P5K Premium won't change FSB

[jamiee]

Hello all... guess I'm a bit of a newbie here


I've been fighting with with my P5K-P / E6850 combo for the last week & just can't seem to get a handle on it. I'm an experienced PC builder of several years but the P5K-P has to be the strangest board I've come across to date!
There's several issues I'm having with it right now and can't figure out if it's all just BIOS related or if its in fact a flaky board.

1. FSB won't change: Right now I have 9x + 420FSB = 3780Mhz right?
well for whatever reason I'm only getting 3690Mhz.
I've had similar issues even getting 400FSB to stick at any multiplier.
Nothing I seem to do to resolve the issue helps.... its all down to random luck it seems. Once in windows everything is nice and stable (ORTHOS + MemTest tested @ 9 x 410 = 3690Mhz for 12hrs.)

2. On most cold boot-ups and the occasional re-boot the PC won't properly start/re-start. all fans come on but monitors stay off and it takes several on/off attempts to get the PC started. This even occurs with nearly everything in the BIOS set to AUTO and running at the CPU's default speed.
Sometimes i will get the boot error that overclocking failed & other times it will boot just fine once it actually gets going. Again, once in Windows, everything is rock stable.

3. Setting a north bridge voltage of anything over 1.40 = audible studdering when playing back music and causes seemingly slow Windows performance in general. for example, if I'm listening to music through my X-Fi Elite Pro & scrolling through the threads of this forum, there will be extreme audio studdering/dropouts and the scrolling itself will be very jittery and not smooth like it should be. setting the NB volts to 1.40 or less seems to fix the problem but could limit overclocking potential.


Like I said, I can't figure out if this is all just BIOS related (ASUS needing to get a better BIOS out), or if my board is somehow just really messed up. The P5K Premium seems like it has the potential to be a very good board and overclock like heck... but for now its just driving me nuts!
This board in allot of ways reminds me of the P5W DH Deluxe, similar characteristics in the early going until newer and better BIOS revisions came out. I'm hoping that's all the Premium needs

Cheers,


-----------
PC
-----------

OS =..........Windows Vista Ultimate
PSU =.........Enermax Galaxy 1000W
Motherboard =.P5K Premium Rev. 2.00g (BIOS = 0204)
Processor =...Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0Ghz default)
Cooler =....Zalman CNPS9700 NT
Memory =......Mushkin XP2 PC6400 2048Mb x 2 (4Gb)
Video Card =..BFG GF8800GTX
SATA-2 HD =...WD 320Gb x4 (1,280Gb Total)
DVD-R/RW =....Optiarc AD-7170A
DVD =....Pioneer
HD DVD =....XBox 360 HD DVD drive
Floppy =......Fujitsu 1.44 floppy/7-in-1 media card reader
Sound Card =..Creative X-Fi Elite Pro
Monitor =.....BenQ FP241WZ Widescreen LCD 24" (x2)
Case =........Thermaltake Mozart Tx w/7" touchscreen LCD display

[Lestat]

do you have EIST and C1 disabled ???? disable it
do you have HPET enabled? cuz you need to enable it
do you have Spread Spectrum Disabled? cuz you need to disable it
hmm what else.
there are other voltage options with the P5K series i am unfamiliar with
but HPET is important as i had issues with it until i enabled it with my P5N-E SLI.

[jamiee]

EIST + C1 = Dissabled

HPET = ??? I'll have to check on that (don't recall seeing it in any of the menus)

Spread Spectrum = Dissabled for both CPU & PCIE



Other things I've tried:
----------------------
1. Replace CMOS Battery.
2. Clear CMOS (several times...not easy to do on this board due to location of the battery & jumper)
3. Swapped ram slots (yellow vs. black)
4. changed countless BIOS settings. 1:1 ratio seems to be the one that works more often than not, but sometimes it still won't boot to what the BIOS is set at.
5. Tried different ram
6. Board origionally came with 0102 BIOS, Windows flashed to 0204 (I know.. bad idea). So yesterday I flashed 0204 again this time using ez-flash with a USB stick.

