D975XBX2 question

[Nick T.]

My plan was to order the following on Monday, but today I found the Legit Motherboard Forum and struggled through a gazillion posts about the D975XBX2 and am now having second thoughts. I would like to have your opinions.

D975XBX2 Bad-Axe 2 mobo
Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz CPU
4GB (2x2GB) Crucial PC2-5300 RAM
WD1500ADFD Raptor 150GB boot drive
Two WD5000YS Caviar RE2 500GB data drives
eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS video card
SIIG 1394b PCI-e Firewire card
Sony DRU-830A Dual Layer DVD±RW writer
Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 II case
PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad PSU
Two Dell 2707WFP 27â€

[Sporg]

Since I got the replacement BDX2 I've been happy. Did quite a bit playing around with it this past weekend and it seems solid.

One thing that I have noticed is that if I plug my headphones into the front audio ports, then the desktop speakers get cutout completely. I have also had problems getting the onboard audio to recognize my surround speakers. I am still playing around with the settings and such - a friend of mine has a BDX board with the same audio issues.

If I am unable to get the audio working I will go with an audio card, which is what I typically do anyway.

As far as loading up the system I did not install any of the RAID drivers during install and everything is working just fine. I also am just using a single SATA drive.

The BDX2 board seems fairly decent, my only real complaint so far is the audio and hopefully with some more playing around I'll get that figured out. I think the audio chip is by Sigmatel.

[Apoptosis]

I'm happy with my Bad Axe 2, but on most of the systems I run I don't plug in the LED lights and don't use the secondary SATA controller so I can disable the controller and since I can't see the LED issue (as they aren't plugged in) I'm left with a board that does what I want (overclock and run fast).

[DaddyRabbit]

[quote="Nick T."]My plan was to order the following on Monday, but today I found the Legit Motherboard Forum and struggled through a gazillion posts about the D975XBX2 and am now having second thoughts. I would like to have your opinions.

D975XBX2 Bad-Axe 2 mobo
Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz CPU
4GB (2x2GB) Crucial PC2-5300 RAM
WD1500ADFD Raptor 150GB boot drive
Two WD5000YS Caviar RE2 500GB data drives
eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS video card
SIIG 1394b PCI-e Firewire card
Sony DRU-830A Dual Layer DVD±RW writer
Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 II case
PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad PSU
Two Dell 2707WFP 27â€

[Nick T.]

Thanks for the responses everybody. I’ll place my order (including the XBX2) tomorrow.

DaddyRabbit - - The PCI-e 1294b card is so that I can get max transfer speed for my FW800 backup drives. I too am a minimalist, but my teenage son hates bling, so projecting a customizable blue message onto the floor will be just the thing! I’m sure that the LEDs will be disabled fairly soon after I’ve seen his reaction. If I thought that I could live with it, the Lian Li “snail caseâ€

[Nick T.]

Assembled the D975XBX2 box on Tuesday and installed Vista Business (retail version). Disabled the secondary SATA contoller in the BIOS to get rid of the Marvell scan at boot time.

I was unable to install the chipset driver from the CD - - it gave an "Internal Error - Process timed-out" message.

Since everything seems to be running with no problems I'll let the chipset drivers and BIOS update go until later.

At this point in time the system gets a big thumbs-up! But, it will take a little while to find out where MS has hidden all of the things that I can easily find in WinXP.

[DaddyRabbit]

Assembled the D975XBX2 box on Tuesday and installed Vista Business (retail version). Disabled the secondary SATA contoller in the BIOS to get rid of the Marvell scan at boot time.

I was unable to install the chipset driver from the CD - - it gave an "Internal Error - Process timed-out" message.

Since everything seems to be running with no problems I'll let the chipset drivers and BIOS update go until later.

At this point in time the system gets a big thumbs-up! But, it will take a little while to find out where MS has hidden all of the things that I can easily find in WinXP.

I don't know with Vista whether you need the chipset drivers? If everything shows up in device manager no harm, no foul...

Glad you're happy with the new system and that your son will be bouncing off the walls

I went with the Antec P-180B in black and one review compared it with the monolith in 2001, I would have to concur but I love the case...

[[email protected]]

Just curious. Why did you go with an Nvidia card? The BadAxe is designed and certified for ATI. If you ever wanted to use two video cards you won't be able to use SLI. ATI crossfire will work.

