Gigabyte GA-7IX users, avoid 7ix.f2 bios

[Nuno]

The rumors that it decreases performance is true, at least with my G400/Athlon 600:
3dmark99:
f1: 5980
f2: ~4400
Quake2/tgl
f1: 128 fps
f2: ~90 fps

That was the first time I saw a bios "upgrade" to decrease performance by that much.

[DentyCracker]

I assume that the bios settings were the same in each case?

[Nuno]

Yes they were. When flashing the bios the settings remain the same. But I checked it anyway. And when reflashed F1 bios, the settings remained the same, but the performance was back to normal.

Now this sucks. The suport for the GA-7IX from gigabyte has been less than satisfactory. Few bios updates, and buggy bios updates. F2 doesn´t offer much things to me, but it is necessary to run 750+ Mhz Athlons, because F1 bios doesn´t recognize 2/3 cache divider.

[DosFreak]

Did you e-mail Gigabyte?

[Nuno]

Maybe I will, but I think they already might know it, it was reported in www.amdzone.com
Besides that, I don´t have a good experience with their technical suport. Their last bios recognized my G400 as a GA-MGA400 with all kinds of trouble, I e-mailed them and never got a response. Abit technical suport was much better. At least they replied.

[Nuno]

Now that´s a cheap one. Look at this fantastic bios hack, courtesy of Gigabyte, in order to support Athlon 2/5 cache divider:
.
Neat, eh?

No wonder performance took a dive.

[Sensei]

Not sure if you've seen it yet, but Gigabyte released a new BIOS that addresses this problem.

http://www.amdzone.com/files/7ix_f3a.zip

Pete

[Nuno]

Yo, thanks. I´ve seen it. Just tried it and it´s ok now.