Any info on 4pca3+ ?

I found out that cunsuspc has the 4pca3+ rev2 boards in stock and wanted to know how this compares to the asus p4c800. I don't need a ton of features, just something that OC's well and is stable. I'm hesitant about getting a board that not many people have much experience w/ but the epox is just so tempting w/ 3.3 vdimm and it's $40 cheaper than the asus. It seemed the older rev was lagging behind other canterwoods in the mem bandwidth department, can anyone comment on weather the newer rev/newer bios have brought it up to the asus level?

I was wondering the same. I think I'll have one of these boards in the next coming weeks though, so we'll see how it turns out for me. :D

Mine was amazing for the first 3 days. This morning i went to turn it on, and it powered up for about 1second and then turned off. If i unplug the psu and plug it back in and then press the power the same thing always happens. I had done no mods, and was giving low volts, and it was cooled very well (65f ambient with big fans).

I wonder if this mobo has some problem that causes it to die very easily. I am gonna rma this board to censuspc.com, which i hear is very easy to do.

OH, before it died the performance was outstanding. My cpu was pretty bad, but with stock cooling/volt i had my 2.4c@290fsb. my bh-5 had 3.13v 2-2-2-6, and my s-sandra bandwith was a little over 6400, and my 3dmark2k1 score with my non oc'd 9800p 128mb was just a tad under 20k.

I have had the privledge of working all the major asus and abit mobos, and this board seemed to be better than them all. I just hope this early random death was a fluke.

Sounds exactly like a short somewhere to me. Try taking the mobo out of the case and putting it back together so you can isolate the problem. I was just about to order this board from census but then I noticed it says DDR 400 ECC Registered? Does this board take registered ram or what?
http://www.censuspc.com/Merchant2/me...y_Code=MOT0021

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Originally posted by SoulEdge
Sounds exactly like a short somewhere to me.

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The same thing happened to me once when I didn't mount my slk900 correctly. The screws I used that went trough the motherboard somehow made contact with the backplate of my case. When I put a large piece of plastic over that it was fine.

so maybe i should kind of screw around with it, maybe take off the cooler and put it back on, and see what happens?

This board doesn't need ecc memory. I had khx 3200 bh-5 2x256 running 2-2-2-6 with 3.12v. If I can't get this board to work I will rma it for another. Before it broke this mobo was outstanding.

I think I get one, try it out.Hopefully it kicks some ass.:D

Just ordered one will report back next week.

me too :D

My old 8k3a was awesome ! This MAX3 is nice, but the 5:4 issue is holding me back. I;ve seen a few peeps with this board at 290-297 at 5:4.

With high vagp voltage the board seems to be able to get almost as high as any board.

hey...did anyone ever find out about that fantom aggressive memory mode? From the most recent bios update list of fixes/changes:

"4) Improved "Aggressive_Memory_Mode" memory bandwidth when the item set on "MAX". 5) Solved Vcore voltage showed wrong when decreasing the voltage value. "

WEll just got it in and my cpu wont do over 260, SNDS. So i put in the server machine to run at stock. Getting a new cpu this week.;)

ah, i`ve got a question for you guys who are running a rev. 2.00 of the 4pca3+ - what`s the max Vcore? 1.85V? pleaaaase :D let this rumour be true...

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Originally posted by kim`grr
ah, i`ve got a question for you guys who are running a rev. 2.00 of the 4pca3+ - what`s the max Vcore? 1.85V? pleaaaase :D let this rumour be true...

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Why would you even need that much? You will kill it...

FYI the ASUS and Abit boards do 1.95v...

I ordered my board last Wed w/ just regular ground shipping thinking it would be here by middle of the week. They never sent me a tracking number but when I talked to census, they said it shipped Fri. I better get it this week, I'm getting impatient. Grrr.....

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...threadid=13319

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Problem however is MAX Vcore setting 1.60 volts, which results in a whopping 1.52V real.
So thats basically only default CPU voltage on an overclocking board which is supposed to... overclock. EPoX has been kind enough to give us Vddr up to 3.30V (overvolts to 3.34) and Vagp up to 2.20V, but apparently they forgot about CPU voltage.

