Gateway FX 6800-01e BIOS Update from Gateway Unsupported

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Took a quick look at the manual you provided.

I'm sure that the effort will be appreciated. :)

It seems the most useful information in this manual will be page 55,
the first diagram - Front Panel Header
which contains the jumper information many have been asking about.

Although I found there are inaccuracies in the manual and from the looks of it, the manual appears to be one thrown together, possibly by the techs themselves as a work in progress.

- 1) the system shown in the manual is an LX6810 Core 2 Quad

- 2) The pictures themselves appear to have been poorly done. They appear to represent a workshop more than they do major business.

- 3) the X58 chipset is designed for a Maximum of 4GB per slot which means that the FX6800 series would max out at 24GB of memory, not the 12GB that this manual would have you believe. The problem with anything higher than 12GB has been the price of 4GB DDR3 memory sticks which are just now coming into reach.

- 4) Looking through the Manual, on page 20 you can plainly see that the BIOS page even though it says FX6800, the Processor it lists is an Core 2 Quad , so here we know that the BIOS screen has been altered. The Product Name should read LX6810.

- 5) on page 37 you have the arrow pointing the opposite direction for opening the case. :)

- 6) on page 39 it shows the wrong motherboard, but on 46 & 47 it shows the correct motherboard.

- 7) pages 49 & 49 appear to be from the Core 2 Quad System.

- 8 ) page 42, first picture is not from the FX6800 system and the exploded view on page 58 appears to possibly be from the LX6810.
 

Hi, As far as I know, it isn't necessary to use RAID with SATA. I have two in here and am not using RAID.
 



That wasn't the Video Card. I too bought a refurb and it has done well. I too experienced the lockups on Boot, Bougt 6Gb of ram ( 2gb x 3 ) and that seemed to take care of that issue. I have Windows 7 ( Home Premium 64 bit ) installed as a dual boot with Vista. After installing Win 7, I went into the device manager and updated the Video Card drivers, as the ones installed by Win 7 weren't all the great. I have since upgraded to the ati Sapphire Vapor X HD5770 1 Gb GDDR5 Video card. The 7600GS is a good card, although rather dated and I have run it on my emachines, before updating to an 8600GT and then 9800GT. The wattage on the PSU is somewhat important in the over all scheme of things, but more inportant, is what you have on the +12v Rail ( the 7600GS only uses what it gets from the PCIe bus with no additional power ). When I put the 9800GT in the eMachines, it required a minimum of 400w with 18a on the +12v rail. I had that with the 500w Antec Basiq I had in there as i was rated at 18a on the rail. Well, When I got into some intensive graphics stuff while gaming, it wasn't enough for that and oproblems cropped up. I then changed it to a 650w Corsair PSU with 52a on the rail, problem solved. I have an 850W Corsair in this Gateway and it has 70+a on the rail. Probably a bit of over kill on my part as a 750w probably would have sufficed.
 
Even with out running RAID, you still need to install the Intel Rapid Storage Technologies Driver for the chipset to work correctly and for the yellow mark to disappear.

As for the power supply, I'm running an Ultra X4 1040 Watt PSU :)
 
Hey guys. I've been a fan of the site for a while, but only recently discoverd the forum community. There seemes to be a lot of smart people in this thread so hopefully someone can point out what I'm overlooking or doing wrong. I've been struggling with setting up a RAID 10 (4 x 1.5TB) for about two weeks. He's a breif summary of what I've done:

- Made an image of my current Windows 7 x64 installation with Acronis True Image Home 11
- Removed the original 1TB hard drive and installed 4 1.5TB drives
- Enabled RAID mode in BIOS and created a RAID 10 volume
- Used the Acronis bootable media and restored my backup to the volume
- Computer failed to boot
- Checked Gateway's (and Acronis') documentation and didn't see anything I did wrong
- Repeated the RAID creation and backup restoration process several times until I found Intel's documentation, which says a RAID volume can not be bootable, but a bootable volume can be converted in to a bootable RAID volume without data loss
- Disabled RAID mode in BIOS and spent a week trying to restore my Acronis backup to a single hard drive five or six different ways only to find out that their software sucks and/or my backup was corrupt
- After giving up on my backup, I did a fresh Windows 7 x64 install
- I installed the Intel Matrix Storage Console and rebooted the computer
- Looking at the Intel software's Read Me.txt file, it says I should create a driver floopy disk/CD/USB drive to use during a Windows Vista (and I'm assuming, Windows 7) install
- When going to download the Windows install driver, Intel's website says that it's not required for Windows Vista or 7

Before I do anything else, I wanted to get some input since I'm sure I missed something simple. I'm feeling a bit defeated and I hit the point where I need to ask for help. The confliting information from Intel isn't helping.

