Introduction
Socket 775 / LGA775 / Socket T was introduced in 2004. I think no normal web site would review a Socket 775 motherboard in 2013. However, as mentioned in my previous article, I needed to repair an old PC, so I bought a new motherboard – Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo Rev. 2.0. This review takes a look at it from the perspective of repairing old PC and its features compared to 2013 standards.
Revision Differences
There are several revisions of this motherboard. It is not obvious what was changed among the 1.x revisions. However, revision 1.x uses VT1708S for audio, which is changed to Realtek ALC887 in 2.0 and dropping the S/PDIF output. It is important to know the revision (silkscreen on the top-left hand corner of the motherboard) before flashing BIOS because the BIOS for different revisions are incompatible.
Features and Mysteries
As suggested in its model name (beware that this implication is not always true with Gigabyte motherboards) this motherboard uses Intel G41 Express chipset in a MicroATX form factor. To my surprise, the latest hardware and BIOS revision was done in 2012. The first shop I went to just sold out of this motherboard and the MSI corresponding motherboard a few days before, so there’s still demand for Socket 775.
Rather than copying the features and specifications from the Gigabyte web site, I’ll just comment on some of the features:
- CPU support – basically the whole range of Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron Dual-Core and Celeron 400 Sequence are supported. Also in the CPU support list is Prescott Pentium 4 – but strangely only a few models are listed – this is the first mystery. So if anyone is considering to buy this motherboard to repair a Prescott Pentium 4 PC, beware. In addition, most of the Core 2 Extreme CPUs are not listed, although it is not likely anyone will use a budget motherboard such as this one for an Extreme CPU.
- RAM – This Combo motherboard supports 2 slots of DDR2 and 2 slots of DDR3, but DDR2 and DDR3 cannot be used at the same time. In 2013 there are very few motherboards that support DDR2, so having this feature is great for repairing DDR2 PC. For DDR2, up to 4GB x 2 (total 8GB) can be used. For DDR3, we run into what I’d call the G41 8GB DDR3 mystery – both the motherboard printed manual and the Intel G41 specifications state that up to a total of 4GB DDR3 is supported, but the motherboard web specifications state that up to 8GB (4GB x 2) is supported. Since there are reports of success of using 4GB x 2 DDR3 on other G41 motherboards, I’d believe the Intel specifications are too conservative. There is a report that Kingmax DDR-3 does not work on this motherboard, but Kingston does. [2016 Update: I have success with a pair of Kingston KVR1333D3N9/4G-SP, with each being 4GB DDR3 comprised of 16 chips.] Note that using a single module of 8GB DDR3 will not work (you need a far newer motherboard to use 8GB DDR3 modules). [For 4GB memory, look for those with low-density 16 chips.]
- On-board display – The G41 chipset integrates Intel GMA X4500 display. We don’t need to run a benchmark test to know that it would not run today’s games at acceptable frame rates. The only question is whether this display will run Windows 7 Aero well. I’m pleased to report that it is good enough for normal web surfing purposes. On this board it only has a VGA output port – no DVI, HDMI output. I wish it had a DVI output, but I cannot really complain about this for its price. X4500 supports hardware accelerated Blu-ray playback if you run Windows Vista or 7, but it’s a mystery to me whether Blu-ray playback can really be done with its VGA output, since it usually requires HDCP (which implies a DVI or HDMI output).
- Ultra Durable mystery – The packaging of the motherboard says it is Ultra Durable with humidity protection, but the web site specifications neither describe it as Ultra Durable-class motherboard or state the feature of humidity protection.
- USB – It has 4 USB 2.0 ports, plus internal headers for additional 4 ports via USB brackets (not provided). Not surprisingly, it does not support USB 3.0, which is now standard.
- SATA – Likewise, it only supports SATA 3GB/s instead of the newer SATA 6GB/s, but in my opinion this is not important for HDD performance at all. It does impact SSD performance, but there is an Amazon UK review saying that the motherboard cannot boot SSD – I don’t know whether this is an isolated incompatibility, a failure to set SATA to Enhanced in BIOS (not a default setting), or (perhaps more likely) a failure to deal with the complex problem of having both IDE and SATA drives – different SATA ports on the motherboard may also behave differently.
- Layout – some reviewers complain that a SATA port can be blocked by the presence of a graphics card.
- Hardware accessories – the motherboard only comes with 2 SATA cables and 1 80-wire IDE cable. There is no USB bracket.
