GA-MA69GM-S2H released yet?

kaange · Post by **kaange** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:09 pm

Has anyone seen or used this board yet?
It seems to have a very nice feature set for a media center PC

line · Post by **line** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:04 pm

It's in stock at NCIX:

http://www.ncixus.com/products/25184/GA ... /Gigabyte/

prod · Post by **prod** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:07 pm

I have one on order, hopefully get it on friday. Appears that is has everything I wanted except for cpu voltage adjustments.

Can anyone vouch for this board working with CrystalCPUID?
Or does anyone know of an updated bios with undervolting capability?

line · Post by **line** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:58 pm

I asked Gigabyte what about undervolting. They told me that pressing CTRL+F1 in the BIOS setup menu would unhide some advanced settings. So try it out when you receive the board and let us know what it reveals.

prod · Post by **prod** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:21 am

Ah, thanks. I hope that helps with undervolting.
Also, the review doesnt mention anything about voltage settings for ram.
Im looking at 2gb of OCZ ram for this board, but I think the voltage is 2.1v. I have heard some asus boards dont like it.
If the bios doesnt support setting the ram voltage manually, will the bios detect and set it to 2.1v automatically?

prod · Post by **prod** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 1:10 pm

Bad news for me, kinda.
My local shop came through with an RMA on my old board outside the warranty period. So I wont be getting this board after all.
My HTPC is going back an athlon XP 1800.
But it saves me cash for the next upgrade at least.

One thing though, a day after ordering the gigabyte from ncix, it was still at the "verifying stock" stage. They are either a little slow or they still dont have it yet. Was an easy cancellation.

line · Post by **line** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:19 pm

It has arrived at Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... Tpk=ma69gm

colin2 · Post by **colin2** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:01 pm

any comparative thoughts on the MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital, another newish 690G mobo? It's the first full ATX 690G I've seen with a DVI port. The full ATX is maybe a little more spacious ... has anyone with the GA-MA69GM-S2H tried fitting aftermarket heatsinks on its CPU or NB? I'm worried about the closeness of those capacitors.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:28 am

colin2 wrote:any comparative thoughts on the MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital, another newish 690G mobo? It's the first full ATX 690G I've seen with a DVI port. The full ATX is maybe a little more spacious ... has anyone with the GA-MA69GM-S2H tried fitting aftermarket heatsinks on its CPU or NB? I'm worried about the closeness of those capacitors.

If you want full ATX, there's always the Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H. It has one more PCI-E x1 slot than the MSI, a Toslink digital output, and parallel port (which some people don't have a use for, but I need it for my JP1 remote programmer). There is no DVI port on the back, but it comes with an HDMI to DVI adapter and works great via DVI with my LCD monitor.

I have the S3H and can confirm that at least for the last 3 weeks, it's been an excellent motherboard with quite extensive overclocking features in BIOS that can be uncovered by entering CTRL-F1.

line · Post by **line** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 4:58 am

has anyone with the GA-MA69GM-S2H tried fitting aftermarket heatsinks on its CPU or NB? I'm worried about the closeness of those capacitors.

If it helps, here are some higher resolution scans of the boards. Seems to me either Zalman would fit there.

GA-MA69G-S3H (ATX)

GA-MA69GM-S2H (mATX)

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 5:30 am

It seems the S2H comes with no floppy connector and no floppy cable, which I believe would indicate it's got no floppy you can use. Is this becoming commonplace?

line · Post by **line** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 5:36 am

It sure has one, see the Newegg retail pics above.

The floppy connector is black colored and it resides near the green PATA connector. A floppy cable is also included in the bundle.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:37 pm

I just built one up this evening. Nice feature set. It does have a floppy, but the DVI port does not support a D-sub adapter for a standard 15-pin monitor.

I am going to play around with it more this weekend and get all the power settings right, but it seems real solid. I don't have a need for HD or HDMI at this point.

Max Slowik · Post by **Max Slowik** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:14 pm

I should be getting one of these for review soon. You guys have specific questions I can address?

winguy · Post by **winguy** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 8:17 pm

austinbike wrote:I just built one up this evening. Nice feature set. It does have a floppy, but the DVI port does not support a D-sub adapter for a standard 15-pin monitor.

I am going to play around with it more this weekend and get all the power settings right, but it seems real solid. I don't have a need for HD or HDMI at this point.

Post back on BIOS undervolting / fan control yeah?

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:46 pm

Max Slowik wrote:I should be getting one of these for review soon. You guys have specific questions I can address?

How does it match up to the Asus M2A-VM HDMI with regard to features, cooling and output quality via std TV out & HDMI?

