Machine specs
Asetek Vapochill LS R507 Modded -50 in bios
Intel 6300 Retail
Intel X6800 ES
Intel QX6700 ES
Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI mainboard
Nvidia 8800GTX Stock heat sink
Corsair Dominator 9136 C5D
4x Western Digital 150GB Raptors 10K RPM
I-ram OCZ 4GB
Installing
There is plenty of clearance for aftermarket coolers that mount from topside, I installed a Asetek Vapochill LS that is capable of more than -50c with current modifications. The gasket fits nicely on the top side, the Vapochill head clears all parts no problem at all. No changes were made for clearance on the front side.
On the back side there are a few surface mounted parts, they are low profile so you will need extra foam insulation so there is no contact with the metal back plate of the Vapochill. I can see other aftermarket coolers that require the back plate also having problems with those surface parts. Normal clearing of metal pins is needed to prevent shorting out.
All three PCIE slots have full board clearance for video cards, all connectors are up next to the ram slots with the exception to the USB pin header next to the battery. There is also a serial pin header at the edge of the board. I did not install this option.
I installed the Iram in the lower PCI slot, no clearance problem with bottom of case. I connected the I-ram to SATA port one and the raid drives to SATA ports three four five and six. I also connected a Seagate 7200.9 for single drive tests.
The board does get hot around the chipset and PCIE slot so dont skip the optional chipset fan, it is needed.
BIOS
Lots of bios shots can be found around the net so I will skip those and give some settings that I use instead.
The bios is geared for the overclocker and has plenty of options to overclock every aspect of the board. The droop is pretty bad from our standards. At 1.70v set in bios it will ride between 1.61v and 1.64v I was able to get all benches done with a max of 1.70 set in bios even though the max setting in bios was 1.8v. I wanted to keep benches consistant to compare against the Abit AW9D-Max I ran at 4.2Ghz.
The bios reads beyond -50c but in windows it reads error.
Linkboost is enabled when it detects an Nvidia video card and it will bring the clock speed of the PCIE to 125Mhz.
QX6700 I left the FSB at stock 1066Mhz and all the voltages stock with the exception of the vcore and vmem, the 6300 and the X6800 I cranked up the voltages a bit to reach a healthy 530FSB, I did quite a few 3D benches on the X6800 at 520FSB.
Vcore set to 1.70v
Vmem set to 2.50v
FSBV set for 6300 set to 1.4v
FSBV set for X6800 set to 1.5v
MCPV set to 1.50v
SPPV set to 1.50v
There are quite a few FSB holes between 1066 and 2090, it seems the HT bus is locked in ratios. To best explain it at 1690Mhz bus speed I will lose PCIE and it will boot in VGA mode, at 1700 it will start to caugh up HD errors in windows. Once you get to 1710 all is fine again till the next hole.
When a failed overclock happens the bios will reset itself to the default FSB speed to let you fix the problem. No need to use the cmos reset jumper. Worst possible case is where you push too far without enough vcore and it will display -- on the post LED diagnostic built into the mainboard. If this happens a cycle of power is needed to get proper reset.
All bios options are nicely labeled with clearer detail to what functions they do.
RAID
It does not matter what SATA connector you plug the raid drives into but you will need to enable that port in bios for raid. You can set each port individualy and run non-rain drives on the same controller. It is possible to scramble the raid with bad memory timing.
Here is a screen shot of the storage control panel
Drivers
Drivers seem solid for the motherboard, everything is working as expected with the exception of an audio glitch where playback is fed back into mic. So if you were in a chat program the other parties would hear anything playing on your PC speakers. In games it will hold the audio channel open and annoy. The mic record quality and volume is superb.
Overclocking tools
Ntune is the main program used to overclock the motherboard and it can also be used to overclock the Nvidia GPU as well. Nvidia has gone the extra mile to label the options in bios as well as in Ntune.
You have PLL access as well as voltages on this screen.
Here is what the GPU screen looks like.
Dynamic Bios access screen.
Tune system screen.
View system information. Notice the Corsair Dominator 9136 Memory
available
Stability control panel.
Memory timing
In bios there is quite a few timing settings and I was very surprised that this memory will do very tight timing of 2-2-2-2 timing at stock 266FSB speed in sync mode DDR speed of 533Mhz. I had no problems running 3-2-2-x, 3-3-2-x, 3-2-3-x as well. This memory was very flexable compared to other DDR2 I have tested. The motherboard booted!!
I will post more tight timing stuff with 3D results.
Ok, onto the good stuff.
This is the oddball screen shot with the Retail E6300 processor. I was dialing it in on air to get this bandwidth. this was sync 3-2-2-4 1T. I dont trust Ultimate too much but it is an impressive score. I setup the hard drive and stuff with this processor and then switched the motherboard over to Vapochill and X6800 processor.
Here is the X6800 at 524FSB CPUID screen shot w/validation
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=136435
I managed a 4.5Ghz screen shot with validation from the X6800 but I was not able to get benches off at this speed.
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=136439
Here is the Kentsfield at 4.2Ghz validation
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=136436
My results are overclocked and not to everyones stability standards. At 4.2Ghz on both processors I am 24/7 stable and benched at or around that speed for these tests. The kentsfield processor had problems at high bus speeds, near stock were used.
Super Pi 1.5 XS
Cinebench
Crystalmark
Nbench
Everest Home with low FSB
Sandra 2007 X6800
Sandra 2007 QX6800
Single Seagate 7200.9 160GB
RAID 0 Raptor 150's
HDTach
RAID 0 Raptor 150's
Single Seagate 7200.9 160GB
I-Ram
Many thanks to Nvidia for the editors day invite and toys to go home with. It has been most enjoyable. 8800GTX 3D benches will be up later today.
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