Just found out I was being used for sex...

[flawlssdistortn]

College is great, you meet so many interesting people and form all different types of relationships, the group of buddies you see 24/7, the girl you only see at the random party but always hook up with, the girl you absolutely can't get out of your mind... And you learn some things in college too, that you'll never get anywhere else. I always kinda laughed when a cute girl would realize for the first time that the 5 or 6 guys paying her visits on a daily basis where doing so not for the purpose of intellectual stimulation, but for the hope of some other stimulation... I was like c'mon, do you honestly THINK those dudes (especially the "Undeclared" majors) were coming to your room at 1 in the morning cause they "just wanted someone to talk to"?!?!

Don't get me wrong, I did feel bad for those girls. But I was never able to identify with them... until I bought the Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 motherboard.

Although this was my first system build, I believe I can say that I am at least as knowledgeable as most people on this forum. I did countless hours of reasearch before purchasing the parts, and read many reviews, especially the ones on Anandtech. The following months after I completed my system were spent on the phone with Gigabyte and AMD tech support. I signed up with 5 different hardware forums. In a short time, I met countless other enthusiasts like myself who were experiencing many agravating problems with this mobo. Incorrect temperature readings, dual channel instabilites, errors in the BIOS... you can read more about it here. Dealing with Gigabyte tech support was a nightmare. I called at least 10 different times, each time waiting on hold for 20min before getting a chance to try and convince a guy that had clearly learned english 3 months ago, that yes my board does support dual channel, and yes it is not stable, and yes the temperature readings are off. To be fair, I don't think those guys knew what was going on anymore than I did. One day I spoke to someone nice enough to admit they were "aware" of the issues and that they were just waiting on word from the BIOS dept.

And today I read Anandtech's nForce4 article... Here are some excerpts:

" Gigabyte is first to market with an nForce4 board..."

"There have also been many end users who have reported issues with memory on the earlier nF3 Ultra board, so we wanted to see if that area had also improved in the nForce4 update."

"The memory performance, a very sore spot with the Gigabyte nF3 Ultra design, also seems very solid. This Gigabyte board was a joy to test and was exceptionally stable in all our benchmarks. It certainly appears that Gigabyte heard the litany of complaints about memory performance with the K8NSNXP-939 because the K8NXP-9 is both fast and stable with any memory that we threw at it."

Look, I'm pissed. I feel cheated, mislead, and I feel used. Now I know how those girls feel. Ok, I don't know if it's a given, or if it's common knowledge that some motherboard models are just "beta versions", to be tested by the public for the purpose of coming out first with the "next gen mobos." Do I have a legititate complaint here? I think I do. I know that mistakes are made, I know things are never perfect. But what really bothers me here is the lack of accountability. It took months for Gigabyte to even admit that they were aware of instabilites, especially memory related, on the K8NSNXP-939. They had us testing 6 different beta BIOSs like guinea pigs, with no documention on their part. And now they have a new model out, the K8NS-Ultra. It's identical to the K8NSNXP-939 except it's about $50 cheaper and they ditched the DPS. And now nForce4 is almost ready. And according to Anandtech, they worked the memory isses out. And here I am, along with many other owners of this motherboard - with our fingers up our butts.

Is it me, or is this kind of behavior not acceptable? And I'm not talking only about Gigabyte. I read Anandtech's review of this board before I bought it because I think this is a legitimate hardware site and I respect all of your opinions. But nowhere in that review did I see anything about memory instabilities or problems within the BIOS. And now, in this nForce4 article, they say that they were aware of the problems of the K8NSNXP-939. Then WHY wasn't it edited in on the initial review? And more importantly, why does Gigabyte deserve an article from this respected site, where the writer sounds as giddy as a schoolgirl at an Nsync concert?

Well I guess it's an established fact that guys usually have one thing on their minds when they're talking to girls, and maybe the only thing on a motherboard manufacturer's mind is money. But you know what, girls don't have to take that crap from us, and WE don't have to take it from the tech industry.

