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Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5

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ZapTap

Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Location
Upstate SC
So I've finally gotten money :attn: and I've had my eyes on this motherboard for a while now.. is there any reason that I should wait or that I shouldn't buy it? tri-SLi is more than enough for me, as I only have 7 expansion slots anyway, and I love the dual-BIOS and 2xCopper that Gigabyte offers on it.. And ultimately, it'll be a pretty huge step up from my current board. But I want to know of any potential downsides beforehand, and it's harder to find this kind of stuff on a motherboard than it was for my case. So what better place to come? :bday: so any help is greatly appreciated.. thank you very much :salute:
 
IF you are buying now with an eye to buying a bulldozer processor later...I would wait until the Bulldozer processors begin to be used in an actual 990FX motherboard. I mean you are only using a 2 core processor now and certainly do not need more board to just run that cpu. BD cpu will bring some changes in reaction to bios and then we will begin to see what these boards really do with the cpu they were designed for. Of course that is how I would do it since I would hate to waste money today on a board that was less than super with the new big-boy cpu to come in what we all hope is a short time now.
 
IF you are buying now with an eye to buying a bulldozer processor later...I would wait until the Bulldozer processors begin to be used in an actual 990FX motherboard. I mean you are only using a 2 core processor now and certainly do not need more board to just run that cpu. BD cpu will bring some changes in reaction to bios and then we will begin to see what these boards really do with the cpu they were designed for. Of course that is how I would do it since I would hate to waste money today on a board that was less than super with the new big-boy cpu to come in what we all hope is a short time now.

That's a great thought.. and you hit the nail on the head with my plans :p but thank you for your input. I'll probably wait until release and hopefully the board will be a good one.. I've already got my eye on it after all :facepalm:
 
It's really good board. I don't have big problems with mine ( even that there is some vdrop for what others are complaining ) but better wait till BD release as we may see some new revisions or some new boards.
From issues there is already mentioned vdrop ( should be fixed for BD ), sometimes there are problems while running drives on SATA3/RAID ( it's just running with max SATA2 transfers in some RAID configs ) and unlocking cores isn't working. Except that, all is fine ;)
 
From issues there is already mentioned vdrop ( should be fixed for BD ), sometimes there are problems while running drives on SATA3/RAID ( it's just running with max SATA2 transfers in some RAID configs ) and unlocking cores isn't working. Except that, all is fine ;)

That's good to know.. so for the SATA controller, that's only an issue with running RAID, correct? and if you have RAID, it slows it down to SATA2 speeds? and is that only for the RAID array or all drives? and core unlocking.. what's the problem there? do you know if fixes are planned for any of this?
 
It's really good board. I don't have big problems with mine ( even that there is some vdrop for what others are complaining ) but better wait till BD release as we may see some new revisions or some new boards.
From issues there is already mentioned vdrop ( should be fixed for BD ), sometimes there are problems while running drives on SATA3/RAID ( it's just running with max SATA2 transfers in some RAID configs ) and unlocking cores isn't working. Except that, all is fine ;)

How do you know the vdroop problem will be fixed for BD?
 
SO far it is rumored that it will be fixed when a BD cpu is in the socket. No one can say for certain that I have knowledge about.

yeah i've heard this too. it sounded like it's differences in power regulation/usage in bulldozer.
 
Yep, all 990FX boards have power design for bulldozers that isn't included in older cpus so if producers won't add manual vdrop settings like LLC in bios then it will work on standard BD settings ( what means vdrop for older cpus ). So far Gigabyte boards don't have this option in bios.

About RAID ... I'm still not sure what it's all about but I was testing my SSD/RAID and it seems like it's working better on 2/3 SATA ports than on 0/1 ( even that there should be 6 the same SATA3 ports ). There is also option in Gigabyte bios to enable RAID5 and I noticed that it's helping even if you are running RAID0. 2x Crucial M4 are making up to ~560MB/s read when something isn't right and up to 800MB/s when SATA3 is enabled so limit is about ~275MB/s for each drive ( except SATA3 SSD in RAID noone will notice that, maybe that's why not many users were complaining for this issue ). Single drives are working fine.

