Gigabyte k8NSNXP-939/K8NS Ultra-939 tips, tricks and guide thread

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Originally Posted by ***Deimos***

James Cash:
Well James, it sound pretty serious.

1. Turn down HTT to 3x, 4x at 245 is close to borderline for problems.
2. What is your memory divider. If you want to use 245, set it to 150 or 133.
3. Try disabling Fast Writes in the BIOS
4. Does the cable with connector (molex) to plug into 6800 have any connections to anything else. The cable usually has 3-4 connectors.. and none of them should be used, except for the single one pluged into the card.
5. It quite possible you have poor contact with heatsink for the gpu. Its really difficult to judge just by the temps. If you notice all the games going haywire after a bit of suttering and freezing, then its likely heat.
6. Which driver are you using?

What are you using to test overclock stability? Prime95 torture for 1-2hrs is good start. SuperPi 32M is ok. Windows Memtest is essential. For 3d rthdribl and 3dmark05.

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Well, Let's see.

1 - 4 x 245 = 980. Is this a problem? It's working fine.
2 - The memory's frequency is 200 Mhz
3 - Already did.
4 - I am out of home until next week and I don't remember this.
5 - I don't think so. Because the problems just happen in stock. When under OC everything works fine.
6 - The last WHQL certified for each hardware.

In overclock, I tested 3d rthdribl for 40 minutes and Prime 95( Blend test) for 6 hours, everything worked fine. In stock, the whole system freezes with 10 minutes or less running 3d rthdribl.

Obs: One thing got my attention yesterday. I noticed that the only thing that I turn down when I am OC'ing is HTT ( 1008 in stock and 980 in OC ). Maybe the mobo is not handling the Bigger HTT. What do you think.

Obs 2: Sorry for my bad English. I am Brazilian.

try 3xHTT and find out...

Hmm... 200Mhz memory.. 245x9/11 = "166" divider... can you try 150 or 133 divider please..

please try each seperately.

The only other possibility I can think of is that your system might be tuning down some parameters when its overclocked as precaution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ***Deimos***

try 3xHTT and find out...

Hmm... 200Mhz memory.. 245x9/11 = "166" divider... can you try 150 or 133 divider please..

please try each seperately.

The only other possibility I can think of is that your system might be tuning down some parameters when its overclocked as precaution.

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I will try that Deimos, but only next week, wheb I get home.
I would like to say that all my problems are happening without any OC.
With OC the system works fine. This is frustrating.

Been running at 313x9 for a week ro so now...and I guess I am experiancing the "coldboot" problem. If I cut the machine off for an extended period of time, when i turn it back on, it geeks and boots to the backup bios. Reboot it and the main bios comes up, but I have reset most everything ( not the time and date )

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Originally Posted by AaronATX

Been running at 313x9 for a week ro so now...and I guess I am experiancing the "coldboot" problem. If I cut the machine off for an extended period of time, when i turn it back on, it geeks and boots to the backup bios. Reboot it and the main bios comes up, but I have reset most everything ( not the time and date )

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That's impressive. What about the HTT frequency?

I run mine at 3x

Apparently there is a new bios for the Ultra-939 board....

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Download/...os_k8nsu939_f9


I can't find any info on it at all. Flashed my backup bios to it last night, played around a bit to see what the changes are, and well the only real thing I can see is you can drop the cas latency to 1.5 now.... Otherwise it seems to be exactly the same.

You guys know where I can find information aboute memory compatibility with my mobo, K8NSC-939??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AaronATX

Been running at 313x9 for a week ro so now...and I guess I am experiancing the "coldboot" problem. If I cut the machine off for an extended period of time, when i turn it back on, it geeks and boots to the backup bios. Reboot it and the main bios comes up, but I have reset most everything ( not the time and date )

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What is exactly the cold boot problem? I think I am having this problem here. My machine has been off for 2 weeks, when I turned it on again the monitor´s led keep blinking and nothing happens. I have to clear cmos to make it work. Is this the cold boot problem?

Welp, is it "the" cold boot problem, I dunno. But it is definately a coldboot problem.

Before you turn the machine off just turn the overclock down with clockgen. Gives me no problems.


Running at 330x8.5 with my ram at 255 2.5 3 3 5....lol

I gotta do the vdimm mod so I can run my ram at 1:1 with tight timings :( ...im a noob to vmodding tho, im procrastinating.

This cpu doesnt seem to want to go past 2.8ghz no matter how much voltage I throw at it. Owell!

Who dares to say that K8NS Ultra 939 can't get past 270MHz just from bios without clockgen? ;)
I ran into the same problem with TCCD and a Venice, increased TRWT to 5 and voila, 325MHz with just +0.1V in HTT Voltage, running at HTT 3x.
Try your luck. A acquintance of mine says that there is a modded bios on the wild (GGE or smth like that) that can take this board upto 365MHz FSB. If you manage to find it, please share here.
Bios is F11, the latest, don't trust cpu-z.