 

[mechBgon]

That does it! We're fitting your computer with a breathalyzer-type power supply that won't start if your blood-alcohol content is over 0.08, buddy.



Gigabyte can send one cherry-picked, thoroughly-tested board to AnandTech... works awesome. So can every other company. But they can't do that to Newegg, MWave or ZZF. So keep your ear to the ground

 

[PeteyBoy23]

"You got hosed. Yep, I really screwed you on that."

A line from The West Wing, that I think should be uttered by Gigabyte.

If I were you, I would demand that they replace your problem-riddled board, with a shiny, new NForce4 motherboard. In fact, I wouldn't stop until they did. These kind of things is why I buy from Newegg, because within 2 years, I can tell them it's hosed, and they send me out a new motherboard (no, not the same one, if I so choose). Just my $.02, and some advice for the future.

 

[kogase]

That was a brilliant post.

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Yeah, see the thing is... I did buy from newegg. And their policy for this board is that you can only RMA for an exact model, not any new one. And plus, if i upgraded to nForce4, that would mean i would have to buy a new graphics card. I tried to write a customer review for newegg (and although it wasn't glowing like the others, it was fair) and they didn't post it.

 

[PeteyBoy23]

Well, you have two choices, as I see it. #1 Bitch and moan to Gigabyte (which I really hope you do, as I think they they *should* make things right by you), or #2 wait until your board is no longer stocked at Newegg, then request a refund. I've done #2 twice before, and it's completely within their customer service policies, and not taking advantage of it whatsoever. Basically, if they don't stock the board you purchased, persuant to their extended warranty, you may either request a refund (recommended by both CS reps) or work out what a fair replacement board would be. With a refund, you have complete flexibility with the board you can buy, so that's why I went that route. In either case, let us know what happens in the end.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: flawlssdistortn
until I bought the Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 motherboard.

Although this was my first system build, I believe I can say that I am at least as knowledgeable as most people on this forum. I did countless hours of reasearch before purchasing the parts, and read many reviews, especially the ones on Anandtech.

You clearly did not do efficient research. This board has been one to avoid since the first reviews I've seen on the forums.

Now you should absolutely get what you paid for, and I would bitch at Gigabyte as much as possible. But ocasionally this stuff happens. You are not the first and you will not be the last. I fell victim to something similar in my colelge years... The Cyrix 4x86 processor that was really a 386, even though it was not advertised as such.

Get what you can from Gigabyte and chalk the rest up to a learning experience. Not much else you can do.

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Originally posted by: Concillian
You clearly did not do efficient research. This board has been one to avoid since the first reviews I've seen on the forums.

Now you should absolutely get what you paid for, and I would bitch at Gigabyte as much as possible. But ocasionally this stuff happens. You are not the first and you will not be the last. I fell victim to something similar in my colelge years... The Cyrix 4x86 processor that was really a 386, even though it was not advertised as such.

Get what you can from Gigabyte and chalk the rest up to a learning experience. Not much else you can do.

Lol, I know i should have checked the forums as well as the reviews . Well, I have certainly learned a lot in the past few months because of this. I think one of the reasons why we're all so passionate about computers is because we have to know how it works, we gotta know why. And that is my main frustration here. I'm not looking for a refund so much as I'm looking for answers. I want to know why it is so damn hard to program the BIOS to output the readings from the temperature diode. I want to know exactly what the limitations of the integrated memory controller are. I would like to know why they put out a second motherboard identical to mine, when there are so many people still having problems. I would like to know why using DIMM slots 3 and 4 are noticeable more stable than 1 and 2. Instead, Gigabyte and AMD just pointed the finger at the other and I was sent running around in circles.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: ConcillianI fell victim to something similar in my colelge years... The Cyrix 4x86 processor that was really a 386, even though it was not advertised as such.

When is a 486 a 486? The 4x86 certainly had the instruction set of a "real" 486 and it even had on-chip cache, what, 1KB versus 8KB in a "real" 486, but still it had the instruction set and the feature set. It just didn't have a math coprocessor built-in like the "real" 486 and of course it ran on a 386 motherboard. So, was it really a 386? No, because it had 486-like features and had the full instruction set of a 486. Was it really a 486? No, because it used older motherboard technology and was overall slower than a same clock speed "real" 486.