Overclocking and G41 FSB Wall
I tested a Core 2 Duo E6400 B2 2.13GHz (266MHz FSB x 8) running at 2.66GHz (333 MHz FSB x 8) with nothing else changed in the BIOS, running Prime95 for a short time with no error, before deciding that the stock Intel Heatsink Fan (with Cooler Master thermal grease newly applied) is incapable of dissipating the heat effectively enough for this level of overclock in my environment. As I have no plan to replace the Heatsink Fan with something better (e.g. my favorite Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus), I have not experimented with even higher overclock settings.
Although I don’t do aggressive overclocking, I’m still curious about a prevalent FSB Wall issue that is present in most G41 implementations. It is widely reported G41 has a FSB Wall between 340 – 350 MHz. With the G41 motherboard being reviewed, it indeed has a 343 MHz FSB Wall wtih default settings. Overclocking PCI-E frequency to 104MHz helped increase the FSB Wall to 357MHz. This is a pretty significant limitation for those who want to overclock much higher, because it implies the maximum overclock for this CPU would be 357MHz x 8 = 2.85GHz (or 2.5GHz for those using Core 2 Duo E6300 with a x7 multiplier).
With the failed overclock settings I attempted, the motherboard usually succeeds to recover from it after a minute or two. However, there were a number of times when I had to power cycle the PSU in order to boot it up again. During these failed overclocking attempts I did not have to clear CMOS.
G41 is a budget chipset, and the GA-G41M-Combo is a budget motherboard. It is unreasonable to expect great overclocking potential from it. Considering the major limitation – the low FSB Wall comes from the G41 chipset, it is not a fault of the motherboard. At least 333MHz works as specified.
Fail to resume from S3 on Windows 7 SP1
The only major problem I have with this motherboard is its failure to resume from S3 with a configuration of Windows 7 SP1 (all patches up to the date of this post and latest drivers for everything), 1GB DDR2 x 2, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, no USB device, SATA HDD, IDE DVD writer. On resume it will go into a reboot loop that can only be recovered by power cycling the PSU. Doing some google I found that it is a prevalent problem with various Gigabyte motherboards, although some of them had a BIOS update that fixed it. Common solutions that disable Hybrid Sleep and changing USB suspend in Windows 7 did not help. I also tried all sorts of BIOS setting changes suggested in various forum posts without success: no overclock, diable HPET, wake up by PME, disable CPU C1E, EIST, XD, increase RAM voltage, and even tried another PSU.
The only thing remaining that I did not try is to downgrade the BIOS from FB to FA version. Finally I gave up on solving the S3 resume problem, and use S1 instead.
Multiple automatic restart until successful POST
David Moylan (see the comments section) experienced an issue “multiple automatic restarts until POST was successful” and he solved it by downgrading the BIOS from FB to FA.
Tips for Set Up
SATA
- By default SATA is run in auto or IDE emulation mode – this default is normal for old chipsets like the G41. However, if you use Windows 7, you really should set the BIOS setting for SATA to be Enhanced before installing Windows.
- Some people have trouble booting SATA HDD while having IDE HDD as data drives with various brands of motherboard. This is how I achieved this:
- Disconnect IDE HDD, leaving only the SATA HDD connected
- Set SATA mode in BIOS to Enhanced
- Install Windows 7
- Reconnect IDE HDD (Some posts suggest to disable it in BIOS to avoid booting from IDE HDD since Windows will still see them no matter what – I have them enabled in BIOS and still it works for me)
- Set boot order in BIOS properly
BIOS Upgrade
- It seems easy for the motherboard to accidentally trigger the Dual BIOS recovery mechanism to copy the backup BIOS to the main BIOS. After updating a BIOS and confirming it to be working, one may press ALT-F12 at power on to copy the main BIOS to backup BIOS as well.
Windows 7
- There is a modified BIOS that includes SLIC 2.1, for those who care about this. Note that this BIOS can only be used for Rev.2.0 of this motherboard – do not attempt to flash it to any different motherboard revision.
- The AR8151 Gigabit Ethernet driver is not present in Windows 7 SP1, you’ll need to to have it ready in USB drive or CD.
- For a 2GB RAM setup, I found that it is the absolute minimum for 64-bit Windows 7. While it works acceptably for simple tasks, it is going to give an obviously slower response than on Windows XP.
