2 Manufacturers keep passing the buck! Help needed

XysteR

XysteR

XysteR

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Northumberland
Hi all,

Its been quite a long time trying to get this resolved, and i've been pretty much stuck with an expensive computer that i can't use as it should be used. Basically i have a Foxconn BlackOps motherboard, 2 X 4870X2's, raid0 array with 2 X 300GB WD Velociraptors.

Now then, for a Foxconn BlackOps mainboard to support the 2 X 4870X2 i need to update to bios P07. If i update the bios to P07 i lose my raid array due to a the mainboard loading all 4 roms into memory, it seems when it loads all of the 4870X2 roms it doesn't leave enough space for the raid controller to load too. Now i contacted both Foxconn and Sapphire and both are blaming eachother, Foxconn is saying that its Sapphires' fault, Sapphire have been saying its Foxconns bios thats at fault.

Whats really annoying is the fact that this has been going on for months now - Pretty much since Dec 08. I work away from home and i'm pretty hard pushed from time to chase stuff up but everytime i've tried to get help from Foxconn i've been blatantly ignored for weeks on end. I don't want either company to get away with this, i want it resolved but i really don't know where to go from here. Here is the current thread link http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=222502 and the a lame excuse from someone who works for Foxconn who told me to leave raid and just get an SSD instead?!? Quote: "and if you can afford 2 4870x2s, an ssd shouldnt hurt your wallet too much :P"

As you can imagine, this is not what i wanted to hear.
 
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If anyone Id say Foxconn, but tbh I dont see how its their responsibility youve exceeded the boards on board controller capacity, why not buy an additional RAID controller card? problem solved
 
95thrifles said:
If anyone Id say Foxconn, but tbh I dont see how its their responsibility youve exceeded the boards on board controller capacity, why not buy an additional RAID controller card? problem solved
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I believe its foxconn too, i'm sure other mainboards don't have this problem with 2 4870X2's and raid.

I don't think an additional controller would resolve the problem, if the system can't load the onboard intel raid controller, i don't think it could load an external either.
 
It's foxconn's fault that the board won't handle it - unless they never said it could handle it, in which case it's your problem for not checking compatability first.
 
Sounds like the BIOS to me, especially if the raid controller worked on a previous BIOS like you say. Have you tried taking one GPU out to see if it will initialise the RAID with the BIOS revision for dual graphics? I would suggest getting a PCI controller but they aren't exactly cheap!
 
Audigex said:
It's foxconn's fault that the board won't handle it - unless they never said it could handle it, in which case it's your problem for not checking compatability first.
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Its a X48 crossfire board so... Foxconn mefinks.

5abr3 said:
Sounds like the BIOS to me, especially if the raid controller worked on a previous BIOS like you say. Have you tried taking one GPU out to see if it will initialise the RAID with the BIOS revision for dual graphics? I would suggest getting a PCI controller but they aren't exactly cheap!
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It will work with 2 GPU's, i'd like to think that an external controller would work but i think that would fail too, as that card would need its bios addressing as does the onboard Intel controller.
 
Yup its Foxconn alright. I've contacted the supplier, they said if the board was RMA'd they'd just send a replacement Blackops. However, they are happy to refund, but i have to provide an independant engineers report to confirm that it has an this issue. I can't think of anywhere nearby who'd do this kind of work and even if i could find someone it'd end up costing me.
 
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you have a lot of patience.
i'd have thrown out that raid in an instant to get gaming going

why didn't you get a raid card if you must have raid.
to me, ppl serious with raid buys a card for that, and ppl serious with gaming buys a video card.

you fought up for 9mths on this, is unbelievable. what you need that raid to do, load a game 3 seconds faster?

loading speed vs gaming quailty
and you chose loading speed
 
xman01 said:
you have a lot of patience.
i'd have thrown out that raid in an instant to get gaming going

why didn't you get a raid card if you must have raid.
to me, ppl serious with raid buys a card for that, and ppl serious with gaming buys a video card.

you fought up for 9mths on this, is unbelievable. what you need that raid to do, load a game 3 seconds faster?

loading speed vs gaming quailty
and you chose loading speed
Click to expand...

Its not so much patience, its a mixture of feeling miffed to the point where i have to let it leave my mind for a while to stop it getting the better of me. I also work away from home a lot and that keeps me stupidly busy.

The intel raid controller on this is actually pretty decent. I run 2 raid0 arrays, i do quite a bit of photoshop work and sampling etc for music production so raid really does shine through for this kind of stuff. The loading speed doesn't effect the gaming quality, that comes from the DDR3 memory bandwidth, 2 X16 slots with the 2 4870x2's in QFX and extreme quad CPU. The stats of the 2 velociraptors in raid0 aint too far away from SSD's. fair enough the SSD's have great access times but..

Ultimately i bought the board because of the quadfire support and raid controller. If i can't have both running together then it doesn't serve the intended perpose - It's going back for a refund.

Don't get me wrong though, BlackOps really are a pretty awesome mainboard, just a complete shame i can't have all the features working as i intended. Its a shame Foxconn didn't fix this issue in the last 2 bios updates P06 and P07
 
if i were you i'd try a raid card if it's necessary
a good one should not set you back too much

besides a raid card is better than onboard
 
Get a refund on the board if you can and get a different one that will work. Foxconn seem blase enough to not mind losing your custom.
 
To be fair on the raid card comments, onboard raid that is part of a chipset has always worked fine when I've set it up and I wouldn't say the available prices for a new controller are exactly cheap and I have a RAID card that can't be used as a boot device without a lot of work which kind of makes it pointless unless you just need more storage!
 
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