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The max vcore in the bios is 1.85, but the vcore undervolts by something realy high like .05v, so it came out to about 1.8v real, which is more than you need. You just need to check to see how much your board undervolts, and change accordingly.

The vdim overvolts also quite a bit, about .03v for me.


soul--> That is talking about the rev1.x...the rev2's have 1.85, and there was a bios update that allows the rev1.2's to go up to 1.85v also.

Just got mine today !

Its stable at 285 5:4, hopefilly 290 after tweaking. My old MAX3 would only do 270 at 5:4 :D

It DOES go up to 1.85 VCORE.

Someone needs to e-mail epox about the phantom agressive memory mode, and the agp/pci lock bug(supposedly turns off above 300fsb, but you can manually set the agp/pci to somewhere close to like 72/36 and it should work)

Guys, don't trust the BIOS/Winbond monitor/MBM/anything else, trust a multimeter. ;) If you actually measure the Vcore under load on the rev 1.x 4PCA3+ it's 1.58 V when set to 1.60 V, nowhere near as bad as the 1.52-1.53 it reports. I'd wager that this is the same for the rev 2.0. :)

On the downside, my second one of these just died. Actually I've had three (all rev 1.x), the first one was DOA... :mad: The replacement better be rev 2.0 or I'll be pissed! :D

gouda: Mate good luck. I emailed EPoX tech support about the Vcore issue with rev 1.x boards... the reply I got was so :rolleyes:!!! It's like they hadn't even used the board, bloody useless! :rolleyes:

Epox needs to shift a little more effort over to the intel side. They are very concentrated on amd, but seem to neglect intel. With just a few little fixes and tweaks I could see this board being the best intel board out there for oc'ing and performance. If there realy is an agp/pci issue that is gonna kill this board for me. I am not going to even consider going back to nvidia, so if I see problems with 300+fsb with video issues and they don't fix it fast I am canning this board for a p4c800. I don't think it will be an issue with the 2.6c though being that 310 would be just about the highest I think I could possibly get, so it should be ok...but I want to get a realy realy good 4ghz+ 2.4c sometime, and as of right I don't know that this board could do that for me.

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Originally posted by gouda96
if I see problems with 300+fsb with video issues and they don't fix it fast I am canning this board for a p4c800.

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Well if I can't get a straight swap tomorrow, I'll be getting a P4C800-E Rev 2.0 instead, that's for sure! :)

The rest was spot on the money, great post! :toast:

I am not giving up on epox just yet. I will give them until my rma period is almost up to fix it. Then I am done. Everything else on this board is so damn perfect that I would hate for something that could easily be fixed in a bios update to ruin it. As long as it doesn't affect my oc with my 2.6c and ati card I will run with it for a little while. If it hurts my 2.6c oc then I am just going to toss it. 340 fsb is one thing, but if I can't do 310 then I won't deal with it.

thanks guys, I know that running a p4 @ 1.85V will kill it rather quickly.

all I wanted to know is that 1.7V REAL are possible, so the MAX information was just to be sure.

<< gonna order one ;)

Well setting it up with a 9800pro some buffalo 3700 that will do 2226, and a nice 60gb raid 0.
Cpu should be here on Friday.:D

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The replacement better be rev 2.0 or I'll be pissed!

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Well with Epox boards, later is not necessarily better. I tried both the Rev. 1.0 and Rev. 2.0 8RDA+ and kept the 1.0. It had higher true voltages and overclocked just as high as the 2.0 with default VDD of 1.56 whereas the 2.0 needed 1.8. The Rev. 2.0 also had the can't-boot-above-1.90 VCORE bug.

I had similar experiences to Retrospooty: same CPU did 277 on the 4PCA3+ and <265 on the IC7-MaxIII. Also 5:4 and VDIMM issues on the Abit board.

The 4PCA3+ loves BH-5/BH-6 and ADATA PC4000. I've run 250, 1:1, 2-2-2-5 with XMS3500 and DDR478, 2-2-2-5 on SanMax BH-6, at 3.2 volts. The ADATA does 282, 1:1, 3-4-4-5 at 2.9 volts, CPU limited.