Latest 64-bit Windows 7 Drivers
- Intel INF Update
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver (Verified: 15.17.19.64.2869)
- Atheros AR8151 Gigabit Ethernet Driver (Verified: V2.1.0.15)
- Realtek ALC887 HD Audio Driver (Verified: 64-bit Windows 7 R2.71)
Windows XP (Not verified)
- Disable PAVP – as it cannot be used in Windows XP anyway, so disabling it will free up a little RAM
Windows 8
- I have not found much information other than this thread about AR8151 Ethernet problems. This issue is no longer valid in newer Windows releases and updates, according to David Moylan.
OS X Mountain Lion (Not verified)
- Read the tonymacx86 guide. Note that the audio chip described in the first post should really be Realtek ALC887 instead.
Summary
The Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo Rev. 2.0 Motherboard is an inexpensive but decent motherboard for repairing socket 775 PC, as long as one does not need all 4 SATA ports together with using a graphics card, does not need S3 Resume to work or intend to overclock much. Those who need DVI or HDMI output will need an additional graphics card or find another socket 775 motherboard (not that there are many choices these days).
Andre said:
let me explain some:
“Layout – some reviewers complain that the SATA ports can be blocked by the presence of a graphics card. This is indeed a minor flaw, but I believe it can be worked around if longer SATA cables are used.”
This problem appear just because a PCI Express x16 Video Card (NOT LOW profile) installed OVER the sata connector and blocking a path to connect, length of cable does not matter. From 4 sata connector I can use only 3.
Andre
moonlightknighthk said:
Thanks for the explanation.
Ady Price said:
you can buy a sata cable that connects at a right angle(90 degrees) on the board.
Pennyman said:
No, that’s incorrect!
The 90° angle cable’s direction ist right to the other connectors. Therby the next (the 3rd) connector will be also unusable.
I bought this mb last week. My video card also blocks the fourth sata connector and i had to cut off a little bit of the plastic case of my video card.
Greets, Pennyman
mcravener said:
Layout: I can also add that it is too crowded around the four pin 12 Volt Atx connection to fit a power supply’s eight pin EPS connection. Not sure if that is the standard nowadays, but the solution is the same as Andre’s: connect a 4-pin Atx cable extension to the relevant four pins of the EPS connection.
Biplab said:
Thanks for such explicit information.
sri said:
my sata hdd not recognizing in this board. please help me to close this.
Dhiran said:
Thanks a Lot I learned a lot from this about my motherboard 🙂 great of you to write something like this
Lee said:
GB, not MB. Other than that, useful information/speculation. I was hoping to stick a sata3 PCIE card into this mobo and put a SSD in it, if I ever do try, I’ll let you know if I get it to work.
moonlightknighthk said:
Thanks. That was a stupid mistake.
Diptanu said:
i m using the gigabyte G41M-combo Motherboard with BIOS as (Award software international inc) version:- FB.
I use dual boot ( Windows XP and RHEL5).
Problem:- In Windows If i Restart , ( Start–>Shutdown computer–> REstart” the Ssyetm goes down and never comes UP.
Simillarly for Linux, I execute Init 6, I can see the last message in screen as “Please wait till the system is rebooted” and after that the screen goes blank.( as exepected and normal)
And After the blank screen ( I expect the POST to happen as I gave a restart from the OS) but that is not happening, Screen remains blank, But I can see the CPU fan and the Disks spinning.
To resolve this issue I have to disconnect the Input power and reconnect again and start. ie a fresh start is required and the system boots fine.
SO the summary is System does not comes up once given restart from the OS ( Even POST is also not getting executed during the restart
Please help me.
Even I tried to use the load optimized defaults and load fail-safe defaults in BIOS, but no sucess…
I tried to contact the Service centre and they are saying they need atlest 7 days to get the issue checked ie I have to be without my System working for atlest 7 days..
No Ways…..
moonlightknighthk said:
Some suggestions:
Change ACPI resume from S3 to S1.
Set the RAM to run at lower frequency in BIOS.
Make sure all USB devices (except keyboard/mouse) are disconnected.
Remove all non-essential peripherals including optical drives. If you have multiple HDD, disconnect all of them but the boot HDD.
Make sure you’re not overclocking the system.
Try a different power supply.
Mali said:
Hello, my system is always hibernated. Sometimes, I disconnect my system drive and work with another drive with linux or mac. When I reconnect my system drive and turn on the system, I get a “KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR”. I have to select the option “Delete the restoration data and proceed with windows”. I didn’t have this error on my old intel motherboard. On this motherboard, if I disconnect drives and reconnect them, the system fails to resume windows. Is there any fix?
