Problems with CFX3200-DR? Post here (merged)

[WakeUpDead]

I have done so many installs on XP I cant even tell you how many, with the diffrent bios and drivers, F6 drivers too and any combo you can think of. Also, tryed without a clean install many times manualy too! I have followed every suggestion in this thread and other treads and forums, from standing on my head, to makeing a simple stripe size change. All drivers I tryed, were installed as many diffent ways as possible, and manualy overwriteing was done too. I have spent , well now about 6weeks, everyday trying at least 1 if not 2 diffrent combos of, a fresh install, with this bios, with this driver, done this way and so on. I didnt however, try with just single drives and only tested with RAID0, 2, 3 and 4 drive arrays!

 

I did, with the 2.14 drivers and 4/06 bios and NCQ enabled, have 6+ hrs of no errors, but that didnt last! Thats as close as I came in 6 weeks to having it run stable(well under the ULI anyhow). I tryed to duplicate that about 5 times and it never ran like that again, typical! Thats why I said they can test my board and Im sure it wont work for them too! Hell Ill even send my HDD's, CPU and memory with my board too, just to prove this problem and get them to fix it for us.

 

I just have given up at this point on this board and wanted to get back to overclocking, so I have switched to SLImage RAID0 for now. Raid cards are in the mail and they will get here early this comming week. I have never in over a year had a DFI board that I couldnt find out how to fix. I have 4 DFI's myself, a nF4-D, nF4 ultra-SLI-D, nF4 EXpert and this CFX3200! On top of that, Ive used about 8 DFI's, in friends/customers rigs! All nF4 LP's, I have yet to make one with this CFX for customers, due to this issue! Thats all I need, trying to fix 5 of these with this freeze issue, man that would suck!

 

I just placed an order for 2 more CFX3200's, I just want to see if any will work right. They should be here tues and I may be able to get some testing done by the weekend. If they are a working boards they they should work out of the box like my first one. If I have to start running all these drivers and such, Im going to send them back till I get a wroking board, so I can compair the two. I just want to have a working board and I want to help figure this out too.

[dark79]

Ok, these are 2 very important posts. The first, questions if the freezes only occur in RAID. Out of curiousity, has anyone experienced the freeze bug on single drive set ups?

 

I'm running a non-RAID config and I get the freezes once every hour like clockwork. Tried 2.13, 2.20 and the Beta drivers in F6 AND in Windows.

 

Running any apps that require access to the hard drives outside of windows (like data recovery, partitioning, etc) freezes as soon as the hard drives are accessed.

 

I didn't have this problem with I was running all PATA. I don't think this is simply a driver issue.

[WakeUpDead]

Same here, when I have used IDE drives. I had no problems, but do the IDE,s run off the ULI?

I agree with you, that its more then a driver issue, otherwise you would notice more of a diffrence running diffrent ones. I only had a few minor diffrences on 1 and it failed in 6hrs anyway. That too, is why I want to try a few of these. to compair how they act on diffrent bios and drivers.

[dark79]

Same here, when I have used IDE drives. I had no problems, but do the IDE,s run off the ULI?

I agree with you, that its more then a driver issue, otherwise you would notice more of a diffrence running diffrent ones. I only had a few minor diffrences on 1 and it failed in 6hrs anyway. That too, is why I want to try a few of these. to compair how they act on diffrent bios and drivers.

 

 

What I meant was I didn't have the freezes in the recovery apps outside of Windows when I was was using only IDE drives. So that leads me to believe that not only is it the ULI chipset, but also that it is more than just a windows driver problem.

 

Most luck I've had so far is using the beta BIOS and the non-beta F6 driver posted 9/18 on the DFI support site. With the beta it I get the m5288 error and 6-10 disk errors immediately following when I boot windows, which then causes errors with ATI drivers loading. Sometimes this results in BSOD.

[Krazeyivan]

I had a non-RAID array - video playback would freeze every so often - very occasional resets with no warning and the m5288 error never went away - with any combination of any drivers - games were badly hit 20-30 mins into playing - suffered the move to the slower controller on the mobo - and like magic all issues are gone. As far as I am concerned - thats conclusive proof, also interesting to note an Asus board with the same ULI chip had the same issues and I believe Asus fixed that issue. I have had this board from day 1 too, I am content to run off this until quad core comes out and is on the next generation crossfire boards.

Not delighted this is still not fixed - but I reached a point of wanting stability over hours and hours of time spent playing with settings that should work out of the box or with a quick update from the manufacturer.

[SiLvABuLLetZ]

I have done so many installs on XP I cant even tell you how many, with the diffrent bios and drivers, F6 drivers too and any combo you can think of. Also, tryed without a clean install many times manualy too! I have followed every suggestion in this thread and other treads and forums, from standing on my head, to makeing a simple stripe size change. All drivers I tryed, were installed as many diffent ways as possible, and manualy overwriteing was done too. I have spent , well now about 6weeks, everyday trying at least 1 if not 2 diffrent combos of, a fresh install, with this bios, with this driver, done this way and so on. I didnt however, try with just single drives and only tested with RAID0, 2, 3 and 4 drive arrays!

