Asus M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe nForce 780a SLI w/ Pheno 9850BE

[Deliximus]

I just bought this board yesterday and installed WindowsXP Pro Sp2. I'm just reserving space here in the meantime while I finish setting up my computer in hopes to get some OCing action going. I'm at work today, so I hope I'll be posting some screenshots tonight!

I found it weird that when I plugged in my two WD 320GB drives into the 780a
chipset's (red) SATA ports along with my WD 750GB, i can't get into the RAID configuration screen (pressing F10). But when I plugged the WD 750GB into the gray slot, then it's ok. Very odd.....

I installed the blower for the PWM heatsink as well, it was a pretty easy install. Unfortunately, my TR Ultima-90 blocks the first DIMM slot. I tried slots 2+4 and 3+4, but both still are recognized as Single-Channel 64-bit during POST. I find that very odd and perhaps someone here can shed some light on that.

Anyways, hopefully, i'll be back with screenshots. I must say this board is definitely faster than the 790FX/770 that i have tried and completely frustrated with (I really want to stick with AMD....sigh...tried DFI M2RS, Abit Ax78, Gigabyte 770DS3, 780G)

Phenom 9850BE
Asus 780a M3N-HT Deluxe/HP
Thermalright Ultima-90 /w Panaflo 92mm
2 x 1GB OCZ Reapers DDR2-800
XFX Geforce 8800GT
2 x WD 320GB B3s, 1 WD 750GB AAKS
X-Fi XtremeMusic, Intel Pro1000 NIC
Antec 900, Corsair HX620W

[LIKMARK]

Might be unganged mode misintepreted as singlechannel, check with cpuz

[Deliximus]

thanks, i'll check that out!

[Quintero]

I tried slots 2+4 and 3+4, but both still are recognized as Single-Channel 64-bit during POST. I find that very odd and perhaps someone here can shed some light on that.

I think this could be a matter of unclear wording, not necessarily a per se misinterpretation by the BIOS. Quote taken from another thread:

Im going to push all the motherboard vendors I talk with to reword unganged single channel to dual channel 2x64bit mode on the boot screen, this simple misrepresentation is going to cause no end of RMA requests for all the memory manufacturers.

Phenom ganged and unganged modes

[Rammsteiner]

Those POST messages can be wrong now and then. For example your DDR clockspeed... well, that's shown right although IMO it should say the real DDR clock speed.

Better example, with 939 mobo I had it showing real speed as explained above. But when using a devider it simply acted there was no devider and showed MASSIVE speeds lol. But it wasnt true of course.

Best way to test is with Everest and such, check your bandwith. Although Phenom bandwith benching is still odd and doesnt really work 100% on Everest (I think/hope, otherwise Ive real crap bandwith). Sandra is a nice program although my board seems to get a corrupted BIOS from it and might eventual kill stuff. Maybe it works for you, but Im not going to test such things.

[Deliximus]

Just a quick update. Tested it for a bit.

-14x200 @ 1.35v (didn't try lower vcore). ddr800 2T, 1800mhz NB, stable for 2 hours of P95 (didn't go for longer).
-14.5x200@ 1.4v, froze after 15 minutes of p95. same setting as above
-14x205 @ 1.4v, froze after 5 minutes of p95, DDR667, 1800mhz NB. Computer didn't boot back up after reset at this setting.

I fell asleep and will troubleshoot / OC some more when I get home later. I think i might have a crappy chip. lol

Update: April 29th.

Dang, 2 cores fail P95 in 30 minutes with 14x200 @ 1.325v. I guess i have to bump the voltage up.

[Mechromancer]

I'm really interested in the power features of the new 7XXa chipsets. Please give us some detailed info on how it performs.

As far as your overclocking woes, I think the Phenoms clock more easily when paired with faster DDR2-1066 memory. This is just what I've observed over time from reading various overclocking results.