Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Good board - abysmal support. July 16, 2010
Leon Kunstenaar
The board looks well made and when I finally overcame their incompetent support it has been running solidly for the past two weeks.
For starters, they recommended the wrong memory (be sure to get 1.5 to 1.65 vold memory for this board.)
I include here my correspondence with them so you can judge for yourself.
7/3/2010 13:08
Question : Installing Fresh copy of XP from a CD. After Loading programs from the CD I get a blue screen when it says "starting windows" Complains about the hard drive. I have thoroughly reviewed SATA settings, swapped drive and cables. Still no luck. Please assist.
Dear customer,
Did current Winxp has Service pack 2 include ? Wixp with SP2 is require, and did you load SATA controller driver from floppy disk turning Winxp installation ? if not please do.
my comment: Specially loaded SATA drivers are not required.
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7/9/2010 07:34
Question : I did use win XP with SP 2 but could only install with one memory stick'.
I did not get any floppy disk with SATA software in the package. I did not load SATA drivers during WIN XP install but the SATA worked anyway.
In several calls to your support people, no one mentioned the XP SP 2 issue which seems to be wrong anyway.
I think the canned answer you gave me in this message is very out of date.
When I spoke to your help technician he told me the match to BIOS memory voltage settings to value on the memory stick label which was 1.7 - 1.9 volts. Even though the BIOS permitted me to do this, it still did not work with 2 memory sticks. The tech then told me to get 1.5v memory anyway.
I know both memory sticks are good because either one works when it is the only one in the board. Nothing works in the 2nd white slot next to the CPU.
Before ordering the board I checked with you regarding what memory to get and I was told to get Kingston KHX1600C9D3/2G. This memory has the wrong voltage. So your technician steered me to the wrong memory. which I now have to return and exchange.
The power supply I used had only 4 leads going to ATX_12V_2x4 slot. Is that a problem?
I have switched to another power supply with 8 leads going to that connector. I just added the second stick with xp installed and it seems to work. Did using the full connector make the difference?
Also please tell me what is the difference between rev 1.0 and rev 2.0 for this board.
Other issues:
The software install disk you supplied cannot find the Realtek Audio driver and every time I reboot I get in to the "found new hardware" loop which takes some effort to get out of.
While the "Gigabyte Utilities" can all be installed at once, the 15 other programs you supply all require a separate reboot. Along with the "found new hardware" loop mentioned above, this was a very tedious process.
Though the board seems well made, I feel that installation was much more of a hassle than reasonable due the poor information given me by your support people.
I hope you can address these issues with relevant and accurate answers. Otherwise I might have to go back to using Asus boards.
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Their answer - note how their answer (those parts that are decipherable)has very little to with my questions. I like the board and would buy another one now that I know what the issues are - no thanks to them.
We are sorry, you have not provide complete components information, this will cause us difficult to provide troubleshooting. Accordind to your information, your current power supply is 330W only which was not match Intel chipset requirement, minimum 500W power supply is require.
Of cause you can load Winxp to SATA drive without driver but it was loaded in IDE mode.
What brand and spec memory was using on system? Boot system up with single stick memory on firt white color slot close to cpu, to in bios setting, under M/B intelligent Tweaker, on advance memory setting, Extreme Memory Profile to disable, change Performance Enhance from turbo to Standard, check current model memory voltage spec (check memory module label), if memory is higher than 1.5v spec, go in bios under M/B intelligent tweaker on memory voltage control item adjust memory voltage match.
For example: current memory is 1.7v, go in bios M/B intelligent tweaker on memory voltage control item change to 1.7v, save setup exit, put the second stick memory on same color coded slot, check if system will boot with 2 stick memory.
 Great product! USB3 and SATA3 for future to low cost. Recommended May 7, 2010
Joao Estrella (Manta, Ecuador)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this one motherboard to arm my PC with core i5 750 and memories ddr3 corsair xms 1600 Mhz. The product works well.
I did not have problems of installation ... it was easy. Till now it does not give me problems.
I do not have devices usb3 or sata3 but I will have them in future and for this moment this one product will have value extra.
If they want to use his ddr3 to 1600Mhz, to activate in BIOS XtremeMemory's option.
My previous Mobo was an Asus P45, it me was OK with this mobo. Now that I updated my system to P55 Gigabyte surprised me with a good product.
 Good Board with Minor Issues May 1, 2010
R. Williams (Maryland, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
PROS:
USB3, Easy overclocking for novices, Reasonable legacy device support, Fan speed control, Good manual
CONS:
Adapters for parallel and serial ports and floppy drive cable are not included. Only one PS2 port for either keyboard or mouse. Some minor issues - see below.
COMMENTS:
I bought this board in April 2010 and installed the i5 750 CPU and two SATA disks in an Intel RAID mirror. The entire process went smoothly, including the installation of Windows XP, which required the RAID driver from the Gigabyte DVD on an F6 floppy. When the OS was running, I found that I could not write or format a floppy disk, but reading was OK. The problem was caused by the F4 BIOS that shipped with the board, which assigned a conflicting address to the floppy drive. Any BIOS more recent than F4 solves this problem. Another issue was a short beep from the PC speaker that occurred randomly at 10 to 15 minute intervals. This seems to be an Intel problem with the CPU, which emits a false high temperature alarm when switching power states. The solution is not to enable the over temperature alarm in the BIOS, or else to disable the C3/C6/C7 state support. These are minor issues, but they can be vexing for anyone who is unaware of them.
I would have given this board a five star rating, but I subtracted one star because of the extra effort needed to get this board working satisfactorily. Gigabyte should publish "release notes" that detail these issues.
UPDATE July 2010
This board continues to perform well and it is much faster than my previous Pentium IV system. There is an issue with support for legacy DOS programs such as Norton Ghost that has been reported for this and other Gigabyte boards. In order for the keyboard and mouse to be recognized by DOS, you must use a USB keyboard. By default the BIOS supports the USB keyboard as a legacy PS2 device. This leaves the single PS2 port free for a PS2 mouse, which is required for DOS. You may use a USB mouse with a PS2 adapter if the mouse supports the adapter.
 Motherboard no good April 8, 2010
Raul Hernandez (Ca)
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Motherboard did not work very unhappy . Thank You Amazon on a great job on my refund it was fast and simple . Amazon deserves 5 stars for excellent service
Motherboard DOA April 4, 2010
P. Wilcox
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I ordered this motherboard from Amazon.com and after doing the installation determined the motherboard was DOA. I am a very experienced computer builder and have built dozens of computers. After determining the motherboard was bad after carefull inspection I saw a few bent pins in the CPU socket. I'm absolutely positive I didn't cause this so I must assume this came from Gigabyte this way. After reading reviews at other sites I saw where this motherboard has a fair amount of DOA's. Amazon's customer service was amazing and I had a replacement motherboard in my hands in two days. Shipping didn't cost me anything either way. I am very impressed how Amazon handled this return! The replacement motherboard has been flawless so far and I am very happy with it. If it wasn't for the DOA I would have given it 5 Stars. One gripe I have about this motherboard though is there is no longer an option to turn NUMLOCK OFF in the BIOS. I contacted tech support and they claim there was no room left for this feature in the BIOS. I'm a little disappointed with this answer but can live with it. This computer was built as a replacement computer for my Dad and has a I5-750, 4 Gigs of Corsair memory, Asus GT240 video card, Corsair 650TX power supply and a 640 Gig WD (32 Meg Cache) Sata hard drive and Sony Sata optical drive, Antec 300 case, and Windows 7 (64 Bit) Professional. Everything went togather perfectly. Very happy with my purchase so far.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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