nForce 790i SLI/Ultra chipset mobos - Reviews/OC/Guides

Okay...

So it seems ive bricked my board with the 0701 installation. Great.

Now im stuck with a Pentium 4 and a 6800GS.


Edit: Amazing, by some stroke of luck, i actually booted after taking the battery out for an hour, and with BIOS 0701 as well.

Okay I am in the middle of some more 702 testing and so far so good I am running prime at FSB of 1800 with my memory at 1600 (7-7-7-24) and I have since enabled P1 which makes all the difference in Mem performance (suggested by sonofander) and I am running 3 minute intervals and I seem to be rock solid.. My read, write, and copy are way up 11500=read and 52.0=latency..

Attachment 78738

I am in the middle of running sfc scan and I just did a large file tranfer at these settings so I will install a few programs and games from the transfer and keep everyone posted.. Boo as I was typing this SFC Scan finished and BAD NEWS:

Attachment 78739

Back to the drawing board

Okay so with P1 enabled and good memory performance I have corrutpion.. But with P1 disabled same settings I do not have corruption:

Attachment 78743


So we are not there yet... 702 is not the answer...

guac, the diff for me at those settings was all in NB & mem volts. Up them and errors will vanish.

Based on your experience here, it looks like bench was right from the beggining when he guessed that the errors were in the NB/mem timings whatever. Looks like when you loosen the reigns a bit, everythings fine... Huh

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

By the way, I'm torturing the Striker II Extreme for 3 ( or more ? ) weeks now, flashing several BIOSes multiple times a day, running extreme voltages ( even on air... how's 1.8V on air with a 45nm CPU sound to you ? :D ) and extremely high frequencies & tight timings.
Just like 680i this one's picky as well, but still can work nicely if you work it out.

The Striker II Extreme is way better than the first Striker Extreme ( I had multiples and multiple RMAs with those :D ).

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now thats a statement we can work with :toast:

any news about new S2E bios, 0702 seems OK by me, but where is changelog?

Running my dominator 1800 sticks has gotten my CPU over the 4 ghz hump (Check my review on extreme bandwidth).
Whether there is something more to be desired since corsair locekd these out of 2000 MHZ is still to be debated.
Running 8-7-7-24 and 8-8-8-24 and both ran great. May just return them and get the 100 dollar cheaper shady ocz 2000 mhz 9-9-9-28... But I'm still on the fence since these are obviously the best cihps out there.

I will say that running much higher quality memory has allowed me to run WAY higher NB volts. I've put NB volts around 1.50 no sweat. On my old patriot kit it'd bsod at any non-auto setting of NB voltage, I'm glad to say it is fixe with this new kit of ram. I am pretty sure I can push this to a 10 multi x450 on air but right now I'm trying to get my 4th core stable at 1.35 vcore and 1.36 vtt

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Guacomole

Tekjunkie I am so bummed for you it was your settings that have really made all the headway for me in my OCing experience with this board. I have RMA'd a couple of boards from ASUS and they are just slow.. Sorry to hear about that....

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Thanks man. Yep, it was a user error. Stupid me, should have waited for the board to POST then should have pushed the CLR CMOS. Once I figured out the GTL settings, I never had corruption. The new SATA drivers in Vista might have also helped. I was running absolutely great with 1780 FSB and 1620 RAM @7-7-7-24 with 0603 with very moderate volatges(1.28 VTT, 1.44 vSPP, 1.55 vMCP,1.375 vCore and 1.6 vDIMM). I was getting great results in everest also(11.5k read with P1/P2 auto). This was with 0603. I tried running RAM 1:2 and Memtest always had errors no matter how hard I try. I saw that people running 0702 could run their memory @1800 and decided to try the BIOS and ended up with a dead board :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OBR

any news about new S2E bios, 0702 seems OK by me, but where is changelog?

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This is about all I could find OBR, its from PMP who seems to be quite knowledgable when it comes to new Asus BIOS releases. Click HERE.

OMG BIOS 0508 sucks badly too *mad*

At 375Mhz FSB with 1.27500 it would run for 8 hours with 30mins but it would freeze right there. Upping the NB voltage would make it fail in 10 mins and upping vcore in 10 secs. I had no time to keep testing since I had things to do but I will give 0508 a last try.

Also, for some reason, for example at 1.25000 I would get 1.31 in load but with 1.26250 I would get 1.30 in load? Hmmm... and sometimes with the NB I would put 1.38v that would give 1.40, but 1.44 gives 1.50?

Can somebody post their Q9450 settings? At least the somewhat estables... cause with 52 pages, its really hard to find them.

ASUS has posted new BIOS: 0703.
It can be downloaded from ASUS FTP server:
/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/Striker_II_Extreme/StrikerIIExtreme0703.zip

There is no info about what is in new BIOS.

Thanks for the heads up about the new beta. Kudos to asus for releasing these bioses. Should count for something.

Guys just a question because I've not read the entire thread.
Is possible to fired up the 790i with CelShock 14400?

