Hello. my first post. I'm not up on hardware debugging, so please go easy on me. I recently assembled a new PC using the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 rev 3.3 motherboard. I have the following hardware installed: (all new) Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB Black /Blue Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4 (in the yellow slots on the MB) HITACHI Deskstar T7K500 HDT725032VLA360 (0A33435) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive Pioneer 18X DVD±R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model DVR-112D EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card I assembled everything just fine. Windows XP pro installed just fine. I have no floppy disk but the fresh install of XP and SP2 (from a separate CD) seems to have installed the SATA drivers. But how do I know? Anyway, my PROBLEM is that any music file I play on my hard drive or off the DVD or on USB will randomly slow down then go back to normal speed. After the install I added my old IDE hard drive and it also plays music files with the same issues. (it didn't on my older machine) I am running the latest BIOS ( F11 ) and drivers from the gigabyte site. My processor is running at 2.4Ghz, not over clocking anything. I just set the BIOS to "optimized" I have tried various media players (MS media player, Winamp, etc) and they all exhibit the same issues. It seems that I get this problem no matter where the source is coming from. even a music CD in my DVD drive does this! So how can I trouble shoot or fix this? How do I KNOW my motherboard is running the latest drivers? If SATA2 is set up correctly? If my BIOS is really running with the correct settings? I am not running a RAID of any kind. I am at a loss as to what I need to try to fix this. Gigabyte have basically washed their hands. they want me to RMA the board back which isn't an option. I know it's not a bad MB anyway because I have a friend with a similar problem and he has an OLDER model gigabyte board, not even a 965... If it helps, here is some data from cpu-z: additionally I have tried the following: downloaded and installed RealTek's latest ac97 drivers (no effect on issue) set the affinity for winamp to only 1 core. (1 not 0 ) no effect. But I did notice my CPU Usage jumps up a touch when this issue is happening. I've circled it in red: I have tried a sound card and that doesn't alleviate the problem, so maybe it's not the sound chip or drivers. What the heck could it be?
Did you install the Intel .INF/chipset driver? Are you using the IDE port on the motherboard? If so, make sure to install the JMicron RAID driver, as they JMicron controller runs in PIO mode if it's driver isn't installed. You may have to set this controller to RAID mode as well (in BIOS).
I'm not running any sort of RAID configuration. I am running my DVD burner on the IDE port. I don't know if I installed the Intel .INF chipset, whatever came on teh gigabyte CD was installed and I updated all those drivers to the latest from Gigabytes website. Would I need to install teh RAID driver if I am not running any sort of RAID setup?
The P965 chipset is paired with ICH8, which lacks IDE support. The most common (and perhaps only solution) right now is a JMicron controller, which supplies 2 SATA ports and an IDE port. There is a known issue with the JMicron controller where it runs in PIO mode by default using the generic ATA drivers in Windows (which is how it sees your SATA controllers). Now, I don't have this board, but I do have an MSI P965 board with the JMicron controller, and the transfer speeds were horrid before I installed the JMicron RAID driver. It's not just my board. I've read about it with different motherboard brands, so it's a widespread problem. The driver should be on your motherboard CD. Where, I can't tell you, as it's been a long time since I had a Gigabyte motherboard. I'd be hard pressed to tell you where to look specifically. I'd look under IDE/SATA listings for a JMicron controller, but it may help to use the search function to find it on the CD. If that fails, you can always snag the latest drivers from JMicron for the JMB363 controller.
OK, I finally got around to trying this and I am still having issues. I've updated my BIOS again to F12, installed the latest INF drivers from intel, installed the JMicron controller (it had 2 options, RAID/IDE or something else, I installed one then went back and installed the other). Windows recognized new hardware (IDE controller) but it seems I still have this issue. My friend replaced his MB with a different brand and he experienced this same problem regardless of motherboard. (GB and Asus). I'm pretty sure we both are doing something wrong with our BIOS settings or something. I did change my BIOS to RAID/IDE, i didn't see anything in my BIOS that said PIO or defaulting some setting to PIO.. arrrgh, this is frustrating. any more ideas?
still looking for any answers. It happens when I am playing games too..very annoying. I read on slashdot about some bugs with duocore processors, but I don't know if it relates to my issue.
Most of them are in relation to AMD's X2 chips. I haven't heard of major issues relating to the Pentium or Core 2 chips, but this isn't to say they're not out there.
This is what I read on slashdot, but I don't know if any of this relates to my issues.. Slashdot | Theo de Raadt Details Intel Core 2 Bugs
I heard about it later, but I've not paid as much attention to it, given I don't have the hardware. I should though. What I can say is that right now, there doesn't appear to be any malicious code out there that's taking advantage of the exploits and that you might want to check Gigabyte or Asus website for a BIOS update that addresses some of these exploits.
i would love to get some others opinions on this. This can't just be happening to me and my friend. wierd...
