Retail Abit IN9 32X-MAX - Pictures, observations and testing...

New OC 32M stable but I can't get the pwm temps under control running orthos. I have chilled water on the cpu and nb now. Had to hack the heat pipes and the bubble gum went to sh*t when removing it. You know how that goes!:rolleyes:

I've been trying to mod that hs with no luck so I think I'll have to do a custom job on the pwm. Maybe water there too...:cool:
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=164341
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j7.../32M4ghzsm.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j7...C00905copy.jpg
Excuse the cloths pin...The hs on that dimm is bowed and won't stick in the middle. Gotta pick up some new heat spreaders:dammit:

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Originally Posted by DoNoT.O.C

No man thanks I believe you, and I apologize if I was harsh some but your bold statement really bothered me!
You had 3 RMA Mobos but you did not tell us in detail why they were RMA?
Were they DOA?
If they were DOA then this is something has to do with manufacturing and not with How good this Mobo could be or with how much this Mobo can give
If you do not mind just adress exactly why you sent these mobos in RMA
And I promise I am gonna read this time :toast:

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680i boards are not stable in general:fact: I don't care if its reference or not, and 3 rma's on a Evga or BFG is common place, I now have my third Evga collecting dust as I have no chance of a refund:fact:

To ask if one 680i is better then another is just pointless, its not the board mfg at fault here its the troublesome 680i chipset they have to work with.

Here`s some early results from 3d benching on the MAX board, mainly been pushing the cards to see what i can get. Will push CPU more when i get it under water cooling(still waiting for a couple of parts:mad: ).
I`ve been testing 7900GS SLI/single, 7900GTO SLI/single and 7800GT single and got some decsent results for a fairly low CPU clock. All done on stock air cooling, stock voltages, and shipping BIOS. No stability issues and no temp problems, the hottest i saw PWM temps after hours of testing was 48c.
First up 7900GS single....

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9140769
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5190130
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2630232
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1128748

SLI results to follow....

7900GS SLI results...

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9141845
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5191019
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2637656
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1142449

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Originally Posted by revenant

hrm.. well, looks like I might need to return this board after all.. that really stinks.. unless I can find the offending area and put some lock-tight on it

like they're talking about here: http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=46694

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well, I can't figure out what's going on with the buzzing, but it's bad.. under load at default vcore it even getting loud now.. RMA time.. which sucks. gah. I hate getting new expensive stuff which is broken... 2nd time in a row for online ordering.. I really like buying local because of this.. foo!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by revenant

well, I can't figure out what's going on with the buzzing, but it's bad.. under load at default vcore it even getting loud now.. RMA time.. which sucks. gah. I hate getting new expensive stuff which is broken... 2nd time in a row for online ordering.. I really like buying local because of this.. foo!

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Are you sure it`s not coming from you`re power supply, sounds just like a problem i had a few months ago. Turned out it was coming from power supply, changing pitch and getting louder as things were running.

Nope - it's coming from the PWM area... spent a lot of time last night trying to pin-point the source.. for sure not the PSU.. believe me, rma'ing at this point was the last thing I wanted to do.. I spent a LOT of time getting the board all dialed in.. then re-fitting it with it's stock coolers, tried it that way, it was quieter, but still very much there.. BTW, this board had signs of being opened and tampered with.. the box was ripped, parts weren't in the right places.. bought new from newegg.. 2nd bad board from them in a row. grrrrrr

Quote:

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Originally Posted by revenant

Nope - it's coming from the PWM area... spent a lot of time last night trying to pin-point the source.. for sure not the PSU.. believe me, rma'ing at this point was the last thing I wanted to do.. I spent a LOT of time getting the board all dialed in.. then re-fitting it with it's stock coolers, tried it that way, it was quieter, but still very much there.. BTW, this board had signs of being opened and tampered with.. the box was ripped, parts weren't in the right places.. bought new from newegg.. 2nd bad board from them in a row. grrrrrr

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That`s wierd, i`m not having any problems other than USB mouse not working on odd occasions. Damn shame you`ve got to RMA the board.
If it looks like it`s been tampered with you should have refused to accept it when it was delivered. Do u think it may have been damaged in shipping.

can't find any link of the beta bios :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by \/ENDE][A

That`s wierd, i`m not having any problems other than USB mouse not working on odd occasions. Damn shame you`ve got to RMA the board.
If it looks like it`s been tampered with you should have refused to accept it when it was delivered. Do u think it may have been damaged in shipping.

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well, possibly.. the box part the mobo was in, with no padding on the bottom, had scored areas where the mobo bottom was wearing into the cartboard..
*sigh* I spent a lot of time this weekend on this project... It is too bad I need to RMA, but NewEgg will replace it fast.. I should have another one in time for next weekend.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by |SiLA|

can't find any link of the beta bios :(

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http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=119222

I wonder if they (abit) will be releasing an 650i board, their 680i looks to be the best on the market ATM :banana:

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Originally Posted by alpha0ne

I wonder if they (abit) will be releasing an 650i board, their 680i looks to be the best on the market ATM :banana:

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Saw this at the abit forums.

