New Abit NF7-S beta BIOS fixes Data Corruption

[Per Hansson]

Abit has released a new beta BIOS that should solve Serial ATA data corruption problems in NF7-S motherboards. Its compile date is 5/13/2003 so be extra careful and only give it a try if you are affected by this issue, if something goes wrong our most recent article about IOSS' Bios Saviour will definitely come handy.

0. Please use AWDFLASH 8.23D or later to update NF7 series BIOS. With incorrect AWDFLASH version, the GUID will be erased, and leads to IEEE1394 peer to peer function failed. AWDFLASH 8.23K is included in this BIOS package.
1. Fixed CPU temperature too high issue.
2. Raised highest CPU FSB up to 300 MHz for "user define mode" in SoftMenu.
3. .Fixed SATA RAID-0 data corruption issue by adding a new option "EXT-P2P's Discard Time" in "integrated Peripherals". The default setting is "3.8 us". Please change it to "30 us"; which is recommended by NVidia. In case the problem is still there, try "1 ms" please.
4. BIOS Compile Date: 5/13/2003

 

[Per Hansson]

I have not tried the BIOS myself yet but will do so later today...

Please post your experience with this BIOS below

 

[Per Hansson]

I have now tried the BIOS myself and am glad to report that it solves the problem without any performance hit...

I did my usual test of compressing a large amount of files with WinRAR and also encrypting the archive.

When I used Abit's first recommendation of 30us I got CRC errors, however when I increased it to 1ms I was able to properly archive several gigabytes of data without errors...

Both modes where within 5% in performance between each other when running the Silicon Image official 1.0.0.28 drivers.

I used PCMark 2002 to benchmark and this is my score (as I said within 5% so I only list one test run...)

Silicon Image v1.0.0.28 driver: (corruption)
HDD score: 1220
Hard Disk - Cached file write: 37,2MB/s
Hard Disk - Uncached file write: 39,0MB/s
Hard Disk - Cached file read: 38,5MB/s
Hard Disk - Uncached file read: 58,7MB/s
Hard Disk - File copy: 14,0MB/s

If you still have low performance after updating your BIOS and installing the .28 drivers that's because you still have the old Asus driver left...

You must go into your %SystemROOT%\System32\Drivers folder and delete the file: "Si3112r.sys"

Then you must go to the %SystemROOT% folder, right click your INF folder and search for: oem*.* files with Silicon Image in the text field....

You will find an .inf file, delete that, and also the file called the same as it but with the ending .pnf

I.e. I search for: oem*.* with text "Silicon Image" I find: Oem0.inf then I delete that and also the file oem0.pnf...

When this has been done it is extremely important that you do not restart your computer, if you do windows will not have any drivers to start with and you will get a blue screen with the message Inaccessible Boot Device...

So now simply go into device manager, right click the Silicon Image SCSI device and update the driver to the official .28 Silicon Image driver...