Think of it as such... you go to a friend's house and see an awesome screaming fast system (compared to yours). You ask him/her what it is and it turns out to be a Sempron 3100+. Your friend tells you how great the setup is, and how it is pretty much the same as an Athlon 64. You think to yourself, "self, this is great and wonderful and I want one." So, you go shopping for one and find they are a bit above your price range... but WHAT IS THIS? A Sempron 2800+ with motherboard for the price of the 3100+ without motherboard. You jump on the deal, build your system and find out... your friend's system spanks your system a lot more than the extra 300+ points would imply. What happened?

Translation, you didn't do the research.

BTW, did you get the 4x86 that ran on the 32 bit motherboard (DX) or the 16 bit motherboard (SL)?

 

[Thermalrock]

a 486 is nothing but a 386 with a 387 on die.

 

[Wesley Fink]

The Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 was Not the Gold, Silver, or Bronze Editors Choice in my original roundup of 5 motherboards (We later added the Asus when they finally fixed the PCI/AGP lock). So if you were paying such close attention to the reviews on AnandTech you made a conscious decision to ignore what we recommended and chose a board from the bottom half in our roundup. Most people bought the Gigabyte because it was available and they didn't want to wait for one of the recommended boards. That was their choice, but your engaging story does NOT alter the real facts here. No, we didn't have memory problems with our review board, or we definitely would have reported the issues, but the board was a really strange amalgam of features which really didn't implement the nVidia chipset features. When all the Forums started reporting memory problems we were relieved we had followed our gut and not recommended the board.

We also advised people NOT to buy the Asus until the PCI/AGP lock was fixed - even Asus USA refused to release boards in the US until the lock was fixed. Of course that didn't stop Asus Europe from putting the unlocked boards in the market, or some US resellers from directly importing the "no-lock" boards - because everyone wanted to buy the Asus board and no one wanted to wait until it was fixed.

Our Gold Editors Choice in that review, the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, has stood the test of time, emerging as most everyones first recommendation for a 939 board. The MSI is picky about power and obstinate, but it is still the best of the nF3 Ultra lot. This even surprised MSI who was confident the K8T Neo2 would be their top board. We found the K8T to be very average in our evaluation. Even our two silver choices in that same review are still acnowledged as among the top 3 939 boards by most, so we must have done something right in that roundup.

My point is we try our best to report the truth, but we sometimes miss a lemon. However, in this case don't blame AnandTech because we hardly recommended the Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939. I agree we could have said more negative about the board, but our test results just didn't justify it.

We are keenly aware that we can be fooled by a "cherry" early board, but it's not as easy to do that as many of you might think. Accepting boards from mfgs is the only way, however, to bring you the information first - when you demand it.

 

[flawlssdistortn]

First off Wesley, I would like to thank you for your response as well as the work you put into this site. I know my post sounded kinda bitter, but my frustration was mainly towards the cold shoulder i received from Gigabyte.

You are correct when you said I bought the K8NSNXP-939 because it was available. Yep, it was in August and I had finally saved enough money for a new system. Couldn't wait, and I got excited by the all the features on the motherboard. I read your review, and yes, i decided on the Gigabyte even though it was not gold, silver, or bronze. But the article stated that any of the boards would be a great choice, and that the K8NSNXP-939 only missed out on the silver award because it was overpriced. The impression that I got was that it was a high performing board that only got edged out by the MSI by a small margin. Look, I'm not faulting you for missing the memory issue, or any of the other problems. But once you became aware of them from talk on the forums, would it have been possible to edit that info into the review? I know this is one of the main hardware sites, so you really gotta be careful if you talk about a problem in a product. I'm not upset that I bought the board. Heck, it's brand new technology, there's always gonna be bugs and quirks, I know that. What I'm getting at is that maybe there could be a way where you and the other reviewers take feedback from other Anandtech members to update your reviews. It would be great if you could have an organized, updated section of "known" issues. The forums are great, and I have now learned to always check them before buying a product. Comparatively, the Anandtech review is like the final word, cause everyone reads it, so a word or to about any issues (verified by you) would be huge.

