Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

[Megalomaniac]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

I just bought a GA-EP45-DS5 Motherboard and put it together in my computer, but when I got the computer starting the screen wont show anything meaning the graphic card is not connecting correctly to the PCI slot. I have a nVidia 8800 GTS graphic card, i tried putting in my 6600 and still the monitor would not work. I've done these things a quite a few times before (setting together a computer) but this problem just goes behond me. I have everything else connected correctly (as far as i know of) and the GPU just wont work! Yes I put the cable in from the PSU into the 8800 if u were wondering.

I might be missing something since I had a 2005 model motherboard before this one, any ideas?

My computer specs:
Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz (2 CPUs)
RAM: 2GB DDR2
PSU: 450-550W (Not entirely sure, and I can only post when im at school so i cant check)
HDD: 1TB, SATA II
Monitor: 19" ACER AL1951 (Including this one since it wont display anything)

[blucabar]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi i have a GA-EX58-EXTREME manin board that operate well until yesterday dont start the system ! ! ! !

the video card dont make no video signal and the mb display show the A& error.

please help me

[Believer]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hey everyone. I'm new to these boards.

I just purchased a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P along with 4x2048 MB OCZ Reaper memory running at 1066 MHz.

I'm actually already into my second RMA motherboard, and I've been having these issues for a long time and is close to giving up as progress is really slow.

I also have a C2D E8500 and a 650W Corsair PSU.

My problems started with the first mobo, straight out the box, BIOS at default fail-safe settings and all 4 memory in place. The board was very unstable and frequently crashed and casued BSoDs. I still managed to install a working sample of my Vista 64bit OS in one of those stable time frames however though (after a few tries), and after that started running some memory benchmarks and stresstests to find what was causing the reboots and crashes (which I still had when running the PC, sometimes it would not even boot)

I got hints of a bad memory channel in bank 1, since switching and running only memory in dual channel in bank 2 produced stable testing in Prime95 no matter which combo of the 4 memories I used, but putting any memory into either bank 1 positions or using all 4 memory positions would produce memory error or calculation mismatches when testing rather quickly.

So I RMA'd the board.

With the new one, I'm not even able to boot with 4 memory modules at all, and not able to run either banks in dual memory config. I am able however to but 1 memory into each bank, as long as it's in position 1 or 3 respectively (i.e. the first position of the memory bank) So this was a change towards the old board.

I boot the PC up with 1 memory module in each bank and start to check memory stability again (mabe damaged them during reinstallation or something) but all 4 modules proove ok.

I read up on forums (now that I have stable OS and internet) and noticed quite alot of people were having issues with 4 memory modules, and the general solution was to upgrade BIOS and up voltages on MCH and DRAM. (the reaver stickers say 2.2V so I went with that)

I update to BIOS F7 and then updates BIOS with the above discussed settings.

I set this with my 2 modules, power down, change to 4, and try to boot up. And I get the same error as the first time with this board, a constant rebooting and restarting with like 10 sec intervalls. Not ever reaching BIOS or initilizing the display.

After rereading most boards and trying to find a remedy or known issue about the problem, I try to drastically lower everything in the BIOS, FSB, upping latencies, turning off anything related to automatic OC and voltage regulations.

I set the memory to run on 800 MHz instead of 1066, lowering the FSB and the latch, I keep the settings with upped voltage to MCH and DRAM, and increase the tRFC to 72 and essentially doubling most memory values.

Saved and powered down, tried installing all 4 memory modules... and lo and behold. It worked! It booted with the 8GB of RAM. I ran some stresstest on it for 5 hours, no error.

Now, to the point where I'm at now. How do I go from these diminished BIOS performance settings to a fully powered (operating by spec) machine? I plan to OC this thing too, but what's the use right now when you can't even seem to get it stable with 4 memory modules at 333 Mhz FSB and 1066 MHz memory?

The real pain with trying setting is that since this can't boot at default BIOS settings, everytime I set the system wrong, it reverts back to settings I can't boot with the 4 memory modules in... thus causing the reboot-cycle. It's a real pain and I don't get how my luck can be so bad that I end up with 2 faulty boards.

Or is it the memory? (would be odd as they works at default in 2 and 2s)

What should I do?

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

It's not what you should do. It is what gigabyte should do. I have been dealing with this same crap for over 3 months on 2 separate EP45-UD3R boards. There are others on different forums having the same issue with these board not running 2 modules when running with a quad-core.

My recommendation is to return that motherboard and get a different manufactured board. I am returning one to newegg and the other one I am going to trash as this is just crap!!!

It seems gigabyte is looking the other way on this or is refusing to acknowledge a possible issue.

[Believer]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Well, it's not an unsolvable situation I think.

I made my purchase together with a friend, he and I share the exact same components aside from the CPU, where he have the cheaper C2D E8400 but with the same E0 stepping.

He has never yet experienced any issues with having 4x2048 memory modules installed from the get-go, never yet experienced any instability or BSoDs, never had to make elaborte changes to the BIOS, but merely runs with optimized defaults loaded.

I hope Gigabyte can find a solution for these problems soon though, or that they atleast addresses the matter.

I'm very reluctant to send back my second RMA motherboard though, but if that's what it takes in order to get a faulty free experience, that's what I'll do. Perhaps the revision 1.1 of this mobo is free from these issues?

