G1.Assassin 2 - Any way to disable Onboard NIC and/or Sound?

[Zaskar]

I recently bought a G1.Assassin 2, After looking I cant find any option to disable either the Onboard NIC or Soundcard. That would be a first for me on a high end board to not be able to do that, it makes installing a different Soundcard or NIC not so clean. Tech support told me I can disable it in Windows device manager, which I knew, but having uninstalled disabled items in device manager is not a real solution for anything. I'm using the newest F11 bios now, I'm hoping this is just an oversite/bug, and that a future update will add that basic feature in.

The reason I was looking for it was the onboard Killer NIC. Apparently it has issues with Both ESET Nod 32 and Kaspersky Antivirus (not at the same time). After running the Integrated Speedtest.net test in the newest Killer NIC drivers, the system will randomly blackscreen/crash until you uninstall  those programs. It doesn't have any issues with Microsoft Security Essentials Antivirus. I have reinstalled multiple times to test, each bare bones installs. If you hold off and never run the built in speedtest.net test and just close the prompt every reboot, it will never have an issue, but I don't know if the card is running as fast as it should or if it is throttling you.  This is with the newest driver available on the Killer NIC site, I tried it again with the older driver on Gigabytes site to the same effect, but the killer drivers don't reflash the NIC with an older firmware, so it was still using the firmware from the newest one, so I cant say for sure if the issue would of happened if I had just used the older drivers from the start.
I recently also had this happen with Slysoft's AnyDVD software, removing it cleared up any crashes. All these programs worked on my last system flawlessly, and work flawlessly without the NIC drivers installed on this system.
I understand that gigabyte doesn't make the NIC or control the drivers for it, but they do control their own bios and the ability to disable the NIC card.

I have an Intel I340-T2 NIC card I tried in the system, it works fine but apparently it has a UEFI addin ability, since it added in 6 new menus to the bios (3 for each of the 2 NIC ports) with the various NIC card options you usually have to go into the cards separate bios to access. Problem is the Gigabyte UEFI bios doesn't seem to take that very well and all the menus titles are overlapping making you have to cycle through with the arrow keys. Im going to assume it would do this with any card that has a UEFI addin ability.

I heard many people had issues with KIller NIC's but I always assumed I could disable it in the bios if I ever had issues with it.
Anyone else experiencing any of these issues, or know if the ability to disable the Onboard NIC/Soundcard will be added is a future bios update?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

You should be able to disable the onboard sound by going into the BIOS and disabling the Azalia Codec. The NIC should be possible to disable in the same way but obviously the Onboard LAN functions.

[Zaskar]

Thats what I thought! It is the standard way to disable them on all other boards Ive used, but the options seem to be missing from the UEFI Bios menus on the G1.Assassin 2, atleast with Bios revision F11. Im figuring it has to be a bug or oversight or something.

[Zaskar]

Anyone else experience this on their G1.Assassin 2? Was this always like this, or something caused by a newer Bios?

[RobD]

At the moment it is not possible. I have asked Gigabyte if they can add this feature.
Will advise their response to this request.

Perhaps a workaround for now is to simply not install any driver for audio and lan, even disable them in device manager.
I know it's not quite the same as disabling in bios which frees up resources, but it may do the job for now.

[RobD]

Gigabytes response to adding the ability to disable nic and audio was that they would re-evaluate their current position with regard this feature.
I have replied to this, stressing that the ability to disable onboard hardware for which there are 3rd party alternatives, is crucial for performance system builders.
I also stressed that this bios feature has always been available from all m/b manufacturers in the past.

Will update with their next response.

[Dark Mantis]

To be honest I wasn't even aware it had been removed from the BIOS on this board. I cannot even see why they would want to do so. As you said it has always been an option previously and was very useful to some.


Please keep us informed as to the responses from the manufacturer.

[RobD]

Thy shall be done. 

[gbmaryland]

There are so many issues with this motherboard, it's not funny.

- Can't disable the audio
- Audio drivers are old and fail to work with newer HD drivers from AMD for ATI video cards
- The Audio driver installation kit checks with Creative for updates, but doesn't see the onboard audio as Creative does support it (but they have newer dirvers for the X-Fi Titanium HD)
- and a clean install of Windows 7 with the Gigabyte (old drivers) doesn't work [e.g. no sound]

In my case I picked up a new audio card, only to find out that I can't disable the onboard audio to install the other card.