problems with Asus M3A78-EM

[xenios]

@ godofinternet: appreciate the thought.

@ deanjo: thanks for the info about godofinternet's workaround.

As to the MB, I took it back to the place I bought it from; its local. As it turned out, the board had an I/O glitch. I decided to go with the Foxconn A7GM-S and it works great.

The only minor issue I have now isn't with the MB; heh, its with Adobe's flash for Linux. Full-screen HD or DVD videos work fine, but online, full-screen video doesn't play too well. In XP its like watching TV. My workaround is running XP in VirtualBox... I was surprised to find flash videos play much better in virtual XP than natively in Linux. Nope, not quite the same as native XP, but close enough to enjoy watching.

[godofinternet]

well i am using the same board with 500 gb sata harddrive and sata dvdwriter i never faced this issue... initially my hardrive was bad i taught it was my mobo... however on checking it was the harddrive i got the drive replaced so no problem since then...

[Nighthog]

You returned your GA-MA78GM-S2H in vain, the 84C chipset temp is wrong/fake, it's no where close to that temperature in reality. Hell it's impossible to my knowledge to get it below 84C in the reading, I never managed and it reached whopping 127C maxxed out in my computer under 100% load whit no problem. Whit extra cooling etc I managed to keep the max temp in the 110s, but the noise wasn't worth it and as I knew the reading was fake anyway I just kept it whitout any special cooling(I didn't burn my fingers that badly on the cooler even when it supposedly was 127C+ >_>; (could keep it about 3secs and fingers where just hot and no irritation or problems afterwards. you would normally burn badly at something at 100C+ whit just touching it!)). had the computer running 5 months until the rev1.0 board got fried for another reason (not because off the "85C or 127C" chipset temp. my Phenom X4 9750 fried the mosfet on the board for some reason when I got hangs on the comp and decided to press the reboot button which gave instant fried burning mosfett anyone? It smells lovely to cause instant cancer! >_>; ). Fried another rev1.1 GA-MA78GM-S2H aswell about a month later in same way as the rev1.0.
Got then a GA-MA78GPM-DS2H rev1.0 as a replacement and this board reports that chipset temperature correctly actually! I have it at 46C right now in idle whit a fan somewhat blowing at it and it reached 70-75C under 100% load. It kept at 50-57C marks when I had no fan to blow on it I think in idle. It's not hot at all. Can if I want keep my hand on it all day... if anything you should be more worried about the mossfets on these motherboards than anything else.

Though there is a problem whit having 4Gb or more memory on this motherboard whit linux stuff. same problem existed whit the GA-MA78GM-S2H rev1.0 and 1.1. It just won't work as far as I can tell. (I've had no luck whit this)

[energyman]

Personally, would recommend against a ATI based board, but given from the choice of boards you listed I would have to say go with the foxconn. Biostar and Jetway don't have real great quality control, ASRock is Asus's budget brand, and MSI has a history of really cruddy BIOS's.

Asrock boards are fine. They lack in overclocking features - but their quality is very good. Even better than some 'quality brands'. Also there is nothing wrong with AMD/ATI Sata.

[deanjo]

Asrock boards are fine. They lack in overclocking features - but their quality is very good. Even better than some 'quality brands'. Also there is nothing wrong with AMD/ATI Sata.

You might want to do some research on that.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14261/10

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14261/11

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15256/9

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15256/10

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14661/9

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14661/10

The 790FX's utterly broken AHCI mode essentially strips the platform of its support for Native Command Queuing—a shortcoming that IOMeter nicely highlights. As soon as we go beyond a single I/O request, the nForce's transaction rate scales much better than that of the 790FX with both the workstation and database test patterns.

[energyman]

*yawn*
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RX780/RX790 Chipset Host Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RD790 PCI to PCI bridge (external gfx0 port A)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RD790 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port E)
00:0a.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RD790 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port F)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon HD 3870
02:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon HD 3870 Audio device
05:05.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2944UW / AIC-7884U (rev 01)
05:06.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt848 Video Capture (rev 12)
05:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB0400 Audigy2 Value

(lspci lies, its an 770 chipset)

dmesg:

[ 0.284013] ahci 0000:00:11.0: flags: 64bit ncq sntf ilck pm led clo pmp pio slum part
[ 0.930542] ata1.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG HD502IJ, 1AA01109, max UDMA7
[ 0.930595] ata1.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
[ 1.597196] ata2.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG HD502IJ, 1AA01110, max UDMA7
[ 1.597249] ata2.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)

that techreport 'test' is bogus anyway. They are testing with the SB600 southbridge - while the 'native' southbridge is the SB700/750. And even worse - they blame the southbridge problems on the northbridge.

>The 790FX's aging SB600 south bridge has long-standing USB performance issues that comparison with 780a makes all too clear.

but have they made sure, that NCQ even works? For linux a patch was needed - or bios update. Maybe windows shows working ncq - but it doesn't work?
I can't be assed to read the rest of it after that - but did they test power consumption too?

[deanjo]

that techreport 'test' is bogus anyway. They are testing with the SB600 southbridge - while the 'native' southbridge is the SB700/750. And even worse - they blame the southbridge problems on the northbridge.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15256/8
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15256/9

Those tests are done with the 790GX/SB750 chipset. Read . NCQ works fine with other non AMD chipsets.

BTW, you dmesg's mean nothing. Even the SB600 shows the same messages.

0000:00:12.0: flags: ncq sntf ilck pm led clo pio slum part
ata4.00: ATA-7: ST3250824AS, 3.AAH, max UDMA/133
ata4.00: 488397168 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)

[energyman]

*shrug* when I went from nf520 to a770/sb700 hd performance did not change noticable. So... what do I care about some tests done in windows?

also:
>Given AMD's unresolved AHCI issues, we've tested the 790GX with the south bridge's Serial ATA controller running in IDE mode. The nForce 750a has no problems running in AHCI mode, which is how we tested it.

so they don't tell you what that ahci problems are, they just turn it off and then pull something out of their ass because ide mode is slower. I am less and less impressed.

[monraaf]

You returned your GA-MA78GM-S2H in vain, the 84C chipset temp is wrong/fake, it's no where close to that temperature in reality. Hell it's impossible to my knowledge to get it below 84C in the reading, I never managed and it reached whopping 127C maxxed out in my computer under 100% load whit no problem.

There are a lot of reports of the so called overheating of he North Bridge of GigaByte 780G boards. I have the GA-MA78G-DS3H and according to lm-sensors it's running 89C idle and 92C when playing a game like Half Life 2. But the heat sink is just warm not hot, I can leave my fingers on it without them getting uncomfortably warm. So yes I think the chipset temp is bogus.


I tried getting the GPU temperature with aticonfig but it tells me:

ERROR - ATI Overdrive(TM) is not supported on the Default Adapter - ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics


Probably not implemented by the driver yet...

[xenios]

You returned your GA-MA78GM-S2H in vain

Not so. Even though it was a fine board I decided against it, as I mentioned earlier, because it "required too much active cooling for a quiet system." I wanted a cool running aNd quiet system, and that's what I have with the Foxconn.

So yes I think the chipset temp is bogus.

The Gigabyte tech support guy I asked about it stated my 85c temp reading was normal for that board's NB. Those 'bogus' reports might be why they replaced one of their best selling boards with a new number and a better NB heatsink.