G41 King said:
Hmmm… Want higher FSB on G41 chipset, disable the on board GPU and away you go! Hmm… want DDR3 RAM? Be careful. The chipset can only address low density 256MB RAM chips -buying ‘off the shelf’ 1333MHz DDR3 will result in failure to post (as the newer RAM sticks have single-sided high density 512MB RAM chips on the sticks). 8GB no problems there, so long as it is low-density double sided.
Sensible to enable enhanced SATA mode BEFORE installing windows, but is ‘enhanced mode’ really AHCI only?? Because there is a PATA slot on the motherboard I doubt ‘true’ AHCI is possible. G41 King.
moonlightknighthk said:
To my knowledge the Enhanced Mode refers to the SATA controller only.
G41 King said:
Good to know. I love these old boards, and they are, in my opinion, much undervalued. I feel they can provide great fun for many uses and users for years to come. I was really pleased to find this review. Only sorry I cant find many of these boards still for sale.
mustafa said:
well this G41 series is just sucks ……i have like a dozen of them with multiple cpus like core 2 duo… celeron …pentium R its simply over heated after 4 months approximently of work ……..the chipset is overheated and just keeps heating up whatever fans you used ……its chipset heatsank is sucks …..not effective at all ….
my recomendation for any one how want to buy it ….just dont …you simply will waste your money …..if you want to buy some good motherboard with in budget …buy the H61 series …….heat sank really effective …..not generating alot of heat …..fast and stable with 1155 socket………have for 1 year till now no issues
moonlightknighthk said:
The reviewed motherboard has been running for 6 months with no problem (other than those already mentioned in the article). Are all those G41 motherboards you used made by Gigabyte? When you mentioned fan, did you refer to manually adding a fan to the chipset heatsink, or refer to the CPU fan and expect the CPU fan to somehow dissipate heat from the chipset?
Zandre said:
Had this board for a few years now still running great!I Use a AMD 5870 GFX Card,8 GB ddr3 1600Mhz kingston hyperX Ram,E8400 3.0Ghz Core 2 Extreme CPU With a Coolermaster Hyper TX3 Cpu Cooler And I Runs Great!Im Only Using Sata Drives.
moonlightknighthk said:
Great!
David Moylan said:
I realise this article is a little old now, but I thought I would post this as I recently had the same issues with power-up (multiple automatic restarts until POST was successful) and I resolved the issue.
I recently purchased a gigabyte G41M-COMBO motherboard to replace a LGA775 board in my Son’s PC as we wanted to upgrade to Windows 8 64 bit with 8GB of RAM and his existing board would only take maximum 4GB.
I’d already upgraded another machine using the same board about 12 months ago and had experienced no problems at all, but when I completed this upgrade I had all kinds of problems with the machine taking an immense amount of time to complete POST and would not restart from Windows successfully.
I was curious and decided to check out the other machine running the same G41M-COMBO (version 2) board, and lo and behold it was running BIOS FA. The new board came with BIOS FB.
I flashed the new machine back to the FA BIOS, reset all the settings in the BIOS and configured them as per my normal standard, and the machine fired up perfectly.
All of the delay/POST/reboot issues have gone. The machine fires up every time and even seems a little quicker on operating system load than previously.
I’m suspicious that the FB BIOS doesn’t read the SPD from the memory correctly as during my testing I did find that a single (older) DDR2 module in this board appeared to work better.
I’m guessing that the BIOS puts the incorrect timings and fails to POST correctly and eventually fails back to “safe” settings which work correctly.
I wanted to post this here as the author thought this was a potential option but didn’t appear to go through with this final step.
Hopefully Google will index this as a potential solution for any other gigabyte G41M-COMBO users who are having constant reboot or machine power cycling issues on restart or initial power on.
cheers, Wiz!!
moonlightknighthk said:
Very interesting finding.
David Moylan said:
That’s exactly what I thought and the whole reason I wanted to post my findings. I’d been really happy with the G41M-COMBO in another identical machine and initially my heart dropped after I’d completed my son’s upgrade because I thought the new board was defective.
LGA775 boards are really hard to come by. It was really hard for me to get this board for him.
If I had the money I’d get an socket 1150 board, but this means a new CPU and I’d probably be inclined to get an SSD drive for it as well.
I didn’t find anything else online which indicated any potential “fixes” for this issue. Everyone seems to just be bagging the board and putting up with the problem. It turns out the fix is really simple and now my son is super happy with his PC upgrade.