I have a Rev. 1.1, 1.2, and 2.0 4PCA3+, but have only run the 1.1. I've heard of both it and the 4PEA+ mysteriously dying. I haven't run my 1.1 long enough to notice anything. A 4PEA+ is in my internet rig, loaded to the hilt and running DDR466, 2-2-2-5 at 3.0 volts. So far so good.

So tell me, any visible differences between rev. 1.2 and rev. 2.0 of 4PCA3+ ? Besides the DIMM and IDE colors. New capacitors, slightly changed layout, anything ?

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So tell me, any visible differences between rev. 1.2 and rev. 2.0 of 4PCA3+ ? Besides the DIMM and IDE colors. New capacitors, slightly changed layout, anything ?

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Well, the box is changed :D . The older revs came in a white box whereas the 2.0 is in a chrome/blue box. I've not had the 2.0 out of the box yet to check. But if it's like the 4PEA+, Pilsy said he could see no visible differences between 1.0, 1.2, or 2.0 versions of that board.

Not sure what's going on with Epox. It's like limited editions of the board, or something. The 2.0 I had to get from Censuspc.com in the U.S. Only have good things to say about them. They ship FPO AP for one thing, and only charged $8.50 for freight whereas Newegg charges $13.80. Got the board in 5 days. But seems nobody else in the U.S. has them. The 4PCA3+ is all gone in Japan. Nada. No sign of Rev. 2.0s, just like with the 4PEA+. I got the 2.0 for $149 and can get $130 for a used board here so it was basically an exchange.

Clevor: I know later isn't necessarily better, but the rev 2.0 has Vcore up to 1.85 V, whereas the 1.x has only up to 1.60 V. I need those extra volts, and more to the point, the voltages in between 1.60 and 1.75 V. :)

Interesting that you say you got better OCs on the 4PCA3+ than on the IC7, many people seem to report the opposite...

Looks like I'll get another board to try regardless! :D

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Interesting that you say you got better OCs on the 4PCA3+ than on the IC7, many people seem to report the opposite...

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Actually the 4PCA3+ is not the best clocking board I've tried, as the P4C800-E did 287 on the same CPU which did 277 on the Epox. But I attribute that to the 1.58 true VCORE max, whereas on the Asus I was running around 1.62. Still, that is not enough to make up for 10 mhz. More like 5 mhz.

And yes, I'd like the 1.85 VCORE too, but on most the boards I tried, increasing VCORE above 1.65 only made the overclock worse. I think settings above that are phantom settings. If the boards are Prescott compatible they shouldn't be capable of more than 1.60, I believe.

But nobody does VDIMM better than Epox. VAGP and VDIMM is rock steady. The 4PEA+ is the lowest undervolting board I've seen: .025. Most boards undervolt by .05. I think the boards die because the VAGP is sucking 1.8 volts, the VDIMM up to 3.3, the VCORE 1.65 or whatever. I am using very good cooling on my board with fans blowing over the mosfets and ram. I'm using a trusty Sparkle 400 watt power supply with pots bumped a bit, although my 3.3 volt rail is chronically low.

I've not had any luck with an IS7 or MaxIII; got rid of both boards. They only did around 260-265 fsb 3D stable on the same CPU and could not run BH-5 worth a darn.

Just got my rev2 today, now I'm just waiting on my 2.4C from newegg. It came in a shiny purple box w/ a sticker that says rev2.x. Rev 2.0 is printed on the mobo pcb also. I like the purple rounded ide cables that come in the box. The board sure looks nice too, I've always liked the green color, especially compared to Asus' crappy brown/yellow. Man I'm itching to get this sucker fired up, I guess in the meantime I'll think of ways to mount my dtek NB waterblock. Any suggestions? I'm thinking about just 2 zip ties through the metal loops and a 50/50 mix of AS epoxy and AS3...

not sure about mounting it, but as5 comes out in 5 days. :D

I kniow, the box is different as well, but who cares. Same regarding the rounded cables, color is not important.
Clevor, can you do me a favour ? If you still have the 1.2 and 2.0 rev. of 4PCA3+, can you tell me if there is any performance difference between the two ?

