8K3A bios's

[SteveI]

There have been a lot of talk about memory performance over 166fsb. Let's not start up again please.

I have 3 8K3a's and have been messing about with different cpus, memory, and bios's... (mostly because of defective memory).

I've seen first hand what different bios's do, stability, performance, upper limits. Before I had to stop.. I tried the latest flavor... the 8K3A2B01... I have to tell you it rocks...

Look below... before you trash it, look at the FSB and this is a Morgan @1.4. It would score much higher with a faster cpu. ALso, this is with slowest memory timings, and 4w on. (before I killed it, my 1.82ghz, with same fsb was about 150 pts higher)

[Genius]

First of all, SiSoft's or any other company's memory benchmark means very little for real world benchmarks. I want faster framerates in my games, which the 2815 bios provides above all, as well as stability.

Secondly, the 8K3A2B01 will not initialize RAID properly when using USB. Since USB is pretty much a necessity these days, most would rather not have to disable it. Epox needs to fix this before I can even try a new bios.

[WinXP]

I have the 8K3A+ an use the 2b01 bios. I do not use any usb connections. The bios has good stability an lets me run high fsb. I will stick with this one till a better one might come out. Here is a cheap stick of Samsung dtm I tried on this board at 225fsb.
http://www.geocities.com/winxp/Samsungdtl225fsb.html
This might favorite mobo to use, it is like a timex just keeps on ticking. LOL

[SteveI]

Originally posted by Genius
First of all, SiSoft's or any other company's memory benchmark means very little for real world benchmarks. I want faster framerates in my games, which the 2815 bios provides above all, as well as stability.

Secondly, the 8K3A2B01 will not initialize RAID properly when using USB. Since USB is pretty much a necessity these days, most would rather not have to disable it. Epox needs to fix this before I can even try a new bios.

Regarding 2815... I only did remedial benching.. My priority was identifying the defective ram at the time. Not everyone has the same priorities... I'm happy for you that you found the best bios for framerates. However, in my situation, I'm more concerned with multimedia... DV encoding, decoding and the like. What is optimal for one person, is not for all... My comments were more of a heads up for those who may be interested, that's all.

Thanks for the headsup regarding the RAID. I am on a +, w/3 usb devices. I am not using raid at the moment, and was wondering why it wasn't showing up in device manager. Since you mentioned it, I might try adding a hdd, just to test it out. What happens exactly? Is it dos mode USB support that causes it, or any USB devices?

[Dano]

I have been having terrible problems with my 8K3A... Everything was fine until I got my Gainward GF4 Ti4200 GS.

All components running at stock speeds and I was getting nasty crashes.. the screen went like a chequered flag.. reset did not recover - it had to be powered off and cold booted.

I replaced my PSU thinking that was the issue... It still happened. Just as I was about to buy replacement DDR ram I thought I would have a got with the latest BIOS.

At some point in the past I flashed with 8k3a2a25. Perhaps I did this around the time I install the GF4??.. I can't be sure. All I know is since I flashed to 8K3A2B01 the crash has disappeared :-D


I can now run in "Turbo" mode instead of "Normal". I don't know if there is a bug in 8k3a2a25?? I looked on Epox site and it seems to have been withdrawn..

Anyway, all seems to be working now. Just wanted to write to say 8K3A2B01 has fixed a nasty issue I had!

As if that is not enough good news my 3D mark (2001SE) score has rocketed. You can see from attachment "before and after" scores

Cheers,

-- Dano

[Genius]

Originally posted by SteveI


Regarding 2815... I only did remedial benching.. My priority was identifying the defective ram at the time. Not everyone has the same priorities... I'm happy for you that you found the best bios for framerates. However, in my situation, I'm more concerned with multimedia... DV encoding, decoding and the like. What is optimal for one person, is not for all... My comments were more of a heads up for those who may be interested, that's all.

Thanks for the headsup regarding the RAID. I am on a +, w/3 usb devices. I am not using raid at the moment, and was wondering why it wasn't showing up in device manager. Since you mentioned it, I might try adding a hdd, just to test it out. What happens exactly? Is it dos mode USB support that causes it, or any USB devices?

I have to wonder though, is multimedia, DV encoding/decoding actually faster at a higher fsb with fast command decode disabled and if so, by how much? I don't think the 1 or 2 second difference that I suspect, if even that, is worth it. But as you stated, it's all based on your priorities/preferences. As far as the RAID problem, simply having two drives in a RAID configuration and having your USB ports enabled in the bios will cause a hang during the Highpoint detection phase. This is regardless of the legacy USB support I believe. I haven't tried changing just that feature in the bios nor do I intend to, because I need my legacy USB support when I boot to DOS with a floppy. I only wish Epox would do something about it, rather than focus solely on the 8RDA and everything else newer. It's a rather glaring bug and I highly doubt it's too much trouble to fix. I wouldn't mind picking up a 2700+ or higher, but this is stopping me from doing so.

[MasterPooBaa]

Checkered flag crash???
UH OH!

Last night i just read a loooong and detailed thread about how There were massive problems with the Gainward it4200 64mb verson and (possibly) also the 128mb. Check your card man, In particular the collection of large Capacitors at the top right! Look for signs of leakage or discollouration. If there is damage, sent it back!

See following link for more info:
www.amdmb.com/index.php#News-5574

[SteveI]

Thanks Genius.. When I have time, I'll mess with the raid and see what pops up... It's been a long weekend for me... 2 defective sticks of memory, and a fried CPU have sapped all of my desire to mess with any of my PCs any more.

[Sideburns]

Wait there guys

Whats this about the raid screen hanging? Mine does take its sweet time detecting and i am using the 2b01 bios and 1 pair of the usb port available. Could i switch back to an older bios and fix the raid hanging? and if so which bios should i use?

[Dano]

[quote]Originally posted by MasterPooBaa
[b]Checkered flag crash???

Thanks MasterPooBaa I will check it out.
To anyone else who is interested in this bug, related links below

<http://www.amdforums.com/showthread....hreadid=185842>

<http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5144>

http://www.amdforums.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1>

[BigDov]

I've just recently switched to the 2B01 bios and have noticed benchmark improvements........ real gaming though, not too big of an improvement.

[Dano]

I took my card back the retailer and they gave me a full refund.

I think I will replace it with a 128Mb DDR Radeon 9000 Pro 2.

While I have a 8K3A (4x AGP) there doesn't seem anypoint in buying a "top of line" graphics card.

By the time I upgrade my motherboard the GFX chipset will probably be out of date!

Cheers for the advice,

-- Dano

[MasterPooBaa]

And there is not very much benefit from 8x agp yet anyway.