David Moylan said:
Just a quick note in terms of compatibility – Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 64 bit run perfectly on this board. The original notes regarding the ethernet adapter are redundant as Microsoft now provides a newer version of the Qualcomm drivers via Windows update.
mcravener said:
Great summation of the GA-G41. Being that socket 775 has been around for so long, since 2004 as you wrote, I was very pleased to find this motherboard (February 2014), which allows for Windows 7, which my previous socket 775 motherboard from 2007 did not. Just a week ago I purchased the GA-G41 and had a few 775 mobos to choose between: an ASUS mobo, an Asrock and an MSI but looking at reviews and builds the Gigabyte stood out as the best choice.
During installation I’ve encountered some of the issues you’ve mentioned, the most clearcut being the AHCI issue, which as you wrote is covered in Enhanced mode. I’m going to retry connecting my one Pata drive, which on the previous installation caused reboots and unrecognized drives, hopefully it will work & hopefully I did install Win 7 in the enhanced mode bios setting.
Another good thing about this late-model 775 motherboard (2010 or so?) is that the bios is now UEFI (aka EFI) which did not seem to be a standard in 2007 when I got my Asus P5N73-AM. So a much richer bios choice set, which is gratifying.
Anyway good job on compiling the GA-G41 material in a most readable way.
moonlightknighthk said:
I hope it’ll work well for you.
mcravener said:
Correction the motherboard bios is not EFI it is still an Award bios, it just has an EFI option for booting on harddrives larger than 2.2 Tb (a so called hybrid bios).
http://techreport.com/news/20941/is-it-efi-or-not-gigabyte-hybrid-efi-bios-explained
Sudheer said:
Comments made by David Moylan were very helpful to me. I had to revert to BIOS version from FB to FA.
System doesn’t switch on at all after proper shutdown. We I press power switch on cabinet CPU fan spins for a second and gone.. I doesn’t switch on at all.
I received this MOBO with FA version BIOS, I upgraded it to FB(Later realized it as my biggest mistake.). Spent almost two days trying out different options to resolve the issue. Finally degraded to FA version. Now it’s working fine.
Richard T. Guillermo said:
i have problem on my ga-g41m-combo when i use windows 7 boot up is ok but when im using windows xp boot up is not continuing…? i also try to update bios but still nothing happened please help me
moonlightknighthk said:
Try a different set of RAM. Or underclock the RAM, or increase the RAM timings.
mcravener said:
I’m wondering if it is a sata driver issue, I had that experience with an XP install on a laptop with sata drives, where I had to slipstream the sata driver into XP for the install to continue.
Vishal Dev said:
I have this same motherboard (GA-G41m Combo BIOS FA) but my problem is that my computer restarts randomly. Sometimes it happens while just booting up or sometimes when I am running some game or software.
System Specs
Intel e8400 @3.0ghz
2 gb ddr3 ram (I think that ram slots also have a problem in my motherboard. Sometimes when i switch ram from one ddr3 slot to another ddr3 slot, computer starts beeping continuosly, but after some time , they start working correctly.)
360gb hdd
AMD hd 7750
400 watts local psu included with cabinet. 18Amp on +12v rail
Can somebody please tell me how to solve this issue ??
moonlightknighthk said:
Firstly, run this memory test for 24 hours: http://www.memtest.org/
If there is no memory issue, try a high quality power supply (I recommend Antec). Those free power supplies that came with cabinet are usually trash.
Swapping RAM causing beeping means your RAM and slots do not contact properly.
Vishal Dev said:
Thanks moonlightknighthk..
Switching PSU solved the problem. Bought a corsair cx430. All issues sorted out.
And regarding SSD’s in above post, i can confirm that SSD is working both as a booting drive and as a normal storage drive. I am using transcend 128GB 340 series SSD. Bought it recently. I am getting good boot up and shut down timings, but copying files is not as fast as I expected. That’s probably due to SATAII ports on my motherboard.
Just bought a new Haswell CPU and motherboard. Will check and post the speed of my SSD after that.
moonlightknighthk said:
Pleased to hear that.
Sam Panen said:
Hi! I had this board recently. My problem is that I have a ddr2 2gb memory 800mhz but only 256mb memory is detected. What do you think is the problem?
moonlightknighthk said:
Try different RAM slots. If you have more than 1 stick of RAM, start with 1 stick only.
