** OFFICIAL ** Intel DX38BT & DX48BT2 BoneTrail Thread

[Sean-E-Boy]

no problem.

does sound like a strange memory issue, usually there are not problems with underclocking ram, though.

I do suggest that you continue to increase the host clock with the multi at lowest (6?) and see how far you can go, because if you can make it to 480, then you can have the memory around 1600 with 400/1333 but if you can get the cpu stable at 7.5 youll be running @ 3.6Ghz, which i do think is possible with your chip...or at least 3.3 @ 7x.

as for troubleshooting memory, i think it is one of the most difficult things with this board. if we work on getting everything else stable first, then we can tackle that.

the general progression i like to take is:
1) find max FSB with default GTL REFs (you are here)
2) adjust GTL refs for REF0 and REF1 and find new max FSB (GTL REFs are dependent on vFSB levels, hence the importance of determining how high a vFSB voltage you are comfortable with.)
3) while still at 6x, determine the best option for RAM between 400/1600, 333/1333, 400/1333, or maybe even 333/1066 and see how fast the memory can go with GTL MCH and GTL DDR refs at default
4) tweak those GTL refs and increase memory speed again
5) Drop the memory back down to something slower than 400/1333, if possible, and start pushing the processor frequency by stepping up the multi to see what the max frequency of the processor is.
6) once stable in 5 (which means close to max FSB and Max cpu frequency) start stepping up the memory to see if it will run at 333/1333 or 400/1600 (probably wont, but dont know).
7) if it will run at either of these, start bringing down the timings, if it wont run here and you are not happy with 400/1333 or slower, drop multi to 7 and see if it will run. If it does, start pushing the Host Clock up again if there is room.

this is how you get to fast.
if, however, you just want to get the memory to 1600 and be at 400x7 or 7.5, we can do that too.

[Pontius]

ill see how far i can push it. Should I just leave the voltages the way they are and stop when I start having issues?

[Sean-E-Boy]

updated previous post.

yes, push it as far as it will go at 6x with current vFSB. when you start to run into issues, up the vFSB a notch, if that didnt help, try one more...if still a no go, bump the vMCH and try again. if neither help, and it is freezing up during boot or BSOD, WRITE DOWN what host clock and vfsb/mch you are at. we will come back to here later, if you want to tune GTLs.

if vFSB and vMCH do not fix it, bump the vCore a notch or two and it will boot.

with the fact that you are on water, and have an MCH water block, you could run the vMCH at max, the vFSB at max and vCore pretty damn high without worrying about getting too hot. as far as "safe voltages" are concerned for 24x7 operation, the fsb should be fine if under 1.45 and the MCH below 1.55.

but really, stop increasing voltages at whatever point you are comfortable...either with the speed, or where you dont want to increase any more.

oh, and increasing the voltage for a little while to see where it will take you isnt going to break anything right away. now as far as running your vCore at 1.9 or whatever the max this board will allow I DO NOT RECOMMEND!

but the MCH can take the max (1.7) and i am sure that your fsb (1.5) can as well.

[Pontius]

ha ok. well I've somehow completely lost myself after starting to push past 400 host clock.. I couldn't get anything stable after that point. I went back to the settings that I had written down at 400 and that wasn't stable!! Idk what i did... would over volting it possibly cause an issue? but i thought I had written that all down.. anyway. I'm gonna take a slower approach and document more thoroughly.

[Sean-E-Boy]

just remember:

one thing at a time, start in the most controllable environment...lowest multi, slowest possible memory speed (400/800 or 1066), either work up and adjust vFSB as you go to address stability issues or pick a vFSB that is the highest you want to run at 24x7.

and since all voltages (except for your RAM) if set high enough can mask instability caused by the insufficiency of others, set them to default values (enhanced power slope ok, though) until increasing the vFSB alone will not fix the instability.

move the host clock up slowly once you get around 400 (maybe steps of 10 rather than 30), as the higher you get fewer mhz in host clock can be gained per step in vFSB.

all the critical components of the board use the vFSB as a reference, so we determine either what vFSB we want or what is needed to reach a particular clock speed, fine tune, and then move on to other components.

also, everyone gets hung up on memory speeds, but there are some important things about memory to understand. for all intents and purposes, the settings in BIOS for memory speed and memory reference have nothing to do with actual speed....these settings just inform the system as to how the mch should be configured and how the FSB should be configured in order to communicate as it relates to information to and from the memory. while these settings will affect the resulting memory speed, dont get upset if you cannot get the system to boot with the memory speed setting at 1600. for example, if your host clock is at 400 (1600Mhz FSB) and you have the memory speed set to 1333 and the reference to 333, the memory WILL BE running at 1600Mhz (cpu-z shows 800, but remember that DDR3 memory is accessed on both ends of the frequency wave, resulting in an effective 1600Mhz memory speed).

another thing is that bandwidth efficiency for memory is rarely above 60%, i would say, meaning that even if you have to run the memory "slower" than you would like on a frequency basis alone doesnt mean that you cannot improve the efficiency of the bandwidth of the lower frequency by adjusting timings as well as having a faster FSB. what i am saying here is that, and take my setup for example, if i were running my system just to get the memory to 1600, the first chance i would have to do this would be at 400MHz host clock. If i did this at 400x1600 or 333x1066, and got the memory timings really tight memory I/O measurements would demonstrate that the Read Write Copy bandwidth would be around 9600MB/s for each, possibly up to 10000MB/s but not much more. Now with my memory set up to the next fastest combination of ref and mem speeds (which for practical purposes is 400x1333) i have to crank up the FSB to 480, but in doing so everything (except for the memory) is operating much more quickly, and as a result I/O measurements of the memory demonstrate RWC to be approximately 10300, 10300, 10400MB/s or 3-8% faster at the same memory frequency. now that may not sound like a whole lot, but thats 800MB (equivalent to 1 CD of data) more data per second moving around.

so dont get hung up with having to have your memory running at a particular speed or frequency, real bandwidth is what you should be concerned with.