Lol, yes I would like fries with that, sorry to be so demanding I know you've got a lot to do Wesley, but thanks for listening to my thoughts. Keep up the good work!

 

[SinfulWeeper]

I don't let my friends buy Gigabyte... because friends don't let friends buy Gigabyte... nuff said.

 

[BW86]

10/10

brilliant

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Although this was my first system build, I believe I can say that I am at least as knowledgeable as most people on this forum

Stopped reading right there :roll: That is either a an insult to the members here, or/and you are presumptuous and arrogant. I don't care how many reviews and .pdf manuals you read, until you have not only built, but also troubleshot many systems based on a partcular platform you don't know dick about it Typical really, once you leave college for the real world you will rapidly discover much of what you learned is useless.

Furthermore, you declare you are not a n00b, and that you realize early adoption of computer tech is inherently risky. Yet here you are :wine:ing about it and trying to make a scapegoat :thumbsdown: You directly attack Wesley

Is it me, or is this kind of behavior not acceptable? And I'm not talking only about Gigabyte. I read Anandtech's review of this board before I bought it because I think this is a legitimate hardware site and I respect all of your opinions. But nowhere in that review did I see anything about memory instabilities or problems within the BIOS. And now, in this nForce4 article, they say that they were aware of the problems of the K8NSNXP-939. Then WHY wasn't it edited in on the initial review? And more importantly, why does Gigabyte deserve an article from this respected site, where the writer sounds as giddy as a schoolgirl at an Nsync concert?

He responds and you start flip flopping. STFU would ya? <flame off>

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Although this was my first system build, I believe I can say that I am at least as knowledgeable as most people on this forum

Stopped reading right there :roll: That is either a an insult to the members here, or/and you are presumptuous and arrogant. I don't care how many reviews and .pdf manuals you read, until you have not only built, but also troubleshot many systems based on a partcular platform you don't know dick about it Typical really, once you leave college for the real world you will rapidly discover much of what you learned is useless.

Furthermore, you declare you are not a n00b, and that you realize early adoption of computer tech is inherently risky. Yet here you are :wine:ing about it and trying to make a scapegoat :thumbsdown: You directly attack Wesley

Is it me, or is this kind of behavior not acceptable? And I'm not talking only about Gigabyte. I read Anandtech's review of this board before I bought it because I think this is a legitimate hardware site and I respect all of your opinions. But nowhere in that review did I see anything about memory instabilities or problems within the BIOS. And now, in this nForce4 article, they say that they were aware of the problems of the K8NSNXP-939. Then WHY wasn't it edited in on the initial review? And more importantly, why does Gigabyte deserve an article from this respected site, where the writer sounds as giddy as a schoolgirl at an Nsync concert?

He responds and you start flip flopping. STFU would ya? <flame off>

Look son, before you get it in a huff about this, you should realize that I'm not trying to blame anyone for my mistake in buying the K8NSNXP-939. Yeah sure, I went a little bit far in my initial post. Hey, I was just tryin to grab the readers' attention I wasn't trying to offend Wesly, and I don't think he took it that way. I later clarifed that my main complaint was with Gigabyte, and that my question was if Anandtech could update reviews so as to not leave out any negative issues that arise.

Oh, and this ain't P&amp;N, so you don't have to start bringin up "flip-flopping" or any Swift-PC-Veterans to try and label me a noob just because I'm being a little critical.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Son? Better check my sig or was that just an expression like the rednecks here in Florida use? As to your assertion that you aren't blaming anyone then perhaps you can explain why you stated "Look, I'm pissed. I feel cheated, mislead, and I feel used"? Being pissed is understandable, cheated by Gigasuck=probably perhaps even definitely! but misled and used? Shat no! You weren't forced to early adopt and no one twisted your arm....did they?

