*Official* Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H Thread (NVIDIA 9400 mATX HDMI 8 channel LPCM) - Page 85

Well, for graphics, a GT 220 is essentially a faster version of the 9300/9400 boards. You could get this one for $50 AR (it was $45 last week). On the ATI side, you could get this one for $38 AR.

For motherboards, there are tons of decent options. Are you married to socket 775? Core setups are getting affordable, and there's also the new low power AMD chips to think about. With Black Friday around the corner, there are bound to be some decent combo deals available. With so many good options, it just doesn't seem worthwhile to pay a premium for a year old board.

I'm looking for a mobo+video card combo now. I want to run XBMC on top of Windows or maybe Linux. The Nvidia VDPAU capable chipsets are the preferred way to go, so that means anything above the GeForce 8400 cards (which are a few years old). Video cards with the newer chipsets are a notch above the 9300/9400, the latest are the G210-GT260 chipsets which are easy to find: ~70 in this NewEgg search. Many are $35-$50

This Asus P5QPL looks pretty good for $75
Now I need settle on
- a case I like (hopefully low profile)
- a video card that fits in the case

I need to look at the GT 220 as I don't know much about it. I also agree with the Core setup and have been looking at the i5 but still not sure on the mobo yet.

My dilemma right now is how much I will spend as I need to add more storage as well (thats another discussion) and I feel my decision should be made soon as I will want to cash in on the Black Friday deals...

XBMC is my choice as well.

I see a a lot of people talking about buying a new mobo without an integrated graphics chipset, and adding a GT family card into it.

2 basic questions please:

- Do these cards have HDMI out?
- Assuming they do have HDMI out, would I also get full bandwidth audio - not simply DD5.1 and/or DTS?


one reason I love my 9400 based board is that is integrated HDMI that is true HDMI

Joe

with the above mentioned GT-220 cards, you get HDMI and full 7.1 PCM audio.

I reinstalled win7 64bit last night, and loaded up the latest nvidia drivers, but the mobo and graphics still report as 9300 (see pic).

Is there something I'm not doing right here?



Steve

Did you install both Nvidia graphics and chipset drivers?

I just re-installed Win7 32-bit also. I can never remember what the recommended drivers are. It's not so easy as going to Nvidia and selecting 9400 motherboard.... there is some combination of various bits that's recommended. Anybody care to post which are the best driver combination? We still need the seperate HDMI audio driver right?

You need the video driver for GeForce 9 series, plus the chipset driver shown in the screenshot here.

Yeah, those were the drivers I used.

I think Gigabyte may have put the 9300 chip in my board - see the Device ID in my screenshot here my GPU is 10DE-086C, which is the nVidia 9300 chipset(!!!) - The device list on boot-up also shows this.

The 9400 chipset should be devide id 10DE-086A - as you can see in post #313 of this thread.

Any thoughts on this? Don't suppose the device id is stored in the bios - and could be changed by an update?

Steve

Pull the NB heat sink and look?

sounds like a plan

Ok, just for you guys (and because I just want to know...) I've taken off the heatsink. Pictures below...

Mobo with NB heatsink off (took a bit of pulling, this was very well stuck down!...almost as if someone wanted to hide something... ):



Close up of NB:



Can you see that?

Even closer...



So there you go. No wonder I couldn't get the GeForce 9400 driver to load

Ah well, at least my mobo is unique

Steve

I believe the only difference between the 9300 and 9400 is the clock speed they're rated at. You can effectively turn a 9300 into a 9400 by overclocking it a bit. Of course, if they're selling you a 9400 board, then it should be set to those 9400 speeds by default.

Wow, that seems kind of shady that they'd take a lower spec'd engineering sample and sell it on a retail board.

You should complain to Gigabyte. They shouldn't be using Engineering Samples in retail boards not to mention it's not even a 9400 chipset, it's clearly marked 9300 which is lower clocked than the 9400.

http://s1.guide-images.ifixit.com/ig...aCkxLp22.large

The photo above is from the Macbook Polycarbonate Unibody, you can see it's using B3 stepping of the 9400 chipset. All the chipsets should be B3 stepping by now.

