FINALLY! Barcelona(s) + Asus L1N64......

[Seigi-Sama]

Hopefully you guys will figure out a workaround for Registered memory. I mean Even Slow registered memory is lightyears ahead of the dinosaur I'm running now. But if I'm going to be on a system Like the Quad FX with NUMA I would prefer to have my Memory fast as hell too. But looking at the Numbers NUMA can achieve, registered memory is probably still faster than Non registered on a Intel Quadcore. I suppose its always possible that AMD, and Asus release a Bios for the system down the road. But who wants to wait for "possible" and "down the road?"

[mabarkdoll]

Great work on the Bios for opteron processors! At least we know we can upgrade in the future if AMD does pull the plug. What does the K8 thing do in your other BIOS revisions? Also does the ECC Ram have to be registered or is unregistered ok? Thanks.

[Jiu-jitsuGOD]

1)can someone do a sum up for me please? Ive read the entire thread multiple times but cant really make sense out of it all.


2)I have a quadFX platform and a l1n64 motherboard will this allow me to upgrade to an octicore with the barcelona's now? If so which ones? maybe post a newegg link?


3)Is it true that AMD dropped support for this platform..?


4) will standard ddr2 memory work ?

PLEASE any answers would be great.
thanks for anyone that can reply much appreciative

[kithylin]

To sum it up:

Rumored that with this new bios, the L1N64 will run barcelona.
PERSONALLY i have not confirmed this, as i have no actual barcelona to play with yet.

2.) This bios requires REGISTERED and ECC ddr2 dimms. NORMAL UNBUFFERED RAM WILL NOT WORK WITH THIS BIOS, EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE FX-series!!

3.) The posted BIOS does work on the L1N64, with reg-ecc memory. I flashed my system about 5 minutes ago as of writing this.

4.) The L1N64 motherboard DOES NOT SUPPORT REG-ECC DIMMS UNLESS YOU USE THIS BIOS. My new ecc registered ram would not work until i updated to this bios.

5.) Do not know about overclocking with this bios, i'm about to try it, as soon as i take my dimms out and fit em with the Spirit RS ram coolers, takes about an hour or so.

I'll update here later tonight as to weither or not this BIOS will overclock via the bios-setup section. IF this bios does that, then there's no reason barcelona shouldn't also overclock. But again i have no barcelona chips, yet, i'll get some soon and test it out. Some of the cheap ones

[Jiu-jitsuGOD]

damn so basically we have to buy new ram if we are going to run the barcelona's because im running OCZ platinum ddr2 .

I really appreciate the sum up BTW.. also what tool did you use to flash the bios... ? did you do it in dos or windows using asus ty tools?

[kithylin]

if you go to the asus website, select the L1N64, then click downloads, there's a "Bios utilities" section, it contains a ms-dos utility. fortunately asus doesn't use these "new fangled" windows bios flashing stuff, which is scary to me. Flashing something as critcial as the bios for your motherboard ontop of a known buggy OS? yikes! Anyway!

It appears that currently there are no overclocking options for this leaked bios, 0401. I changed settings in bios relating to the cpu voltage and the frontside bus and everything, and booted into windows and it was all at stock still.

I might get two of the cheaper barcelonas next paycheck and just enjoy that until the B3's come out.

I don't know about windows overclocking, as i can't get any good overclocking utilities to work for vista 64-bit. I tried systool but it needed a driver and vista wouldn't let it or something.

FYI: i'm using two dual core 2.8ghz opteron 2220's right now.
And my new ram i got is 4x2gb ddr2-667-ecc-reg, total 8gb. Vista sees it all, runs great now.

[Lightman]

Sounds good. When is your paycheck due in?

[Okda]

Here's a cut and paste from my post in the VIP section here @ XS:

sorry for off topic but what is that VIP section ???

[kithylin]

Sounds good. When is your paycheck due in?

blah, well maybe no barcelona now, brakes on my car started making noise, so there goes my processor fund, blah, next time, maybe by then the b3's will be out.

[i found nemo]

do the brakes urself hit up autozone and figure 30 bux tops.

