The New AMD Building Thread

Oman7,
That's the rub! I didn't find anyone with this problem, and I'm pretty good at Googling! It's not so much what you ask for, it's how you ask for it! Nothing I did find was remotely close to the problems I'm having. The biggest complaint I came across most often, is people complaining that you can't use Hybrid CrossFire with a 48xx series cards. Guess they didn't bother to look at the specs, so it's the MB makers fault! LOL!! About the same for complaints about the HD-3300 OBG too. Future upgrades should fix it, ATi has said they are working on it, so they at least know about it! I can't fault AMD because they have the hardware in place, so it's up to ATi to make it work!

The Sata ports facing the front of the computer are a pain, but not impossible. I don't plan to ever disconnect them from the MB, but if I send back the MB I guess I'll have to! No worry there, as it will have 4 Sata cables attached when when the new one's installed. I just leave two of them rolled and tied up for future use and the other two for my current drives. The plugs themselves fit much tighter than with most Sata connections, and the plug is completely surrounded by plastic. It would be very hard to put one in wrong, cause you would never get it in there close enough to the male part on the port to break the little locating pin. Trust me, you can break them very easily without even knowing it. LOL!! These port plugs are the exact shape of the outside of the plug and guides the connection so the male of the MB and the female of the inside of the plug, mate! Besides, I didn't hurt the drive I broke, but I've been more careful ever since! Room isn't my problem, it's that I can't see the front of the connector without removing the HDD Bay! Difficult to do without laying the computer on it's side, as there's two long screws through the bottom of the case, and two inside the computer. For now, Braille works believe me! ROFL!!

I did find out that video problems came early and often with the 790GX chipset. It was in the early reviews that places like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware reported. Many testers refused to draw a conclusion, citing the video problems they had with them. Great MB, but we'll have to wait and see was as far as most would go. Just ask Fred how good are the HD-3200 graphics of his 780G. So far the HD-3300 graphics don't even look like the 780G's second cousin! The "Ugly" one! ROFLMSOAO! Great video as long as you don't pan side to side or up and down! Something is slowing down the video, and since both the HDDs and the Sata's run through the SB, it's my #1 Suspect! Streaming video seems to run just fine as do most small AVIs. Since streaming video has nothing to do with the SB, it makes sense. Everything is controlled by the 790GX! Lan to NB, NB to CPU and CPU to NB to the video. Little or no SB involved! Streaming Video and AVIs usually are much smaller screens and most look horrible at full screen. I'll see about an RMA to Gigabyte tomorrow!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Hmmm...thats curious. Ive had one video issue. But I chalked it up to a Dual view issue(Possibly Registry). See...when I first started having fun with the dual view setup, I would use my 20" acer for video playback, and the other for browsing and what not. I used Nero showtime to accomplish that. One day, while not running dual view, I attempted to open the program and it locked up! Then Dr watson encountered an error. Most the time now, if im not running dual view and open the program it locks up! The only way to get control back, and be rid of the lock up, is to end Dr. watson, and Showtime Processes. Oddly though, if I Right click on say a divx file, and choose open with showime, its fine. And it always opens fine if im running in dual view now. I imagine its as simple as a registry entry. But I still dont know much about those kind of things. I wish I could spend more time planted at my computer LOL! But that wouldnt pay the bills! At least not yet

Hope Gigabyte/Newegg help you out!

Kevin

 

I'm not too worried about it. I'll probably send it to GigaByte so that the head Tech can take a look at it. It will cost me $6 or so for shipping, but in PR, it's worth it for me to do, and this way he'll see it for sure. They requested the DS4H from Newegg, but it had already been shipped back with a bunch of others. I know they want to take a look at it and I can make that happen, so why not! Don't hurt one bit to be nice and accommodating! LOL!! I know there are a number of DDR2 790FX boards coming out, so I might even be able to wind up with one of those, like the swap I made for the P35-DS3R and that turned out all right! LOL!! Besides, I'm really interested in Far Cry 2. I like it! I'll have to start looking for combos with free games more often!

Russ


Russ

 

Looks like my board is no longer deactivated. Its back on the egg!