[sdumper]

Hmm I have that mobo and don't have any issues with it so far:


http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=230405

http://www.blazingpc.com/forum/showp...4&postcount=19

http://www.blazingpc.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=15

http://www.blazingpc.com/forum/showt...ex.html?t=6966

[Unexploded]

I'm stuck at 3.807 MHz with the same cpu/mb combo. I've also noticed the same weirdness you mention re: "Setting a north bridge voltage of anything over 1.40"

The second I do that, my pci-e link speed drops from 16X down to 1X and I start seeing the same restart issues (sometimes it looks like it restarts, but without video).

The only way I've found to counter this is to bump the pci freq to 101 or 102--that usually sets it back to 16X and get rid of the reboot issues.

[sdumper]

NB Voltage 1.55 good to 540 fsb
1.7 needed for 600+


Try auto on all then set:

vCore
Damper
Reference = max
FSB Ref = 1.5
NB = 1.55
NB ref = auto

Strap = 333
You can also disable static ram settings

Then bump SB to 1.2

[jamiee]

Well I went back into the BIOS (Don't see any HPET setting btw.), and noticed I wasn't on the 1/1 divider.... so I switched to that & wudda you know... the setting took & now I'm at 9 x 420 = 3780Mhz (Still need to test this out but so far so good). Now why on earth won't the other dividers take properly?
I know my ram is capable of faster speeds and I'd be willing to bet I haven't reached the limit of this CPU eiter.
I just can't see this being a hardware limitation of some sort.

sdumper,
I'll take another look at my voltages, but I'm pretty sure if I set NB=1.55v, I'd end up with audio studdering and slow windows performance again.

[jamiee]

Ok, so back into the BIOS and changed NB voltage to 1.55. No suprise here that yet again I'm getting the audio studdering mentioned above, also scrolling through this site (or any other) is very choppy/laggy.

Now for the weird part.... durring the restart (before going into the BIOS) I noticed that the POST was reporting a CPU speed of only 3.0Ghz (how's that possible?? I was just at 3.78Ghz before the re-boot!).

I checked over everything in the BIOS ( 9 x 420 1/1) and the PC will only boot at 3.0Ghz now..... Its like what's set in the BIOS isn't sticking and the board is doing whatever it feels like!

CPU-Z confirms this with: CPU= 3.0Ghz, Bus speed= 333Mhz, FSB= 1333Mhz.


This is weird stuff....

[HDCHOPPER]

try higher pci-e clock 117

[jamiee]

Tried setting a higer PCI-E clock but that doesn't seem to help any. (not with the FSB problem anyway).

[Lestat]

reflash the bios with the stock bios.
or if your on the "latest" and i DO NOT MEAN BETA. then reflash it
or go back to the previous bios.

also be sure to reset the cmos after you flash.

[jamiee]

Lestat my CPU is is one of the new G0 steppings, and while they do run on the 0102 BIOS, it doesn't fully support them; hence why I flashed to the 0204 revision.

I've tried clearing the CMOS as well as loading defaults in the BIOS to no avail.

Now for a bit of interesting news.... I decided that one of my DVD ROM drives wasn't really needed since I already have DVD-R/W and Xbox HD-DVD drives. So I took the Pioneer DVD drive out (IDE). This leaves only the Optiarc DVD-R/W on the J-Micron IDE channel. Well darn if after that the PC didn't boot to the proper settings set in the BIOS. I figured that was just pure luck though, so I re-booted and upped the FSB a little bit. WoW! it actually took again! (Lucky twice in a row.. hmmm?)
So I messed around in Windows a bit then decided to try my luck a third time... Re-booted, upped the FSB and saved. Once again the settings took!!!

I'll have to do more testing but its really starting to look like it was the J-Micron controller that was somehow affecting things. (or maybe the DVD drive itself). Doesn't make much sence - but whatever works, works

On another note, I also tried upping the NB voltage to 1.55, but again that just caused studdering in Windows. Looks like it's a separate issue.

[Lestat]

J-Micron controller that was somehow affecting things

that doesnt surprise me the jMicrap controller is the worst since the old crap VIA controllers.

i could speculate,, so i will.

