Sean,
Thanks! My memory is in the black slots and I will try disabling watchdog and do the power on power off and let you guys know what happens.
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Sean,
Thanks! My memory is in the black slots and I will try disabling watchdog and do the power on power off and let you guys know what happens.
I was not able to get the board to post when I changed the memory and disabled watchdog. The on off powering did not work either.
BTW for cooling I am using a Zalman cnp9700nt on cpu with fan control enabled. I am also using a Thermaltake MCH/Northbridge cooler and a 60mm fan mounted on the memory heatsinks.
So far so good with the 1902 BIOS. I've been using it for a little while. Seems to be pretty stable for me.
I'm going to get some faster DDR3 soon as I currently only have 1333MHz Patriot memory. Anyone have recommendations for some really good, but not too expensive DDR3? I'd like to add as much as possible to, just to have breathing room for a while. I'm confident I should be able to push the clocks even further on my Q6600 with the right memory.
BlackKnight00, HighTest
My dream is to fill ALL FOUR slots with memory, but no way, yeah?
So what's conclusion? Two 1600 mhz memory in JUST BLACK slots or four right 1333 memory banks in FOUR slots, right?
I'm talking about 4x2Gb banks, in target to get 8Gb of memory.
I'm not surprising, since DDR3 memory always was point of problems.
BlackKnight, there are many angles from which to approach this:
If all you want is to be at 400 x 8 with memory running at 1600 follow this:
1. go to your memory settings and first choose "auto" to have the board set all the timings to SPD defaults, then change auto to manual (two options here, you want the one that doesnt change any of the timings), set the mem freq to 1333 and the ref to 333, do not change any timings at this point and make sure the voltage is set to what is noted on the ram themselves...if you cannot choose the exact voltage, choose 1 step higher...next set Command Rate to 2T (if you have this on auto, sometimes it causes problems with higher memory clocks). save and exit.
2. if you booted in #1, try changing the command rate manually to 1T (the tighter of the settings). if it didnt boot, go back into BIOS and go from 1333x333 in the memory settings to 1333x266 (slower, but stay with me). If that boots (and it should) restart and change back to 1333x333 (sometimes this board is funny with memory settings...who would have thought that?!?!). if that doesnt work, go to bios and try setting memory to 1600x400 (results in the same memory frequency, but loosens the internal timings of the MCH a bit).
2. if 1600x400 works, good, if not, you will need to go back to 1333x333 and try #3
3. go into bios, change the multi on your CPU to the minimum (6?) and keep the host clock at 400 (will keep the memory at 1600). save and exit.
--something to remember here is that the MCH has to deal both with the I/O of the RAM and some of that of the CPU, by lowering the multi you are checking if the memory and the MCH can work together properly at the given bus speed, memory speed, and timings.
If this works, you know that running at the particular combination is possible and that you may need more vMCH and likely more vFSB. I know that more vFSB sounds silly since you are not changing the FSB, but there is an interaction between the MCH and the vFSB and this interaction can be controlled by either adding more vMCH, vFSB, or altering how the MCH uses the vFSB, also known as the MCH GTL REF, in this interaction. this setting is found in the processor settings page near the bottom..."adjust reference voltages" or something like that and there are several settings.
so at this point you have 2 options: you can increase the vMCH and the vFSB (i would bump up this one first) one at a time until you can boot to 400x8 at 1600Mhz ram, or you can take the next step in tuning and read this post which explains GTL REFs, how they work, and how they make certain voltage settings inter-related. Once you get a grasp on the concept, read this post and start playing.