PS. As for OCing, as strange as it may seem, I've heard of many 4PCA3+ users that can take their boards to 300MHz FSB and above.

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Originally posted by Alexandrus
I kniow, the box is different as well, but who cares. Same regarding the rounded cables, color is not important.
Clevor, can you do me a favour ? If you still have the 1.2 and 2.0 rev. of 4PCA3+, can you tell me if there is any performance difference between the two ?

PS. As for OCing, as strange as it may seem, I've heard of many 4PCA3+ users that can take their boards to 300MHz FSB and above.

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300fsb wouldn't be strange, but above is basically impossible with this board, atleast much above 300. the 4pca3+ and 4pda2+ have a bug where the agp/pci lock doesn't work over 300fsb. If you have an ati card you won't be able to get much higher, but supposedly with an nvidia card you might be able to go higher because they have a higher tolerance for higher agp/pci speeds...but then you have to use an nvidia card, and I don't even know if that actually will help. I should be able to get to about 315fsb(boot not stable) with my 2.6c, so I will be able to test +300fsb oc'ing with different cards...unfortunately the only nvidia card I have is a ti4200...wouldn't mind seeing what kind of 3dmark scores I would get with it :D

Well, if the AGP/PCI lock won't work, then why not just set AGP/PCI manually to 68/34 or something ? Wouldn't that work ?

Here's some more stuff about that agp/pci lock issue:
http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showth...y&pagenumber=2

Thanks.

I heard that manually setting it didn't work. Hopefully my mobo will be here soon so that I can verify all this stuff...

Some of the guys here have good luck with Epox boards (I would say :)):

http://holicho.lib.net/wcpuidv3/wcpuidv3.htm

Maybe the agp/pci bug doesn't affect everyone, or isn't realy that big of a deal...I could have been pretty high on that list with a 2.4c, but the 2.6c I should still be close to the top30...

I like the a7n8x @ 277 fsb...not to shabby...

I was looking at a couple of 1M SuperPI runs and I got a 40 second run on the 4PCA3+ at just 277 fsb (3.35 gig), 5:4, DDR443, 2-2-2-5. That would put me just under the guys running 300+ fsb/3.6+ gig! The closest P4 guy to me was running 3.5 gig I think. Either that, or the list must not have been updated recently.

That is cool...I will have to run that @4ghz in a week :D

I notice two guys were running Win98SE for SuperPI (must be the same guy). I dunno for sure, but I get 30' 16M SuperPI runs in Win98SE and yet in WinXP times drop down to 16-17' :slobber:. Yet my AMD rigs will net me 16-17' times even in Win98SE :confused:. I gotta check this again.

amd rapes in super pi...not sure about the os difference though

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Originally posted by MCWB
Guys, don't trust the BIOS/Winbond monitor/MBM/anything else, trust a multimeter. ;) If you actually measure the Vcore under load on the rev 1.x 4PCA3+ it's 1.58 V when set to 1.60 V, nowhere near as bad as the 1.52-1.53 it reports. I'd wager that this is the same for the rev 2.0. :)

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Could you tell me where exactly do you measure Vcore? On the MOSFETs?

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showth...threadid=45218 :)

Thanks :-)) But it still remains unclear to me how to measure Vcore. I tried on the mosfets, but the values were too off to be true. I guess i must measure somewhere on the voltage regulator chip, but dont know where. Anyone, any idea?

What kind of bios du you use guy`s

And why are you using it ?

Best Regards

Fosco

I just got the newest bios. There aren't realy enough bios's to have alot of different choices.

And what the's newest BIOS ?

it is like 2 months old...just go check epox.com

Oh, that one, I kow it, I was hoping they released a new one.

not that I know of...I think I am gonna e-mail epox today and ask about that #4 change that doesn't exist in the bios, and I will ask about the agp/pci bug...

agp/pci problem...

fix...
use the P4C800 ULTRA Version 1.5d version...

There is a nice ClockGen proggy at www.cpuid.com, i like it more than setfsb...

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Originally posted by gouda96
agp/pci problem...

fix...
use the P4C800 ULTRA Version 1.5d version...

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Hello..

