[Person of Color]

Ho boy. What a fucking vomit pile. Where do I even begin with this lemon?! Some retard took a pickaxe to the schematics when they designed this new 3.0 revision.

Let's start with the box. It's loaded with all kinds of great pictures, bragging rights, etc. etc. about how it's VRM's have 8 pins, how DURABLE it is, QUALITY, overclocking features, etc. etc.

No. Just no. Here's my first impressions of this board: It's cheap. It feels kinda cheap, it looks kinda cheap, and it's just not very impressive. This doesn't look or feel like a $100 AMD motherboard. It looks like a $60 motherboard ate a few cheeseburgers. The VRM heatsink is hung like the asian dude in the pool scene in Gayni**ers From Outer Space. The northbridge heatsink is dinky with a gaudy anodized finish. But the southbridge heatsink is fucking massive! We all know how hot those get.

If you compare this board side by side to the Biostar TA970XE I was "upgrading" from, the Gigabyte looks pretty low rent. The PCB is thinner too.

Compared to the Biostar, you sacrifice some really nice shit. Hey, you want Crossfire support? Fat chance. Despite having a wider board, Gigabyte didn't want to run extra traces for the second PCI-E. You get an x16 slot that's electically x4.

Coaxial AND optical digital audio?! Nope, you only get optical. Enjoy your days long sync times. (This REALLY irritated me).

Realtek integrated audio? Nope, you get VIA.

There's no integrated power buttons and no diagnostic LED's.

The layout of this board is half assed. Huge cooler? Lose a ram slot. Doesn't matter that it takes three rows of screws. You're losing that fucking slot.

Oh look, the video card slot is the second slot down, so you can install another PCI-E card at the top without blocking airflow. But wait, there's more! We put a capacitor there so even a tiny ass wifi card can't be inserted. Why put the rear case fan power connector, you know, by the case fan? Why not relocate it to the other side of the board near the ATX connector? Clear CMOS jumper? Shove it 1mm above the front panel headers. That's right, nobody gives a fuck! Good luck clearing your CMOS now cocksucker!

That brings me to the worst part of this board...

Overclocking it. Fuck me, somebody shoot me in the face.

First off, VDroop. You want it? This piece of shit's got it! It's got more droop than Betty White's tits. Despite being an 8 phase board with LLC, it has more VDroop than the 4-phase Biostar.

But that's okay, because it has LLC right? RIGHT?!

Wrong. LLC has three options - Auto, Regular, Extreme.

Or as they should be labelled - Do nothing, pretend you're doing something, and melt the surface of the fucking sun.

Regular has slightly higher idle voltages. Under load, it makes no difference. Extreme just overvolts shit 100% of the time.

This is componded by the fact that you have to adjust the CPU VCore at 25 mV intervals. There's no PSTATE support, so fine tuning the voltage is impossible. Guess what has PSTATE? Yep, the Biostar!

Due to the half-assed voltage adjustments, I had to run my CPU at 1.57v to get 4GHz - which wasn't attainable. At all. Prime95 never lasted more than five minutes.

Why, you ask? THE GOD AWFUL, STRIPPED TO SHIT, EFI BIOS. YOU CAN'T DISABLE FSB SPREAD SPECTRUM. EVERY BOARD I HAVE SEEN IN THE PAST TEN YEARS HAS THAT OPTION, EVEN $50 MATX AIDS BOARDS WITH VIA CHIPSETS. AND THE EFI SETUP HAS MORE MOUSE LAG THAN A 386 RUNNING DOOM.

Stay away from this underengineered, lackluster piece of shit. I know the 1.1 and 1.2 revisions were legendary. Stop smoking peyote, Gigabyte.

I award it 2/5 TX BMW's. Into the trash it goes!

[Jimmy]

[Person of Color]

That one sent me into a coughing fit from pure laughter.

[Hendricks266]

The worst part is that it doesn't have any ISA slots that work with an Adlib.

[Person of Color]

Don't worry. They'd just put capacitors around it so you couldn't use it.

Adlib is shit btw

[Stabs]

moved away from GB recently after years of using them, i usually had mid-high range boards so the issues you are having arn't there, OC was good but fuck their stupid USB ports, any hubs or extension cables and its problem time. first thing i noticed when i got my first ASUS board the usb is flawless, i can actually enter the bios without a spare ps/2 keyboard plugged in.