there are a couple advantages to adjusting GTL REFs in addition to other voltages compared with just adjusting voltages alone:
first and probably the best reason, by adjusting GTLs you should be able to run stable at a given hostXmulti with less vCORE than by leaving GTLs at auto, which means lower temps and voltages and longer life...but if you dont really care about that,
second, you can move up your maximum stable FSB by ~5-8% (may not sound like much, but for me went from 460x8.5 to 485x8.5, or .212 Ghz of processor frequency),
third, the absolute weakest part of the x38/48 board is the MCH (which is why intel went to Corei7, effectively redesigning how the memory and the CPU use the MCH, but thats another story) and by adjusting MCH GTL REF, magic happens and all of the sudden stability increases and so does your memory frequency capacity. With 2 dimms i was able to get my mem frequency to 1940Mhz at 8x multi, but i wanted the 8.5x multi for the processing power (which also increases memory throughput) and since the MCH cannot handle 4 cores at 485 and 2x2g at 1333x333 i had to go to 400x1333 and take a memory freq hit to 1617.
HighTest and Dukzcry, few things to consider here: if you are overclocking and are currently using 2 dimms, 4 dimms will cut your max OC down quite a bit or will force you to use a lower resulting memory frequency to remain at the same hostclockXmulti.
second, more RAM will not increase performance in most things except for video encoding or severe photoshoping of a really large (20+ megapixel) image (unless you have ancient hard drives, in which case investing $ to them would increase performace more).
third, if during your most intensive activity, be it games or photoshop or whatever, you are not using more than say 85-90% or your currently installed memory, adding more will be of no benefit and is like throwing money away.
think of a computer like a desk at an office...the person sitting behind it is the CPU, the surface of the desk itself is the RAM, and the drawers and filecabinets are the hard disks. now you can access your hard disks and remove files and place them on your desk so long as there is room to do so...with too little RAM (too small of a desk), you constantly have to keep putting files back in the drawers in order to look at a new one. but if your programs are not too intensive and with too much RAM, no matter how hard you run them, half/40% of the desk remains empty. now in an office this is fine because you can say "look how big my desk is...you know im important" but with computers it is just a waste of money.
Sean-E-Boy, very good comparison, but i thought that for virtualization the more memory desired. Although, i haven't any needs in more than one guest system.
At least few words about silliness and costing away buyer's money. In our russian review sites board with 12Gb of RAM for i7 considers as negative side of board, they want more and more :(
for sure if you are dealing with servers more ram is a bonus, since part of the goal there is to make sure that everything fits into ram to avoid access delays.
I lowered the cpu multi to 6 and the board still will not post with memory at 1600. I went as high as 1.5v on the mch and 1.35v on fsb. I am beginning to think that this memory just cant run at that speed.
i have had several sticks of corsair, and they are were able to go at least a little over what they say they are "verified to operate at". are you at 1600x266 or 1333x333? you can also try increasing the timings from 9s to 10s and Command Rate to 2T.
Darkknight,
sorry, i havent had much time in the last week or so to help you with this. here is one thing i suggest:
put the memory at 1333x333 10-10-10...2T, processor at 333x6, and leave the voltages where they are.
if it boots, check with cpu-z or something to make sure that your memory is running at 1333, if it is, restart, go into BIOS and start increasing the FSB by 10mhz steps.
when you get to the point that it wont boot, back it off 5 mhz and see if it will...if it boots, bump the FSB up 2...if it doesnt, go down 2, etc, until you figure out where the max is that it will boot to and take note of that as well as what happens when it wont. For example, does it try to load windows and freeze, blue screen, restart, not even POST.
now that you know what the max is under the current conditions, and if it is anywhere close to 400mhz FSB (within 10 or 15), bump it up 5.
--if a) you know that it is just going to freeze on restart and not even attemp to load into windows, you need to start playing with voltages, probably the vFSB (refer to the GTL REF guide for details as to why you would do this) save and see what happens.
--If b) you think that it may try to load into windows, go ahead and let it load, but keep track of how many times the little bar below the windows logo or name makes full passes as well as how far into the next cycle it goes.
In the case of a), play with the voltages and see if anything makes a difference and let us know.