[Pontius]

well . I dont know what I did but somewhere in this process I ed something up in my OS (xp x64). I reset everything in the bios back to defaults and re did my memory settings. it takes a lot longer to boot and I was launched fallout 3 to see how it ran and its extremely glitchy. I have a dual boot set up so i launched windows 7 and things run great.. Idk what happened. has anyone ran into this? I'm thinking ill just get rid of xp and start using windows 7 but I'm still kinda confused. maybe manually installing those drivers messed somehting up cause its a 64 bit system?

[Sean-E-Boy]

Na, i have been using only 64-bit software since xp 64 came out.

XP is extremely twitchy as far as the OS is concerned...hell, even if you do nothing but turn it off an on for 6 months or a year it will start to run real slow. you can try to do disk cleanup and erase all but the current restore point, and then defragment the drive. get a trial of O&O Defrag (Vista verion) install it in your Windows 7 load, and then run a COMPLETE/Name defrag followed by a SPACE defrag on the XP drive. should make things nice and zippy. if you still have issues, go here: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm from XP (wont work on 7) and choose the complete scan, but once it is installed and you see a pop-up window, choose customize, which is just below complete scan, and select only the registry cleaner. once it is done...and on a 64-bit system it will take all night because their software is screwy...restart the system and see how it goes.

If that still doesnt help, then of course reinstalling the OS would be in order, but then you would have to either re-install 7 or hope that the repair installation program on the 7 disc can recognize the dual boot config and fix the boot sector of the disk accordingly.

[Pontius]

yeah I may just end up making the switch over to windows 7 permanent i think there is enough support and compatible software now for it. That and now there is a 64 bit version out for it. Im pretty sure they sent me some license keys for beta at my work so ill have to check. Thanks again.

[Sean-E-Boy]

remember that once the trial period for 7 is up, you may have problems accessing files...so i would say that you keep xp on there, even though it is really slow, just to make sure you can access everything you need.

[Budman]

New idt audio drivers available on intel's site.

[Pontius]

well this looks to be a complete failure. I did have a key from work. Installed the new 64 bit build for win 7. it took FOREVER to install. There must be some serious driver issues because it takes like 5 min to start up and my cpu usage spikes to like 80% when i open something like minesweeper... grrr. maybe ill try out vista 64 bit.

[Sean-E-Boy]

not sure what would be going on. a new install wouldnt have any of the drivers that you installed manually, so ?

also, you may want to wait until tuesday...Windows 7 RC comes out then.

[Pontius]

EDIT: oh thats the one i have. the 7100 build. they are just releasing it publicly that day.

yah I also tried using the vista 64 bit drivers but that didnt help.

I just pulled out 4gb and that seemed to solve most of the issue with windows 7. but that defeats the purpose.

[Sean-E-Boy]

so, before all this you were in the process of trying to figure out FSB limitations...are you still at 6x forced multi?

[Pontius]

ha.. sorry to take the thread off track. i've gone back to default settings on everything to figure out the OS issues im having.

[Pontius]

It looks like I'm having the same issue with a clean install of windows vista x64 bit. things run fine on a 32 bit system. this is baffling. so it must be something wrong with my mobo..

EDIT. Alright well when I have memory in all four dimms is when it causes issues. im starting to tear my hair out.. i may just pull out the 2 1gb sticks and just go with that.. sigh. at least that will make over clocking easier.. Let me know if you have any other suggestions. Ive tried upping the NB voltage and loosening the frequency on the memory but doesn't help. although that was somewhat guesswork. thanks .

[Sean-E-Boy]

Small dimms in the Blue, big dimms in the Black.

[Pontius]

yea I tried that. I think there must be some sort of damage. Its possible that I got some coolant on the board somewhere and its shorting out. :P oh my life. Thanks again so much for your help im really greatful this board is here. Ill have to come back to this mess when I have more time. Right now I'm gonna try not to get distracted by windows 7 while I try to write a paper for class.

[Sean-E-Boy]

Well, I doubt that you really need more than 4 gigs of RAM, if some program you are running requires that, you should probably be doing it on a Mac!

and i'll leave you in peace...i understand the temptation :: responsibility battle all too well, and should proabably be doing something else myself right now!

[Pontius]

well today was a much smoother day. I was able to bring the host clock up to 410 with no problems, but thats about all I have time for right now. However do you have any issues restarting? Usually when I restart from windows, when it goes to restart, the power stays on but it does the idle start thing where no usb lights come on and no video or anything. I hold the power button down wait 5 seconds and its fine. Is there a fix?

[Sean-E-Boy]

i have had issues with restarts to black screen, i attributed it to a not fully stable system, as i was working up the overclock at the time. if you are seeing it at defaults, i am not sure what to say other than this board has a history of power up/suspend/power failure response issues.

What BIOS are you on now?

[Pontius]

no its not at defaults, Im at 410 host clock right now.Ill run some more tests later on. thanks.

[petr0id]

Little trick: turn your pc off (remove power cord from PSU for a minute, or so)
after BIOS changes. This mobo "likes" things like this.
And without any beeps it can be heared - does it run overclocked or with default settings, reseted somehow after "cold" reboot.

[Sean-E-Boy]

This mobo "likes" things like this.

This has to be the best 6 words strung together in this post, PERIOD!

more difficult to please than a 25 year old woman....and much less "generous."

[petr0id]

Sorry for my bad english. Really