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Originally Posted by maxwedge

http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=119222

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thank you:toast:

been lurking around xs forums quite some time now, that is... since i got the 680i bug, its challenges and problems have woken up the teen oc'er in me...
So... being an asus and an intel fan for the past years, bought the p5n32-e sli cause i thought the striker was an overpriced toy for kid oc'ers.. had just minor problems with it.. followed some three or four bios updates, maxed it up with a 6700 at 3,8gigs and ocz's ridiculously priced 1066 sli 2gb kit (5-5-5-15 ) ,sli'd it with a couple of 7950gt's raid 0 raptors, and sold it to a good customer as a super stable performance system. Another friend asked if i could build a better one for him, so i got the striker extreme for him... Now that was(still is?) a mobo with serious stability issues.Memory was too edgy.. on that one, and if memory can't perform stable enough then nothing is stable...specially in a sli architecture... Not to mention the fact that everything had to be maxed out voltage wise..
so vcore couldn't be regulated between say 1.38v through 1.58v...so 1.6 it was!! anybody trying to oc a qx6700 at this core voltage knows he cant do it on air...again one bios after the other, some stuff fixed, (more auto stuff that worked that is) but the vcore thing remained... so i threw in a 1kw psu, a pair of 8800gtx's ,couple of striped raptors, and asetek wc kept the whole thing at reasonable temps.
felt like gates a little when i demoed 3dmark06 to my customer-friend telling him wer'e at the top-top ranks when for the first time after a week of benching and stressing the baby, it gave me a very-very bad bsod and an instant bad crash... you know... the one that makes water fizz in the loop... took me 2 days to understand why the raid array was fu..ed, and why those memory like crashes would become worse and worse.. yeap!! the ultimate pc would off course have logitech's "most advanced" wireless laser mouse and bluetooth "edge" keyboard not to mention the awesome sounding and looking z10 speakers... these were in their boxes until the big show... took me two days of total embarrassment to finally pull out the quad and plug in a 6700 that at 4g customer stable, felt the same with its double brother..

both friends are now enjoying their "dream machines" thanking me and praising my "high tech" skills ... if only they knew what i went through...

anyway, as time went by i was feeling so bored with my super stable 965 based servers, (gigabyte's excellent dq6 running on an 6600 and a6700 holding a total of over 6 tb of valuable data collected all those years from the net), that i had to get a new toy for the qx..

to make an already long story short i got the abit, because of the pwm, and the fact that the company is in a comeback process.. and i'm sure they'll back up the mobo and come out with a great bios... already their first one is rock solid compared to the others early releases...

memory seems to work as it should, although "edgy" and "sharp" as in all 680i's, the voltages work incredibly correct, the auto stuff mapping needs serious work from the abit team to fill those ugly frequency potholes,
the board is well built and has an excellent oc potential.

one thing is not designed well i'm afraid, and thats the pwm's amp rating and or cooling solution. It won't handle anything over 1.46v core you push into a quad core with just a little load... 90+ amps and 135 degree shutdowns are not acceptable.. i really dont know if these numbers are real or not (not the amps, cause they make sense, the temperatures are out of this surface mount world..)
and thats with a 8cm fan above the pwm-mosfet heatsink, an asus flat blower blowing under the mobo and an intel p3 stock fan on the nb(fits perfectly), all maxed out...

http://img17.imagevenue.com/loc4/th_...b1_122_4lo.JPG

hope this excessive drain is caused by another wrongly adjusted sli related voltage and that newer bioses will have the ability to manually enter vcore and vdimm and set the rest to a smart auto headache remover..

if not the case, then the only solution to me would be a dedicated loop to cool pwm and nb... but that would be really tricky...as these fragile little heat giants are very exposed and could easily crack under sudden temp changes...

i also understand that bios developers are having a rough time, like me and you are having with this chipset, but also with tremendous pressure on their heads to rectify a situation that i believe is nvidias fault 100%.

Sorry for the ridiculous length of my first post, but i believe anybody messing with the 680, knows he's here for the challenge... it's something like taming a wild fire or the raging sea or like understanding women i guess :=))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shawn1998

If anyone has had any luck with installing 64bit Ultimate with the IN9, could you post and let me know. It makes no sense that the 32bit version installs and works perfectly, but the 64bit version won't even install. The bsod error message says to check my hardware and update the bios to help correct the error, so it's not driver related, it seems to be memory-controller related.

Shawn

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I will let you know in a day or two. Hopefully I will get the last of my part shipments soon; and seeing as our specs are very similar, it should be a good comparison.

