or not, its actually faster at 3.8 on this board due to the gimped memory timings I had to use on the 680i.

I am currently running the 2333 bios at 425 FSB. Updating to the 2395 severely limited my overclock, I could not boot over 325fsb regardless of memory freq or strap.

Something to keep in mind if anyone hits a FSB wall early on the 2395 or later flash.

 

[hox]

424 FSB sounds out of reach for me, but I think my multiplier is too high. I did try an overclock yesterday and got a stable 3.6 ghz overclock of my quad core processor. I then ran 4 instances of super pi 1.1e each to 2 million places and the average was about 44 seconds. Next I ran aquamark 3 and got a score of 171, 978. My previous machine a dual processor opteron 250 with a 7900gtx card scored around 72,000 with aquamark and ran the same super pi test in about 1 minute 15 seconds. I suppose if I turned my multiplier down I could achieve a faster fsb, which is better lower bus speed and higher multiplier or vice versa?

 

[Yreka]

Seems like with the new BIOS, Intel is optimizing the board for the high end CPUs, tightening the timings up a bit, but decreasing the overall FSB ceiling of the board.*My speculation* This hits the midrange chips the hardest, as we cannot go higher than 8X or 9X, we need a high FSB to achieve those overclocks(Most of the "low end" CPUs are using the P965 boards anyway).

If you have a high multiplier, and can still get your memory where you want/need it without having to drop your X below 10, then you are probably going to be ok. Your chip will hit a wall before your FSB does. But if you had a say, 9X processor you would need 400FSB to get 3.6, so in this situation, with the new bios, the board/FSB may become the limiting factor.

 

[Rike]

I really hope you are wrong about new Bios limiting the FSB. If Intel wants to be a player in the highend, enthusiast market they should get their act together and build a butt kicking board. If anyone should be able to, you'd think Intel would have the resources to get it right. :disgust:

 

[mattmos]

Hi thebackwardsman,

just noticed you have a bx2 and a 8800gtx, and was wondering if you had any problems with the install - specifically the audio header? For me the audio header for the front panel sits directly underneath the 8800 cooling cover and its a very tight squueze to get an audio connection in there.

Did you use one of the other pci-e slots by any chance?

cheers
matt

 

[mfas]

Well, I can see that many people have problems of one or the other kind with this board, which is kinda frustrating for me. My problem lies in that I can not update my BIOS further than v2333. I have tried both 2395 and 2431, but none of them makes me able to boot into windows. I have made a thread of my own to describe the problem: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1990504&enterthread=y

It worries me that maybe the tightening of timings in the BIOS describes earlier in this thread ruins the stability of my setup, but I have no explanation of what the problem is.

Does any of you have any ideas what or how I can test my setup, when Windows is not able to boot? Any utilities I can download and boot from a CD (I have no floppy drive)?

 

[mfas]

http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software/dcc/dow
load.htm The D975XBX2 is listed for downloading the Intel Desktop Control Center, and I can confirm IDCC does work for me, so I am guessing it was meant 975X motherboards but Intel has not updated all their links related to IDCC.

Well, I also tried to install IDCC 2.2, but it won't install... it actually states that I don't have an Intel motherboard, but I'm pretty sure my XBX2 really is an Intel motherboard. What can I have done wrong?

 

[dannydiscus]

mfas there are issues with Intels programs working with 64-Bit operating systems. I have both 64 and 32 bit Windows XP and everything works fine on the 32-bit version while 64-bit nothing seems to function correctly or even install. I have had issues with the new BIOS and overclocking, it doens't allow as high of overclocks as 2333 even though the overclock is orthos stable. Overall the board is great, with mods I have hit 1M SuperPi stable 500 FSB on water, but software and bios are lacking quality.