GA-8KNXP for New (First Time) System?

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Thunder9

I'm building my first system, and thinking about using the GA-8KNXP.
I'll be using a P4 2.4 and 2 X 512 MB DDR400. Some of the posts I'm
reading have me concerned, so is there any tips you can give me to
make this as painless as possible?

#1. What should I get for RAM? Lets say about $100 per 512 MB stick.

#2. To optimize this for multimedia, what do you think about putting
the OS on PATA and putting the high capacity drives on SATA Raid 0? I
recall something about two buses... the PCI (for PATA and all
peripherical cards) and the onboard SATA. Is that right? If I use
the on board SATA, do I have to disable something else?

#3. How many optical drives can I use? Are optical drives simply IDE?

#4. Any other issues to be concerned about (ie incompatibilities to
watch for... video, etc.)

#5 This board seems to have a lot of features, but also a lot of
problems. Maybe its not worth it? Maybe I should go for a more
simple (ie less trouble prone) board?

Thanks,
Thunder9
 
I'm tickled to death with my GA-8KNXP

As far as memory, some people report having problems, some don't.

I bought my MB, CPU (3.2Ghz) and 2gig of DDR400 ram all from a local
computer shop.
The shop actually installed the ram and the CPU and bench-checked it for me
right in front of me (they offered to, I didn't ask) to make sure everything
worked,

They get too many returns from novices that don't install things correctly
such as the heat sink, then return damaged parts.

Anyway.... the ram they installed is nothing special, it's not even a big
name brand. but they did choose all four 512meg sticks from the same lot.

The system has been running for the last several months, 24/7 with no
problems at all.
 
WE build custom systems with the GA-8KNXP motherboard (our Bistro875MAX) and
the motherboard is now solid with updated BIOS. If you make your own, the
first thing would be to have the latest F6 BIOS, or the FB BIOS if you get
the revision 2 board, on a floppy and update the main BIOS. The earlier
memory issues related to boards with the 875P chipset have been resolved
with the revised BIOS, but we still up the voltage by +2 (from the default
2.5 to 2.7) for maximum stability. We use Mushkin PC3200 Black memory with
no experiences with any bad DIMMs. We always test the memory for 12-14
hours running MemTest86 and have always seen zero errors with this memory.
Since you're considering the 2.4C Pentium 4, you have a little more headroom
to overclock, and could use the PC3500 level 2 DIMMs, if you'd like.

There onboard support for 4 SATA drives, as well as for 8 IDE/ATAPI drives.
You can hook up a maximum of 4 optical drives to IDE 1 and 2 (or,
optionally, external drives using Firewire or USB.) IDE 3 and 4 should only
be used for ATA hard drives in either a base or RAID configuration. You
don't have to disable anything to use all available drive options, but do
need to take your time when providing BIOS settings to take advantage of
everything. The one pitfall with any Gigabyte motherboard is the "broken
English" used in all of the documentation, but if you're not in too big a
hurry, and have some common sense, you can decipher their written advice
easily. Any drives connected to the onboard Intel ICH5-R SATA, the Silicon
Image SATA, or the ITE GigaRAID ATA need controller drivers to be added
separately, and if a OS boot drive will be on one of these controllers,
you'll need the drivers on floppy for use during the OS installation (using
the F6 prompt to specify additional drivers to slipstream into the
installation.) You will get better performance if you configure the BIOS
settings for any SATA drives to use native SATA mode instead of IDE
remapping, in order to bypass the PCI bus.

If you install a Pentium 4 that uses the 800MHz front side bus (which the
2.4C does) you'll need to change the default BIOS setting of 133MHz to
200MHz yourself. Many of the advanced BIOS options aren't available unless
you press the CTRL+F1 keys simultaneously after you're at the main BIOS
screen. You may not even notice that the menu has changed, but when you
access the submenus, you'll have additional options in order to modify the
memory voltage and the CPU speed.

I hope this helps you out. I do highly recommend this board.

Sincerely,
Russell
http://tastycomputers.com
 
WE build custom systems with the GA-8KNXP motherboard (our Bistro875MAX) and
the motherboard is now solid with updated BIOS. If you make your own, the
first thing would be to have the latest F6 BIOS, or the FB BIOS if you get
the revision 2 board, on a floppy and update the main BIOS. The earlier
memory issues related to boards with the 875P chipset have been resolved
with the revised BIOS, but we still up the voltage by +2 (from the default
2.5 to 2.7) for maximum stability. We use Mushkin PC3200 Black memory with
no experiences with any bad DIMMs. We always test the memory for 12-14
hours running MemTest86 and have always seen zero errors with this memory.
Since you're considering the 2.4C Pentium 4, you have a little more headroom
to overclock, and could use the PC3500 level 2 DIMMs, if you'd like.

There onboard support for 4 SATA drives, as well as for 8 IDE/ATAPI drives.
You can hook up a maximum of 4 optical drives to IDE 1 and 2 (or,
optionally, external drives using Firewire or USB.) IDE 3 and 4 should only
be used for ATA hard drives in either a base or RAID configuration. You
don't have to disable anything to use all available drive options, but do
need to take your time when providing BIOS settings to take advantage of
everything. The one pitfall with any Gigabyte motherboard is the "broken
English" used in all of the documentation, but if you're not in too big a
hurry, and have some common sense, you can decipher their written advice
easily. Any drives connected to the onboard Intel ICH5-R SATA, the Silicon
Image SATA, or the ITE GigaRAID ATA need controller drivers to be added
separately, and if a OS boot drive will be on one of these controllers,
you'll need the drivers on floppy for use during the OS installation (using
the F6 prompt to specify additional drivers to slipstream into the
installation.) You will get better performance if you configure the BIOS
settings for any SATA drives to use native SATA mode instead of IDE
remapping, in order to bypass the PCI bus.

If you install a Pentium 4 that uses the 800MHz front side bus (which the
2.4C does) you'll need to change the default BIOS setting of 133MHz to
200MHz yourself. Many of the advanced BIOS options aren't available unless
you press the CTRL+F1 keys simultaneously after you're at the main BIOS
screen. You may not even notice that the menu has changed, but when you
access the submenus, you'll have additional options in order to modify the
memory voltage and the CPU speed.

I hope this helps you out. I do highly recommend this board.

Sincerely,
Russell
http://tastycomputers.com
Click to expand...

Thank you so much. This post will definitely be saved as a reference!


Is the revision 2 board better? I think I have a connection that
could get me this board if its worth it...
 
We have yet to receive any of the rev2 boards from any of our distributors.
Gigabyte won't give any information. From what I understand, the rev2 board
has an updated onboard Realtek sound chip and they moved the location of the
case or PSU fan pinout. Anyone else have any add'l info?

Russell
http://tastycomputers.com
 
We have yet to receive any of the rev2 boards from any of our distributors.
Gigabyte won't give any information. From what I understand, the rev2 board
has an updated onboard Realtek sound chip and they moved the location of the
case or PSU fan pinout. Anyone else have any add'l info?

Russell
http://tastycomputers.com
Click to expand...

GB's autumn (Prescott?) i875p refresh:

GA-8KNXP (Rev 2.0):
<http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8KNXP (Rev 2.0).htm>

GA-8KNXP Ultra (Rev 2.0):
<http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8KNXP Ultra (Rev 2.0).htm>

GA-8I875:
<http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8I875.htm>

GA-8I875 Ultra:
<http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8I875 Ultra.htm>

Later,

CN.
 
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