John Peters said:
Has anyone put an HDMI graphics card on this MOBO? If so which one?
mcravener said:
I use an Gigabyte Radeon HD 7750 OC HDMI 1 Gb to run a 32 inch screen with this motherboard. Good if you can find it – needs no external power besides the PCI-E connection – and reasonable benchmark results imo.
Vishal Dev said:
And I use a sapphire hd 7750 1gb ddr5 on 32 inch LED TV . Works without any issues 🙂
niculaie said:
I have this board but revision 1.3 a little older sorry, working perfectly almost 4 years already, with E7200 (2,53/1066) at 3,3/1343 and the board has fsb max 1353 with pciex at 103. What I don’t understand is that I measured the power some day, like 74-80 W idle, but while turned off like 14-18 W ?? Is it not too much? I wrote to gigabyte but I doubt there is much to do now after all this time. The problem is that my S3 standby is working and I kind of using it daily … so … otherwise I put a power cord with turn off button
Rezky wibisono said:
after read the articel, I decide to upgrade my ram to 8 GB so what kind of brand/serie will support to GA-G41 Combo?
moonlightknighthk said:
You may try Kingston 4GB x 2 assuming they are of the same model, same spec, and preferably same batch, but I cannot guarantee it’ll work. Make sure you buy it from a place that allows you to return if it’s incompatible.
Vagelis said:
Hi,
I just bought the same motherboard (rev. 2), I did a successfull fresh install of windows 7 on an ATA 80gb WD disk (the only disk connected so far) but the system doesn’t even start to boot (boot order is correctly setup to HDD). I’ve tried all SATA modes with no luck. Any suggestions?
moonlightknighthk said:
What do you see on screen when it fails to boot?
Vagelis said:
Black screen, cursor blinking. It doesn’t even start booting. It’s right after the windows 7 installation where it should start booting from the hdd.
moonlightknighthk said:
How did you install Windows?
If you used an IDE DVD writer to install it, check that it’s set to slave by jumper.
If you used a SATA DVD writer to install it, try removing it to see if the IDE can be booted.
In any case, check all the boot-related BIOS settings again. There may be more than one related setting.
Vagelis said:
Hi,
Thank you for the response. I installed via a usb stick (booting with USB-HDD). The installation finished successfully. The ATA disk is set as master. I also tried to change the ATA cable with no luck. I don’t see any other related BIOS parameter besides boot order and SATA mode and I’ve tested all.
Thank you anyway,
moonlightknighthk said:
If you previously set SATA mode to Enhanced when you installed Windows, I think you should try setting it differently and reinstall Windows to the IDE HDD from scratch (format it again). SATA mode should be set to Enhanced if and only if you use a SATA HDD.
Vagelis said:
The SATA mode during the installation was AUTO. Normally this should do the job. Since I’m going to try a reinstall which mode do you suggest for a configuration with a single IDE disk and nothing else connected?
Thanks,
moonlightknighthk said:
Before reinstalling it, try pressing F8 to see if it can boot to Safe Mode. If you reinstall it, I’d suggest you change the SATA mode and make sure there is only an IDE HDD device, with no SATA device connected.
Vagelis said:
Just to “close” the issue, I didn’t find any solution, so I purchased a new 2TB SATA disk. I hope that I will not fall onto any new issue with the new SATA disk.
Thank you for the help,
Vagelis
moonlightknighthk said:
I see. For SATA HDD, you should set SATA mode to Enhanced before installing Windows. I hope everything goes well for you.
Vagelis said:
Yes, I set the SATA mode to Enhanced and installed Win 7 64bit with success. Since I plan to purchase an SSD HD in the near future, I will post the results when this happens, although I don’t expect any problems because I have examples of people using SSD disks with this MB without problem besides the degraded performance (I don’t know the deegree) due to SATA2 instead of SATA3.
Thank you again for the help,
Regards,
Vagelis
Ronney said:
hello,
currently i have reo motherboard with core 2 duo e7500 2.93GHz pro. & 2 gb ddr2 667 mhz ram win7 32 bit.i want to replace my mobo with gigabyte ga g41m mobo,
4gb ddr3 1066MHz ram with win7 32bit or 64 bit ,can i go for this motherboard or not with this config.,
in future i would like to add medium level grafic card of 1gb to it ?
what is you suggestion!!!
moonlightknighthk said:
It should work. You cannot, however, use both DDR2 and DDR3 at the same time. If you’re buying memory for Windows 7 64-bit, perhaps consider getting 4GBx2 (8GB) DDR3, since you cannot add more memory in the future. If you only have 4GB RAM, Windows 7 32-bit cannot utilize it all.
mcravener said:
Both me and Vishal above are using a 1 GB graphics card which work well.