[The Commander]

64bit Java will fix everything!

[Forge]

unexpected back-pay kicks ass (the VA paid me for post surgery recovery from last year - i wasn't even expecting it)

so i used the little chunk of change "wisely" (insert condescending comment here) and purchased a gigabyte UD3 990FXA rev 4.0 (it was on sale and with my coupons i got it for $99 US)

so far in comparison:

This doesn't look or feel like a $100 AMD motherboard. ---- this one does

The VRM heatsink is hung like the asian dude
The northbridge heatsink is dinky with a gaudy anodized finish. But the southbridge heatsink is fucking massive! We all know how hot those get.

http://www.gigabyte....spx?pid=4672#ov
these are pretty stout and i can touch them after running prime95 all day and it's very warm, but nowhere near hot

Crossfire support ---- yes

Coaxial AND optical digital audio?! Nope, you only get optical ---- same

Realtek integrated audio ---- yes

There's no integrated power buttons and no diagnostic LED's. ----same

The layout of this board is half assed. Huge cooler? Lose a ram slot. ----low profile ram works fine

Oh look, the video card slot is the second slot down, so you can install another PCI-E card at the top without blocking airflow. But wait, there's more! We put a capacitor there so even a tiny ass wifi card can't be inserted. ----not a problem here

Why put the rear case fan power connector, you know, by the case fan? ----this thing has four or five fan connectors

Clear CMOS jumper? Shove it 1mm above the front panel headers.----towards the back by the audio connector

Overclocking it. Fuck me, somebody shoot me in the face. ---- same

First off, VDroop. You want it? This piece of shit's got it! But that's okay, because it has LLC right? RIGHT?! Wrong. LLC has three options - Auto, Regular, Extreme. -----this one has Six, but Medium & Low vdroop -.012, while Standard, Normal, & Auto all vdroop -.024, while Extreme over volts +.012 and add another +.012-.024v when under load

Or as they should be labelled - Do nothing, pretend you're doing something, and melt the surface of the fucking sun. ---- same

This is componded by the fact that you have to adjust the CPU VCore at 25 mV intervals. There's no PSTATE support, so fine tuning the voltage is impossible. ----same

Due to the half-assed adjustments ------- i set mine to extreme LLC and undervolted by .035v - there's also no adjustment for individual cores (i could run prime95 and watch when the cores posted, then i could go into the bios on my asus and adjust each core individually by +/-12% to get them all to post at the same rate). You can't even select which core you want to disable - it just starts with the last core and works numerically up the line from last to first

THE GOD AWFUL, STRIPPED TO SHIT, EFI BIOS. ----same

YOU CAN'T DISABLE FSB SPREAD SPECTRUM. -----same

AND THE EFI SETUP HAS MORE MOUSE LAG THAN A 386 RUNNING DOOM. -----same


why doesn't this have PCIe 3.0 yet

some of the shit's better - mostly the hardware aspect, some of the shit's the same - mostly the bios
even so it's still 10 times better than the board i migrated from - i'm well over 3.8 without even trying and the old board couldn't get off 3.6 without over-volting the shit out of it (no fun on a 4+1 board)

[Person of Color]

I got mine to 3995 stable but I'm pushing for more. Haven't had time yet. I got it at 4006 with 1618 RAM 240FSB 2100-something HT and I'm convinced that the heat is killing me at this point, Core 4 crashes after this thing sits at 60+ degrees for a few minutes. I have to up the NB and HT voltage and that does me in heat wise. I'm gonna try fresh thermal gel, my system is idling higher than it used to.

It's insane how tempermental this board is. I've dumped like 8 hours of tweaking into it.