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Nope. I have a rev 1.0 and a rev 1.1 and my issue of not being able to run 2 modules of ram is on both of them. Only thing strange about yours is that most of the ram issues you are having are people who are trying to run quads, not dual cores.

[blucabar]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi i have a GA-EX58-EXTREME manin board that operate well until yesterday dont start the system ! ! ! !

the video card dont make no video signal and the mb display show the A6 error.

please help me

Sorry, the MB make a A6 error. There is some one that understand what doesn't mean this "A6 ERROR"

The MB is complete black, dont operates dont give any video signal!!!

i hope that some one help me.

Thanks a lot

[badshah123]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi,

I built a new PC with GA-EP45-UD3P with vista sp1. I enabled "msahci" in vista registery as well. When I enable AHCI in BIOS, It gives me a messages like, AHCI installed, then it try to test all my SATA drives. BIOS goes to new screen with my IDE dvd drive showing in green color. After that it shows me a message "bootmgr missing".

If I switch back to "IDE" mode, it boots fine.

What am I doing wrong?


Thanks

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@Rio - you need to set the voltage correctly in the bios. According to OCZ Technology | Products | Memory | OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Edition you need 1.9v to operate correctly.

In the main bios screen, press the following key combination CTRL+F1, you will see the screen flash. Then go into the section where you can tweak the settings and increase the vDIMM or Mem voltage. The JEDEC specs show it as a 1.5v default, so I assume you need to add +0.40v to get your required 1.9v.

That should get you started.

Post back with a success or failure report.

@badshah123 - you can't just enable the AHCI in the bios, you either have to enable the BIOS setting and reinstall windows, or you need to read up on the Intel SATA driver method (http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831) which can be done after the OS is installed.
If I remember correctly, you will have to do some of the instructions slightly different and it won't necessarily work first time, so keep reverting back to IDE mode until it works.
Also dont forget the purple ports on your motherboard if it has them, they can be used to get out of a boot problem because they are separate hardware ports to the yellow intel ports. I wish I could give you more info, but when I did it, I was following instructions for XP and I had vista, so a lot of trial and error was occuring.

[badshah123]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Thanks Infiniti25. I tried following directions with no luck. Problem is that when I enable AHCI, Bios detects all drives but does not detect boot drive info and throws an error that boot mgr missing.

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@badshah123 - Which ports are you using on the motherboard? The directions I posted are for the yellow ports. You have to create the modified driver and install it before you enable AHCI in the bios. If you have both Yellow and Purple SATA ports then you need to put the drive into the yellow ports, and you need to enable AHCI in the proper place in the bios.

I think you mentioned that the detection was colourful which means you are using the purple ports on the motherboard and the corresponding Gigabyte JMicron AHCI detection in the bios, you need to use the other yellow port Intel based SATA bios option.
In my P35-DQ6 bios I have SATA AHCI/RAID mode and below it I have SATA port0-3 native mode.
Then further down I have onboard sata/ide device and onboard sata/ide ctrl mode.

If you look here, GA-EP45-UD3P Peripherals, you need to be modifying the top two entries for the yellow ports, or entries 17 and 18 for the purple ports. Then make sure the boot drive is connected to the proper port.

Another possible cause to your problem is if you have multiple hard drives, when you enable AHCI, you might need to save the settings then go back into the BIOS when AHCI mode has been saved to reset the boot order as the boot order changes when modifying the SATA operating mode.
The problem you might be seeing is that the first boot device might be a hard drive which only contains data and no operating system.

[badshah123]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Thanks Infiniti. I am not using the purple ports. I am only using the intel yellow Sata ports. I have six yellow ports and 2 purple ports. I think your last statement is probably applicable to me. I have multiple sata hard drives. I will go in BIOS and change the boot order and post my results. I have one more question before I enable AHCI again. I do have IDE DVD drive as well. Any impact on IDE drive when I enable AHCI?

second question - I am only changing first entry to AHCI. Do I have to enable "SATA port0-3 Native" as well?

Thanks

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Setting to native is what I have always done, its to support something thats newer than the IDE standard, but I forget what and having the legacy mode allows you to use the original standard drives. Most drives will not have a problem with IDE Native Mode enabled. I think its more a speed thing than a specification feature.

As for the IDE drive working under ACHI, I think that if its connected to an IDE port then the SATA AHCI doesn't affect it since its "SATA" AHCI ;)

Go for it, its possible as I and many others have performed that procedure in some form in both XP and Vista.
Just dont make the mistake of trying to go the other way, I ended up with a deadlock in boot, I couldn't boot with AHCI enabled and I couldn't boot with it disabled. I ended up being saved by the purple ports and resolving the problem by installing the modified drivers again and reconnecting back to the yellow ports and booting with AHCI enabled.

[Reo]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

thanks for but i sold my 1600EB and got a 1600lvk so no need to give so high volt ennymore! hehe

[badshah123]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Infiniti25 - Here is what I did in vista

1) I changed one registery key in Vista to enable MSAHCI.
2) Changed BIOS (first two options) enabled AHCI and enable native ports.
3) Restarted and went to BIOS again and fixed the boot order.

Everything worked. My real problem was not fixing the boot order. Thanks for your help!!