About cpu cores unlocking ... I haven't seen anyone who was able to run stable unlocked cpu on Gigabyte 990FX boards ( if I'm wrong please add comment ). It looks like you can unlock 1-2 cores but when you try to use anything like F@H, prime95 etc you get instant freeze. Many users were complaining that they are able to unlock cores on older boards but they can't on 990FX UD3/UD5/UD7. Probably the same is with my Phenom II X2 that is running 100% stable 24/7 @4.1GHz+ but no matter which core I try to unlock all is freezing in windows. I will replace it soon so I don't care much.
 
Latest BIOS F6D is fixing SATA3 bandwidth.
2x Crucial M4 64GB

raidm4d6sm2.jpg

It's on daily system , 1 partition full in 85%.
So about 200MB/s more only by BIOS update :thup:
I still can't make stable cpu after core unlocking.
 
Latest BIOS F6D is fixing SATA3 bandwidth.
2x Crucial M4 64GB

View attachment 100354

It's on daily system , 1 partition full in 85%.
So about 200MB/s more only by BIOS update :thup:
I still can't make stable cpu after core unlocking.

Well that's good news.. I'd still like to hear better though. If they add llc, i'll have no issues with buying this motherboard:)
 
Still no BIOS with LLC and is also missing disable APM option ( this is mainly for FX ). For second "issue" there is software solution that I found here. "Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 has no bios setting to disable APM (Application Power Management). Without this disabled, the motherboard will maintain the TDP limit when overclocking or overvolting above the limits. As a result APM will throttle some of the cores back to lower Pstates during heavy, multithreaded workloads reducing performance. ... To get around this, we have to use AMD OverDrive software (above). We enable TurboCore, apply, then disable TurboCore … this in effect also disables Application Power Management. "
It's really working also on UD5 but after reboot you have to set it again or cores will throttle to about 2.8-3GHz so it's better option for benchies.
LLC option is in beta BIOS for UD7 so I bet that there is beta for UD5 too ... just not public :(
After 2 short evenings I was able to set my FX-8120 to quite stable 4.5GHz ~1.45V idle, ~1.32V load ( this vdrop is making me sad ).

edit:
I got F7a beta from Gigabyte so will check it later. No info what has been changed.
 
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Did you find out about the LLC options for the UD7 from Sin0822?
This is only the 2nd I have heard of this.
Does the AOD trick work with the ud7 and vdroop as well, or just the APM?
 
Did you find out about the LLC options for the UD7 from Sin0822?
This is only the 2nd I have heard of this.
Does the AOD trick work with the ud7 and vdroop as well, or just the APM?

I was contacting with Gigabyte general support and I got answer that there is no newer bios for UD5 than F7a ( date is 18 oct ). When I asked about bios with LLC and APM like this beta for UD7 that has Sin0822 they answered that my question has been forwarded to bios support as they only have F7a ( so I'm waiting since then ).
I see no difference between F7a and F6. No LLC or APM options in bios.
All is working the same on UD3/UD5/UD7 as these boards are almost the same with little changes. Without LLC/APM bios you can overclock it in the same way, disabling APM everytime you start system.
I actually found info about AOD trick in review made on UD7.
There is no software way to control LLC for now.
 
I saw only one revision of UD3/UD5 and there will be new one but I'm not sure when. It still has vdrop issues and no option to turn off APM in BIOS.
Since my last post there were no BIOS updates and after many mails to Gigabyte I got only answer that if there are no LLC +APM options in BIOS then board won't support it. Simply have to wait till next revision.
What more, users who already got boards in 1st revision can't count on RMA for voltage problems because Gigabyte is sure that all is within AMD specification and there is nothing wrong with boards ... I will leave it without comments :rain:.
 
aw well that s**ks, i was really liking the color, and layout of the UD5 and really looks well built, but i saw that UD7 has the LLC options on their new bios update and that would take out the Vdrops from what i read. if that is true then ill probly go for the UD7 but i need to read and find out more about it if its true if not then i guess ill have to go with sabertooth/CHV on this one.
 
There is a hardware revision coming for the UD7, 1.0, that enables LLC. People that buy the board in the next few weeks will get LLC, but us poor early adopters will not. Makes me furious.
 
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