[kithylin]

yeah i always do em myself, but i'm gonna replace everything brake-wise with aftermarket since it needs a full job all 4 wheels. Might get some barc's with the tax return.. hrmm, we'll see ^,^

[Jiu-jitsuGOD]

so regardless the ram im using with my fx74's is basically useless if I want to upgrade? right? and are these cpu's on new egg to buy? can someone post a link thanks..!!

[Shadow0001]

Guessing there's still no update on an upgrade path?(officially supported of course)...At this point,i couldn't even care that the CPU's are barcelona core based at all,or even using the upcoming Tri-core versions either.


What are the odds of AMD already using what it's got,at least until they get the clock speeds on the Phenom chips up to speed in terms on clock rates and actual performance?


By that,i mean do it the same way that Intel did,with the use of an MCM and slap 2 65nm brisbane X2 dies in a socket F format,as they still hit pretty respectable clock speeds(up to 3.5 Ghz quite easily),and would easily outperform the Phenom until that chip is able to hit at least 3.1~3.2 Ghz reliably,wich may very well require 45nm to do,so quite a long way off(maybe September).


I could live with 8,65 nm cores running at 3.5GHz,even if they're made up of the older X2 line.....

[Shadow0001]

Well,a month has gone by and i still see there's no new info regarding any updated Bios from Asus themselves to be able to use Opterons with this board,or any other possible upgrade path announced by AMD,wich they stated in the past there would be one,even though the Phenom FX's were cancelled.


The reason i'm asking is that it seems that B3 revisions of the Phenom's are just about to hit retail,and that there's faster clocked versions available(9850),wich are running at 2.5 Ghz and cost just over the 300$ mark,here's the link.


http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14392


So with that in mind,Opterons also running at those speeds should also be out soon,and worse case scenario here is that since the chips are already running at 2.5 Ghz to start off,the minimum we can expect is that they'll hit at least 2.7~2.8 Ghz stable under an overclock,maybe even 3Ghz if we're lucky,but there's a couple of questions here.


1: Does this leaked Bios recognize the B3 versions of the Opterons?.

2: Does this Bios,once installed,allow to overclock the Chips thru the Bios menu,or will i have to use a windows based overclock program to make it happen?

3:I can live with the registered memory issue if that will never change,but since i have yet to buy the memory,is there any particular brand that can actually overclock at least half decently,to say at least 750 Mhz DDR 2 speeds,since the overclock on the CPU's will be pretty mild anyhow,as it doesn't take much in terms of FSB increases to get another 200~300 Mhz on the cores anyhow,when the chips are already running at 2.5 Ghz.

[s7e9h3n]

Been away for awhile, but just wondering if anybody's been running these yet? Got another pair awaiting a 4-way board My L1N64 lost a DDR channel and I need to get a replacement board now

[msimax]

will the 8 series work like 2 series in the l1n64

[s7e9h3n]

will the 8 series work like 2 series in the l1n64

Yep...shouldn't be a problem

[Shadow0001]

Yep...shouldn't be a problem

Those will be a lot more expensive though....Won't they?


Anyhow,i'm still running my L1N64-WS for a few more months,and patiently waiting any possible upgrade path,but i had this need to test out a triple crossfire setup,and if a Phenom 9850 is at a decent price and overclocks to at least 3Ghz,running with a nice cheap 790FX board wich are going for about 200$ so that makes them 80$ cheaper than X38 boards for intel,i might not resist the urge.


I saw a price listing for the Q9450 at my local shop and they're going for 375$,so add another 80$ for the price difference and it's almost a 200$ price difference between the Phenom 9850 + 790FX board versus an Q9450 + X38 board...


Obviously,i'd only be considering this since Nvidia,in all it's wisdom,keeps SLI locked down and won't allow crossfire to work on SLI,even though there's no technical differences between the 2,As HP offers the black bird 002 systems that have crossfire working with an SLI chipset as a possible option.

[LIKMARK]

Anyone actually running this board with Quad opties?

