P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

[aspenleaf]

I, and many others, have been corresponding with Gigabyte tech support concerning DPC latency spiking with the latest official BIOS releases. This spiking has led to dimished low latency audio performance, and may only be noticed by people using their systems as digital audio workstations.

Late last week, most of us received a beta BIOS to try, and it looks like they have solved the problem. I would encourage anyone that has noticed this problem with the system, to contact tech support so you can try the beta BIOS, and help them gather enough feedback so they can release a solid official version.

My system has been very stable with the beta BIOS. The only problem I have noticed is that changing the vcore settings has no effect. It stays on whatever vcore it was set at when I flashed the BIOS, no matter what I change it to. However, when used at stock clock speeds with the DES software, it is able to reduce my vcore when downclocking the CPU. Of course, DES doesn't function when the system is overclocked.

We're very pleased that Gigabyte is resolving this issue, and I'm certain they will be able to release an official BIOS that works well.

You can read more about the issue by follwing this link:
P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency

[KWILD]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

I got the same problems with my GA-P35-S3G!
Contacted the GIGABYTE support and after some days i got that scandalous reply :

Dear Sir,

After confirmed by our RD, DPC high latency was caused by ICH6390 Label Data update. ICH6390 Label data is used for initail seting while system boot up . This is INTEL specification Data and also certified by INTEL. We will not sure if caused any unpredicable issue if changed it. Thus, we are sorry we can't rework this BIOS. We are really sorry for the inconvenience you have with our product.

If you still have any further question to this issue or suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. If you have any issue different from original, make sure you issue a new form in order to get proper assistance and it may be response faster as well. We will try our best to help you resolve the problem ASAP.

Best Regards,
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY


That people are really crazy,they sold crap boards...i call that a fraud!!!!!!
It's time to start an ANTI-GIGABYTE campaign all over the net,personally i've already blacklisted Gigabyte when i build DAW's for my clients and when i do counsels.

[aspenleaf]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

That is a pretty shocking reply from Gigabyte, but it goes against what the rest of us are getting from them. The beta BIOS they have asked us to test has reduced the DPC latency spikes for most testers, so they must have been able to change something to reduce it. Also, other manufacturers using the same chipset don't seem to have the problem.

Before you give up completely, try contacting them here: Gigabyte Tech Support

That's where I was able to get the beta BIOS for testing.

If Gigabyte is saying the problem is caused by Intel spec of the southbridge, then maybe we should be contactng Intel to see if there is anything they can do to correct the problem.

[KWILD]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

I got that shocking reply exactly from the same link.
That people are totally crazy!
A great way to handle their customers.
I've decided to not buy nothing no more branded GIgabyte!!!!!!!
And im starting a boycott against that crap idiots!!!
For what is in my capabilities for Gigabyte products at least 500 or more customers less in the near future!!!!!!!

[aspenleaf]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

Didn't they offer a beta BIOS for you to test?

[Dewdman42]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

Well I am anxious to find out what happens with this Beta Bios they have been sending around, but I have a feeling they are not going to move this into the production release. As such, some of the other problems people are having with this Beta Bios (most notably that they can't overclock), the prospect does look a little grim. I recently purchased a GA-P35-DS4. I have yet to run the DPC latency checker to see where I am at, but based on the feedback I am seeing, it does not look good. To tell you the truth, if I had any idea about this a few weeks ago, I would not have gotten a Gigabyte mobo. period. But now I'm here, so I will try to see if we can get this issue resolved completely.

PLEASE GIGABYTE, fix the production BIOS releases!

To be honest, if it were not for the fact that I currently need an LPT and this mobo is one of the few current evolution mobo's that still has an optional LPT port. So, I hope this can be resolved. However, the DPC latency issue is most definitely a higher priority for me, so if it can't be resolved fairly quickly, then I will also have to declare Gigabyte mobo's as junk and get something else.

let's see what happens though.

The reason I am a bit skeptical is because it appears that what they did to provide this "beta" bios to folks was to recompile some old code. That means that any number of different bug fixes and feature additions are not in this beta bios release and I would guess it to be a fair amount of work for them to back port those things to "old" code. We were told at one point that they fixed this DPC latency by simply going back to some "old code", whatever that means. So you see my point? As they evolved the code from old to new, they fixed things, improved things, but somehow their new code wrecked the DPC latency. They are going back blindly to the old code in order to satisfy a few DPC complainers, but really, the true fix means they have to back port all the changes they did between the old and new, without completely changing the code in whatever way they did to ruin DPC. Not an easy task and I am not holding my breath. Still, I do have to declare these mobo's as currently "junk" with this DPC latency problem.

[GIGABYTE - Janus Yeh]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

which MB?

NEED BIOS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW
[email protected]

[KWILD]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

Didn't they offer a beta BIOS for you to test?

No,they only offer me that stoopid,patetic reply that i've post over.

[Sploozoo]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

Hi I'm suffering this problem too with my GA-EP35-DS3R (rev. 2.1)

The latency problems are making my workstation completely unusable in protools.

We have another thread going at the digidesign user conference about the problem.

DUC: COME HELP: Buffer Errors on GA-P35-DS3 with nVidia 8800GT

I'd very much like to get the patch and Gigabyte really should help resolve this issue.

I bought the Giga after my intel board died and thought it'd be an upgrade however now I can't really record anything. Unfortunately it took me two weeks to isolate the problem and now it is too late to return the board to Frys... so I'm stuck.

Gigabyte please help....

[Dewdman42]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

GA-P35-DS4(rev2.0)

[badonkadonk]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

I have this issue on a X38 DQ6. Is there a fix for me?

[llamadragon]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

Just wanted to share my personal solution for these DPC latency issues in the hopes that someone else might benefit. I had a pretty random latency patern in DPC Latency checker with occasional spikes blasting way over the 16000 microsecond line and my audio sounded like crap. I got a newer beta bios from Gigabyte which evened out things on average but every 4 seconds there was another massive spike. I pulled all the optical drives and eSATA connections off the motherboard and the problem went away - nice smooth 30-40 microsecond latency. I put them all back assuming there was a loose connection and the problem came back. Then I noticed I had an eSATA cable connected to one of the ports on the back, but not connected to any drive. I reached down and pulled it off and my latency spikes vanished.

In short: Check your SATA connections and don't leave "empty" eSATA cables connected.

I hope that helps someone.

Cheers,
LlamaDragon

[Dewdman42]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

That is a good tip and I want to check out with the non beta bios now to see if that is the underlying problem. Really, that seems like a bit of a bug to me, the unused eSata should not be causing interrupts to happen like that. The whole point is to have an unused eSata port that you can plug things in when you want to use it. but it would be nice if we can pinpoint this as the cause of the problem.

[badonkadonk]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

I have done some testing on this. It happens on a fresh format , with or without any device drivers installed. I installed in ide/ahci/raid mode same thing. No esata connectors either. Happens with or without Sp1.

I attached a pic of my latency on X38DQ6

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: P35 Motherboards and DPC Latency Spiking

So.... Is it supposed to look like this?



How long do you run this application?