Also for those looking for this board, maybe you can wait for the newer MCP89 chipset instead.

wow, thats insane. where did u purchase the board from?

i thought engineering samples couldnt be sold in retail channels since its the property of the original owner(nvidia).

wow...you should contact gigabyte on this one.

I've love to hear how this one turns out....

I bought the Zotac uATX 9300 board since the Gigabyte wasn't available. Regardless of which one you bought the stock cooling on the GF9300/9400 wasn't going to be adequate for a low airflow case, so the fan on the Zotac is irrelevant to me (it has to be replaced regardless). On the plus side it's cheaper than the Asus, and has 1394.

Don't worry, they'll void his warranty for removing the heatsink.

Not just removing it...

Have you seen that heatsink contact surface? This thing has canyons running accross it.



When I saw that I just had to give it the full smooth down and polish treatment.



Hopefully that'll help when it comes to overclocking back up to 9400 speed!

Steve

So, ever since I got this board, I have not been able to have my computer sleep properly. I tried everything I could think of, and it just would not sleep.

Well today I updated the BIOS to the latest version and it finally worked! Unfortunately though, shortly after, it stopped going to sleep again.

Prior to updating the BIOS I had moved the HTPC to another room, and the only thing I could think of that had changed other than that, is that I connected up the ethernet.


If I pull the cord before sleeping, it works perfectly. The system refuses to go to sleep at all with an ethernet cable plugged in though.

Running Windows 7 and the latest drivers from nVidia. Has anyone else had the problem? Any ideas on how to fix it?

EDIT: And it gets even stranger. It went to sleep properly after 20 minutes of idling (as it was set) but still won't go to sleep when I press the power button or select sleep from the start menu.

I've had all kinds of sleep problems since I upgraded from Vista to Win7. I think it has something to do with the PC thinking it needs to be available for streaming, b/c if I have my desktop (also running Win7) off, then the HTPC will usually sleep. But if both are on, then neither will usually sleep properly. I haven't had time to properly investigate this but I'd love to hear any solutions people have come up with.

Two things I've found that keep the HTPC awake (or let it sleep then immediately wake up again) on Windows 7 RC are network cards with the "Allow this device to wake the computer" box ticked in it's device manager properties and steaming options under the Advanced Power config settings - check that the option for "Multimedia Settings/When Sharing Media" is set to "Allow Computer To Sleep" - or it won't ever sleep (even if you aren't using media sharing).

Failing that you can always try typing opening a command window (type "cmd" in the start menu search box) and type in "powercfg -lastwake" to see what 'woke' your computer last.

Steve

Check the BIOS settings for wake on LAN as well. Because your system seems to sleep when the network is unplugged, I suspect that setting is letting any network traffic wake your system.

For anyone who cares, I can confirm that the HR-05 IFX and the Scythe Ninja Mini fit on this board (and inside the Nmedia 1000B case). I have a low rpm fan on the IFX that runs thru the ninja mini. works great. I could probably run it passive too.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Just before I came back here to see if there were any responses, I've found the cause.

In checking the system event logs, I noticed that the machine was trying to enter Away mode' rather than sleep.

I then ran powercfg -requests and got:


I have no idea why this is. Media sharing is disabled, and I haven't even run Windows Media Player once on this system to do the initial setup that it goes through.

What I did to fix it was disable the media sharing service, but I've just tried what steve3000 suggested and changing the When sharing media preference in power management from Away Mode to Sleep fixes it as well.


Is there any reason to leave Away Mode enabled? (I think it's a BIOS option) I'd much rather my machine just slept than using it, but surely there must be some reason for it to exist.


I still have WOL enabled (as I need it) and it's sleeping perfectly now. Not sure whether or not I should just disable that service and leave away mode available, or if I should just leave the service running and set the PC to sleep only.

Thanks for the post. My HR-05 is coming today and I was worried that the Ninja Mini would be too close to the chipset. I'm sure that will make installation interesting. Out of curiosity, what thermal compound did you use? Some in this thread have apparently used ceramique; I wonder if that would be better than just using standard as5.