Venice & Motherboard Compatibility List Results / Problems / Suggestions

[synergy]

Hi I'm starting this thread because there doesn't yet seem to be a lot of
information out there as to what motherboards may have compatibility problems with Venice CPUs.

Please post all your results (a sticky might be nice) as to what boards /
versions have problems and which ones are found to be very compatible
and preferably very flexible in timing / voltage for overclocking too.

I believe all these issues are applicable concerns to _any_ Venice S939 or S754 motherboard. In the extreme case of incompatibility I'd guess
that a Venice CPU might get fried (bad Vcore incompatibility), simply not
boot, or be flaky (bad 4-dimm DDR400 support or bad voltage regulation).

The possible issues I'm aware of are:

* What BIOS version is needed to fully support Venice CPUID, Timings, Memory Controller settings, Multipliers, MHz, Voltages, et. al.?

* Is it not possible to safely and correctly BOOT *old* (pre Venice) BIOS versions long enough to flash the BIOS update needed for better Venice
support? Can one do it with only 1-2 DIMMS in? Will the Vcore be too high?
Will it just not boot?

* Does the motherboard have 4 DIMM slots that, with Venice, correctly can
support DDR400 with optimum timing when FOUR Dual Channel Double-Sided-DIMMs are used?

* Does the motherboard have any memory channel limitations of timing or
Cool & Quiet support, possibly motherboard added "hacks" or whatever that
were intended to get older AMD64 cores (e.g. Winchester) partial 4-DIMM
support that will "break" / interfere with proper Venice operation?

* Are Vcore voltages in the BIOS and the quality of the regulators appropriate
for adjusting to voltages from 1.30 Vcore through 1.45 Vcore, and preferably
above and below this region in fine increments for Venice and future CPU
support (e.g. upcoming S939 dual core ones)?

* What hardware revision of motherboard properly supports Venice, in case
there may be changes (regulators?) to some motherboards for this.

* Does any built in overclocking logic / utility properly support Venice
wrt. picking safe ranges of timings, voltages? What versions are needed?

* Is the board mechanically compatible with a Zalman 7000B or 7700B or
THERMALRIGHT XP90 / XP120 and 4 DIMMs and a
AGP / PCIE high performance video card?

* Other nice features -- Can it use a USB Keyboard to get into the BIOS setup? Can it do so _even_ when there are USB _hubs_ between the keyboard and the CPU?

* Does it properly boot from USB DVD/CD and have functional Legacy USB
device support?


Personally I'd like to get a good AGP board since I've got a Nvidia 6800
AGP board already, and I'm hoping either the
ASUS A8V v2.0 or the ABIT AV8 will work but I'm open to other ideas.

Thanks!

[synergy]

I see here:
http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx
ASUS's list of CPU compatibility includes REV E CPUs.
It looks like they've listed a few of their motherboards compatible with all PCB
revisions, but with specified (new) BIOS revisions.

[synergy]

I see here:
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?threadid=82697
ABIT USA Forums > Socket 754 and 939 Motherboards - Non MAX > VIA chipset based Socket 939 AMD motherboards > Venice core CPU's ?

People complaining about ABIT not at all having supported the Venice CPUs
as of today's date on their AV8 and other VIA chipset AMD64 motherboards.
I guess these quotes say it all:

"I have posted on this forum regarding this issue. Over the past 2 weeks I've sent Abit tech support 3 emails asking this question and they never responded. Today after waiting on hold for an hour I finally reached a tech support agent and asked him, all he could say was he didn't know if they would post or not and he had no idea if there was a planned bios update at this time. I'm very frustrated with this matter and I sincerely hope Abit gets on the ball soon as my 3500+ Venice should be shipping to me by the end of the week. Anyone have any ideas how to get Abit to hear us on this issue?"

"This and a few other reasons is why I'll probably never own an Abit board."

Also : http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/generic/checkcpu.htm
doesn't even *list* Athlon64 CPUs at all, certainly nothing about Rev D vs E (Venice).
So it seems ABIT is seriously behind the times in BIOS / Motherboard support.

I didn't look around a lot to see if they're doing any better on their S754 or NFORCE
chipset motherboards, but I'd assume there's not good news.

