GA-X79-UD5 a faulty product?

[Arismac]

My Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 crashes every time I try to alter the Hyper-threading from Enabled to Disabled. I understand that upgrading the BIOS from F3 to F7 may help BUT I am also told that I must Disable the Hyper-threading BEFORE I can upgrade the BIOS. The board is four months old and has not been overclocked or altered from stock standard.

Lodging a support ticket with Gigabyte is not getting me anywhere because they want to know the "The sSpc number of your CPU". Neither I nor several Tech Forums including Tom's Hardware, know what they are talking about. I have installed @BIOS but now I am completely stalled and the rubbish bin looms large.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I must admit to not understanding exactly what number they are after but it shouldn't be a problem, just give them every number off the CPU top. Maybe it is the SLA number that they are after but whatever they can get what they need from the numbers printed on the processor.

You could do the upgrade with hyper threading enabled of course.

[Arismac]

Thank you for your response. It now gets even worse with this board. I got permission from the reseller (Retailer) to try flashing the BIOS. I achieved this using the @BIOS utility and am now running F10. Now I cannot get into the BIOS setup at all. Pressing DEL just gets me a blue splash screen with "GIGABYTE - UEFI DualBIOS" at the top but with no other text or links. The only way out is to reboot. The machine will still boot to Windows 7 64-bit.

Help really needed please, as my Support Ticket at Gigabyte is now being ignored.

It is starting to look as though Gigabyte might have a rotten lemon here and the user is being intentionally locked out of the BIOS for the same reason my support ticket is being ignored.

[Dark Mantis]

If you want to try going back to how the motherboard was originally delivered then the way to do this is to flash the Backup BIOS over the Main BIOS which will then be able to bot from the original version. It might take a few goes to get the timing right but it will work.

You can kick in the backup BIOS by shutting down the PSU from the wall, then hold down your case power button in and then turn on the power supply button, a few seconds later the board will start, shut off the power supply then.   Then you can turn on the power supply again and power up the board normally and DualBIOS will kick in.

[Arismac]

Thank you so much. I would love to try this but I am now in the hands of my retailer/supplier, who is apparently communicating with Gigabyte. We have some pretty tough laws in Australia generally called Consumer Protection Laws. So my supplier is going to replace under warranty unless I can get it working. This involves two sets of criteria, firstly I must not do anything to void the warranty and secondly having reported/lodged claim with the supplier I am under the "the suppliers instructions".

The way this is developing I am more convinced than ever that there is an inherent problem with this MB which is yet to be solved by the manufacturer (Gigabyte). I think my problem is only a symptom of the real problem which is "Overclock this MB at your peril". Which I did not want to do. It would be so good if somebody who has flashed to F10 would appear here so we could compare notes and get a second opinion.

[Dark Mantis]

No problem. I now understand your situation and will of course help in any way that I can but will wait for your prompting. Please keep us informed.

[Stablesgh]

When I bought my  GA-X79-UD5 it came with F3 BIOS.  F8 was the latest available art that time, so I duly updated to that.  That required @BIOS due to the new BIOS file being significantly lkarger than the  old.

I have subsequently updated the BIOS to F9 beta, F9, and F10 without problem using QFlash.

You do need to load optimised defaults at the end of the flash process, then re-enter the BIOS at the next boot to make the necessary changes to boot order, AHCI?RAID, etc.

There are a number of alleged flaws with this board, but I have experienced none of these and, compared with previous boards I have used this is sublime!

[Arismac]

Thank you for your response. My purchase is under warranty so under instructions from Gigabyte via my supplier I have flashed up to F10B. But have not got the board working properly. I can still not get into the BIOS at all. So I have asked my supplier to replace under warranty.

Fortunately Australian Consumer Protection Laws have me well covered on this one.

[Stablesgh]

Are you using a USB keyboard?  That can sometimes give problems entering the BIOS?  Having said that, my keyboard is USB.

[Arismac]

Yes I am, but the problem is that while I can see the BIOS Menu hitting "Del" presents me with a screen without text or links except for the Heading. This situation only developed after I had to reset the BIOS following a crash.