M3A overclocking

[Jakalwarrior]

Some time ago a guy in the asus forum reported he got the nic working after an complete bios cleanup.
Unplug power, set the jumper remove the battery, press power/reset to clear the capacitors and leave it like that for ~10 minutes.
Other types of resetting the bios did not work for him.

I tried it too :/ left mine out for about 2 hours and no luck. BTW in the manual it says to remove the battery when you reset the bios so ive been doing that all along too.

[SSN585]

I've more or less given up on my Corsair DHX XMS2 Dominator 1066 sticks (3 x 1024MB), and instead installed 3 x 1024MB Crucial Ballistix Tracers 1066. I had been unable to get past 220:440 FSBRAM with the Corsairs.

So with the Crucial Ballistix's (BTW, the LED's are pretty cool - kinda like an old cheesy SciFi movie), I'm able to use the following settings:
FSB 200
CPU x11
DRAM Manual 1066
5-5-5-15, 20trc 2T

I haven't ran any benchmarks yet, or tried to lower the trc further. I do know that with these settings, FSB 220 and CPU x10 fails to post. Will probably start raising FSB slowly next.

[SocketMan]

Is like a love triangle-nothing but trouble
Try using 2 sticks and TRC @ 29 thats the "SPP" rating for DDR1066.

[SSN585]

SocketMan, thanx for the info. I have been having some stability problems. I'll try the settings and pull a stick.

It's a shame that the Enzotech H/S blocks the first memory slot. I *MIGHT* be able to get the first slot into action...the crucial's are much shorter than the corsairs I pulled. I'm currently using A2blk/B1yel/B2blk. I'll either pull B1yel or shift to A1yel/B1yel. Sound correct?

[SSN585]

Whoops, I said I'd pull B1yel.

What I did was pull A2blk.

[SSN585]

OK, I spent a little time fixing my rectal-cranium inversion.

I managed to get one mem stick in the first slot, A1yellow. It barely fits, and I was able to get it in without pulling the Enzotech Extreme-X; but the RAM heatsink is touching the outer two heatpipes. The second stick went into slot B1yellow. The black slots, A2 & B2 are empty (for now). With two sticks only, I get 533.5Mhz DRAM, 3 : 8 ratio, 5-5-5-15 2T, tRC 30 (EPP#2 - 1066). CPU-z is reporting Dual Channel ganged mode. I ran Prime95 Torture Test for 1hr44min, no errors.

I feel all warm and fuzzy now. If it stays stable I'll tweak on tRC and the FSB.

Thanks for the help and hints. I have to say that the Crucial's are an improvement over the Corsair. Or, I just didn't get the correct timings.

[justapost]

You'll need ~2.3V for the Crucial's to run em at 1200MHz. If you run your system with an 220MHz ref HT the ram is running at ~1170MHz so the max 2,25V for the ram might not be enough.

Pluged an 5000BE in the M3A yesterday. Expected 100-200MHz more than with the BE2400 but they both to out at around 3.3GHz with 1.5V.
Gonna check the voltages the 5000BE needs for 2.3GHz now.

[justapost]

Gonna check the voltages the 5000BE needs for 2.3GHz now.

Lol, at 2255 (11x205) MHz the 5000BE requires 1.0V, exact the same as the BE2400 at this frequency.

[noee]

Lol, at 2255 (11x205) MHz the 5000BE requires 1.0V, exact the same as the BE2400 at this frequency.

That seems nice. All in all, it's a good chip, at least I like it.

I've settled in at 12x @ 260 with x4 (800) HT, 3120Mhz. It takes 1.4V in bios to make this stable and it runs about 53C at full load (ambient is ~24C). CPUz shows 1.392V, so does SPeedfan.

Memory is 2x1Gb Patriot DDR2-800 @ 2.05V, 5-5-5-13-18 2T (running 390Mhz)

Do you think this is a reliable setup (24/7) for the 5000BE/M3A?

[SocketMan]

Lol, at 2255 (11x205) MHz the 5000BE requires 1.0V, exact the same as the BE2400 at this frequency.

Not sure 100% but it might even do 2500MhZ @ 1v
Low Power

[justapost]

Not sure 100% but it might even do 2500MhZ @ 1v
Low Power

The BE2400 required min 1.075V for 2530MHz, have not tried the 5000BE yet.
Gonna compare the power consumption today.

[SocketMan]

You'll need ~2.3V for the Crucial's to run em at 1200MHz. If you run your system with an 220MHz ref HT the ram is running at ~1170MHz so the max 2,25V for the ram might not be enough.