I wasn't trying to offend Wesly, and I don't think he took it that way

Considering how seldom he responds to a post and the following quote

And more importantly, why does Gigabyte deserve an article from this respected site, where the writer sounds as giddy as a schoolgirl at an Nsync concert?

I'd say he may have taken exception to the comparison to a schoolgirl@nsynch show :laugh:

Look, you added shock value and flamebait to garner attention, so just don't be surprised when you recieve the kind of attention and responses such content usually draw

 

[Fern]

Wow, I'm impressed to see Wesley respond here. Good to know these guys visit the forums:thumbsup:

flawlssdistortn, your post reminds again of why I don't buy the very newest (= untested by the market place) stuff. I'm a version 2 sorta guy with hardware. If you are the very early adapter, you get to post about your experiences/views regarding the new products. People are interested in it, because it's new and they don't have one yet.

I'm curious if you got the K8NXP-9, would you be in the same boat again? Here again is something very new and untested by the greater market place. What probs are potentially going to pop up with it that are not to be found by reading reviews?

As far as editing new info into a (older) reveiw, Hmmm.... don't know about that. It would prolly be more appropriate to put the newer updated info a follow up article. Like "Mobo Revisited etc". Once a review is done and published, it's finished. To start a trend where you go back and edit in new data to a review would be a bad judgement IMHO. Henceforth, they would all be unfinished "works-in-prgress". Why publish that? How would one know when to start reading such reviews, would they have to mark them "Finally Done!" across the top?

In the end I trust the reviewers to get it right, and I have confidence they did (ie, they had no basis to report such problems with their sample). But quality control seems difficult for some to master. Seems greater care may be taken with the first products, but things don't always go right when mass manufacturing. So complain to Gigabyte and hopefully you'll get a quality product that performs to advertised specs.

BTW, your remark about building one system and knowing as much as others here did cause raised eyebrows on my part :Q

2nd BTW, maybe Karma caught up with you for too many late night visits to cute girls. What comes around goes around.

Good luck with it.

Fern

 

[IHYLN]

two words

Cliff Notes

 

[Momental]

My interpretation of flawlssdistortn's (too tough to type) saying that he's not a "n00b" would be to say that he, like most of us isn't as completely clueless as the general populace who wander into their local Staples or Best Buy to get what they perceive, is a "Fast PC".

I've only partaken in one system build myself and in no way, shape or fashion, say up I'm up to the same level as many of you who could build it, tweak it, trouble shoot it and upgrade it in your sleep.

I also liked the whole metaphor of the "late night hook-up with the hottie down the hall in your dorm". Great anecdote! :laugh:

There's this guy here in town (Cambridge, MA) who has this frickin' S-W-E-E-T Cobra Mustang (2002 or 2003, I believe) to which he's obviously done a ton of modification. The thing is just nasty :Q and I see it all the time. The point being, I love cars and have since I could pee standing up, but don't pretend I can do anything more than check the air in the tires and remember to roll the windows up before it rains. Doesn't mean I love cars any less than he does, ya know?

Flawless is undoubtedly angry and frustrated, mainly at Giga-Puke and understandably so. However, his frustration is somewhat pointed at Anand and the boys for not literally saying, "Hey, if you're gonna buy a board, then DON'T get this piece of schtuff!". It's not blame so much as it is just a sense of, "Man! I wish somebody told me not to waste my coin......." We've all been there, bud, whether we were searching for a MoBo or looking for that one great restaurant to which we'd wanna take a first date only to find out that she's allergic to peanuts and you just ordered Pad Thai. No cookie for you tonight!!

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Yes, I do feel "pissed, cheated, mislead and used." But it was Gigabyte that was using me for sex not Wesley!! If only myself (and many others) could have gotten a heads up from him. A hardware reviewer is like that friend of the cute girl who's job it is to tell her when something aint right with a dude (basically cock-block).

Yeah you're right Fern, a writer can't just keep changing a review that's "done." I like your idea about a follow-up review, but that would not always be the most current either.... Maybe a review should have a link to a forum sticky or something titled "official known issues." The difference from other threads being that it would be more organized and it have to be validated by an Anandtech writer. This way, it could constantly be updated.