$20 says the jmicron bus isnt locked so that when you use it the bus mhz is way out of spec thus making the overclock fail.

who knows....

not sure why higher chipset voltage would cause studdering unless its heat related.

dont trust heatpipes on chipsets, they dont work.
throw a fan over it and keep the chipset and pwm area cool.

[jamiee]

Lestat, That is certainly a possibility with the jmicron....
I agree about the heatpipes... they can be troublesome but usually only hinder extreme overclocks. Certainly stock speed or mild overclocking should be fine.

I'm only looking for about 3.8Ghz 24/7 use.


As for my luck lastnight.... well it ran out...
I tried a fourth time to see if I could bump the FSB a little (this time only 5Mhz up to 425Mhz), saved the settings & when the PC re-booted, it dropped back to the CPU's default speed of 3.0Ghz. One thing I do notice though is that durring the POST the ram speed looks to be running at the speed set in the BIOS, the CPU is not and once in windows cpu-z reports that both the CPU & ram are running at their default speeds (the ram is not actually running at what the POST reports).

An even bigger setback this morning is that I had my PC turned off lastnight, when I fired it back up this morning, it not only took five attempts to get it to boot, but its actually underclocked itself!! (both CPU + RAM).

I checked the BIOS and set everything to AUTO, but it still only wants to boot at 2.4Ghz & 640Mhz on the ram.

Plz. see screenshot.

[Lestat]

call asus support on monday (since they aint ther eon the weekend)
and get that board RMA'd.

something is defiantely wrong with it.

[jamiee]

*Sigh* - you may be right about that

For what it's worth, I flashed back to the origional 0102 BIOS and cleared the CMOS after flashing. The PC booted to its proper default speed but again wouldn't hold any overclocked settings when I attempted them.

[jamiee]

Ok... not trying to get my hopes up here too much, but I might have just stumbled across something significant...

as it is now, I may have fixed both the overclocking and NB=1.55v audio studdering/slow windows performance problems!

What did I do you ask? ... Well I changed My soundcard from PCI slot #2 to #3.
This actually makes sense because when I first setup the P5K-P, I had the soundcard in slot#3 and don't recall having any problems at the time. Of course silly me, I looked at the manual and decided that PCI slot#2 would likely be better for a soundcard even though it meant placing the card right below the very hot 8800GTX.

Well wudda you know, after moving the card back to slot #3, the PC booted at the correct settings ( 9 x 400 = 3.6Ghz ) and just for kicks I set the northbridge voltage to 1.55.
Everything is working just fine (for the moment anyway). No audible studdering, no web page scrolling issues...nadda!

[jamiee]

Just an update..... Looks like everything is working properly now.

The PC still won't cold boot after being overclocked, but I had the same issue when running a P5W DH Deluxe with early BIOS revisions. Hopefully Asus will get the P5K-P up in good standing order with a new BIOS revision soon.

Otherwise all BIOS settings are sticking nicely (currently @ 9 x 422FSB = 3.8GHz, 5:6) and 1.55v northbridge isn't causing any problems.


I believe PCI #2 on this board shares with the jmicron controller, so I'm thinking that was my problem.

Sometimes its just the little things.....


Thanks for the help guys

[jamiee]

Well I'm back again.
Look's like changing the PCI slot may have not been the real issue.
I've flashed back to the latest 0204 BIOS using ez-flash and guess what, all my problems have come back

I'm going to try clearing the CMOS one more time ( I really don't enjoy having to remove the videocard to do this... curse you Asus!!), and if that doesn't work then I guess i'll be flashing back to 0102.

[jamiee]

Well I cleared the CMOS and that seems to have worked.
Looks like clearing the CMOS after each BIOS flash is a must for the P5K Premium (maybe other P5K's as well).

Loading setup defaults in the BIOS after flashing doesn't seem to be enough on its own.
This was never an issue with any of my previous boards (I've had my fare share of Asus mobos over the years), but I'll just chalk this up as a learning experience

Cheers.