Pluged an 5000BE in the M3A yesterday. Expected 100-200MHz more than with the BE2400 but they both to out at around 3.3GHz with 1.5V.
Gonna check the voltages the 5000BE needs for 2.3GHz now.

Thats not too bad isn't it ?

[Oc-Ghost]

is that HTT for real?

edit: hmm...memspeed

[justapost]

Spike snapshot?

[gOtVoltage]

is that HTT for real?

edit: hmm...memspeed

Funny i so miss read the memory....its way confused...

[justapost]

Now if your ref HT is 200MHz, your CPU freq whould be 1GHz at 0.99V your memory whould run as 1066 and your HTT whould be 1800MHz.
So you ran into the NB multi uplock ref HT calculation mismash.

Compare your max async latency of that setup with one at 2.3GHz and a 9x nb multi. If you use the higher value in both setups the results will be pretty close.
Maybe other generic timings beside max async latency are also affected by the multi glitch.

[justapost]

The BE2400 required min 1.075V for 2530MHz, have not tried the 5000BE yet.
Gonna compare the power consumption today.

Need the power meter for the intel rig atm so i tested the 5000BE and he also requires 1.075V for 2530MHz(11x230).
Don't expect that the power consumption will differ much looking at the identical voltage requirements.
The BE5000 is ~10€ cheaper here than the BE2400.

[SocketMan]

Over clock your sense of humor
It's just Everest confused, thinking it's an Intel rig maybe
It's 200x5.
2454 DDR was the hint---Good call by OC-Ghost

[SocketMan]

Need the power meter for the intel rig atm so i tested the 5000BE and he also requires 1.075V for 2530MHz(11x230).
Don't expect that the power consumption will differ much looking at the identical voltage requirements.
The BE5000 is ~10€ cheaper here than the BE2400.

There is an article from a few month ago might be of an interest to you,don't
know if you've seen it:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/...ar_powered_pc/

[CRFX]

Thanks to justapost linking that volt mod guide a few pages back I was finally able to up the voltage on my 9500.
Got it up to 1.4 and 2670mhz with shading, going to need to hard mod a resistor to get any higher. It's a bit toasty at 60 degrees under load, time to beef up my cooling.

[justapost]

Thanks to justapost linking that volt mod guide a few pages back I was finally able to up the voltage on my 9500.
Got it up to 1.4 and 2670mhz with shading, going to need to hard mod a resistor to get any higher. It's a bit toasty at 60 degrees under load, time to beef up my cooling.

Now that is cool, you did that mod! I received an DMM which has a setting to detect connected points. I measured a few resistors to pin connectins and think i found the right one. But i never tried it because i allready switched to the sapphire mobo.

[Jakalwarrior]

Disabled the onboard LAN and replaced it with a crusty old realtek I had laying around (love that card, all windows versions already have the drivers for it). Warm boot issues all gone. Luckily I havent had an issues with the onboard audio yet since I dont have any spare sound cards laying around.

Currently at:
2900mhz, 2900Ht, with 1.3vcore. Now that my warm boot issues are gone and it isnt so darn painful to overclock, since I can actually tell if its instability or warm boot retardedness, I can get back to work on 3ghz+.

[justapost]

Thanks to justapost linking that volt mod guide a few pages back I was finally able to up the voltage on my 9500.
Got it up to 1.4 and 2670mhz with shading, going to need to hard mod a resistor to get any higher. It's a bit toasty at 60 degrees under load, time to beef up my cooling.

The resistor in the green circle is the one i identified. Is that the one you shaded?

Disabled the onboard LAN and replaced it with a crusty old realtek I had laying around (love that card, all windows versions already have the drivers for it). Warm boot issues all gone. Luckily I havent had an issues with the onboard audio yet since I dont have any spare sound cards laying around.

Currently at:
2900mhz, 2900Ht, with 1.3vcore. Now that my warm boot issues are gone and it isnt so darn painful to overclock, since I can actually tell if its instability or warm boot retardedness, I can get back to work on 3ghz+.

Had a similar problem with the onboard nic on the m2a-vm, it allways stopped working after few minutes, no matter what os i used. Did not want to rma that thing just because of the nic, those are cheaper then the shipping.

[Jakalwarrior]

Well apart from the bad NIC, the first two ram channels wont post. But... I hate RMAing since they wont buck up and pay shipping even though they screwed up.. and I dont have a spare board... I will probably RMA it before the warranty runs out though.

[CRFX]

That looks like a capacitor, haven't measured it though.
Yellow circle is the resistor I shaded, arrow with V is where I can measure voltage. Green is NB. Both resistors were around 100k. Had to get below 20k before I saw any increase.
Do you know any programs that can read NB voltage, it's a pain getting to those pins while it's running.