The link too www.abxzone come up whit : cannot find server.
So i wondered if you could tel me a little about the prob.

And if you use SetFSB to set fsb.. will it then starts whit what ever you sets next time win starts?

Seems like mine is running at 72\36... Is this the same that you have prob whit?

Sorry for my bad writing.

Fosco

ABXZone works fine now, but as far as I can tell their are having problems with the P4C800 boards and AGP/PCI lock.

seems like the p4c800 and the 4pca3+/4pda2+ both have some problem where somewhere around 300fsb the agp/pci lock malfunctions, limiting oc'ing. You can get around this buy oc'ing to the highes stable oc before the bug kicks in, and then use clockgen or setfsb.

I am not sure about if it saves your oc'd speeds, because I haven't gotten to use either program yet...but I would imagine it does, otherwise that would be a real hassle.

Using setfsb at the present moment and working.:D

WOOHOO !

This board rocks. I broke all kindsa barriers that I had with my Abit MAX3 (it would not run stable over 270 at 5:4 with all the same parts) :D Check sig

:banana:

Also fixed several minor glitches as well.

What BIOS were you using with the MAX3? A lot of the issues are supposed to be fixed in a new BIOS but i'm not sure if its still beta or if its official yet.

Soulburner, is that 19645 3dmark01 the highest you have gotten on 01?

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Originally posted by gouda96
Mine was amazing for the first 3 days. This morning i went to turn it on, and it powered up for about 1second and then turned off. If i unplug the psu and plug it back in and then press the power the same thing always happens. I had done no mods, and was giving low volts, and it was cooled very well (65f ambient with big fans).

I wonder if this mobo has some problem that causes it to die very easily. I am gonna rma this board to censuspc.com, which i hear is very easy to do.

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I have heard of several 4pca3's with this problem... I bet that this board has the same issue thay many IC7 (non MAX3's) have.

They OC so well that the strain of the added voltage can burn out the MOSFETS . Thats why ABIT put the OTIS on there (the fan may not do a damn thing but the heatsinks on the MOSFETS are there because of a high failure rate attrubuted to OC'ing and high voltage).

Anyhow, with all this in mind I got out my jig saw and (sloppily) cut up some heatsinks for my MOSFETS and installed them. I can tell you one thing for sure... these heatsinks are hot as hell, so cooling them can only have been a good thing !!!

Check it .

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Originally posted by gouda96
Soulburner, is that 19645 3dmark01 the highest you have gotten on 01?

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Yeah since I only have 2.85v to give this RAM I can't go over 276 on the FSB :(. Not doing a vdimm mod on this one though.

Also its all on quiet air cooling ATM which isn't bad really. The card runs at about 83c during testing so I know with some better cooling it would clock a lot better :D. It will run stable and artifact free over 500mhz on the core even at that temperature, but 490 is faster for some reason so thats the sweet spot I run it at. Same with the mem @ 900.

I have some new plans in the works so that score is only going upwards. BTW i'm selling this card if anyone wants to play with it PM me, its a ViVo w/TV Tuner hardware as well and should have a lot of potential seeing what its done on the crappy air cooling it has.

going to have to put on some heatsinks on the moffetts;)

retro, I didn't even think to check the mosfet temps, but it would have died while in use, and not sitting overnight in a cold room. I was also only at the highest @ 295 fsb with 1.6v real...not very high, but maybe the high vdim is an issue. On all the ic7's I have dealt with, the mosfets never got hot...abit just wanted something they could hype to sell more mobos.

Soulburner...@283fsb with the stock cooler, and an non oc'd 9800p 128mb I got something like 199xx...maybe you should ditch that nvidia card and pick up a quality ati card :D

One step ahead of you, read my post again....:toast:

don't know how I missed that...did what realy annoys me when other people do, only read 1/2 the post.:toast:

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What BIOS were you using with the MAX3? A lot of the issues are supposed to be fixed in a new BIOS but i'm not sure if its still beta or if its official yet.

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I tried all the latest Beta BIOSswith my MaxIII and all it seemed to do was castrate the memory performance on the board, even though it got rid of the 255, 1:1 limit barrier. 5:4 never worked right. I got an RMA from Newegg but they gave me an exchange rather than refund.