[Forge]

yea. mine's sensitive too. even tuning the video card seems more of a chore on this than on the old asus. (this is what i've spent most of my time doing - burnt it in to find the max before it started dropping off, error checked it to get it down to where it's not throwing anomalies, now it's tuning it to handle stress tests without dumping to the desktop - this one is the bitch -one tick down on a slider test-pass, one tick up on the other slider - test-fail, put back both sliders where it passed test-fail--start over)

right now everything's at base (except under volt to compensate for the extreme LLC) i bumped fsb to 206 & multiplier to 18.5. this immediately threw the clock to over 3800 (stable).
on the asus these simple setting only got 3600 (stable), with additional fsb & ht adjustment i could get it to 6999, but anything over that required flirting with the 1.5v core boundary.

sitting at over 3.8 with simple settings has me optimistic to get it to 4.0, but like you said. temperamental. it'll probably take me quite some time to get it there with minimal heat output.

though i'm surprised at the low temps this board is holding. the asus would idle @ 44c and if i pushed hard enough it would get to 61c (i accidentally got it to 65c once, but i shut down when i caught it)
this 990 board idles at 32c, i ran prime95 all day and it only got to 51c. it dissipates the heat rather rapidly as well.

[Forge]

4.0 isn't going to happen

i can get 4060 stable on two cores easy, the problems start when i unlock the other cores and #3 wants to do things at its own pace.
since there's no way to lock/adjust individual cores I can't do much about it
even with overvolting the vCore to 1.5 - or - undervolting down to 1.26 for stability and running at the base 3.3 it's still not perfectly stable

from 3300 to 3829 with the extra cores unlocked it can run "stable" with prime95, but OCCT & 3dMark11 cpu tests freeze the system
the system also randomly freezes with all the cores unlocked
(it's not a windows issue because the same problems occur while running linux)
(it's not a video card issue - with the extra cores locked I stressed the crap out of it and the system and had no problems, but as soon as i unlock the extra cores the computer locks up)

so i'm either stuck with a duel core or i run all four and deal with occasional lock-ups

[TerminX]

Which voltage options do you guys have? These boards usually have a lot more settings than just vCore, and they make a crucial impact on overclockability. If you guys are raising your FSB much you'll need to increase the CPU NB VID control setting, etc.

[Forge]

NB Core
HT Link
NB/PCIe/PLL
CPU PLL
NB vid
CPU vCore
Dram

i only ran the FSB up to 207 with an 18.5 multiplier for 3829
it randomly locks. i can run it stable under prime95 all day just fine (as long as i don't get a random lock). OCCT & 3dMark11 cpu tests lock the system up almost immediately.
(it does this as well with everything set to default - only unlocking the extra cores)

for me there's no helping the issue - been reading the gigabyte forums and this board has not got along with 500 black series phenom II since rev 1.0
the only suggested option (on the forums & from giga's tech support) is to run the vCore up to 1.55v and maybe it'll be stable
(they assure that this won't cause any short/long term damage)

edit: confirmed. this board and chip do not work well together
went through the gambit of over/under/default clocks & volts and any combination thereof. no luck. the unlocked cores freeze the system. without being able to adjust each individual core there's not alot i can do.
i'll have to grab an FX chip if i want to hone my meager oc skills

[Gambini]

This reminds me, with my last upgrade I got a Gigabyte GPU. I didn´t trust this brand, it always looked cheap to me (not sure why, maybe because it´s cheap) however who sold it to me said it was as good as Asus or SVGA. I personally always used XFX, except one old card that was MSI. So far, in three months, it seems to run really well, never had any complain and it´s really silent (despite having a 10inches fan).

I saw this thread´s title, which read Gigabyte and shit on the same line and though I´d post this.

[Jeff]

Quote

first thing i noticed when i got my first ASUS board the usb is flawless, i can actually enter the bios without a spare ps/2 keyboard plugged in.

I had a motherboard I bought from ASUS a couple years ago. I wouldn't necessarily say the features were crap, but the stability was worse than a 300 lb guy trying to run for a 2 blocks straight. Would completely hard freeze every 3 hours (only way to get around it was to hit the power button and restart).

/Rant off.

[Forge]

GA-990FX-UD3 (rev 4.0)
Phenom II x2 560 black series 3.3Ghz (unlocked to X4)

with the four cores unlocked this seems to be the best setup i can get where the system is stable and almost never locks up:


FSB 200 to 221
Multiplier x16.5 to 17.5
NB Core V 1.2 to 1.3
HT Link V 1.2 to 1.3 (normally not something to mess with, but for some reason it helps stabilize the system)
NB/PCIe/PLL V 1.8 to 1.8
CPU PLL V 2.5 to 2.5
NB V 1.2 to 1.2
CPU Core V 1.425 to 1.5125 (a bit higher than i'd like, but it makes the system stable)
DRAM V 1.5 to 1.625(manufacturer recommended)

system at 3.867 Ghz
32c idle, 50c load

any red flags?