About me being a noob - well yeah, compared to you guys (geez i didn't expect to get a response from so many longtime members, lol). Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like every time I check the Motherboard or Processor forums, half the threads are "What's the Best mobo" or "What should I buy next" or "Help nothing's On Teh ScReen". Now if those aint n00b threads I don't know what is. So let me asure you my knowledge is above that.

 

[oldman420]

Wow flawlssdistortn You brought em out of the woodwork that time, I can understand that you feel ripped but you are one of the lucky ones that gets to help the rest of us avoid a bad product.
Your words were a bit harsh though.

 

[Ballistyx]

Originally posted by: flawlssdistortn
-snip!-

The following months after I completed my system were spent on the phone with Gigabyte and AMD tech support. I signed up with 5 different hardware forums. In a short time, I met countless other enthusiasts like myself who were experiencing many agravating problems with this mobo. Incorrect temperature readings, dual channel instabilites, errors in the BIOS... you can read more about it here. Dealing with Gigabyte tech support was a nightmare. I called at least 10 different times, each time waiting on hold for 20min before getting a chance to try and convince a guy that had clearly learned english 3 months ago, that yes my board does support dual channel, and yes it is not stable, and yes the temperature readings are off. To be fair, I don't think those guys knew what was going on anymore than I did. One day I spoke to someone nice enough to admit they were "aware" of the issues and that they were just waiting on word from the BIOS dept.

And today I read Anandtech's nForce4 article... Here are some excerpts:

-snip!-

"The memory performance, a very sore spot with the Gigabyte nF3 Ultra design, also seems very solid. This Gigabyte board was a joy to test and was exceptionally stable in all our benchmarks. It certainly appears that Gigabyte heard the litany of complaints about memory performance with the K8NSNXP-939 because the K8NXP-9 is both fast and stable with any memory that we threw at it."

Look, I'm pissed. I feel cheated, mislead, and I feel used. Now I know how those girls feel. Ok, I don't know if it's a given, or if it's common knowledge that some motherboard models are just "beta versions", to be tested by the public for the purpose of coming out first with the "next gen mobos." Do I have a legititate complaint here? I think I do. I know that mistakes are made, I know things are never perfect. But what really bothers me here is the lack of accountability. It took months for Gigabyte to even admit that they were aware of instabilites, especially memory related, on the K8NSNXP-939. They had us testing 6 different beta BIOSs like guinea pigs, with no documention on their part. And now they have a new model out, the K8NS-Ultra. It's identical to the K8NSNXP-939 except it's about $50 cheaper and they ditched the DPS. And now nForce4 is almost ready. And according to Anandtech, they worked the memory isses out. And here I am, along with many other owners of this motherboard - with our fingers up our butts.

-snip!-

I feel your pain bro (ask you already knew from the other thread).

[edit]The following is in response to other's posts in this thread.[/edit]

Why did I go with the K8NSNXP-939? Not so much because it was the "only thing available" at the time. I was upgrading from a Gigabyte 7NNXP that ran FLAWLESSLY for me. I never had one lick of problems with that board. Yeah, I knew that the K8NSNXP-939 wasn't *TECHNICALLY* the perfect board out there spec wise (like Wesley said, regarding the strange decisions to only use two out of the four nVidia SATA controllers, and then adding two more VIA the Silicon Image controller. The strange decision of crippling the nVidia gigabit controller so it only runs at 100MB, and then adding a gigabit controller VIA the PCI bus. Etc....). What I've learned over the years is that what constitutes a reviewers decision to make a particular product an "Editors Choice" product doesn't necessarily mean that A) the product that didn't get named as Editor's Choice isn't necessarily a bad product, and B) The editor's criteria doesn't always fall in line with everybody's needs.

Do I feel any rage towards Anandtech about their review of the K8NSNXP-939? Nope. not one emotion whatsoever really. They did their tests, and the didn't discover any issues related to memory. Hell, I APPLAUD THEM! They went the extra mile and tested the board with four DIMMs, which is something I have yet to see other reviewers do regularly. They didn't give it an editors choice award because of the boards features, which is a decision I can respect.