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They OC so well that the strain of the added voltage can burn out the MOSFETS .

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I use an infrared thermometer and I too, do not notice a problem with any of the mosfets on the 4PCA3+/4PEA+. One thing I like about the Alpha 8942 is I can hotglue 4k 50-60 mm fans on the aluminum shroud, which I have blowing on the mosfets. I've not had any problems with my 4PEA+ or 4PCA3+ dying. I got heatsinks but don't even use them. I feel if they overhang the mosfet, they block cooling to the solder connections and PCB.

Well Abit, you got one more chance. :D

Getting a cpu by this weekend. Will do some testing.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Clevor
I tried all the latest Beta BIOSswith my MaxIII and all it seemed to do was castrate the memory performance on the board, even though it got rid of the 255, 1:1 limit barrier. 5:4 never worked right. I got an RMA from Newegg but they gave me an exchange rather than refund.



I use an infrared thermometer and I too, do not notice a problem with any of the mosfets on the 4PCA3+/4PEA+. One thing I like about the Alpha 8942 is I can hotglue 4k 50-60 mm fans on the aluminum shroud, which I have blowing on the mosfets. I've not had any problems with my 4PEA+ or 4PCA3+ dying. I got heatsinks but don't even use them. I feel if they overhang the mosfet, they block cooling to the solder connections and PCB.

Well Abit, you got one more chance. :D

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Newegg has 4pca3+'s in stock now. You could rma your max3 for that or a p4c800, and you would be alot happier with either one...I garuntee it ;)

Gouda, I already have a P4C800-E. You may have missed that from some of my posts. It did overclock my L310xxx Malay 2.40C the highest, but unbuffered memory scores trailed the 4PCA3+ a bit. Buffered was higher though.

It runs BH-5 very well considering the 2.85 VDIMM limit: DDR440, 2-2-2-5 and DDR459, 2-3-2-5. But you'd need a (simple) VDIMM mod to get higher, and it will be nowhere as easily adjustable as with the 4PCA3+. The rap on the P4C800-E is you pay for what you get; it is hardly a cheap board. Prices haven't dropped on it either. You figure $230 for that board compared to $150 for the 4PCA3+? I don't think the extra bucks is worth it for 5 mhz more top end but lesser memory performance and easy VDIMM to 3.32.

I will give the IC7-MaxIII another shot. They say some boards are good and some not. I know Newegg got a new batch of boards in. It's possible it's a component problem with the board.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Clevor
Gouda, I already have a P4C800-E. You may have missed that from some of my posts. It did overclock my L310xxx Malay 2.40C the highest, but unbuffered memory scores trailed the 4PCA3+ a bit. Buffered was higher though.

It runs BH-5 very well considering the 2.85 VDIMM limit: DDR440, 2-2-2-5 and DDR459, 2-3-2-5. But you'd need a (simple) VDIMM mod to get higher, and it will be nowhere as easily adjustable as with the 4PCA3+. The rap on the P4C800-E is you pay for what you get; it is hardly a cheap board. Prices haven't dropped on it either. You figure $230 for that board compared to $150 for the 4PCA3+? I don't think the extra bucks is worth it for 5 mhz more top end but lesser memory performance and easy VDIMM to 3.32.

I will give the IC7-MaxIII another shot. They say some boards are good and some not. I know Newegg got a new batch of boards in. It's possible it's a component problem with the board.

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Why would you get the max3? It is simply the worst mobo out. If you have a 2.4c and want to use 5:4 you won't be able to oc at all because of some rediculous 5:4 bug. It is by far the most buggy board made. save your money.

I'm looking for something that might beat the P4C800-E overclock. And I'm a fan of Abit. But they seemed to have dropped the ball on their SD/CW setups.

I am running my 4PCA3+ now. Flashed to the latest BIOS and don't see all that much diff, except they removed VCORE above 1.6 since it never worked anyway. There is no aggressive mode setting in the BIOS; that probably appies to the SD board.

One tip: you may have to jack the VAGP as high as 2.0. I can overclock 2 mhz higher now, so I'm at 279. 3D lockups at extreme overclocks are probably due to the AGP slot not getting enough volts, especially running high VDIMM.