[TerminX]

Do you really need a whole +0.1v on the NB core and HT link? Assuming the board has the option to adjust them in smaller increments than that...

[Forge]

i'll take them down until i lose stability, but my temps seem to be fine
i read that the NB is okay up to 1.34725
couldn't find crap on the HT voltage, but raising the bus speed raises the ht link frequency so i'd figure i'd experiment

[TerminX]

Yeah, you probably aren't going to hurt anything with those voltages, was just curious if it was actually doing you any good or not.

Good luck with your quest for 4.0+ stable. I've fed a Phenom II X4 1.6v and up trying to reach that goal before. The setup in one of my desktop machines is capable of cooling that kind of crazy voltage... on air.

[Person of Color]

Woke up to this piece of shit crashing into a boot loop after lowering the FSB and Prime95ing all night. Restored default settings and it wouldn't post. Cleared the CMOS and still nothing. About to return it to Staples now. I'm just going to exchange it. I think this one may have been a dud. These boards suck regardless, I think this one just sucked harder than the others.

I just upgraded my fans yesterday, and it was running cooler than ever.

I miss my Biostar. I sold it along with 4GB RAM to a friend and I'm going to install it tomorrow along with a Phenom II X4 820. It's a weird OEM chip that is listed as having 4MB L3 cache but all of them have the full 6MB. I overclocked one before at it was easy as shit. 2.8 stock, I'm going to push this one to 3.6.

[ReaperMan]

I though you would of already gotten rid of it weeks ago.

[Person of Color]

I went to return it to Staples and they were out of stock. I had to spring for the 990-FXA-UD3 instead. Hopefully that one will suck less.

[Forge]

if it's rev 4 only the bios is going to piss you off
if it's rev 3 you're going to throw it in the river

[Person of Color]

I really hope it's rev 4. I never had the VRM throttling issues other people had though. I could probobly hit 4.0 on a rev 3. I wonder what died on that old board...

[Forge]

the rev 3 has the shitty vrm's and throttles horribly
the rev 4 has good hardware and i read somewhere that the temp throttle is 90c. if you run a rig at 90c both you and it should be throttled (btw i set my vCore to 1.55 and ran prime95 for around 6 hours and the temps wouldn't go over 52c)
there are some quirks with this board's bios and some phenom chips (it can be sensitive as hell to unlocked cores, and some chips will only apply the oc multiplier to the first core - which requires using their crappy easytune software to load a profile on windows loggin to get the increase to inject on all cores)


since i need to get a new cpu (i'm having some of the problems with board-chip compatibility) -
which is better?
FX 8150
FX 8320

they both have the same general performance
FX 8320 has better power consumption in comparison with its performance (less juice for more bang), better at multi-thread tasks, runs cooler
FX 8150 has better single-thread performance, and can top out at a higher Ghz

[Person of Color]

Fuck the first gen Bulldozers. Screw Zambezi, go Vishera.

Get an 8320 and run it at 4GHz like everyone else.

If you live near a Micro Center, return the current board and get an i5/mobo bundle. Or an AMD bundle. Your choice. No one beats Micro Center on price. Not even Shady Pauly's, and that guy is pretty damn cheap.

[Forge]

i was leaning towards the 8320, (more bang for buck), but i'm not a guru. i only know what i read

i like the board itself, i fucking hate the UEFI bios, most new boards have it 'cause they're geared for windows 8 and it makes it pretty much idiot friendly to oc. i would've like some hands on experience instead of just absorbing the information, but i can live with it and do what i can. A simple 24/7 oc will do once i'm done tinkering with what i can get my hands on to adjust.

unfortunately i live in bum-fuck middle of nowhere washington state and get my components from newegg

[Person of Color]

I used to work at Micro Center a few years ago. Great company.

[Person of Color]

Just finished getting my GA-990FXA-UD3 up and running. It's Revision 3.0, unfortunately, but I doubt I'll have the throttling issue. I didn't have it with the old board.

[Forge]

most of the throttling issues i read about had mainly to do with FX 83xx chips, overclocking, and high temps on the vrm
good ventilation & maybe adding a case fan on the side panel to blow on the vrm usually takes care of it