[synergy]

Looks like a fair number of people are having problems with various DFI
BIOS versions and settings as well as other motherboards and settings:

"Official Venice Overclocking Thread"
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17405163&page=1&pp=30

DFI Forums > AMD > Motherboards: 64-bit (NF3/NF4/VIA K8)
[RESOLVED]DRAM DRIVE STRENGTH*3* WORKS>> Probs with my Venice 3800
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10150&page=1&pp=15

ABXZone.com Forums > AMD Zone - Athlon 64 (includes FX, Opteron, and Sempron) > A64 General Discussion > AMD Venice core reviewed
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91961&page=1&pp=15

[PicaXuu]

Seems everything should be allright with DFI:

"NF4 Ultra-D "E" STEPPING BOOTS FINE 1/25/05" here: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10104

[saiamne]

Will post with the 125 BIOS

Think people are having the best success with the 414-2 and 414-3 BIOS (no critical functionality problems) and even the 326 seems to work alright

If people are trying to run their same 310 BIOS that they've been tweaking a Winchester on, I think they're running into trouble getting as much performance...but the 414 series seems best so far from everything I've read

[synergy]

AMD's own WWW site has a
"AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor Family - Recommended Motherboards"
list which includes the options to query for CPU Rev EC (that's odd, I thought
Venice was E3?) compatibility as well as by Socket type, Speed, and so on.
If you click on a motherboard in the generated
"key feature: supports up to processor stepping: EC" list it'll show what
Motherboard revision & BIOS revision were tested / certified as compatible.

http://www2.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/1,,30_2252_869_9460%5e9461,00.html?1065217534

Of course I'd still read the reviews / motherboard forum / manual etc. to find out
about users' experiences / problems / quirks / limitations.

[synergy]

Here's SPCR's list of
"Undervoltable motherboards"
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article69-page1.html

That is relevant in since it gives some idea over what range Vcore can be
changed on the listed motherboards, and since Venice and presumably other
current stepping CPUs uses lower Vcore voltages than the previous steppings,
the motherboard has to have better Vcore regulation, resolution, and lower voltage
settings to work well with Venice.

[trakslacker]

whoa there tiger. Find this button and make good use of it. :)
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/images_black/buttons/edit.gif

Also, welcome to XS!!

[tictac]

I see here:
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?threadid=82697
ABIT USA Forums > Socket 754 and 939 Motherboards - Non MAX > VIA chipset based Socket 939 AMD motherboards > Venice core CPU's ?

People complaining about ABIT not at all having supported the Venice CPUs
as of today's date on their AV8 and other VIA chipset AMD64 motherboards.
I guess these quotes say it all:

"I have posted on this forum regarding this issue. Over the past 2 weeks I've sent Abit tech support 3 emails asking this question and they never responded. Today after waiting on hold for an hour I finally reached a tech support agent and asked him, all he could say was he didn't know if they would post or not and he had no idea if there was a planned bios update at this time. I'm very frustrated with this matter and I sincerely hope Abit gets on the ball soon as my 3500+ Venice should be shipping to me by the end of the week. Anyone have any ideas how to get Abit to hear us on this issue?"

"This and a few other reasons is why I'll probably never own an Abit board."

Also : http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/generic/checkcpu.htm
doesn't even *list* Athlon64 CPUs at all, certainly nothing about Rev D vs E (Venice).
So it seems ABIT is seriously behind the times in BIOS / Motherboard support.

I didn't look around a lot to see if they're doing any better on their S754 or NFORCE
chipset motherboards, but I'd assume there's not good news.


:nono:

ABIT AV8
BIOS ID:2.0
1. Add AMD Rev. E CPU support. :woot:
2. Add new DRAM timing items.
3. BIOS compiled date: 04/20/2005

Download Link:
ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/bios/av8//av820.exe

ABIT AN8/AN8 Fatal1ty/AN8-SLI/AN8-Ultra
BIOS ID:1.3
1. Add AMD Rev. E CPU support. :woot:
2. Add "Wake-up by Onchip LAN" function.
3. Add LDT frequency item "x1.5" and "x2.5".
4. Add some new USB related items.
5. BIOS compiled date: 04/25/2005

Download Link:
ftp://ftp-tw.abit.com.tw/pub/download/bios/an8/an813.exe

[RebelsHaven]

I have run a 3500 Vinnie in the following without issue. The BIOS that was in the board, I just left:

MSI Neo2 Platinum 1.36 BIOS

MSI Neo4 Platinum 1.3 BIOS

DFI LP Ultra-D 310P BIOS

Epox 9NDA3+ 10/26/04 BIOS

Epox 9NPA+ Ultra 1/24/05 BIOS

All booted right up without issue...

