LS8 Posted July 21, 2008 Author Share Posted July 21, 2008 Nope. Nobody reported this problem here so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h4ck1nt0sh Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 Strange, I hope it´s not a hardware problem (mobo/cpu)... I will try to downgrade the firmware with crossover, because i don´t have a windows installation. And after that I will install from the retail dvd. Hope that will fix the problem! Grüezi wohl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LS8 Posted July 21, 2008 Author Share Posted July 21, 2008 You do not need Windows. Copy the BIOS file (P35DS4.F8 - size 1048576 Bytes) to a floppy disk, reboot. Press END on computer startup, a BIOS update console will start automatically and you can flash the BIOS right from the floppy. P35DS4.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 It depends on the revision of the mainboard too. I used F6, F8 and F12 with my P35-DS4 Revision v1.0 F12 was the only bios-revision that ran really well and it was the only version I could use Sleep with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LS8 Posted July 21, 2008 Author Share Posted July 21, 2008 I am running F8 on my both machines - one is rev. 1.1 and second is rev. 2.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewdman42 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 Regarding BIOS, I have tried going back to F8 and had problems with it, can't remember what. I am actually using a new beta release of the bios for my rev2 GA-P35-DS4, F13b, that I received directly from Gigabyte technical support and so far no problems, though I don't use SLEEP so i don't know if that works or not. Restart/shutdown seem to be working fine. I'm using Retail vanilla and the stuff provided by LS8's leo pack with EFI strings. As vanilla as I can get. This F13b bios release fixes a problem related to interrupt drivers having latency spikes in versions prior. There are a few threads about this on various forums, including one where some gigabyte tech support guys hang out. Some people went all the way back to F3 to get rid of the latency spikes, some guys are using the new beta bios and hoping it will be made permanent in the final F13. Its somewhat debatable about whether these latency spikes have any significant impact on overall performance, but anyone doing things like audio production work, or video work will probably notice a difference. People ran tests on windows with and without and some found improvement, some did not. In particular, ASIO performance was improved for those that know what I'm talking about. This issue was brought up on the windows world because of a free utility floating around called "DPC Latency checker". It displayed these awful spikes at regular intervals, in many cases in the several ms range, which is an eternity in hardware latency. With the beta bios, problem goes away and there is a nice even maybe 15-20 usec of latency when nothing is going on, with no spikes. I wasn't sure whether this problem would effect OSX, but I finally found a built in tool provided with OSX that can measure the hardware latency and guess what, yes the problem is present on OSX too with the older BIOS. The tool is command line and its called "latency". Its not the greatest tool because it doesn't display a history graph like the "DPC latency checker" does on windows, but it at least shows you a summary. let it run for 30 seconds or 60 seconds and don't touch the keyboard or mouse. When I run it I see zeros all the way down the page except for the very top row where I see a very large number <10 usec. that is good. It means all my hardware interrupts are under 10 usec, no spikes. If I move the mouse or type on the keyboard, I will see some hits popping up into other ranges, but still mostly all within the 100 (or 2) usec range. If I played some audio or did something else heavily hardware dependent, I would expect to see more spikes, but all within a few hundred usec at the most. Mon Jul 21 11:13:40 0:00:38 SCHEDULER INTERRUPTS --------------------------------------------- total_samples 37481 19830 delays < 10 usecs 37450 19829 delays < 20 usecs 29 1 delays < 30 usecs 2 0 delays < 40 usecs 0 0 delays < 50 usecs 0 0 delays < 60 usecs 0 0 delays < 70 usecs 0 0 delays < 80 usecs 0 0 delays < 90 usecs 0 0 delays < 100 usecs 0 0 total < 100 usecs 37481 19830 delays < 200 usecs 0 0 delays < 300 usecs 0 0 delays < 400 usecs 0 0 delays < 500 usecs 0 0 delays < 600 usecs 0 0 delays < 700 usecs 0 0 delays < 800 usecs 0 0 delays < 900 usecs 0 0 delays < 1 msec 0 0 total < 1 msec 0 0 delays < 2 msecs 0 0 delays < 3 msecs 0 0delays < 4 msecs 0 0delayse When I went back to bios F12 and ran the same test, I got lots of high numbers showing up while doing absolutely no mousing our keyboarding around. Those are the latency spikes. If we had a history graph we'd see them at regular