I use an Gigabyte Radeon HD 7750 OC HDMI 1 Gb to run a 32 inch screen with this motherboard. Good if you can find it – needs no external power besides the PCI-E connection – and reasonable benchmark results imo.
Gigabyte GV-R775OC-1GI AMD Radeon HD 7750 Graphics Card 880 MHz PCI Express 16x 1024 MB
Vishal Dev said:
June 25, 2014 at 1:20 am
And I use a sapphire hd 7750 1gb ddr5 on 32 inch LED TV . Works without any issues 🙂
Ronney said:
thank you & what about RAM i read in some blogs & review of this motherboard that is does not work with kingston 4gb ram but in market its the only one brand that provide 4gb ddr3 1066MHz .i dont want to overclock with 1333MHZ. suggest or link 1066MHz ram.!
moonlightknighthk said:
It’s a mistake to buy DDR3-1066. You should buy DDR3-1333. You can run DDR3-1333 at 1066, or lower. You can control this in BIOS settings.
peter said:
i have a transcend 4 gb single ram 1333mhz(JM1333KLN-4G).The system is not booting and beep sounds occurs immediateliy inserting the ram.It works with ddr2 ram.My configuration is c2d E4500@2.2ghz .Kindly help me with changing the overclocking setting to make the ram work.
moonlightknighthk said:
Try cleaning the contacts of the RAM. Try both RAM slots. Do not use DDR2 and DDR3 at the same time. Try clear CMOS. Try different BIOS versions.
Lucian said:
This MoBo is only compatible with a few 4gb ddr3 ram sticks. I had to return mine. I am now searching for confirmed 4gb product numbers.
moonlightknighthk said:
FYI only – I have not tested these:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Giga-Byte/ga-g41m-combo
Krishnan said:
I have been using this Mo-bo for last 3 years with Core2duo 2.0GHz CPU, 2 x 2GB DDR2 RAM & Radeon HD5450 GPU. Performance is great!
However, recently, a mo-bo component marked D07 (A03 49 06NG) near the CPU suddenly overheated and cracked, after which it stopped working.
Can you please inform me about a good reliable service centre where I can get the mo-bo repaired ? (I stay in Mumbai, India).
Thanks.
jonathan said:
I have just purchased this board New from Ebay for £30.00 as my old board died and i just wanted to transfer the cpu and memory over to another , i find this board great for games with a decent Graphics card . I think it would be more to get repaired than to replace.
dan said:
i have new gegabite mother board …. she needs to Bios update … so what should i do ? i don’t n Know what is bios
nicu said:
is it working? if yes, dont update. if no, can’t update. if so and so why do you need update? I guess you are not talking about the GA-G41M-COMBO in this thread because I have it and it is not new since like 4 years and I was running E7200 OCed since day 1 no bios update now I run E7500 at 3.77 GHz
Rushdi said:
i m using core2 duo E7500 on gigabyte g41m combo with 4GB ddr3 1333Mhz . i bought another ddr3 4gb 1333Mhz but it didn’t work(no display). what should i do?
moonlightknighthk said:
This sounds like incompatibility. Before giving up, you may try:
– Swapping the RAM
– Try each of them individually, in each RAM slot
– Use one stick of RAM to boot up and go into BIOS, manually lower the memory clock and RAM timings first, before installing the other. Try to run them at LOWER than DDR3-1333.
Anonymouse said:
2 x 4GB DDR2 or DDR3 definitely works on this board, BUT they have to be double sided DIMMs with 8 chips on the front and also 8 at the back Which also brings me to the following:
1. “AMD-only” 4GB DDR2 sticks, while cheap, they have 16 chips/side which will not work on any Core 2 board.
2. Don’t bother with compatible DDR2 4GB sticks because they are incredibly overpriced.
3. Do not buy DDR3 that has higher voltage higher than standard 1.5V. 1.35V ones is ok because they will have a 1.5V mode.
4.If you are buying this a replacement board, think hard about the cost to benefit ratio. The prices for the DDR2/3 G41 combo boards has shot up the point where a brand new G3258 Pentium overclocked to 4GHz+ on a basic H81 board would completely destroy a 3GHz C2Q/Xeon with non of the the pesky DDR3 limitations and at the same time with much less heat and power draw for a slightly more money.