Update:
- I installted the Intel Rapid Storage Technolgy software and rebooted my computer
- Under the "Status" tab I do not see a button that says "Create"
 
I haven't tried RAID myself on this system, but there is one thing you can try seeing as this system does show a jmicron boot screen.

You can do a quick Google search of jmicron raid to see what kind of useful information you can come up with which may be of some help to you.
 


The manual mentions the need to remove the front panel to install/reaplce the ODD, but doesn't show how. I can't really figure it out by looking, either.


I haven't tried RAID myself on this system, but there is one thing you can try seeing as this system does show a jmicron boot screen.

You can do a quick Google search of jmicron raid to see what kind of useful information you can come up with which may be of some help to you.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion and I've searched a couple of times since you menionted it. The only thing that I really found was this two-year old post where people were talking about switching from a JMicron controller to an Intel controller on a custom built computer. Acornis seems to have worked for him too.

 
If you read a few posts up (just after the post with the Links to the Manual), you'll find that I posted some information on the manual itself.

It turns out that this manual is generally speaking, Cobbed together.
There are mistakes in it and it seems the majority of the material is for the LX6810 Core 2 Quad system.

But there is some material in the manual specific to the FX6800 Core i7 system.

Although as I mentioned above, the specifications are incorrectly listed as the X58 chipset supports up to 4 GB per memory slot for a total of 24 GB on this system, not the 12 GB that Gateway incorrectly lists.

-------------------------

As to removing the ODD (Optical Disk Drive), remove Both side panels from the system.

If your system doesn't have thumb screws for both panels, now would be the time to purchase some at a local Computer shop for easier access in the future.

Next, there will be six plastic tabs, three on each side behind the front bezel each tab about 1½ cm wide.Now this can be a little tricky as you need to release all three tabs on the left side of the front bezel so they all pop out while you tip the bezel to the right. Once all three tabs on the left come out and the bezel is tipped enough to the right, the other three tabs on the right should just pop out and the bezel should come off easily.

To replace the bezel, just insert the three tabs on the right and being careful to line everything up (a little tricky at first) the tabs on the left side should easily pop into the slots in the case.

Just a note of caution. When you have the front bezel off, note the round holes near the tab holes. On the back of the bezel, there are some pins/guides which must insert into these holes or if not, the bezel will be difficult to reattach.

----------------------

Once the Bezel is off, removing or replacing the ODD is a simple matter of disconnecting the drive cables and removing any screws which may be present on either side of the side of the drive.


Hope this helps :)
 
Hope this helps :)
Click to expand...

It does! I got the bezel off and the Blu-ray drive mounted without a problem. You've been incredibly helpful thus far.

I have a new challenge for you, sir. 😉

In addition to ordering SATA cables and the BD drive, I also ordered a new heatsink in effort to cut down on noise and help with heat (hopefully.) Is there any way to remove the metal heatsink mounting bracket from the underside of the motherboard? The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus mounting kit does not work with that existing bracket.

It feels like I could force it though by applying lots of pressure with a screwdriver, but I don't want to force, and then break, the motherboard.

Edit:
This heatsink is labeled as such:
ACER HI G4100 001 REV : B
FOXCONN 2009 05 02
Click to expand...
 
I haven't tried to remove the mounting bracket on the backside. But I was able to use the bracket with a liquid cooler as the screws lined up perfectly. Just had to use some neoprene washers to take up the slack.

As to trying to force the bracket, you need to be extremely careful cause if you damage the Motherboard in the least bit, even cracking it, then the motherboard will be toast.