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Originally Posted by caligula

Who dares to say that K8NS Ultra 939 can't get past 270MHz just from bios without clockgen? ;)
I ran into the same problem with TCCD and a Venice, increased TRWT to 5 and voila, 325MHz with just +0.1V in HTT Voltage, running at HTT 3x.
Try your luck. A acquintance of mine says that there is a modded bios on the wild (GGE or smth like that) that can take this board upto 365MHz FSB. If you manage to find it, please share here.
Bios is F11, the latest, don't trust cpu-z.

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On the Gigabyte site the latest reported is the F9. The F11 is for the K8NSNXP?
You said "325MHz with just +0.1V in HTT Voltage" but 325x3 is still under the Ghz so it shoudn't require overvolting to get to that frequency. You mean that the HTT Voltage influences the max bus frequency?
The most I could get from this mobo is 303 Mhz using 5/6 ram divider with +0.2V on VDIMM, I think the bus can still go up but my ram are not for ocing.

I ran into stability problems without that +0.1V in HTT. Should you have further questions about this, feel free to ask my mobo why it wants it, I don't have a damn clue :)
Sorry for typo, you are right, BIOS is F9.

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Originally Posted by Pisu87

On the Gigabyte site the latest reported is the F9. The F11 is for the K8NSNXP?
You said "325MHz with just +0.1V in HTT Voltage" but 325x3 is still under the Ghz so it shoudn't require overvolting to get to that frequency. You mean that the HTT Voltage influences the max bus frequency?
The most I could get from this mobo is 303 Mhz using 5/6 ram divider with +0.2V on VDIMM, I think the bus can still go up but my ram are not for ocing.

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Ususally the limit for HTT is about 1100-1200 total, for the best new NF3 stepping chipset. The older ones are limited to about 1000 (not enought to declare official support for 1000HTT speed like the NF3 Ultra cousin).

Ex (based on my experience):
With 5x you barely get over 200Mhz
with 4x you get around 250Mhz
with 3x get just over 300Mhz
with 2x you get less than before...

so you notice the limit is about 1000 for total speed. However, notice that there is some frequency above which perhaps noise and clock skew prevent going any higher. If you get over 310, you should be happy (I had 315 working for a week, and then it wouldn't be stable over 305)

If you have done the PSU Vsense mod for 3.3V results will vary because the mod increases the voltage to the chipset/AGP and various other components.

Those who are adventurous I recommend removing stock chipset HS and putting something more hefty there (like old P3 or Athlon HS). More chipset voltage can help too. However, chipset voltage modification for NF3 is not as popular as for popular NF2, since the results are usually very good without any modification.

i tested my ultra-939 to 360MHz FSB and it does well at that speed, i didn't go farther. but i have to raise FSB with clockgen, cause it boots only at 305-310MHz or else the BIOS defaults are loaded.

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Originally Posted by VASkO

i tested my ultra-939 to 360MHz FSB and it does well at that speed, i didn't go farther. but i have to raise FSB with clockgen, cause it boots only at 305-310MHz or else the BIOS defaults are loaded.

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360FSB (if that is indeed not a typo) is VERY high. There are some folks which require to use water cooling on northbridge to get to even 330... what is your secret?

First obvious question is what HTT multiplier you are using, and what kind of memory settings?

Somebody previously said to change the TRWT=5... is that what you did?

I have the k8NSU, my max HTT is 3*385 with clockgen if i put higher than that it freezes.

there's no secret, the board just rocks. i did 360 with x3 HTT, TRWT 2.

running now 312*9 with 166 divider qith opty 144 and OCZs plat rev2 TCCD. i love my setup.

only thing is, the vcore fluctuates a bit.

The description and the release date of the F9 bios for the K8NS Ultra-939 on the Gigabyte site have been changed, why? :D

Dunno, I noticed that also. Maybe that they are just now getting the f9 to the other mirrors?


And surprise surprise there isnt any infomation about it on the site that I can find.

It is different bios.. Weird..

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

I have the following:

K8NSNXP
3500+ new castle
2x 1gb (2gb) crucial balistix 3-3-3-8 pc400 DDR 500
OCZ Booster


Everything I've been trying to far just seems to crash. Should I be running any ram dividers or should I be lowering to 3x HTT? At 4xhtt and 3.3v's on the ram, I could get it to about 230 1:1 before it crashed. The ram was also so hot to touch that I've now backed it down to 3v's and am just running 5x htt and 218 fsb 1:1.

Did you enable the AGP/PCI fix?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pisu87

Did you enable the AGP/PCI fix?

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AGP 67 in bios? yes.



I think I may try:

3x ht
133 divider (150 with a64 tweak)
300 fsb in clock gen
3.0v on the ram
1.6v on the cpu

that would give me 300x11 = 3300 processor
3x300 = 900 ht
150+100 = 250 fsb ram

did it.. got to 227 fsb and it crashed... :(

Maybe I should drop the multiplyer on the processor.