Maybe it's the new BIOS, but my junk Corsair stick paired with a decent one now does 248, 1:1, 2-2-2-5 at 3.2 volts. Passed both 3DMarks and a 16M SuperPI run too. 2 mhz increase.

At just 277 (3.32 gig), 5:4, DDR443, 2-2-2-5 the rig is wickedly fast. Reminds me of the IC7-MaxIII with pre-beta BIOSs and AUTO settings for the ram: getting 3300+ unbuffered:

3DMark2001=20,176
3DMark2003=6,508
PCMark2002=11,272
UT2003 Demo=85.3/52.4 at 1600x1200/4xFSAA/16xAniso
40 sec SuperPI 1M run.

My 9800 Pro is only running 428/355 too. The board breezed through CodeCreatures also, at 1600x1200. Some of the SD/CW boards have trouble clearing this at max overclocks.

I really need a better CPU :p: .

I don't know if these boards can beat the p4c800 in oc's, but they are soo close that it realy doesn't make a difference...but it very well might to you.

My mobo got here today!!! I totally wasn't expecting it this soon...I am so damn happy...and guess what arrived right after I left for class? My prommy!!! All that is left is for my 2.6c kickass cpu to get here :banana: :banana:

Have fun gouda. Hope it works out.:D

If anybody is on air, tell me if you can get over 279 fsb. I seem to hit a wall there, with two diff CPUs. I know the CPU and ram can go higher. It seems the NB voltage is holding me back, or there is too much voltage to spread around. I am at 1.60 VCORE, 2.0 VAGP and 2.9 VDIMM. One CPU has done 279 max on other boards though, so I can't complain.

I put a much stronger 40 mm fan on the Tiger1, but no diff. So it's not the temps.

I'm gonna try the rev. 1.2 to see if I can go higher.

I was running 3dmark and prime at 285 with 1.55vcore, which was more like 1.5vcore, 1.7vagp, and 3.22vdim. This proc isn't too good either...I expected it to top out at 3.4, so I was surprised it went higher with the stock pos.

This mobo appeared to be doa, then it seemed like I fixed it, then it looked like it had died, now it is working again, and hopefully it stays taht way :cool:

I was wondering if you guys are noticing realy long boot up times? When I first power it on it probably takes 15 seconds before video turns on, and when I reboot the video goes idle for about 5-10 seconds before it starts to boot back up. Anyone else have that? Both of my boards did this, but I think the first one booted a little bit faster.

Yeah, the board does that. Sheepishly boots up. You have to be patient. Sometimes when a board does that it is resetting defaults, but the Epox always holds it's settings.

I tell you one thing though, the board rarely fails to boot with any ram I've tried on it. At worse you can get into Memtest and see errors showing up. But a lot of boards won't post at all when you get carried away with the ram.

I noticed a long boot time on my board also but I dont think it was 15 seconds, more like 5 before I got that little beep to indicate that it was POST'ing.

Long POST times here as well, and long HDD detection time as well, but it's OK, I like it never the less. Mine is rev. 1.2 BTW.
And one more thing, if you cut power to the PSU, the POST time will be even longer, the first time I thought I fried something because the video wasn't starting at all.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Alexandrus
Long POST times here as well, and long HDD detection time as well, but it's OK, I like it never the less. Mine is rev. 1.2 BTW.
And one more thing, if you cut power to the PSU, the POST time will be even longer, the first time I thought I fried something because the video wasn't starting at all.

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how long did it go before it finally posted? That might be what mine did the first few times I tried to boot. Does it see to hang on c5?

Nope, didn't hang at all, took longer but didn't hang. I was used to 8RDA+ which got to POST really fast, and that's why I got scared at first, but then I got used to the long post times.

With the latest BIOS, the bootup seems to pause longer at HD drive detection, I think because some Epox boards have problems with USB Zip drive detection.

Yeah, sometimes my 1.1 board takes maybe 10 sec to boot, particularly after you change ram or the CPU.

But I got a lot of SD/CW boards that boot real fast but are slow in benchmarks!:p:

Them be the brakes.