The reason I say this is cause Motherboards are multi-layer with circuitry between the layers. If any of the layers get damaged, then they can not be repaired.

But as for cooling, this case is seriously lacking and needs to be modified for any decent cooling and you're always going to have noticeable noise levels with this system as long as it's in the factory case if you're going to have any decent levels of cooling for not just the CPU but everything else too.

For Blue-Ray Playback

I would recommend going with PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D. Then once you install it, before playing any disks go into the setting and disable the OSD as this one setting seems to crash Power DVD when playing Blue-Ray Disks.
 
RW:

I happened to cross this thread looking at HD's, and I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed with the help, the great attitude, your GREAT writing, and your excellent sense of how these darn things work. I too, have a FX6800-01e that I bought from Best Buy about 2 years ago (after returning two of them within a week- don't let the GS "tweak" your machine!!!). I spotted the BIOS update a few months ago and twice spent hours on GW Chat trying to get an answer to no avail. I gave up. Then I found this (and your subsequent BIOS_842P181G thread). I followed your instructions to a "T", and nare a problem at all. YOU HAVE THE KNACK, MAN!!!

Like I said, I've had my FX for about 2 years now. I really haven't had any problems with it other than those initial ones (Best Buy even refunded my GS dollars spent). I have added an extra HD, upgraded the PS, and then I loaded Win7-64 on it about 8 months ago (clean install), and this thing screams (no OC'ing). All I do is religiously use CCleaner, PerfectDisk11, and occasionally rid it of all the old updates using Win's Disk Cleanup. I don't purport to be a super user after seeing the knowledge you have imparted, but I have been able to hold my own.

I respond to this mainly because it it extremely rare to see someone who has the talent, the patience, and the fortitude to last what is 12 healthy pages of just about every issue they've thrown at you. I can only wish that you put up your own webpage just for FX6800 users to solicit payments for this hard-earned work. I shiver at how much time, effort, and ill-charged Gateway support service money everyone has invested in their machines that you couldn't take advantage of! It would be my pleasure to throw some of that towards your way for the level of support you have afforded everyone!

That said 🙂, now all I need to ask you is what HD would you replace the 750gb Seagate in these things...I need to increase my 5.9 score since the HD is dragging it down now. I've been eyeing the 600gb VelociRaptor by WD.

Oh...and to all those who have solicited his help: note how well he constructs his replies....something we ALL could learn from: concise, and extremely comprehensive! Thanks RW!
 
It's great to hear your high praise & gratitude! 😀

So far, I'm only able to help those who have the original FX6800 series motherboard which is the TBGM01.

From what I understand, some of the newer FX6800 systems use a different motherboard of which I am unfamiliar. But even so, I still don't trust Gateway (Acer) to do things right.

As for a replacement drive, I'd say to be sure to order from a place which has reliable handling & packaging as this is really going to make a difference in the drive you order. If the drive is mishandled, or badly packaged and banged about during shipping then chances are the drive may fail fairly early due to drive damage such as the spindle becoming wedged or the heads hitting the platters or other damage which can cause early failure.

I had a WD Black edition drive that failed one month after purchase and talking to the tech who authorized the replacement, he as much said the drive was most probably mishandled somewhere between the store and shipping.

--------------

But getting back to the subject at hand, a VelociRaptor sounds just fine or you could just get yourself say a 180 SSD (or larger).

Personally, I would install a decent size SSD drive large enough for the entire operating system plus a little extra head room. Then install either a VelociRaptor or a Black Edition for installing programs, games and other stuff.

After this, I would optimize the system so that any Temp directories or other stuff which could cause fragmentation would be on the hard drive, not the SSD drive.

Matter of fact, you could partition the hard drive so you would have a separate partition just for the system to use for all this stuff including such files as the pagefile and the hibernation file.

I guess you get my drift. :)

Just take your time to make sure you get everything right and that you don't miss anything.

It's been a long day and I'm about worn out almost.

Good Luck!
 
Renegade, I'm new to this forum and not sure how it works but it looks like you know heck of a lot about the FX6800-01e.. I bought the same Corsair memory as you and I am having some issues that I really hope you might be able to help me with..