-Mike, MXOtech

[DaddyRabbit]

Just curious. Why did you go with an Nvidia card? The BadAxe is designed and certified for ATI. If you ever wanted to use two video cards you won't be able to use SLI. ATI crossfire will work.

-Mike, MXOtech

In doing my new build I had a couple of tough decisions. Reading the 680i issues and the delay in the RD600 chipset boards settled me on a 975x chipset board (not really a tough decision after all).

The real tough decision was between:

1) One X1950XtX
2) Two X1950 Pros in Crossfire
3) An 8800GTS

All were roughly the same cost at the time. I looked at my use however and, since my monitor is only 1600x1200, figured that neither SLI nor Crossfire would buy me much performance wise, since super high resolution gaming is where they shine.

Now between ATI and Nvidia. I have been an ATI guy since the original Radeon days primarily due to Image Quality where ATI was always better, not from a benchmark or review standpoint but to my eyes (I'm not a brand loyalist). All of the reviews however stated that the G80 finally licked the IQ problem for Nvidia plus there was the (still vaporous) DX10 support.

Also I figured in the fact that, with the buyout of ATI by AMD, that Intel Crossfire support was no longer a given with the new DX10 ATI cards and , since I had already decided against multi GPUs the field pretty much narrowed quickly.

Unified shaders and DX10 compatibility available WHEN I was ready to buy sealed it. I'm sure I may regret the purchase sometime in the future but not at the moment as the 8800 pretty much rocks for the moment.

In short:

- I'm not going to be taking advantage of either SLI or Crossfire
- It will be some time (at least a year) before I can dump several hundred dollars on a new video card
- The Nvidia at least promises DX10 compatibility and is first to market with the unified shader architecture.
- The damned thing is FAST...

[Sparky]

Couldn't be happier with my D975XBX2. OCing was a little confusing, but once I read some forums on it, disabled bios watchdog, have had my E6700 up to 3.05 on air and it's been stable.

[mjronline]

I have almost the exact same setup as you DaddyRabbit, though for some reason I'm having major problems with Vista. Maybe you guys have some ideas?

I have the D975XBX2. E6600 CPU, NVIDIA 8800GTS, Antec P-180 case. I have 2 major problems. First, the microphone doesn't work with the onboard sound. Doesn't matter if I plug it in the back or in the front panel of the case. The second problem is that vista gets stuck everytime I try to reboot. It gets to the shutting down screen, and then just sits there and I have to press the reset button the case to restart the system. The last problem has nothing to do with vista and more to do with the motherboard itself. 3/4 of the time when I startup the computer the top led light stays on in the case and the motherboard just sits there doing nothing for 3 minutes until finally it starts moving and boots everything up.

Has anyone here had any of these issues at all with this motherboard or know anything about them? I can't be the only one and this board is supposed to be vista premium certified.

Thanks so much!
Mike

[he46570]

Mike,

I have Vista 64 installed with exactly the same set-up you have.

The microphone does work in my set-up, though the level is a bit low for some reason. I also don't have any issues with start-up/shut-down either. Are you overclocking?

Robert

[mjronline]

Mike,

I have Vista 64 installed with exactly the same set-up you have.

The microphone does work in my set-up, though the level is a bit low for some reason. I also don't have any issues with start-up/shut-down either. Are you overclocking?

Robert

Nah I'm not overclocking. Could the problem possibly be that the front panel connectors on my case are AC97? I know for XP Intel has 2 different sets of drivers. One set for Hi Definition front panel and one for AC97, but for vista there is only one set of drivers. Is it possible that the drivers don't support AC97 front panel and that the wires to the front audio connectors is causing both the front and back mic not to function?

Thanks!

[mjronline]

Just for everybody's reference I solved my issues. The mic problem turned out to be a faulty plug on my mic for the rear mic and for the front mic, the problem was caused because the motherboard drivers don't support ac97. When I plugged the wires into an hd audio box they worked fine. Hopefully the next driver update will have a fix for that. I noticed that for the XP drivers for the motherboard they do indeed have separate drivers.

The freezing/shutdown issues appear to have been caused by faulty drivers for my USR 5416 802.11g wireless card. They were causing the entire system to lag and freeze up at random times as well as stopping the system from shutting down. Once I switched to a different wireless card that had native vista drivers, all the freezing problems went away.

Thanks guys.