You guys know how to read the 3.3v rail w/ mbm? It's reporting the vdimm for me. Also, can you read the NB temp through it too?

Strange how you see many other motherboards being reviewed all the time, but not this one.

Some good info here guys keep it up!:thumbsup:

hey guys, received my 4pca3+ rev 2.00, began the overclocking :) and had to up Vagp to get it stable as I increased the FSB.

so, my question: which Voltage do you consider as a maximum for Vagp? I mean, how does this voltage influence the gfx-card? do I have to understand it as some kind of mobo chipset voltage increment increasing gfx-card stability or overall stability?

well, someone in this thread uses 2V Vagp, any suggestions?

What does the 2 options under the ram timings do? Are these for PAT and is it best to leave them auto/enabled/disabled? Also, Epox states in the list of updates for latest bios "Improved "Aggressive_Memory_Mode" memory bandwidth when the item set on "MAX"." I don't even see an aggressive memory mode to set to max, only SPD or manual ?

I have asked about Aggressive_Memory_Mode about 10 times in this thread, and in every other 4pca3+ thread I have ever seen, and my best geuss is that it was meant to be placed as a change in the 4pda2+ bios revision being that it is in the 4pda2+ bios.

The 2 settings under the timings are for pat, and it would be best performance wise if they were enabled, but they might hinder your oc. I was able to have them and HT enabled at my max oc without any problems, and it helped my 3dmark and s-sandra scores by a little.

Got a sl6wr cpu 2.4c, will do some testing today.:D

Quote:

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Originally posted by gouda96
I have asked about Aggressive_Memory_Mode about 10 times in this thread, and in every other 4pca3+ thread I have ever seen, and my best geuss is that it was meant to be placed as a change in the 4pda2+ bios revision being that it is in the 4pda2+ bios.

The 2 settings under the timings are for pat, and it would be best performance wise if they were enabled, but they might hinder your oc. I was able to have them and HT enabled at my max oc without any problems, and it helped my 3dmark and s-sandra scores by a little.

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I didn't see any option in the bios for HT ?

It is one of the top setting under "advanced bios options"

Ahh, I see it now. Skipped right over it, but it was enabled anyway.

*Update* Damn, I don't know what the culprit is but something is justr really odd here. Yesterday I could do a full run of 3dmark at 3.6ghz, 5:4, tightest timings. Today, I can't even boot into windows w/ out getting a BSOD much less run 3dmark unless I complete slacken the timings. It's not the memory itself, because I tried 2 different sets and it's the same w/ both. I did also have a problem w/ 3dmark crashing today at any cpu or mem speed. I had to uninstall/reinstall to get it to run again. What's happened? Did some part of the OS get corrupted? If that's the case, I don't understand why the mem timings would have any effect... This little system is giving me a headache...

Do a reinstall or the cpu may be dying too much juice.:(

I'm wondering about that SNDS thing now. Sheesh, I never even went above 1.65 vcore and this is w/ water. I can't even run 3dmark at 3.3 anymore. I've never seen so many bluescreens in my life, 3dmark just BSOD's or crashes to desktop, and I loaded UT2k3 just to try another 3d intensive prog and it crashes after about 10 mins w/ a page fault error. Now that would indicate a ram problem but w/ 3 different sets, that's almost impossible. The video card might explain the crashing to desktop but not the constant BSOD's. So that leaves some problem w/ the mobo or the cpu. Grrr....

Check for condensation, I know of someone who just experienced this exact same thing and there was some water under the pins.

It's only plain water w/ room temp air so condensation would be impossible unless there was a leak. It's also been running 3dmark fine for the last 30 mins at default speeds.

wow soul...that realy stinks. have you tried reinstalling the os?

I am gonna get a fresh install on my setup tomorrow when I put my prommy on. This time I will remember to load ghost or drive image!

Can you get your hands on another cpu to try out? Sounds like it is probably the mobo and not the cpu.

I am realy annoyed by this mobo, just something about it...I think I might pick up a p4c800-e. I could get the vdim/droop/3.3v mods done in 30 minutes. I am gonna see how the board does under the prommy tomorrow before I decide though.