GA-990FXA-UD5 Living Review

[MiiCK]

Just read through this thread, very nice read absic, thanks! 

[absic]

Thanks for your comments. It's nice to know what other forum members think of such reviews.

[Dark Mantis]

To be honest I think it is an excellent review and certainly helps a lot of members especially if they are attempting their first build. 

[derobert]

Hi, i have a second thoughts about bios F7h, today it happend third time:

Computer do not power up when pressing power button. Old trick with unplugging power cable and holding power button for 30 sec helps. Then i have this:



and then i must set all settings in bios (raid etc), Windows 7 boots up, ALL DRIVERS are being reinstalled and i must restart computer. I was angry that it happened third time already so i switched back on F6. We will see if it happen agin. Also i discovered that  on F7h computer randomly boots up himself even when i turn off all usb wakeup options etc...

[Dark Mantis]

It is possible that ther BIOS file is faulty or corrupt leaving you with a BIOS that can't load. Did you use @BIOS to run the update ?

[derobert]

no, i always update from Qflash in DOS

[Dark Mantis]

It still sounds like a corrupt BIOS file for whatever reason. I would suggest updating the BIOS to the latest version and then checking it is sound. If so you can then synchronise the two BIOS versions.

[derobert]

Hi, what exactly do You mean by synchronize bios? Today it happened again! It was F6 bios now, so i think maybe motherboard is faulty? I didnt fully diagnosed it yet. Only one thing i can tell  is that when this happens i have always hibernated system and computer was plugged in power - but i dont know what it might have in common. I will try to shutdown windows and unplug the cord from power, then we will see whats next.

[derobert]

What is the newest unofficial bios for this board? something newer than F7h?

[goldfinchFX]

Yes, there's something newer than F7h. You can get version F7j (which includes a new AMD AHCI Option ROM) in the german forum. You can follow this link http://forum.gigabyte.de/index.php?page=Thread&postID=55028#post55028.
I've updated my BIOS and it seems to be more stable than the older one.

Edit: By the way it's a great review!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi, what exactly do You mean by synchronize bios? Today it happened again! It was F6 bios now, so i think maybe motherboard is faulty? I didnt fully diagnosed it yet. Only one thing i can tell  is that when this happens i have always hibernated system and computer was plugged in power - but i dont know what it might have in common. I will try to shutdown windows and unplug the cord from power, then we will see whats next.

From a cold start with the power to the machine switched off press the power button and then enter the BIOS by pressing Del. Then when you get to the main screen press F9. This will bring up an extra screen which will display more information about the two BIOS versions. Assuming they are different exit the BIOS and shutdown. Again press the power button and this time press Alt + F12 where you would normally use the Del key to enter the BIOS. You will find that then your monitor will turn black and you will see:

Press [Enter] to start copying main BIOS to backup BIOS...

When you press Enter more text will appear saying:

Writing BIOS image.... xxxKb OK

Once completed  more text will show:

BIOS successfully recovered! Power off or reset system!

Do as it says. Both Main and Backup BIOS chips now store the same BIOS version. You can now reboot as normal.

When you copy the first BIOS image to the second BIOS it also copies the current configuration
 so if you use RAID or something, set it before the copy.  It also copies over any saved profiles too.

[t0tal3d]

What bios version did you use for SSD Raid 0 array?

[absic]

Hi there,

it was the F6 BIOS (available from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#bios ) Although I am currently running the F9 BIOS without issue on the RAID 0 Array with SSD's.

[t0tal3d]

Hi there,

it was the F6 BIOS (available from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3891&dl=1#bios ) Although I am currently running the F9 BIOS without issue on the RAID 0 Array with SSD's.

Hello All,

Just thought i would post my experiences on this board. First up its the first board where ive ever experienced the slow boot after bios/before logon screen.

Have tried bios versions F4 to Current F10 Beta bios (currently F9 is giving the best results)
Bios settings:
AMD ports
RAID enabled
Ports 4/5 as SATA type
RAID 5 support enabled (allows more speed for each Sata port)
Disabled esata
Disabled gsata

Disabled boot logo
Disabled all but primary boot device SSD array
No OC at all.

Through multiple fresh installs on an intel ssd 520 60GG raid 0 array, at first with default MS drivers - poor performance around 400mbps or less
This is on a standard 64kb stripe via amd raid configuration utility after bios.
Also tried the AMD drivers - latest from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx
Still not much improvement.

Using windows backup & acronis true home image plus back (boot CD with universal restore enabled so it defaults back to MS drivers) i tried multiple restores to 64kb stripe, 128kb strip and 256kb stripe, all with fast initialization on (default).

Needless to say the best i could get was Read of 668.41 MB/s & Write 158.15MB/s - which is an OKish middle ground considering previous attempts.
However its still quite short of max performance of 550 MB/s Read & 500 MB/s Write per drive.

Finally, after talking to absic, he confirmed that were was no known work around for the boot time side of things - after bios but before windows actually loads. Raid setup does the standard 5 dots ( . . . . . ) while it detects, then it goes to custard. flashing cursor in top left corner ( - ) for about 10 seconds.
Then windows kicks in, takes about 20 seconds just to load that part. Overall boot time is about 60 seconds as the pre bios loading is quite slow too.

For anyone who is experiencing this, it does look like the chip sets responsible for all the issues, speed and slow boot times as on 880 chip set boards, or totally unrelated chip sets these issues vanish

Lesson learnt, AMD has failed on this chipset.