In the case of b), if it doesnt load all the way or freezes after login or when you stress it with prime, go back to BIOS and on the CPU page, got to reference voltages, and increase the MCH GTL REF by 2 and see if it lengthens the time it takes to freeze either upon loading or once in windows. if it shortens the time (unlikely), then go down 2 from the original setting and keep testing, the longer before freezing the better, but if it still freezes then you have a voltage issue and you should try increasing vFSB by 2 or 3 steps without changing anything else and see if it helps.
these boards are more than capable of running ram @ 1600 mhz, (at 8x multi i can get mine into the high 1800's, but doesnt produce the same overall speed that i get by going to 1617 at a higher multi) it just takes some playing and understanding to get there...but one thing to consider is that ram frequency is not the holy grail...you can have a much faster system running wth the memory at 400x1333 and increasing the FSB and working on tightening the memory timings at a lower memory frequency than having tight fast memory at lower FSB.
its kinda like having a guy with a shovel and a guy with a wheelbarrel...with faster ram you are moving the wheelbarrel off and dumping it as fast as possible regardless of how full it is and possibly spilling some along the way...but if you slow down the wheelbarrel (the memory) and increase the FSB (the guy with the shovel) you can still get the same amount of dirt to the destination in the same time, but much more efficiently (and without the spills)! and sure, sometimes getting the dirt there faster regardless of how much you have is better (some gaming) but 99% of the time it really doesnt matter, and if you are dealing with encoding movies or some other large file manipulation, it is better to get as much there at a time so it can be processed and work can start on the next part.
Sean
ps. what is the rating of your power supply?
I am sooo glad that I found this thread. Lots of reading to do.
I am up in the air as I recieved the DX48BT2 in combination with a QX9770.
I have been trying to research the overclocking abilities of the board and I am on the fence an whether to keep the board or sell it in efforts to fund the purchase of an Asus Ramp. Extreme.
I am not an extreme overclocker, but I do want to make the most out of the components I purchase. I currently have a watercooling setup what has served me well and enabled me to OC a q6700 to 3.8ghz at 1.425V on a Asus P5K Deluxe.
I guess my initial question is do I keep the MB? My goals are to get the qx9770 to 4.0ghz and my memory to run 1600+.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
Castlehawk,
Welcome!
4Ghz and 1600Mhz with that chip and board should be cake. the most diffictult thing here is that the Intel x38/x48 boards, while very soilid once you get them configured correclty, can be a bit tempermental in the early days and weeks of OCing.
You might be the first person in this thread with a processor that runs 1600mhz front side bus at default settings, so that should be interesting to see how the x48 handles it and the memory capabilities along the way.
What RAM do you have? Be aware that filling all 4 slots on this board (as with any other, i would think) will severely limit your overclock and also that the x48 chip itself is the weakest part of this board...you are not going to break it, but it is where all the limitation for OCing this board is.
when installing your RAM (assuming 2 dimms, not 4), be sure to put it in the BLACK slots, not the blue ones.
Sean
Hey Hawk, welcome.
That QX9770 was the proc I was eyeing, but 130W is overkill I believe, I'm more on the green camp now. Too bad these babies, and a lot more C2D are being discontinued, PDNs have been issued by Intel I believe.
Still, it will be interesting to see how they do with these boards. Please do keep us posted on your experiments.
Intel keeps updating the DX58SO BIOS, as expected of course, while our boards will probably get left behind more and more. At least the power issue Intel, give us that fix, you know it's a "bug".
Hope soon enough there will be an update to IDCC for the SmackOver, maybe then Matt keeps his promise and updates ours too.
No new feedback on 1902? Is the AC power loss issue fixed or not? I believe someone said no. Intel has (they say) fixed it in 1893 already.
Anyway, just noticed that Intel has updated the readme of 1902 to pdf, before was doc. Maybe this was a while back and I didn't pay attention. They did change a bit the text though, nothing important, same meaning.