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 2:14 am

I don't own this board but from the manual it does not appear this board supports over/under clock/volt directly in the BIOS. However, it does support CnQ (a form of underclock/undervolt power scheme) which means you could run CrystalCPUID in Windows.

prod · Post by **prod** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 5:24 am

frank2003 wrote:I don't own this board but from the manual it does not appear this board supports over/under clock/volt directly in the BIOS. However, it does support CnQ (a form of underclock/undervolt power scheme) which means you could run CrystalCPUID in Windows.

Hoping this has hidden advanced bios features, from above:

I have the S3H and can confirm that at least for the last 3 weeks, it's been an excellent motherboard with quite extensive overclocking features in BIOS that can be uncovered by entering CTRL-F1.

Also I would choose this board over the asus. The asus requires a pci-e addin card to get hdmi/svid/component video output. That means if you add in a higher performance video card of your own, these features would be unavailable. The gigabyte doesnt requre you use up the pci-e slot, and it also comes with optical audio output.

line · Post by **line** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:00 am

It would be nice if someone could test CTRL+F1 on the S2H and report what it reveals.

Some questions to austinbike and Max:

* Does the board support AC'97-type audio connectors on the front panel?

* How good is the Realtek 889 audio if you're using the analog ports?

* Does the Northbridge run too hot to the touch under 3D load? Which aftermarket heatsinks would fit there?

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 12:13 pm

prod wrote:Also I would choose this board over the asus. The asus requires a pci-e addin card to get hdmi/svid/component video output. That means if you add in a higher performance video card of your own, these features would be unavailable. The gigabyte doesnt requre you use up the pci-e slot, and it also comes with optical audio output.

Surely, the HP video card you would fit instead would have these features too, otherwise why on earth would you bother to upgrade it? e.g. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA ... uctID=2433 It is an HTPC type MB after all.

EDIT: I'd also like to know if the relative position and height of the NB cooler to the PCI-e x1 slot makes fitment of x1 cards impossible/impractical?

line · Post by **line** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 3:15 pm

I'm getting ready to order this board with an AMD BE-2350 CPU.

Are they going to play nice with regard to fan control? Do Gigabyte boards generally do a good job with fan control on the AM2 platform? I'm hoping for a few hundred RPMs at idle.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 4:15 pm

I have this board and installed it this week. Everything is working great.

Post up all of your questions and I will play around with it tonight

Should be able to take screenshots of the "hidden" BIOS options.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 7:25 pm

Here are the bios screens:

Any ideas on Speedfan? CPU is ~40c, that is telling me under 10c. Someone else mentioned a thermal probe, but I can't find any data on that.

kaange · Post by **kaange** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:12 pm

So no undervolting

line · Post by **line** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:15 pm

austinbike, thanks for the images. Sorry but I'm not sure about SpeedFan.

Looking at the PC Health section in your BIOS, CPU fan at >2000 RPM seems a somewhat on the high side for a speed-controlled fan. Is it always this high or does it get lower after POST? Does it matter if you set Smart Fan Ctrl Mode to either Legacy or PWM?

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:41 pm

austinbike wrote:Post up all of your questions and I will play around with it tonight

Have you fitted an x1 PCI-e card and if not, does it look like it will fit with the NB cooler being where it is
How hot is the NB cooler running?

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:21 am

I haven't stuck anything in the x1 slot, all slots are empty. I can check on the NB tonight when I get home.

GnatGoSplat · Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:22 am

FWIW, the S3H (full ATX version) does do undervolting. It's not a hidden option, it's in the "M.I.B. Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker" menu option which seems to be absent on the S2H.

Some strange things I noticed about the S3H NB... EasyTune5 (Gigabytes tweaking/health monitor program) says "System" temp is between 41C and 44C. It stays at 44C pretty much all the time. It seems too warm to be ambient air temp since the CPU runs cooler than that, so I guess it's NB temp? That seems a bit low to me considering the NB is hot enough to burn flesh, but that temperature doesn't change when idle or under 3D load.

EasyTune5 is a cheesy looking program with poorly done, grainy graphics, but it works very well to control fan speed. My Brisbane X2 4400+ idles around 26C and I have the fan set to 0RPM below 38C so it's extremely quiet at idle. It seems to adjust fan speed proportionate to what you set the minimum RPM and temperature as. It's significantly quieter than the Asus M2N that I replaced.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:16 pm

Firetech wrote:
austinbike wrote:Post up all of your questions and I will play around with it tonight
Have you fitted an x1 PCI-e card and if not, does it look like it will fit with the NB cooler being where it is
How hot is the NB cooler running?

The NB cooler is slightly higher than the slot, so it is not really usable unless you have a special card.

Firetech · Post by **Firetech** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:22 pm

austinbike wrote:The NB cooler is slightly higher than the slot, so it is not really usable unless you have a special card.

Hmmm, a very bad design given that tuner cards are arriving in x1 format now.
Looks like the Asus will be getting my $$s after all....

GA-MA69GM-S2H released yet?

GA-MA69GM-S2H released yet?

Cheers Austin.