Disclaimer: YMMV.
sayem said:
DDR3 4GB does not work in this motherboard
moonlightknighthk said:
I have success with a pair of Kingston KVR1333D3N9/4G-SP (DDR3 4GB comprised of 16 chips each)
Ahad Leo said:
I am using this MB with Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66ghz. I have a Transcend 2GB DDR3 Ram of 1333Mhz. Bought another 2GB ram of other brand but that didn’t work. Only Transcend 1333Mhz is working. Need to install extra ram. Can anyone help me about the ram Problem. New ram doesn’t mach with the old one. So I am running my desktop with only 2GB DDR3 Ram. Last night installed windows 10. Working normally. But If I can expand the RAM then It will work more faster. If I buy a 4GB 1333 Kingston, then will the kingston work with the transcend 2GB?
amahadleo@gmail.com
moonlightknighthk said:
Running Dual Channel with different brands of RAM is simply asking for trouble and should be avoided. The best thing you can do is to give up the 2GB DDR2, and buy a pair of 4GB (with 16 chips instead of 8 chips) x 2 DDR3 from somewhere that allows you to return if it does not work.
Nick Berrow said:
Surprised this thread is still going-sign of a good board?. Interesting that you got Win10 working on it-I take it it is 64-bit if you are wanting to add that much new RAM?
I have been trying to install win10 on mine (with modded xeon x5450-worked great with win7/64) but just cannot get it going with win10 so will try with an e6750 for install. Anyone else got info on Win10 with this mb?
BTW I also had problems with ddr3 (bought kingston, then g-skill-both no go) and then got help from g-skill:
“We asked our engineering department and found a very likely cause to the problem. The base SPD speed was changed a while back (after G41 chipset support had ended) to a default of 1600MHz. And because your G41 motherboard only likely supports up to 1333MHz by default, so it’s refusing to boot with a default of 1600MHz”
Because it was on a ‘supported list’ or i did a test (can’t remember now) g-skill modded the RAM to 1333Mhz spd-now works fine. So you also have to check the SPD of the DDR3.
Nick Berrow said:
Update-Win10 will not work with Xeon x5450 modded for 775 socket! This setup ran Win7/64 really well but completely rejected by win10-their (MS) hardware guidelines really suck!
Q9550 for €30 from ebay plus ‘re-cycled’ asus 5450 silent 1GB and 4GB G-Skill RAM works great for win10Pro/64 on this board for most apps like office netflix, streaming films from wifi NAS etc. but I don’t think that it will stretch to any serious gaming.
liverp00l said:
This is an excellent board , im running Windows 10 64-bit, Q6600 Quad core cpu, 8gb ddr2, solid state disk, and Nvidia gtx 960 had no problem updating to windows 10 from windows 7 and works flawlessly games work really well at ultra on a lot . My daughter bought one from Amazon this weekend as mine was so good , again running Windows 10 64-bit , Q8800 Quad core cpu, 4gb ddr2, Asus Radeon 6950 and no problems at all and she can upgrade memory a bit more and invest in a better graphics card to get more out of it.
Yanni said:
Greetings all,
I ‘ve had some trouble with my G41M-Combo (rev 2.0, FA BIOS). The problem is when I change Vcore setting, it shows up as changed in the System Health section of the BIOS but when I boot up to Windows or Linux, the Vcore is reset back to the default for my CPU, about 1.1Volt. I wonder if anyone has any clue why this is happening and how it can be solved. I ‘ve seen the comments about FB vs FA BIOS and I think if I upgrade to FB it will actually be a downgrade, not an upgrade.
Rajesh said:
I have installed Win10 x64 OS on Gigabyte G41M Combo mother board with FB Bios version. It has E8400 CPU with old 4GB Kingston RAM, GT710 GPU card and 1TB WD Blue HDD. The PC is running very fast and playing 4K videos without any problem. I want to increase its RAM to 8GB but it is not accepting single sided 4GB Kingston sticks. Can any modification in Bios is possible.
moonlightknighthk said:
4GB sticks with 16 chips are required. This is a chipset level restriction, not a BIOS issue.
Rajesh said:
Thanks.
Yanni said:
I am trying to activate AHCI on this board without success…
I found the information in a forum that ICH7 does not support AHCI. Indeed Wikipedia agrees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I/O_Controller_Hub#ICH7
Should I quit trying to enable AHCI for my SSD or is there some way to activate it? Are you positive that it can be enabled?
moonlightknighthk said:
It does not support AHCI. I corrected the article.
Yanni said:
Thanks!