I only tried 4X256Meg(G.Skill LE) on the 9NDA3+ with the 401 BIOS for Rev E, and I can OC to 300FSB, but only at 2T ... 1T won't POST at any FSB, 200 and up....

All boards could run the NewEgg purchased Venice at 10X275 @ 1.55Vcore and 10X285 @ 1.65Vcore. That was all I tried as I wanted to check compatability quickly on these 5 boards... CPU temp was about 5°C lower then a Winnie at the same clocks. All systems Water Ccooled...

[WA261]

Were you able to run the k8N ablve 300fsb?

[RebelsHaven]

Were you able to run the k8N ablve 300fsb?

Sure...But for the clock to equal 9X285 above 300, I have to use 9X327 and the memory won't clock that high at 2.5-3-3-7....
If I loosen the mem settings from 200 1T 2.5-3-3-7 to 3-4-4-10, depending on the memory brand of TCCD, I've been as high as 8X360FSB. But those relaxed timings hurt performance... The DFI can go to 315 @ 200 1T 2.5-3-3-7 with G.Skill or A-Data Vitesta DDR600....

[The Mad Duke]

I was going to start a new thread for this, but this looks like a good place to post. I have only done 1 evening worth of testing, but it looks like my 9NDA3+ has problems with the revised memory controller in the Venice. My Winchester has always booted reliably from power on in this board. For a good while last night I could not get my Venice to boot at all. I tried the 3 most recent bios versions, none seemed to help. Finally I got it to boot with a single stick of memory in slot 2. My memory is PQI Turbo PC4000 512 MB X2, which is TCCD on a BrainPower PCB. I have some old Geil PC3500 which I will try tonight. The problem seems to only affect cold boots - once I got it to cold boot the first time I went through several warm boots without any difficulty, and was able to flash back to the current 05-04-01 bios. Setting the memory to 2T did not seem to make any difference. It is running now with the memory in slots 1&2 - I was using slots 3&4 with my Winny because that gave a higher overclock. So far this combo is stable for brief runs of Stress Prime95 at 2.6 GHZ at stock voltage. Will do more testing in the next few days to see if I can get a better handle on the problem. Anybody else out there tried a Venice on the Epox board ???

[charlie]

san diego + DFI LP Ultra-D + 0310BIOS = :thumbsup:

[JohnClark]

I have an MSI Neo2 Platinum, and Venice proc (A64 3000) on the way. Please tell me this will work? I've got to have the new pc operational by this Friday night. Thanks.


John

[RebelsHaven]

......I have only done 1 evening worth of testing, but it looks like my 9NDA3+ has problems with the revised memory controller in the Venice. My Winchester has always booted reliably from power on in this board. For a good while last night I could not get my Venice to boot at all. I tried the 3 most recent bios versions, none seemed to help. ......... Anybody else out there tried a Venice on the Epox board ???

About 6 posts up, is my POST with the 9NDA3+ results... I got the same thing as you... BTW, I had PSU issues when the Vennie went into the 9NDA3+ board. Would not POST... I moved up to a Tagan 480W PSU...

[RebelsHaven]

I have an MSI Neo2 Platinum, and Venice proc (A64 3000) on the way. Please tell me this will work? I've got to have the new pc operational by this Friday night. Thanks.

John


About 8 posts up, is my brief results for the Neo2...

[sokarul]

I would like to say the with the new bio the abit an8 is able to run. I was getting some .8.7 code which is chech cpu core voltage. I was after a while switching cpus i got it to start with the venice.

[tictac]

I would like to say the with the new bio the abit an8 is able to run. I was getting some .8.7 code which is chech cpu core voltage. I was after a while switching cpus i got it to start with the venice.

Any issue Overclocking Venice with AN8 ? :)

[sokarul]

Any issue Overclocking Venice with AN8 ? :)

Just found this.

On air I am stuck at 27XX mhz.

28xx mhz crashes. And its not overheating. i bought better ram and it still does it. I was going to try and change the multiplier.

[Faceless Rebel]

MSI Neo4 Platinum boots just fine with Venice/San Diego starting with BIOS v1.1. I know this because that's exactly what I did with my 3700+ before I flashed to v1.3.

Right now MSI Neo2 and Neo4 do not have the 1T/2T Command Rate option in the BIOS for San Diego. MSI is working on adding that to the BIOS in the next version.