At first it worked great, the memory was recognized and all was well.. until I tried rebooting. It hangs at startup with a black screen and a continuous beep.

If I press the power button for 10 secs and the restart sometimes it boots fine but other times is just hangs and beeps again..(it beeps probably 4 out of 5 attempts).. I contacted Corsair and they said upgrade the BIOS so I followed the instructions in this thread and (I now have flashed the 842P181G BIOS).

After that my system only recognized 4gb ram and still had the same problem of hanging with a long beep most of the time but occasionally booting up ok..

In despair I have put back in the original 3Gb ram until I find a solution.. any ideas?
 
OK, here is the http://www.ami.com/support/bios.cfm.
The very first link at the top of the page will be for a .Pdf file which will contain the AMIBIOS Checkpoint and beep Codes for diagnostics.

-----------

Now seeing as you are having this problem, with the memory, I can only assume there is a problem with either one or more of the new memory sticks, the motherboard or one of the memory slots.

Towards the beginning of this thread, I had outlined a technique for testing the memory to find the bad stick/s.

As for the Memory slots, you'll want to make sure they are clean from any dust or other contaminants. Use a bright flashlight and a good magnifying glass to check the previously unused slots for any signs of tarnish or other corrosion. You can use an emery board (nail file) carefully to clean the contacts.

With the memory itself, you can use a pencil eraser to clean the memory contacts.

As for the Motherboard, if there is any damage (which I doubt), it would be a crack in the board as there are several layers to the motherboard itself.

But you could still have a bad memory socket which in itself is not unheard of. My money would be on a bad stick of memory or a dirty contact.

Not sure if this would make a difference or not, but in the BIOS for the memory, I have it set to Spread Spectrum.

-------

Now seeing as you have had to do a hard shut down (holding the power button in for 10 seconds), that means that you basically crashed your system. Any time you do this, this causes corruption to the drive. So what should be done upon booting the system is to open Windows Explorer > right click on the C:\ Drive, select Properties > Tools tab > Error Checking, Select Check Now > Click Start.

It'll tell you that it can't be done right now because the drive is in used and it'll ask you if you would like to schedule a Disk Check. Select Yes, then close everything and reboot the system and you'll see that the system will perform a scan disk and it'll fix any errors it finds.

Good Luck with everything. :)
 
thanks for the fast response.. I will try the Spread Spectrum first - so the fact that sometimes it works fine with all 12gb could still indicate bad memory or a dirty stick.. i thought memory would either work or not work? .. not sometimes work.. ?

one other point i forgot to mention is that when I tried to enable the clear NV ram option in the bios as you suggested in another thread, i am unable to save the settings.. it appears to have saved but when i go back into the bios the option has reset to "no"..

thanks for being there!
 
The other thread which has the most recent BIOS update has the clearest & best instructions for updating the BIOS.

Plus if your BIOS had never been updated previously since the original factory BIOS from when the FX6800 was first released, then the secondary instructions in that thread addresses that issue.

-

Seeing as the memory is New, there shouldn't be any tarnish on the contacts. But a light rub with a pencil eraser is good for cleaning this.

More than likely, you may have a bad stick or one of your memory slots might be dirty (dust or tarnish).

Earlier I had mentioned the possibility of a bad motherboard or a bad memory slot.

--- Something like this could occur if there is a very small crack which you may not be able to see in the motherboard itself which could have been caused by pressing too hard. Or maybe a bad connector on the PCB, that is to say, maybe one or more of the memory slot connectors wasn't soldered correctly.

If it turns out you have a bad stick of memory, then it shouldn't matter what slot the stick is inserted in for it to show as bad. But if it's the slot itself, then it'll always show the same no matter what configuration you use for the memory in testing to find any bad sticks.
 
My FX6800 makes an annoying buzzing sound that revs up when I am scrolling in Windows Explorer. When idle there is a humming sound but it revs up and gets louder when I scroll through things on screen. Any idea how to solve this, anyone else notice this on their stock FX6800 rigs or am I just super sensitive with my hearing? It's driving me nuts, hard to work with that noise.
 
