Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 1.0) supports AM3 CPU.

[LeetPirate]

The reason for this thread is that Gigabyte are lying bastards, and I want all those who own this board to know that there is still hope and all is not lost as it may seem.

When Giga-Losers first released the GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 1.0), the product page contained various specifications and stickers claiming the board to be AM3 ready. However since Giga-Scammers are liars, when the time came to hold up their end of the deal they quickly replaced the board with a new revision 2.0 and claimed that only rev 2.0 supported AM3 whilst removing all traces of AM3 support from the rev 1.0 product page. Several emails back and forth to Gigabyte support team only confirmed my worst nightmare, that Gigabyte support team is 100% idiots who know nothing. Luckily to confirm I wasn't paranoid I did a search and found data to confirm that Gigabyte did indeed claim AM3 support on rev 1.0 of this board. Source. Gigabyte was quick to remove all the evidence from their servers.

I will just summarise their lies, with 1 of their replies to my many questions to them.

Question : Yea but I am saying you are liars. When you introduced this motherboard you advertised boldly that it will be supporting AM3 cpu then all of a sudden when the time comes you refuse to supply bios upgrades. This is unfair to customers. All you have to do is supply bios updates with the latest AGESA cpu code from AMD. This is the most dishonest business practice I ever saw from a company. How come ASUS does not lie to customers?

I know for a fact the platform supports AM3, you just need to make the BIOS with the latest AGESA code, because the boards with 790fx and SB600 chipsets amazingly have AM3 BIOS updates but you refuse to supply the same BIOS for the 770/SB600 chipset. All you keep doing is talking a load of rubbish and ripping off customers.

Just supply the BIOS update. We both know it's possible else you would not have said it when you first made this board. Stop being liars.

Answer : Unfortunately it cannot be done with rev 1.0, the chipset was revised on rev 2.0 which is hardware related

Just to prove they are lying, there is no hardware related issue that prevents the AMD770/SB600 chipsets from supporting AM3 CPU. Many other competing boards have similar configuration and support AM3 CPU just fine. To fully understand that point you need to know that all AMD 7-series Northbridges are built on the same core design except the various models have different performance features disabled none of which relate to CPU compatibility. In fact why on Earth would AMD make a chipset to be incompatible with their own CPU to start with?

I finally decided to ignore Gigabyte and buy the Regor core AM3 Athlon II 245 cpu anyway. Here are some information and screen shots of the results. Irrelevant information was removed.

Everest Report

CPU Properties

CPU Type: DualCore AMD Athlon II X2 245

CPU Alias: Regor

CPU Stepping: DA-C2

Engineering Sample: No

CPUID CPU Name: AMD Athlon™ X2 245 Processor

CPUID Revision: 00100F62h

CPU VID: 1.3250 V

North Bridge VID: 1.1750 V

CPU Speed

CPU Clock: 803.6 MHz (original: 2900 MHz)

CPU Multiplier: 4x

CPU FSB: 200.9 MHz (original: 200 MHz)

HyperTransport Clock: 2009.1 MHz

North Bridge Clock: 2009.1 MHz

Memory Bus: 401.8 MHz

DRAM:FSB Ratio: 12:6

CPU Cache

L1 Code Cache: 64 KB per core

L1 Data Cache: 64 KB per core

L2 Cache: 1 MB per core (On-Die, ECC, Full-Speed)

Motherboard Properties

Motherboard ID: 01/05/2009-RD780-SB600-XXXXXXXXX-XX

Motherboard Name: Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 v1.0 (2 PCI, 4 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)

Chipset Properties

Motherboard Chipset: AMD 770, AMD K10

BIOS Properties

System BIOS Date: 01/05/09

Award BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG

Award BIOS Message: AMD 770 BIOS for GA-MA770-DS3 F7

DMI BIOS Version: F7

Conclusions:

1. Giga-Morons are indeed lying bastards afterall, the board can and is working with AM3 cpu even after they blatantly said it "cannot" be done. :blink:
2. Windows detects the Regor core and Cool and Quiet power saving features are working since you can see the core voltage drops, the multiplier drops to 4x and the cpu is running at 800Mhz on idle. This is confirmed by CPU-Z and the Everest report.:dance2:
3. The only thing incapable of fully recognising the CPU is the BIOS because Gigabyte refuses to update it with the latest AGESA code. Luckily the BIOS version F7 has some AMD K10 architecture support and therefore it will work with all the new AM3 cpu's based on the K10 architecture regardless to the core name or cpu stepping. The current AGESA v3.3.20 in BIOS F7 identifies the Regor core Athlon II 245 CPU as Phenom II, for all intents and purposes this is not a problem at all since the BIOS supports all the K10 architecture features needed to run the AM3 CPU. Once again it confirms what I was trying to explain to those incompetent fools at Gigabyte, that they just need to supply a simple BIOS update but they are sticking with their lies for now.:rolleyes:
4. Atleast when you buy from ASUS they never lie about what they promise. In fact this is the first time I ever saw a big manufacturer blatantly lie like this and get away with it, false advertisement is a crime not so? :think:
5. All Owners of Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 1.0) motherboard can jump for joy knowing that the board supports AM3 CPU, despite the false claims of the manufacturer. :lol:
6. After inspection of the VRM on the board I would not recommend using cpu with >95W TDP to maintain stability since this board appears to only have a 3+1 phase power design. I'm not saying it won't work with >95W TDP cpu, just that ideally you would want to have atleast 4+1 phase power design for stability and longevity of the board. I believe less phases means more amperes will need to pass through each phase to supply a higher powered cpu at full loads which means more heat losses and stress onthe pcb traces and components.:unsure:

My source of inspiration for going ahead with this experiment was this thread over at HEXUS community forums.

I hope Gigabyte lawyers don't come after me for exposing them.:ph34r:

UPDATE: Recently, Giga-Byte has released BIOS F8f however they never mention anything about AM3 support included because they are liars and they intend to carry that lie to their grave it seems. I gutted that new BIOS and to my surprise BIOS F8F contains AGESA Code v3.5.3.0 which is quite newer than even the other boards that "officially" have AM3 support. Basically BIOS F8F is a major jump in CPU support, Giga-Losers will never mention it but screw them, as long as I know it I will post it everywhere for people to know the truth.

[RadioActive]

That's interesting. Personally, I stopped buying Gigabyte products for quite some time simply because they are overpriced, when I was building my PC I got a Biostar board (790GX) which costed almost half what a Gigabyte would've and for what?!!