Gigabyte motherboard, stay away!

Tinman

Tinman

MyGaming Silverback
Hey guys

So I have recently bought a new rig.

I chose the Gigabyte Ga-ma790fxt-ud5p as my mother board as it got good reviews and supports AM3 and Crossfire.

I have been building rigs for a few years now, and never have I had so many issues than I am having with this motherboard.

Its one problem after another. After trawling the net I have learned that my experience is not unique, and the problems I have been having are common.

Firstly, it originally picked up my AMD Phenom 2 AM3 955 Black Edition at 1.6GHz. I quickly learned that this was easily fixable by updating the bios, no problem.

However, after flashing the bios and getting the CPU reading properly, I came to realize that the new Bios is also bugged, and causes system crashes when transferring data between harddrives.

I then switched back to an earlier bios revision which seemed to fix this problem, only to realise that the onboard sound card had been lost somewhere along the way.

The motherboard was also picking up 2 additional mysterious PCI devices (I had none installed).

After hours of wrestling with system settings, bios tweaks and registry files, I managed to get my system relatively stable.

I then installed my second HD 4870 - big mistake. I know Crossfire tends to be slightly buggy, but I have in the past had little trouble getting it stable and running. Blue screens and system lock ups are common, and everytime I boot up Windows detects the second HD 4870's HDMI high definition sound and asks to install it. Midway through installing it crashes.

System crashes have also become common when installing programs.

Finally, the motherboard has an annoying yet admittedly harmless bug which causes it to reset the DMI table at bootup. This is apparently due to the motherboard not originally being compatible with the Phenom II 955BE, and is unfixable.

Everytime I boot I get an annoying "AMD configuration changed, Update DMI!" or something along those lines. I still boots, but its irritating.

Any advice is welcome, but I recommend staying away from this motherboard.
 
Hard luck with this Mobo - I hope the correct upgrades and config will eliminate the problems. If not you can always sell it to an unsuspecting fool ;)
 
/whispers
And here we have a rare sighting of rpm in the MyGaming forum. I am going to try and get closer. I must be very carefull not to spook him.


:D


Anyways....... hard luck on that mobo Tinman. Looks like you got a lemon. Gigabyte is normally fine when it comes to mobos. I'd say swap it around but you might be stuck with the same problems. What's the chance of getting a completely different board?
 
That sucks Tinman. I've got a lower end Gigabyte board and it works alright. However I've got to agree with I am Penguin. My next board will be an Asus.
 
Know how you feel tinman. I bought a gigabyte board last year for my moms pc. All the USB ports failed 2 days after i got it.

At least my Asus P5N-T Deluxe works wonders ;)
 
I told you not to buy the Gigabyte mate:)
Send it back and get an Asus as for a certain fanboy remark (see post 4) I suspect we'll be in a battle of words soon mate.
 
The Joker said:
I told you not to buy the Gigabyte mate:)
Send it back and get an Asus as for a certain fanboy remark (see post 4) I suspect we'll be in a battle of words soon mate.
Click to expand...

LOL first thing I thought when it started going sour was "should have listened to Joker"

Anyways, it looks like I have most of the bugs worked out. Some very odd hardware conflicts but its getting better. The newest Bios helped things.
 
I have discovered the final problem.

AMD has openly admited that AM3 has issues with DDR3 RAM.

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?85093

I was getting system lockups at least once every 20 minutes. After trying multiple bios revisions, swapping drivers, re-installing the entire rig and even switching operating systems I discovered this workaround.

"The company has already specified the safest workaround for the issue: specifying the memory modules to run at the speeds of PC3-8500, 533 MHz (DDR3-1066). One can refer to hardware literature on how to do that"

While the problem described does not reflect my identical situation, I figured I would give it a try.

I dropped my 2x2GB 1600mhz DDR3 to 1066Mhz and it is finally running stable.

Incredibly annoying having to run my RAM at almost half its rated speed.

I hope AMD brings out a proper fix for this soon.
 
Man, what a nightmare TM... I definitely would not appreciate struggling with my home pc like this! It should just work and that's it!
This is one of the reasons I like buying a complete system. That way the items in the system have at least been tested and should be certified to run without problems.

You lose the full customisation though, so pros / cons...
/shrug
 
Sorry to hear tinman, I would have also kick my self in the but if I didn't listen to joker and something went wrong. He knows his stuff.
 
I've owned several nice Gigabyte motherboards and been very happy with them. But a close friend of mine also had a horror story with his High End Gigabyte board... but at the end of the day it turned out to be some faulty RAM.

Stories like this make me scared to buy a newish high end system.
 
What a mission TinMan, i would've been bleak long time ago if i had the same problem :/
Just buy an "price-reduced" E7500 with an Asus Maximus II Formula, never had any issues :D
 
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