So has anyone else tried the new 1902 bios? Does it fix anything? I was also wondering...has anyone played with the Intel Desktop Control Center? The website says it is incompatible with any bios after 1814...which was a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGGG time ago. I was just wondering if it was worth it...I have ATI's Catalyst Control Center for my video card and it's freakin sweet...on the fly OCing, temp monitoring, and fan control! If only my MoBo could do the same...::sigh::
Anyway, back to my original question...is 1902 worth it?
soccergeek, I dont see any advantages or disadvantages to 1902...most of the updates deal with improved ability of the BIOS to read hardware IDs. So if you are having issues with a certain device always or commonly being detected as new hardware and having to be configured upon windows boot, this may help. other than that, same ol yttihs BIOS!
Hiya everybody! Soccergeek! I'm still on 1893. System is working, that's enough for me. And after reading about 1900, that it is maked for prevent user from load "custom bios", i think - no way. First i must know what is that - custom bios (still have no info about it)... And about oc'ing software, AMD was released for their users very good looking utility, named OverDrive™. For us, Intel's dearest users - nothing similar. It's sad.
Guys, guys... regarding IDCC not all is lost yet, I hope. Matt at Intel promised they would go back to our version of IDCC and work on it again, just after they work out the DX58SO version, v4.3 and v4.4. However, it's been a long time since even those versions of IDCC ahve had an update. They were shooting for the end of Q1 I believe, so maybe in April we'll see some work done. Matt, if you're reading this don't let us down.
Regarding BIOS, I really had high hopes when John from OCZ got involved with the BIOS development, with some mem optimizations in the oven, but I guess that stayed in the drawer since nothing really new in that departmente surfaced. Too bad.
I can't understand how a company like Intel, a giant in the semicon and platform design and implementation, does not have the resources to make things like this happen, at least more quickly. Don't they have good enough engineers? How come even the taiwanese have better development teams? Intel, having desined the silicon and studied the platform, should have the expertise to do much better. I'm not saying they have bad boards or hardware in general, excelent in my opinion in terms of stability (not performance so much) without those much hyped techs from the taiwanese manufacturers, but the software to go with it... well, you know how it is.
IDCC is a cool tool, just wish it was working like it should.
I won't even say a word regarding those BIOS issues that are still to be dealt with!!!
Now bear with me here...I like to play devil's advocate, as I think it is important to look at the other side and try to understand their experience...
Lets consider this: compared to Asus and the likes, how long has Intel allowed its consumers to really have any control of the board? not very long, in my recollection. Maybe this is part of the teething process for them...they realize that they needed to get in on the portion of the market that likes to "play with it until it breaks," but didnt realize exactly what that meant.
Just think about it in terms of aftermarket performance stuff for your car...10 years ago it was almost impossible to get anything for your car, from the dealer, that would increase its performance (aside from japanese and a select german makers). And even including the japanese and germans, if you could get such an item it was essentially a "no-liability, no-support, buy and install at your own risk" kind of affair. Even today, where they will sell and install performance parts, if you tweak that performance up a little, it lands outside of the scope where the dealer is going to help you with any issues without them charging you an arm and a leg, because the manufacturer is more concerned about building and maintaining reliable cars intended to perform at the level they designed...not those teetering on the brink of explosion!
now correlate that back to our situation. I think Intel has done a tremendous job at providing support (for free, no less) that allows us, with multiple configurations of parts, to improve our performance and our stability and have done so multiple times. now with cars, it took them nearly 90 years to get to the point where they will assist with this to ANY degree...and the fundamentals of the car and the factors relating to performance have almost not changed in that timeframe. With computers, almost every day comes with a new technology that changes the way the entire system, or at least a major part of it works. and tie that in with taking the components to the 99 percentile of their possible performance and you would have an undeniable headache with trying to make sure it all works together ok.
Am i saying that we are wrong in demanding more from Intel? absolutely not, because it will help to improve (as long as they are taking notes) their future products and help them to understand not only how overclockers are a portion of the market that will pay a little more just so we can "tweak it," but also how we are a portion of the market that continually demands more and more FOR FREE. the only incentive they have to service us is the hope that we will continue to buy their products, nothing more, nothing less....and i think they have done a good job at playing catch-up with the other manufacturers out there.
sean
ps. what i really wish would get fixed is how XS logs you out after 5 minutes and you have to log in again to post what you have been typing....i mean, seriously?!?!?! my BANK lets me stay logged in longer before it kicks me off!
