Help Needed - Gigabyte 7VRXP ... Please ....

[Wiggo]

Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology or SMART is something that I don't remember being explained in any motherboard manual. SMART is the hard drive's integrated controller working with various sensors to monitor various aspects of the drive's performance and determines from this information if the drive is behaving normally or not and makes available status information to the BIOS that probes the drive and look at it at start up which will inform you on one of the boot screens if there maybe something going wrong with the drive to give you time to backup before investigating what the problem is.
As for the Gigabyte manual I've found them to be one of the better ones compared to a lot of others.
The onboard Promise controller by default is set as a standard ATA controller that any drive, HDD or CD/DVD ROM, can be connected to though some makes of ROM's have trouble working with which is why a lot of ppl prefer the Highpoint version. It's best in some cases to leave any ROM drives on either of the two main channels and just run HDD's on the Promise channels. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[mish]

well hey all, I must tell you about my experience with Gigabyte boards. I jumped onto this discussion to follow up on gigabyte issues. I built a system P4 1.6Ghz, 256 133 ram, 20Gb 7200 HD, MX400 64mb video, Gigabyte 845 chipset mainboard (can't remember model) OS Win98SE. This system worked fine till I installed 845 chipset drvs to enable 4x AGP. I got a black screen for no apparent reason numerous blue screens with messages that varied around vxd vwin32 errors. some programmes caused more troubles MS outlook fax, scandisk and any loading large programmes ie Autocad 2000. I dont play many games on my PC since I work on it but I tried to load aquanox well talk about a hissy fit!!! My HD showed all types of corrupt files so I swapped it, no joy same probs. I swapped the ram still no luck so next I decided it must be the video card so I replaced that with a MSI g4mx420. Bah same problems (I formatted the HD each time I made a change).
Gigabyte told me that 2% Mainbds fail so I replaced that for a GA8sdx SIS645 chipset.
Cranky gotta tell you, could it be the cpu?
Another HD format and loaded Win2Kprof for the error log and system tools and hell it runs fine with AGP 4X enabled. Id been told win98se was sturdy i still dont trust my system but just had to share this tale of woe with you.
Took 9 weeks of dicking around to get where I'm at with it.
regards all

[zzilver]

On startup my GA-7VRXP goes

Detecting\ ........................

I believe it's checking my harddisks. That's fine, but I don't want the wait for this every time. :bounce:

Is it possible to turn this Detecting....... OFF.

[Wiggo]

The "Detecting" bit is that the onboard Promise controller is enabled. If your not using that controller (like me) then go into the BIOS and disable it so ya don't have to put up with that. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[GeeLuv]

Can you all tell me what temp your GA-7VRXP is running @ idle and load? Mine runs way too hot and doesn't like my PNY Geforce 4 4400 card at all. The idle heat averages around 51c and under load, etc can get into the 60's. This is with a Volcano 7+, artic silver 3, 2 exhaust and one intake fan in an aluminum case w/round ide cables. I'm so frustrated with this thing I think I'm going to return it. Already RMA'd the CPU and board once each. I'm not overclocking or anything either, too hot....

[GeeLuv]

Oh yeah, this is with an AMD 2000 and PC2700 cs2 ram w/raid 2x60gb ata 133 7700rpm maxtors...

[Wiggo]

ATM I'm getting 44c idle and 48c under load though with the temp sensor reading the temp off the resistors under the core I'd say that this is an inflated temp reading till I get a CompuNurse to be sure. But I run SETI 24/7 even while games are being played and no stability issues have popped up and I'm running my 1800+ @ 2100+. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[zzilver]

Took me a couple of hours, but my GA-7VRXP is running fine now. I was becomming a bit worried though. :confused:
With all the negative postings.

I found out that installing Win 98SE was the major problem with this board. Somewhere I red "Don't use the drivers on the CD they are no good". For win98 SE this seems to be right. After downloading new drivers, my problems were all gone.

[Wiggo]

Good to hear as I was startin' to think that I'd got the only 2 ones that worked and I was doin' something wrong. :thumb:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[zzilver]

The "Detecting" bit is that the onboard Promise controller is enabled. If your not using that controller (like me) then go into the BIOS and disable it so ya don't have to put up with that. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

What does the Promise controller exactly do. I am not using RAID but I do have a 133 ATA harddisk. So if I disable this controller does ATA 133 still work. Some of my system specs:

IDE1 Plextor burner
IDE2 Pioneer DVD-rom
IDE3 Maxtor 740X
IDE4 Empty

I configured my system this way because the manual of my Plextor says that a Master Slave configuration is bad for the performance of the CD-writer.
I had problems installing a CD-rom on IDE 3 or 4. So when this setup worked I was very pleased, and followed the advice..
<center>
IF IT AINT BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

<center>:wave:<center>

[Wiggo]

Yes disabling it will effectively kill IDE3 and 4 though I always set CD-RW's and CD/DVD ROMs as CDRW master and CD/DVD's as slave on the secondary IDE (IDE2) and never had any probs with that setup and then the HDD set as master to the Primary IDE (IDE1). :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[cjho]

I just recently bought my GA-7VRXP and haven't had any major problems.... ATI AIW 8500DV running at AGP4x... the most annoying thing I've had is the crackling sound... this is with Via 4-in-1 4.40v.

I still haven't figured out how to clean up the on-board sound except by lowering the UDMA mode of the HDD

John.

[Wiggo]

I don't have any sound probs (but then I've had no probs at all) but I'm using the 4.38 version. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[tesna]

I usually had bad noise on my speaker when I run CPU idle 5.9. The manual in CPU idle says that I have bad soundcard/PSU. I'm using live! and 350w PSU.

Btw when I tried to enable the onboard sound on my 7VRXP the sound seems ok, but the quality far behind my sblive!