ABit AX78 Overclocking/Stability

[Jethro]

Yeah i'm afraid these chips are gonna force me to go 5 5 5. Nice to see your latency @ 38. My 939 setup does 37 with 7500mb or so right now. Nice super pi man! I hope i get at least 3.2 or so outa this opty =) Tempted to pull off me spreaders before there stuck and see what IC's they have.

[Cheffy]

im held back by cpu - its not happy with anything much more than 3433 really the ram has more in it, only running 2v atm O.o

all those bench are at day-to-day clocks. i could probably pull them off at 3.5 or so if i set my mind to it. no idea how to "tweak" for pi. just ran it and got that result - brute force style. good luck with the opty!, and nice scores on the 939.

[Jethro]

Well im up and running! Playing aroudn with overdrive now. Opty not to shabby she is giving me 3.1 already but need 1.55v and i have no .5 multi's? Ram is acting strange thus far. Currently at 258x12 with ram at 667 b/c 800 wont boot! What an easy board to setup! Smoking fast even in its virgin tweaked state =)

[LIKMARK]

You might have to set trfc manually on this board as it tends to set it too tight by default. It's probably set to 75ns, right?

[Cheffy]

pulled ~24.45 seconds pi at 3.5ghz, and 9120ish on nuclearus. temps were fine then got a sudden shutdown while running 3dm06 (during the loading phase of test 2 i think) that could only be recovered with a full switch off the mains. i think it might be OCP on the psu, but im pretty sure it should still have plenty of amps left - it coped with my old (and much hotter running) 939 when i fed it 1.75v @ 3.25ghz ?!

the ram wont boot @ 800 even with extra voltage set and so on(you said it was rated for upto 2.4v? i was under the impression that the 75ns was a bank specific delay set to keep all the sticks in sync despite being at different distances from cpu and that trfc was listed further below under these? ill have to check tonight how its set on mine

[LIKMARK]

i was under the impression that the 75ns was a bank specific delay set to keep all the sticks in sync despite being at different distances from cpu and that trfc was listed further below under these? ill have to check tonight how its set on mine

That is what I thought too, apparantly it is trfc set in ns on this board according to users at Abit forums. It waas set to 105 for dimm1+2 and 75 for dimm3+4, wich would have made sense if it were a delay due to dimm distance to imc.

[Cheffy]

your running 4 sticks then? im running 2 and i think it says something like 120 / 75 / 75 /75

jethro - if i remember the 1/2 multis arent in bios for my 6400BE either, i seem to memember reading (a long time ago) that some athlon 64 boards couldnt do 1/2 multi so they ran at the lower full multi and bumped fsb (without reporting it) eg 10.5*200 became 10*210

[LIKMARK]

Yes. Four sticks. I'm running bios 1.2, not bios 1.3a FYI

[roadie]

I had a similar trfc issue on my nvidia AM2 board. With default BIOS options, trfc was set to 75, 125, 75, 75. I'm only running my RAM in slots 3+4 (furthest away from the CPU) so have trfc set to 75ns for those slots, but I have relaxed the timings for the other, empty slots.

[davidletterboyz]

Just wondering...does this board support 125W Phenoms? I'm looking for a cheap AM2+ mobo.

[LIKMARK]

Yes it does

[davidletterboyz]

Yes it does

Anyone tried it on 9850 before? Anandtech reported that 3 and 4 phase pwn ain't good enough for 125Watter....i'm not sure how true is that though. Still waiting for their updates.

[Cheffy]

people used to run the old 74w thunderbirds and athlon xp's on 2 phase on the cheaper boards... 3 phase was considered luxuary, and after you wound them upto 2v+ your easily breaking 125w

solong as the pwm is well designed it should be fine! (ive not heard of any 9850's on the AX78 yet, but i dont see why it wouldnt work as the B2's have been fine for others and it runs 125w X2's and i think they only get 3/4 phases as 1 is for the phenom imc?

[davidletterboyz]

Yeah, that's what I thought too. But anandtech tested a few m-atx. All of them are having either 3 or 4 phase PWM. Those with 3 phase PWM will blow after a few sec lol. Those with 4 phase can hold on a bit longer...but once they oced it, they killed the mobo.

BTW, those phenom B2's are mostly 95W TDP. However, 6400+ BE is 125W eh?

[LIKMARK]

Think that is 95W ACP, about 120W TDP @stock. My 9500 is overclocked to 2,5GHz and runs at 1,35v. My whole system draws about 275W when playing, and 240W when priming. Well above 125W TDP on the cpu i think.

I do not think they would sell a mobo with full Phenom support unless it can handle it.

[davidletterboyz]

Actually, some manufacturers' websites do not mention their mobo support 9850 BE, except asrock (5 phase PWM) and gigabyte which they just updated today. (that's off topic anyways).

[Jethro]

By default the board had set dimm1 to 105 and the rest to 75 but i changed em all to 75 oops! That might explain my ram clocking woes. That setting is new to me have to do some homework. Bad news tho upon trying to flash to latest bios she froze up Had to RMA, be awhile before i can do further testing!

[LIKMARK]

Bad news tho upon trying to flash to latest bios she froze up Had to RMA, be awhile before i can do further testing!

Sorry to hear, what happened exactly and wich bios did you update to?

[Jethro]

The beta bios file! She just froze up whilst erasing main block! Prolly be a week and a half or so before i get her back! One interesting thing i noticed was that even with ddr2 and 200mhz more cpu speed it wasnt but 7~10% faster then my current setup in sig if that. Not much of an upgrade at all. Perhaps if im able to hit 1100 or so rams and get a bit more fsb that will change. Might even take a 3ghz phenom to really feel like an upgrade i reckon.

[LIKMARK]

Hmmm, your'e not the first one having to rma your board after trying to flash that bios. I've downloaded it, but do not dare to flash it.

[Cheffy]

I Made the purchase knowing it was a side-grade, but i knew it was the end of the road for the 1gb ballistix ive been using (and diligantly RMA'ing every few months) as the last set were shockingly bad, the prices on crucials site went up 50% over a few weeks and now they arent even listed...

I shall miss the old VIA chipsets tho.. not the fastest, but i have used them since the days of the thunderbird and if you had any problems with an addon card you just install the v-latency patch and it went away

[Heidfirst]

Bad news tho upon trying to flash to latest bios she froze up Had to RMA, be awhile before i can do further testing!

couldn't you just have got a new BIOS chip?

[Jethro]

Didnt know you could get one easily. Perhaps i will for the future. Ty for the tip. Ive since read as Linmark indicated that this board is not windows flash compat atm. Quite a number of peeps frying bios chips indeed. Seems the old floppy method is the only safe bet. To bad i dont even run a floppy anymore haha I guess usb flash will do!

[LIKMARK]

Actually I meant that the beta bios probably is quite dangerous to flash to, at least without the right addons in dos (awdflash)

[Jethro]

Well however you meant it either way flashing the bios appears to be a bit risky! I'm gonna order a backup chip to be safe! At least im doing some homework for clocking ddr2 while i wait