Sean
You are of course correct, that is normally my opinion too. Sometimes I just get carried away and spill out my frustrations.
I work for such a big company too and I know how hard it is to convince people that, although your product might not be up there with your competitors in terms of features and performance, the reliability of the product or solution is what should really matter.
Yes, it's not been long since Intel has opened this type of control to users of their boards, if I'm not mistaken the BadAxe must have been the first with some tweakability. Maybe Intel shouldn't have called their line Extreme right off and let it mature first, it might be misleading, but then again for Intel it's extreme really.
For my needs, I'm not that extreme, it serves me good, very good indeed. I'm more into stability right now in fact.
Still, in the software department they are slow, but again, Intel is more of an hardware company, can't really blame them.
If going after the enthusiat crowd is their aim now, they will eventually have to provide the necessary resources to be more agressive, otherwise they will loose the race, at least to those die-hard guys that need the most tweaking available. Those guys will definatelly go the taiwanese way, with the super-charged BIOS, the heatpipes and all.
For me, and although I keep :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:ing about the power issue (which I still would like to see fixed, this is not some additional feature, it's a well known and documented bug), this is still a great board.
and yes, logout so quickly? Man, this is a nuissance, once you write up such a long post... just happened to me now!!!
Its necesary to conect a molex in the 4 pin auxiliary power conector located in the motherboard (Intel X48BT2) ???
i have two 4870 pci express cards
fredoariaudo, the 4 pin power connector on the mobo (the one by the PCI slots) is ONLY needed when devices connected via PCI do not have their own power connectors and are drawing the board power down to the point that you are seeing issues. I do not recall anyone in this thread having said that they have had to use it.
you would probably have to have most of the PCI slots filled with devices like non-powered graphics cards (unlike your 4870s which have 1 or 2 pci-e power connectors each) or highly power consumptive RAID cards to need to use it.
are you experiencing any issues with both of your 4870s installed?
sean
Sean,
I agree with what you said. Intel hasn't been in the game very long..but to play "devil's advocate ;) " right back, no car manufacturers (at least until recently) would boast about all the after-market add-ons you could do. Intel's site was very specific on the "here's what you can do with this board!" advertisement. They all but said the IDCC could do dishes for you (embelishing a wee bit of course). It wasn't until after you get ready to download and use the IDCC that you get a little warning about it only working on a specific version. Now that was MY fault for updating the bios before reading the manual...but that comes from forced habit of work practices (update bios and firmware first); however, we us proven system setups so I take full responsibility for not reading the fine print before beggining my little adventure into the wonderful world of x48. That is really my only complaint about the board (well, that and the 4 Dimm slots NOT being able to run at 1600Mhz...but that isn't really a big issue because my processor is an E8500 which only runs at 1333) :off:
I love my new system. I have a friend who has an i7 and he complains all the time about the problems with it and he has the Intel x58 board. I don't have any stability issues at the moment (even with Vista). And everything is working like it's supposed to. For that, I tip my hat to Intel. It is very difficult to make a board that is:
1.) Overclockable AND stable
2.) Works out of the box with the 1,000,000 different configurations people are going to use on it
3.) Pretty, oh so pretty (yes, I broke out a little "West Side Story")
Bottom line...I agree with you...and with Manel. I'm happy with the board. I would be happy with a Porshe too...but that wouldn't stop me from wanting a Ferrari! :rofl:
Hopefully one day, we will live in a perfect world and all will be well with Intel's updates...but until that day...we can still dream...:yepp:
One other thing I forgot to mention...Sean...your analogies are off the charts man...where do you come up with that stuff? It's like pure magic! I love them. Keep 'em coming.