GA-X48-DS5 Velociraptor RAID errors - F8C BIOS seems to fix but breaks OC-ing

[Tanquen]

If I use the F7 BIOS I get RAID errors and random crashes. It makes no difference if I overclock or not. I can overclock the CPU and it is in all other ways, stable.

I believe the F8C BIOS is an attempt to fix the RAID issue. Maybe it is just a side effect of the noted "Update Intel AHCI ROM" in the F8C BIOS description but it works for me.

The problem is that with the F8C BIOS I can no longer overclock at all. If I change the FrontSide Bus from the default of 333 to even 334 the GA-X48-DS5 will not boot and reset the BIOS settings. With the F7 BIOS this is completely stable, as it should be.

P.S.

This was Gigabytes reply to the same question:

Dear Customer

Are there any particular issue you are encounter with it without any overclocking?
When overclocking we are unable to guarantee any stability results

[Tanquen]

Help?

[absic]

Hi there,
Unfortunately I can't see a way to solve this. The F8C BIOS is actually beta and Gigabyte use a get out of jail card when making this kind of release.

What is a BETA?
BETA describes a new version that is reliable yet may not include all the features of the final product. During this phase we are previewing new features and gathering customer input to insure our product provides the best experience possible.

And their reply to you regarding the problem is basically saying: If your system is stable at default settings, then this BIOS is OK and there's nothing that we need to do.

So, in the short term, you either need to go back to F7 where you can overclock but have instability with your raid array or you stay at F8C, have a stable system but can't overclock. I would like to think that later releases of the BIOS would solve this problem, but there are no guarantees.

[Tanquen]

I hear you but I bought this board because they said I could use it to over clock and had RAID support. It's now like two+ years and the board was not stable (over clocked or not) until the F8c beta. Intel said it was not their issue Gigabyte said it was not there issue and WD said it was not their issue and then F8c comes out and the RAID issue with VelociRaptors just fixes its self. Now the F8c has been beta for almost a year. There is nothing wrong with my hardware as it over clocks fine with the F7 BIOS. Even though F7 did fun things like set my CPU voltage at 1.5v with all BIOS setting at default. F8c don't do this among other things. I'm guessing if I could match the F7 settings I could get it to OC but I only ever just bumped up the FSB. I don't know what all F7 was doing that F8c is not. Whatever it is, it's lame that they can just leave it in beta and abandon the board after they have everyone's money.

[Tanquen]

First they say F7 should work and that they are going to test it, then when I tell them the problem again they just say that "Through trial and error you can obtain the best setup for your system" This is support?



Answer - 900008
Answer :  Dear Customer

Unless there is a major change/update in the beta bios or else it will stay as beta.

 
Question - 900008
From :  Richard Berry [ r123@pacbell.net ]
Sent :  3/26/2010 15:45
Question :  F8c is BETA, I need the final.

"BETA describes a new version that is reliable yet may not include all the features of the final product. During this phase we are previewing new features and gathering customer input to insure our product provides the best experience possible."
Answer - 898790
Answer :  Dear Customer

If the F8c is more stable for you, you can use that bios, but in terms of overclocking we cannot make any guarantee. Through trial and error you can obtain the best setup for your system
 
Question - 898790
From :  Richard Berry [ r123@pacbell.net ]
Sent :  3/24/2010 11:00
Question :  All SATA no USB drives.

Errors reported in windows log files include
a) parity error on device 0 (iastor.sys raid driver)
b) iastor.sys has failed to respond in the time allocated

I also had Random hard drive corruption and loss of data.

The GA-X48-DS5 has the ICH9R Intel chipset and I'm using the Intel Matrix Storage Console version 8.9.0.1023. The errors are random and have something to do with the Intel controller and the Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS drives. I talked to all the companies at the time and no one would or could help.
I have a dual boot system and see the same thing in Windows 7 (64bit), Vista (32bit) and Windows XP (32bit).

It can take a few weeks for it to happen but last year before the F8c BIOS came out I had a folder on one of the drive with about 80GBs of large files in it and if I copied it from a single 1TB drive to the VelociRaptor RAID I would always get an error before it finished. After the F8c BIOS, I no longer got the error.

The F8c BIOS updates the Intel AHCI ROM and I'm thinking this is why I don't receive the RAID error if I use the F8c BIOS.

This is a thread with some folks having the same issues:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1321611
 
Answer - 898100
Answer :  Dear Customer

Which version of the raid driver you are using under Vista 32 for the ICH10R, we will have our team run some test with the F7 bios under raid 0 with the same driver version and raid utility. What type of error message did you encounter during large file transfer and how long towards the file transferring. It is being transfer to an USB drive or to which drive?