 

I did, with the 2.14 drivers and 4/06 bios and NCQ enabled, have 6+ hrs of no errors, but that didnt last! Thats as close as I came in 6 weeks to having it run stable(well under the ULI anyhow). I tryed to duplicate that about 5 times and it never ran like that again, typical! Thats why I said they can test my board and Im sure it wont work for them too! Hell Ill even send my HDD's, CPU and memory with my board too, just to prove this problem and get them to fix it for us.

 

I just have given up at this point on this board and wanted to get back to overclocking, so I have switched to SLImage RAID0 for now. Raid cards are in the mail and they will get here early this comming week. I have never in over a year had a DFI board that I couldnt find out how to fix. I have 4 DFI's myself, a nF4-D, nF4 ultra-SLI-D, nF4 EXpert and this CFX3200! On top of that, Ive used about 8 DFI's, in friends/customers rigs! All nF4 LP's, I have yet to make one with this CFX for customers, due to this issue! Thats all I need, trying to fix 5 of these with this freeze issue, man that would suck!

 

I just placed an order for 2 more CFX3200's, I just want to see if any will work right. They should be here tues and I may be able to get some testing done by the weekend. If they are a working boards they they should work out of the box like my first one. If I have to start running all these drivers and such, Im going to send them back till I get a wroking board, so I can compair the two. I just want to have a working board and I want to help figure this out too.

 

Well. Damn. What combination got you 6 hours stable?

[deadeyedic30]

Has anyone given up and bought an addon controller card instead ? I haven't even got my board out of the box yet, still waiting for memory and case to turn up, and i am wishing i had bought a board with a chipset from the darkside.

[SiLvABuLLetZ]

I know a few have done just that. And to those who have done just that, are we seeing performance equivalent, or better than the ULI controller?

[WR6X]

Is it really necessary to install the raid drivers (from the cd or something)? I've noticed that with a fresh windows installed, and no other software whatsoever, the problem did not occur. Tried HDtune several times in a row and no failures. But now with everything installed the problem occurs.

 

Greetz Erik

[CPDMF]

While my board has been off to RMA I have been working with a friends CFX3200 that has the same issues and then some.

 

I pulled the Raptors out and stuck in a pair of Hitachi SataII 80 gig in RAID0 16K Stripe 4K cluster. On the 728 bios with just the latest F6 drivers from DFI I haven't seen any errors in 4 days. I have been beating the living hell out of these drives with any HD bench I could find, still no errors or hangs. Plug the Raptors back in and I can force it to error within 5 minutes. He went and picked up a couple Hitachi SataII drives last night and we set up a 4 X RAID0 on the ULI with the same 16K/4K sizes and have not seen any hangs or errors yet.

The Hitachi's with Sata 3.0 have proven to be just as fast as the Raptors in everything but Random seek times but it was within 1ms so it doesn'tmatter..

 

Right now I have his rig set up with his 2 Hitachis on the ULI and a pair of Raptors on the SIL.. You have to disable the ULI controller to be able to get into the SIL controller bios and set up the drives, but after that it will work but displays the option rom error. Same is true for the SIL having to be disabled before entering the ULI RAID bios so it's still kind of lame..

 

I'll see what happens when my board comes back.

[fumduck]

I think my problem might have dissappeared for now?? Only second day from no freezes.. All I did was disable ULI in startup... Have not changed bios from what came on disk. I did load the uli drivers after windows install.. and at f6 in windows install.. But only time will tell I just check my event viewer no error M5288 since 10/08 evening....

 

EDit... froze hard two minutes later...hmm what to do next...

[SiLvABuLLetZ]

While my board has been off to RMA I have been working with a friends CFX3200 that has the same issues and then some.

 

I pulled the Raptors out and stuck in a pair of Hitachi SataII 80 gig in RAID0 16K Stripe 4K cluster. On the 728 bios with just the latest F6 drivers from DFI I haven't seen any errors in 4 days. I have been beating the living hell out of these drives with any HD bench I could find, still no errors or hangs. Plug the Raptors back in and I can force it to error within 5 minutes. He went and picked up a couple Hitachi SataII drives last night and we set up a 4 X RAID0 on the ULI with the same 16K/4K sizes and have not seen any hangs or errors yet.

The Hitachi's with Sata 3.0 have proven to be just as fast as the Raptors in everything but Random seek times but it was within 1ms so it doesn'tmatter..

 

Right now I have his rig set up with his 2 Hitachis on the ULI and a pair of Raptors on the SIL.. You have to disable the ULI controller to be able to get into the SIL controller bios and set up the drives, but after that it will work but displays the option rom error. Same is true for the SIL having to be disabled before entering the ULI RAID bios so it's still kind of lame..

 

I'll see what happens when my board comes back.

 

Interesting. Thanks J. I had already bought 4 raptors though. Damnit nvidia/dfi..