Nevermind, I disovered the fan noise is probably from the ATI 4800 series video card fan when scrolling in Internet Explroer. This issue can be solved by turning off "Use smooth scrolling" in IE8. Just go to the Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Browsing > Use Smooth Scrolling (uncheck this).
 
Sorry I wasn't around to see your posts as I have been busy elsewhere.

If the sound is just coming from the video card itself, then it may be time to clean your computer case of any and all dust preferably with an air compressor. This includes the video card too as the card can and will get clogged with dust which will make it harder for the fan to cool it.

The reason I always suggest the use of an air compressor is just using a can of compressed air is almost never enough to do the job thoroughly.

If your system has recently been cleaned, then the video card may be running a bit on the hot side what with all the new GPU rendering accelerators out there now which you can find in IE 9.0, FireFox, Flash and what ever else is out there now that is trying to take advantage of your video card's GPU these days.

You might want to keep watch on the temps with either
HWMonitor 64-Bit
or try the trial of AIDA64 Extreme Edition

---------------

If the sound is coming from the speakers though, it's been awhile since I last dealt with that particular problem and I'd have to really think about that one.
 
Hi,
I am a computer newb and have a question about the SATA drives. I bought a [WD caviar black 1 TB 32mb cache SATA 3.0] to replace the original Seagate one after it failed. I mounted it inside where the old one was. I recently got a good deal on a newer model [WD caviar black 1 TB with 64 mb cache and SATA 6.0 support].

I mounted the latter in one of the front panel tool-less drive bays. My question is, regardless of where you mount the drives, do they all run at the same speed connection wise? I am pretty sure this motherboard does not support SATA 6.0gb speeds and that is fine. But, will putting it in the front tool-less drive bay effect the speed of data transfer as compared to mounting it internally where the original one was?

The reason I ask is, I was hoping to clone the old drive and put it on the new one and use it as my primary drive. I would then use the old one as a backup drive. I just don't want to take a performance hit as I primarily use this system for gaming.

Also, does the 64mb cache of the new drive even warrant me using this as my primary drive, or does it not make much of a difference compared to the 32mb cache model I am currently running my programs off of.

Thanks in advance!
P.S. not sure if any of this info helps, but here are the other upgrades I have done. Added 3 more gigs of ram, a radeon 5870, and an OCZ 600 watt PS. Currently running bios RO1A. Running Windows 7 pro.
 
It doesn't matter where you mount your drive in the system as all the drive bays use the same set of SATA connectors along the bottom front edge of the motherboard.

Just find which SATA port goes to the System drive and which goes to the front bay you want to use and swap the connectors in those two ports.

Or if you want, you could pickup an SATA 6.0 PCIe card so you can get the full benefit of the drive seeing as you are looking to get the most speed you can get.

Of course the larger cache will always make a difference, but in this case, I don't think you'll really notice it much as the Caviar Black drives are great to begin with. :)

Reading your post, I think the best advice I could give you would be to invest in a case with better cooling, something that's not so restrictive unless you would rather go with something geared more towards liquid cooling.
 
Thanks, Renegade!

I didn't know they made SATA 6.0 PCIe cards. I thought you had to buy a new motherboard to support that. 😀 They aren't to expensive either. Might just pick one up. And the case could definitely use an upgrade with better airflow. I might have to do some research and look into a good one.

As always, Renegade, your dedication to this thread has been fantastic. Thanks a bunch. I have learned a ton about general computer knowledge from reading the posts here. Buying this computer has taught me how to upgrade the ram, bios, and hard drives(with this threads help of course). All things I have never done before. Truly invaluable.

Well, I'm off to get owned in Bad Company 2. Thanks again.
 
@Renegade_Warrior: I found this forum which enabled me to:
1) Update the Bios, 2) Increase my RAM, 3) install a new HDD into the front SATA bay, 4) Install Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate. Thank you... it's a totally different (and fast) computer now. Vista was horrible.

So now I have this extra Seagate drive that came with the PC. I updated it's firmware. I'm wondering if there is a way to now configure RAID1 with my 2 750 GB drives without having to wipe the new drive I just spent many man hours setting up.

This exact question was posted in this thread back in Feb 2010, with no reply. Hoping someone can help.

thanks again.
 
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