[yankeex86x]

Hi guys!
you made a great job....
You gave me some hope to make ad octal processor on this board!!
I've to ask only one thing....
I own an L1N64-SLI with 2 FX-74, and i discovered that the bios given from tictac is the WS/B bios (0.401).
If I download the WS/B bios (0.501) and i put it into my board, may i be able to run the optyes? (with reg ram)
However, yesterday i opened both WS (0.505) and WS/B (0.501) bioses, and i discovered that theres almost no difference between them, the only exception is for cpu microcode, where the WS/B has the FX microcode plus Optys.
I would be happy if someone of you will answer to me, because i don't want to risk changing my bios chip...
thanks in advance.... and forgive me for my poor english....

[Oldguy932]

Can't use regular ram with the barcelonas, you need registered I'm pretty sure. If you don't I'd like to know.

[yankeex86x]

Thank you for your reply OldGuy932,
but the main problem wasn't it (I alredy know that I'll need Reg Ram with parity) thanks however....
I know that the "old" barcelona bios available was v 0.401, released by tictac (thank you very much!!) .
As I know ASUS released the new version, 0.501.
From what I remember about the WS timeline, the overclock capability (FSB adjustments) were much improved using the lastest v 0.505 bios.
So, if I want to buy the Opty 2350 (2GHz) and overclock them to 2.5 GHz (FSB 250MHz) I've to take the lastest bios with better overclocking capabilities....
I imagine that asus modified the lastest WS bios (0.505) and added support for 3rd gen Optys, and renamed it as 0.501....
my question is:
May I use the v 0.401 bios, or can I use the 0.501 too ?
there also something strange in s7e9h3n post (1st post):
CPUz shows the mobo as L1N64-SLI WS/B, which has Opteron support natively... why?
wasn't it an L1N64-SLI WS?

[Oldguy932]

I never even noticed that, I actually didn't know there was a new revision of the board till like a week ago. If your board comes up as the WS/B with the bios from tic tac, I would think its safe to flash. Also I would only get one opteron at first just because if it doesn't work you don't want to waste too much money.

[LIKMARK]

Thank you for your reply OldGuy932,
but the main problem wasn't it (I alredy know that I'll need Reg Ram with parity) thanks however....
I know that the "old" barcelona bios available was v 0.401, released by tictac (thank you very much!!) .
As I know ASUS released the new version, 0.501.
From what I remember about the WS timeline, the overclock capability (FSB adjustments) were much improved using the lastest v 0.505 bios.
So, if I want to buy the Opty 2350 (2GHz) and overclock them to 2.5 GHz (FSB 250MHz) I've to take the lastest bios with better overclocking capabilities....
I imagine that asus modified the lastest WS bios (0.505) and added support for 3rd gen Optys, and renamed it as 0.501....
my question is:
May I use the v 0.401 bios, or can I use the 0.501 too ?
there also something strange in s7e9h3n post (1st post):
CPUz shows the mobo as L1N64-SLI WS/B, which has Opteron support natively... why?
wasn't it an L1N64-SLI WS?

L1N64WS/B is basically a L1N64WS with Opteron supportive BIOS. That's why s7e9h3n's board shows as /B rev in Cpu-Z. I have heard that the new revision also have split power plane feature, but have not been able to clarify this further.

The Opteron 2346, 2347, 2350 and 2352 is all BA revision that probably won't overclock much. For a B3 revision Opteron you'll need a 2354 or 2356 today, and they're expensive, yet. They'll probably become cheaper as Shanghai gets released in a couple of months.

I'm getting a L1N64WS/B and one Opteron 2347 tomorrow BTW! Been waiting for weeks now (sure feels like that at least)

[yankeex86x]

Hi LIKMARK!
thank both you and Oldman932 your infos!
I've to disagree with some points (LIKMARK)...
New Optys 2350 are B3 step, and you can identify that by checking the "GH" at the end of the part code....
The L1N64-SLI WS/B hasn't the DDPM (from asus website) because it's a "simple" Socket F motherboard (not F+)....
do you think that B3 Opteron will be overclockable?
thanks again!