Goot times! :toast:

Dug around the net and found it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777

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SYMPTOMS
When you try to install Windows Vista, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:
STOP 0x0000000A (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4)
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
This problem occurs if the following conditions are true: • The computer uses more than 3 GB of RAM.
• The computer uses a storage system that is running the Storport miniport driver.
• The computer uses a controller that uses 32-bit direct memory access (DMA).

Back to the top

RESOLUTION
To resolve this problem, install update 929777. To install this update, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com)
Back to the top

Update information
The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

Update for Windows Vista (KB929777)

Download the KB929777 package now. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...9-06B2BC5B1336)

Update for Windows Vista, 64-bit versions (KB929777)

Download the KB929777 package now. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...C-377541E93C18)

Release Date: January 30, 2007

For more information about how to download Microsoft support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
119591 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/119591/) How to obtain Microsoft support files from online services
Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.
Back to the top

Prerequisites
To apply this update, you must have Windows Vista installed on a computer that uses more than 3 GB of RAM.

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I posted this find in the OS forum, but thought you might want to see it before you did your install. It is recommended that you do your install with 2gig, apply the patch, then install the other 2gig. Feedbacl from other forums is that this works like a charm and solves the issue. Let me know if this works for you when you do yours.

Shawn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by revenant

well, possibly.. the box part the mobo was in, with no padding on the bottom, had scored areas where the mobo bottom was wearing into the cartboard..
*sigh* I spent a lot of time this weekend on this project... It is too bad I need to RMA, but NewEgg will replace it fast.. I should have another one in time for next weekend.

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Good luck with the next one, hope it goes well.:)

yeah - me also. I decided to order another one and o'night it.. I'm not patient any more. lol. turned the RMA to a refund. for the win. :D

BTW, the stock cooler was holding the PWM temps about 20c higher than with my aftermarket setup.. Swiftech bga sinks on thermal tape with a 40mm fan over them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by revenant

yeah - me also. I decided to order another one and o'night it.. I'm not patient any more. lol. turned the RMA to a refund. for the win. :D

BTW, the stock cooler was holding the PWM temps about 20c higher than with my aftermarket setup.. Swiftech bga sinks on thermal tape with a 40mm fan over them.

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Nice one rev, hope it this one works out for ya. So the thermal tape works ok on the PWM's then? What temps were you getting with this setup?

any of u have troubles running this mobo with pc8000c4 of cellshock?can't even get stable cas4 @400 1t or 2t..same for cas3..only way to be stable is cas

I have Cellshock C5 but i got lucky and it has D9GKX IC's so its the effectively the same I guess, and I have had it running perfectly happily at 1050mhz 4-4-4-12 2T at about 2.2v. At 1T the max ive had so far is 800mhz 3-3-3-12 for tight timings. Anything higher than that and i have to loosen timings or drop to 2T. Still not fully tested it yet though. One thing I would say, is that its extremely fussy about voltage. I couldnt even get it to run at 600mhz 1T to start off with, a little to much or a little to little and it just wasnt stable. Also, increasing NB voltage helped alot in stablising it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeMK

I have Cellshock C5 but i got lucky and it has D9GKX IC's so its the effectively the same I guess, and I have had it running perfectly happily at 1050mhz 4-4-4-12 2T at about 2.2v. At 1T the max ive had so far is 800mhz 3-3-3-12 for tight timings. Anything higher than that and i have to loosen timings or drop to 2T. Still not fully tested it yet though. One thing I would say, is that its extremely fussy about voltage. I couldnt even get it to run at 600mhz 1T to start off with, a little to much or a little to little and it just wasnt stable. Also, increasing NB voltage helped alot in stablising it.

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could u please post some pix of yer bios settings?uguru..voltages and timings :(

tia

Quote:

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Originally Posted by |SiLA|

any of u have troubles running this mobo with pc8000c4 of cellshock?can't even get stable cas4 @400 1t or 2t..same for cas3..only way to be stable is cas

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hello, sorry for the english,

i have this mobo & memos and i need 2,3 for 500 4-4-4-12 and i can't pass 525 stable and i try with 2,45 vdimm all 2T

bye

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Originally Posted by maxwedge

I don't know if mine is the same but I'm hearing a buzz sound now too. It buzzes in exactly the same time the HD light blinks. I have diskeeper 2007 on mine and it runs in the back ground all the time. My fans kind of cover it up but now that I hear it, it's bugging me LOL!

PS: 100% sure it's NOT the HDs. Turned off auto defrag and I can live with it now. I always use manual anyway.:shrug:

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ok, yes.. when my machine would boot, the buzzing would go away while the disks were active.. pulsing with disk activity.. but you're reporting sort of the oppposite.. at any rate, when there was no disk activity on my board, it was buzzing audibly from the pwm area.. loudness dep on vcore I had set.. when the machine was under load it would get louder. sounded actually more like air escaping from a tire.. sort of.. like the sound my x1900s made when they were under heavy load.. but way louder. I didn't notice any other real issues with voltages or anything with the board.. but that noise had to go. whew.



edit: forgot to say, "man, that s u c k s!"