Just like webwilli, I am now selling my s2e and bought in place a p5e3 premium.
Absolutely no regret. X48 ftw.
What a strange feeling to set fsb450/mem900 and boot straight away, prime, install stuff, play games and no problem at all.
I got so used to wait for the corruption or CRC or bsod or lockup to occur, and now it's over ! What a relief.

All my hardware kept the same, I just switched the s2e for the p5e3 premium. So it was really this crappy board.
PS: 0701 & 0702 were worse for me than 0601 in terms of stability/corruption.

No more sli :(

703, minimal changes but still considering that asus is working on it :)
0508... I dont know what to do to boot into something higher than 375mhz so Im going to the next BIOS.

To everybody
Horrible experience with 0509. Flash it and everytime it would boot, it would get stuck in DET DRAM, I would have to shut down and turn on again to make it boot. Wasnt estable with 0508 settings and even upping vcore didnt help much. Going to 0511 right now...

EDIT: 0511 the same story, trying 0512... wtf is wrong with the newer BIOSes? 0508 is the best one for me so far...

EDIT (2): 0512 is the same story... when pressing reset it would get stuck in the dam DET DRAM, I have to reset twice to make it boot and in default settings is not estable GRRR!. Im going now for the 060x series... which updates the NVMM and hopefully fixes my OC issues.

One question, is it required to ClearCMOS after each OC?

EDIT (3): 0601 the same? Looks like all comes from NB? I have decided to run everything at default again and even 0601 gave me a freeze in orthos after 3 secs. I raised the NB to 1.38 (from 1.36v) and now is running a little longer. I will see how the NB voltage affects my system at stock settings since it cant be CPU cause is getting 1.31v w/ LLC enabled and RAM at default with 1.86v.

BTW, 602 is official latest BIOS in the ASUS site and 702 has been added as a BETA.

Okay I am on 703 and it is much better I have P1 enabled and here is my performance:

Attachment 78801

My read and latency are decent and my settings are as follows:

FSB=1770 Linked/Synced 9.5 Multi for 4.2
Memory 1770 (8-8-8-28-2T)

Vcore 1.4275 in bios
PLL = Auto
VTT = 1.26
Memory = 1.92
SPP = 1.46
MCP = 1.55
GTL's -29,-32,-32,-29

5 hours Prime stable blend and sfc scan safe no corruption, I am beginning a 3DM06 loop for a couple of hours and I will post my results but it looks good so far..:up::up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Guacomole

Okay I am on 703 and it is much better I have P1 enabled and here is my performance:


My read and latency are decent and my settings are as follows:

FSB=1770 Linked/Synced 9.5 Multi for 4.2
Memory 1770 (8-8-8-28-2T)

Vcore 1.4275 in bios
PLL = Auto
VTT = 1.26
Memory = 1.92
SPP = 1.46
MCP = 1.55
GTL's -29,-32,-32,-29

5 hours Prime stable blend and sfc scan safe no corruption, I am beginning a 3DM06 loop for a couple of hours and I will post my results but it looks good so far..:up::up:

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FSB=1800 Linked/Synced 9X Multi for 4.05
Memory 1800 (8-8-8-24-2T)

Vcore 1.4275 in bios
PLL = Auto
VTT = 1.30
Memory = 2.00
SPP = 1.54
MCP = 1.55
GTL's -51, Auto, Auto, Auto

Hi guys,

I have a Striker 2 Extreme at home, but I can't do anything with it. I wish about 420 mhz fsb with the quad, and ram about 750-800, but it seems impossible to me.

I have try more volts on NB/SB or anywhere else, but it doesn't fix anything.

I'm on 511 bios and JNL/GTR ram.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Benji Tshi

Hi guys,

I have a Striker 2 Extreme at home, but I can't do anything with it. I wish about 420 mhz fsb with the quad, and ram about 750-800, but it seems impossible to me.

I have try more volts on NB/SB or anywhere else, but it doesn't fix anything.

I'm on 511 bios and JNL/GTR ram.

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whats your CPU? I have problem with Ocing Kensfield too, cannot to break 350MHz at all

I've tried this with a 8200, tester of FSB, i reach 400MHz boot windows, but not stable.
400 more don't boot.

I don't understand anything about the special features of nv chips. What about the SPP ratios for example?

it is strange, i with E8400 have fully stable 450MHz with no problem at all, same with 45nm quads ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sonofander

No more sli :(

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Hopefully, I could exchange my 2x8800 gts for a 9800 gx2.
So it's a good compromise for me.
Good luck to all with the s2e, maybe I will keep the board and stay tuned in case a magical bios comes up.

I had 0508 bios and my memory bandwidth was 9000 MB/s (read).

Since I update the bios to 0512/0602/0703 the brandwidth now is 7440 MB/s.

I have 4GB OCZ 1600 Platinum EB. Can someone explain me what "P1" is and how can it be enabled?

How is possible that memory bandwidth has decreased? What can I do to get 9000 MB/s using new bios?