intervals also. Try it. Anyway, there is one bug that I know about with F13b, but there is a work around. Basically, if you try to change the vcore setting in F13b, the change won't stick. However, if you go back to an earlier BIOS and change the vcore, the change sticks and then when you flash back to F13b, the change still sticks. So that is the work around for overclocking. Otherwise, I haven't found any other problems. I have it from a reliable source that OSX Sleep does not work with BIOS S3 sleep mode on the newer BIOS's, including this one. So if that is important to you, then maybe you can't take advantage of the latency fixes. I've attached F13b in case anyone else wants to try it, this was given to me for my GA-P35-DS4(rev2.0) from tech support. Any other mobo, you're on your own. But I do know this problem effects pretty much all the P35 boards from Gigabyte and possibly the X38 line as well. Also, I would suggest that if the S3 sleep mode is important, go hang out on the gigabyte form at tweaktown.com and post your concerns. Tech support guys from Gigabyte Taiwan actually do hang out there once in a while, they post with limited english, but they seem to be paying attention. They actually built this beta bios just for our request. Maybe they can make a fix for the S3 bug too. But I'm not sure how to demonstrate the bug for them on a supported OS like Windows. I leave that to you. p35ds4.13b.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h4ck1nt0sh Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 Dewdman: thanks for the information. i might try other firmwares to. i recently downgraded from f11 to f8. ls8: i think i found out, what the problem caused. it was the old 80GB hdd, which seemed to have problems with sata-2 mode. i installed from retail dvd on an newer 250gb hdd, using your scripts, and the i/o bug disappeared. your guide is really great, thank you for that! really easy to use, good work! system runs good, so far (ask again in some days!). i´ve made a highload test by running dd (as mentioned), remember (for ram testing), itunes+visuals and firefox running a vlc plugin to watch a dvb-c stream via my dreambox. cpu load was about 100% on both kernel and memory usage was 3.8 from 4 gb. it ended up in a kernel panic! btw: is single or dual channel ram installation recommended? is there any difference? i´m using single channel now (2x2GB double sided in DDRII1 and DDRII2 slot). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackintosh33 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 I have a PA-P35-DS4 with rev. 2.1. Does anyone know if this revision will work with ls8's guide? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h4ck1nt0sh Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 yes, it will. same board here. please post how it worked. i´m getting kernel panics sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackintosh33 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 yes, it will. same board here. please post how it worked.i´m getting kernel panics sometimes. What BIOS are you using? I'm going to try F13 first and if that doesn't work then downgrade to F8. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewdman42 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 No kernel panics here. h4k1nt0sh, do you have any IDE devices? If so, make sure you're using the JMicron kext provided by ls8. Even better, get rid of your IDE devices and go all SATA. Make sure the BIOS is set to AHCI mode. Don't use IDE. Particularly if you have more than 3.5GB of ram, there are known problems with IDE. Are you overclocked? If so, turn it off a while and make sure that is not the problem. If that eliminates the problem, then increase your vcore until you eliminate the kernel panics. its best to test overclocking under Windows, but I have successfully run prime95 under darwine(or crossover mac) to push the CPU and make sure its getting enough power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclau Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 Anyone with the problem of SATA optical drive not being detected on and off? If I switch to another SATA port, it will be detected again. However, after a few days, it will happen again. Anyone has any solution/suggestion? Thanks! My specs in my sig. BTW, for those who wish to flash/upgrade/downgrade the BIOS, but do not have a floppy drive or a windows installation, you can do so by copying the BIOS file to a USB drive and using the Q-Flash utility in BIOS. I found the F7 version works best, otherwise there will be issue with either sleep, restart or shutdown with the latter versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 @eclau I have a similar issue with my sata optical drive: If I leave a CD/DVD in it for over 4-5 minutes the drive won't respond at all and won't let me gain any access to it .. neither opening the inserted