 

Looky what else they got.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128387
Danged if it doesn't look like your MB without the OBG! Looks like a real good MB for the price! 8 usb ports on the back, and ports for 4 more on the MB. 8 S-ata ports, 6 Intel and 2 GigaByte. I don't know why people keep calling the GigaByte S-ata ports garbage. I used them on my P-35-DS3R. They are excellent for E-sata or any drive as they can be hotswapped, and the speed is exactly the same. I guess some people feel that for some reason the 6 from the SB are better! Not me!

Russ

 

For future reference Russ, I find the best solution to those side-on S-ATA cables is to use the right angled ones, so the cable's pointing the right way again. Kind of defeats the object of the swivel, but it makes working easier in a cramped case.
Haha, the 'Braille' method, been there, and for this reason above all else, and that was with normal vertical connectors!
Picture the two S-ATA ports sitting between the pair of PCI express slots, both of which are filled with graphics cards longer than the board, you've got one PCI slot's worth of gap to get that cable several inches down and into the slot!
For ref, I never had any problems with the Gigabyte S-ATA ports on my P35C-DS3R. Didn't get a chance to try them on the X48-DS5.

 

Sam,
The right angle ones could only be used for the top row. The bottom ones would have to be straight, unless they make a longer plug to fit over the regular right angled plug. Actually I'm pretty sure the right angled plug was designed to go on the drive end, so the wires would go straight down from the drive. Looks much neater that way.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

That's true actually, but usually there's at least three sockets there.

 

Hey There All,
I need a little help here. All I've ever used to overclock my video cards was CoolBits. This is on a XP-Pro 64 Bit system and I have no clue how to do a thing using RivaTuner. If nothing else, I want to be able to speed up the fan a bit.

Thanks in advance,
Russ

 

Where it says Customize...
On the right hand side of the window that appears when you open it,
click the picture of the circuit board. That takes you to overclocking and fan controls. Regular rules apply beyond this point.

 

sam,
I did that, but I can't get anything to change unless I let RivaTuner OC it to the max, which is a lot higher OC than I want for the video card! I haven't found a way to move the adjustments manually yet.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

drag the slider and go OK, that's all I did...

 

Sam,
I've tried to do that and all you can do is let it set the overclock and it's way too high for my tastes. I did set the fan to 50%, so my cool temps are back again!

Another discovery with the ODDs. If I install just one, it works fine. If I swap that one out for the other, same thing, but if I hook up both, they both become flaky! More evidence to support my feelings that the MB is the problem, specifically the SouthBridge!

Russ

 

Strange, I never had any issues. Dragged it to 830, set OK, started running benchmarks, got higher performance.
Agreed on the southbridge.

 

Sam,
I finally figured it out. I raised the core clock, with the shader clock linked, to 594MHz core and 1511MHz shader clock and the memory clock to 864MHz, which gives an effective memory speed of 1728MHz. I can overclock it higher if need be, but I'm happy with these settings!

Russ

 

Im about to attempt Riva Tuner on 64bit Windows 7! I'd like to bump up my Windows Experience mark. Oddly a 3.0Ghz score was only 0.1 lower than 3.5Ghz on the processor score. Im getting a 7.4 score for the processor! The ram was unaffected by the 24mhz bump. Though I wouldnt think it would be at such a low bump!

Been down and out! Got pretty drunk friday night, and hung over all day yesterday!!! Hope I didnt miss anything! LOL

 

OK! Forget about that experiment. M$ pretty much made that a hassle!!! Because Riva Tuner doesnt digitally sign the software, Windows 7 doesnt like it. DOESNT LIKE IT AT ALL(64BIT anyway)!!!!! You can read about it here

 

Oman7,
You will need to do a search for the 64 bit version of RivaTuner. PM me your email and I'll send you the one for Windows XP-Pro 64 Rev. 182.08, 64 bit, if you haven't already tried it. It is supposed to work with Win7.

Russ

 

By the way, im running 182.08 on XP right now. But on Windows 7, it recommended 181.71! Its all I can get navigating their website!

 

The RivaTuner I sent is what they say works for 64 bit. It worked with my XP-Pro 64, and is supposed to work for Vista and Win7!

Russ