At any rate, as I said I never had any issues with my previous Gigabyte motherboard. Heck, I was very happy with it, except that I started to notice how slow my AthlonXP was for the tasks I was asking it to do (opening and converting RAW camera images into TIFF files and then manipulating them). I wanted to go with an Socket 939 Athlon64, and considering how stable my Gigabyte 7NNXP was, the K8NSNXP-939 was the obvious choice for me (even with it's "strange" features).

Do I regret my decision to get a K8NSNXP-939? Slightly. At this point in time I *AM* VERY happy with my board. I did have to buy all new RAM for my system. I wanted to be able to go to 2GB of RAM, but because "technical difficulties" with running all four DIMMs slots occupied (2 DIMMs would run at DDR400. 4 DIMMS would run at DDR333), I had to buy two 1GB DIMMs. That's not was irked me really. What irked me is that (like flawlssdistortn) I had to run the gauntlet of incompetent "technicians" at Gigabyte who only knew how to point fingers at AMD for the memory controller issue. All the while forgetting that how a board is designed DOES play a factor in not only if it will work correctly, but how stable the system will be. Convenient, huh?

Speaking as somebody who's been in this field for a while (10+ years... I still remember tinkering and repairing c64's. ), I've come to expect teething problems with some products. What I've learned over the years though is that how the problem is resolved is more important than the actual problem itself. Say what you will, but Gigabyte HAS gone to great lengths to avoid acknowleding this problem publically. Yes you could argue that it was in their best interest to save face and keep everybody in the dark until they could figure out a possible fix. To this day they haven't publically acknowledged that there's a problem though.

It pretty much boils down to this :

Even if you don't currently own a K8NSNXP-939 (which, by the way is/was considered one of their flagship boards), knowing the issues that people have experienced with this Gigabyte product and how the company has handled the situation, would YOU take a chance on purchasing one of their other products?

I think anybody reading that statement knows what the answer is.

I'll eventually go for a PCIe based 939 board in the future, but I'm going to wait until SLI capable boards are out for a while from OTHER manufacturers besides Gigabyte. Although I'm now happy with my board, I *AM NOT* happy with how Gigabyte has handled the situation.

In closing, Gigabyte is fully aware of my thoughts and feelings about this situation. They sent me a questionaire asking me how satisfied I was with their service and products. I have a feeling that the person reading my answers wasn't all too happy with my response.

-B

 

[flawlssdistortn]

You're right Ballistyx, the main thing is not that there are initial problems, it's Gigabyte's response to them. Instead of a revision 2 board, which I think was sorely needed, the K8NS-Ultra was released, minus the DPS, and presumably minus the quirks. I thought at first the DPS was excluded because it might have been causing stability problems, but then I see the nForce4 board has it... So maybe it was just taken away to drive down the cost to something reasonable?

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
a 486 is nothing but a 386 with a 387 on die.

I believe that there were extra instruction sets added, plus on-die cache. However, at the time that was the gist of it capability-wise.

Something to ponder... the 486SX (486DX minus the "387") would be akin to a regular 386, right? Well, why is it that a 486SX would handily outperform the 386DX of the same MHz? Difference in having on-die cache? Motherboard/bus difference? Dunno, but it is fun to fondly recall when you used to be able to count on Intel to make their new CPU faster than the old one at the same MHz.

I believe I can say that I am at least as knowledgeable as most people on this forum.

Forgot to comment on this one. Rhetorical question... why is it that some people always refer to how much knowledge or experience they have when they get stymied by a problem? Just makes them look

Anyways, good luck on resolving your issues and thanks for being the guinea pig.

2 DIMMs would run at DDR400. 4 DIMMS would run at DDR333

Kinda like my friend's MSI socket 754 board. One DIMM, DDR400. Two DIMMs, DDR333. [YODA]Yes, pattern I see.[/YODA] How common is this occurrence on A64 boards to run lower speeds with two sets of RAM?