media nor ejecting. As long as there is no media in the drive this doesn't happen. I asked for this a bunch of times here at insanelymac but didn't get any answer to it ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewvideo Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 I have eveything working sleep, shutdown, net, and Graphics etc. But I am have a firewire error. Firewire drives do mount, but I cant read or write to firewire drives. I get a error when reading or writing to the drive. In system log it says ERROR: FireWire unable to determine security-mode; defaulting to full-secure I replaced only the IOFireWireFamily.kext from 10.4.8 and not not work. I had some superclass error. SO I replaced from 10.4.8 IOFireWireAVC.kext IOFireWireFamily.kext IOFireWireIP.kext IOFireWireSBP2.kext IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext Now firewire works (Read & write) . Now I have no sleep. Well It sleeps - dont wake up Can any help Thanks GUID PT | PC EFI v8.0 | Vanilla 9.4.0 kernel | Time Machine | Sleep | Reboot | Shutdown MoBo: GA-P35-DS4 rev.2.1 BIOS F8 CPU: Intel core 2 quad cpu Q6700 RAM: 2x2GB Graphics: ATI 1950 XT (Nait) @ Dell 1920x1200 HDD: 500 SATA DVD SATA read/write/rewrite Sound: Onboard ALC889A digital out LAN: Onboard Realtek 8111/8168 USB: Onboard 8x USB 2.0 FW: Onboard FireWire 400 IEEE1394 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclau Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 @eclau I have a similar issue with my sata optical drive: If I leave a CD/DVD in it for over 4-5 minutes the drive won't respond at all and won't let me gain any access to it .. neither opening the inserted media nor ejecting. As long as there is no media in the drive this doesn't happen. I asked for this a bunch of times here at insanelymac but didn't get any answer to it ... Thanks, sheeplover. Hope someone will come out with a solution soon... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LS8 Posted July 22, 2008 Author Share Posted July 22, 2008 ...I finally found a built in tool provided with OSX that can measure the hardware latency and guess what, yes the problem is present on OSX too with the older BIOS. The tool is command line and its called "latency". Its not the greatest tool because it doesn't display a history graph like the "DPC latency checker" does on windows, but it at least shows you a sum... Here are results from my iMac 17" C2D 2.0GHz 2GB RAM (early 2007). These result are much (MUCH MUCH MUCH) worse than results from my hckntsh: Tue Jul 22 12:45:20 0:01:39 SCHEDULER INTERRUPTS --------------------------------------------- total_samples 94696 81221 delays < 10 usecs 792 44062 delays < 20 usecs 21129 7835 delays < 30 usecs 11005 27455 delays < 40 usecs 47306 1869 delays < 50 usecs 13557 0 delays < 60 usecs 412 0 delays < 70 usecs 238 0 delays < 80 usecs 47 0 delays < 90 usecs 25 0 delays < 100 usecs 26 0 total < 100 usecs 94537 81221 delays < 200 usecs 65 0 delays < 300 usecs 16 0 delays < 400 usecs 15 0 delays < 500 usecs 7 0 delays < 600 usecs 3 0 delays < 700 usecs 8 0 delays < 800 usecs 5 0 delays < 900 usecs 3 0 delays < 1 msec 4 0 total < 1 msec 126 0 delays < 2 msecs 20 0 delays < 3 msecs 7 0 delays < 4 msecs 5 0 delays < 5 msecs 0 0 delays < 6 msecs 0 0 delays < 7 msecs 1 0 delays < 8 msecs 0 0 delays < 9 msecs 0 0 delays < 10 msecs 0 0 total < 10 msecs 33 0 delays < 20 msecs 0 0 delays < 30 msecs 0 0 delays < 40 msecs 0 0 delays < 50 msecs 0 0 total < 50 msecs 0 0 delays > 50 msecs 0 0 minimum latency(usecs) 6 0 maximum latency(usecs) 6078 33 average latency(usecs) 32 14 exceeded threshold 0 0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karaakeha1 Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 About Gigabyte P35 DS4 BIOS so far F7 is the Best If motherboard is overlocked or even without it , It won't wake up from sleep Second Best is F8 I even talked to Gigabyte support ,they know there is issue with wake up from S3 Sleep They send me 13E , I tried that even than it won,t wake from sleep About latency issue it is addressed to great extent with 13E But system goes into endless restart cycle when wakes from sleep ,so no practical use to me But for all practical purpose there is no issue at all with F7 , I don't experience any practical implication of low latency Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karaakeha1 Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 Anyone with the problem of SATA optical drive not being detected on and off? If I switch to another SATA port, it will be detected again. However, after a few days, it will happen again. Anyone has any solution/suggestion? Thanks! My specs in my sig. BTW, for those who wish to flash/upgrade/downgrade the BIOS, but do not have a floppy drive or a windows installation, you can do so by copying the BIOS file to a USB drive and using the Q-Flash utility in BIOS. I found the F7 version works best, otherwise there will be issue with either sleep, restart or shutdown with the latter versions. I am using 2 SATA DVD-RW & Blueray RW . I never noticed or had this problem. Try Jmicron Port . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tseug Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 About Gigabyte P35 DS4 BIOS so far F7 is the Best If motherboard is overlocked or even without it , It won't wake up from sleep Second Best is F8 I even talked to Gigabyte support ,they know there is issue with wake up from S3 Sleep They send me 13E , I tried that even than it won,t wake from sleep About latency issue it is addressed to great extent with 13E But system goes into endless restart cycle when wakes from sleep ,so no practical use to me But for all practical purpose there is no issue at all with F7 , I don't experience any practical implication of low latency Mine wakes up from sleep on the F12 BIOS. It's overclocked but it still works. As I recall, I had to disable loadline calibration in order to get it to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewvideo Posted July 23, 2008 Share Posted July 23, 2008 where is the ' loadline calibration ' in the bios and what it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewdman42 Posted July 23, 2008 Share Posted July 23, 2008 Regarding BIOS, I have received F13e from Gigabyte last night. I guess this is nearly ready for production. The production version of this BIOS has already been released for some of the other P35 boards, but not quite ours yet. I tried it last night. Sleep S3 worked perfectly for me, so that seems to be fixed. I slept and awoke, no problem and very fast. Restart and shutdown are working. latency seems fixed compared to F12, though I can't tell for sure without running on windows. Also they fixed the vcore retention issue I mentioned before. karaakeha1, I'm not sure why you're having sleep problems. which kernel and osx86 distro are you using now? I recently did a clean install using boot-132 to install from Vanilla Leopard disc. Then I upgraded to 10.5.4 using online Apple Update. Then I installed chameleon and applied the post-batch.sh script provided on this thread to overwrite that handful of kexts (ie, SMBIOS, AppleHDA, etc). I used EFI strings for Audio, network and GeForce video. Everything is working 100%, including Sleep(s3), USB, iPod, firewire, audio, network, everything....and I'm getting the best benchmark numbers I've seen yet on this machine. ls8, latency numbers will be inflated if you have any kind of devices you're using. if you use the mouse/keyboard, the latency numbers will go up. USB hard drive, etc..any kind of device usage, particularly stuff like firewire, usb, etc..will ramp the latency values up a bit. The BIOS fix eliminates spikes that people were seeing for no apparant reason when a minimum amount of devices were connected. The fix eliminates the spikes. But if you plug a bunch of stuff in, then you won't detect the spikes most likely because they will be buried under all the other device usage, but that doesn't mean the inefficiencies aren't happening somehow. Also, BTW, latencies under 100usec are not bad at all. That performance you showed for your iMac is not bad at all. Everything under 33 usec. That is actually quite good!! When you get spikes into the hundreds of usecs, or worse yet, over 1ms, then that's when it can effect something like audio. Still, many people will never notice the difference even there, except for some pro audio and video situations. but its true, when I measured these latencies on this hardware running XP, the idle latencies were more like 20usec on average, a bit lower than the iMac is showing. but this is actually a very small discrepancy, not worth worrying about. ps - I'm attaching F13e in case anyone else wants to try it P35DS4.13E.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stellair Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 About Gigabyte P35 DS4 BIOS so far F7 is the Best If motherboard is overlocked or even without it , It won't wake up from sleep Second Best is F8 You're trying to say that with bios F7 it won't wake up from sleep or did you mean with bios F8? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrewvideo Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 Do anyone has the onboard firewire working? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewdman42 Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 yep. working fine here. Follow this guide to the letter. I did and I'm in heaven right now: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=115877 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 Onboard Firewire works OOTB for me - no need for any additional procedures. I have a DV-Cam and an external HDD connected to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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