p5n32-sli cant get stable passed 203mhz???

[Rayman]

i need help asap
im on the newest bios
newest drivers also
my p5n32-sli setup is

Pentium D 820
2x 512mb corsair 8000ul
ocz 600w power xtreme
2x xfx xxx 6800gs
2x 80gb hitachi in raid 0
ati tv elite remote edition tv tuner card
msi wireless b/g/a/bluetooth card

if anything else u need to kno jus let me kno

[Charles Wirth]

I maxed out at 230FSB on that board and it should do more than 3Mhz without raising any voltages.

Bring down your memory speed to 666Mhz or 533Mhz

Try one of the overclocking profiles

Your board is supposed to run at 266FSB as well, testing a real 1066FSB cpu is the only way to know for sure if your motherboard is limited to 203FSB.

My thread on the P5N32

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ighlight=p5n32

[Rayman]

oh i was running 1 2 one but i believe this memory should no problem got some ocz stuff gonna try b4 i return the board and cpu goin back to amd!!!!!!!!!!! sorry but this is the first time i went intel and really not feel it back to the dark side lol

[Charles Wirth]

Get a P5WD2 and you should be able to pull upwards of 266+ FSB with a good heat sink.

[Rayman]

do u think if i go amd i will see better results though?

[Rayman]

and i want to stay sli

[Charles Wirth]

since you have 6800's they should work on p5wd2 mobo as it also has dual pcie graphics slots.

[Rayman]

yea but right now im only breaking about 8000 in 3dmark 05 i want somethin around 11,000 so i think i would have to upgrade 4 that if i want to stay on air

[Charles Wirth]

That board will never hit 10k with those cards. I maxed out 8k with 7800GT's

I posted scores in that thread.

One X1800XT or GTX 512

Both companies have dual core drivers available, noticable difference on ATI in all 3D apps.

[Rayman]

yea thats y i said i would go amd im gonna see if i could atleast break 9000 2night but got atlot more playin 2 do with the setup so would crossfire b a better option than sli?

[Charles Wirth]

I have not run 6800's on the p5wd2 in SLI nor have I run crossfire yet. The P5WD2 bios is supposed to support crossfire now with master card.

Get past 203?

[Rayman]

yes with out adjusting the the mem jus cpu but still nothing fully stable doin more testing and btw i cant go past that on stock voltage so either way this mobo goin back

[Rayman]

ok now at 222fsb on my other comp now while its benching 3dmark 2 see wat it gets

[Rayman]

comp locked up

[Charles Wirth]

North bridge is blazing hot?

[LarsK]

The bios does take a lot of testing to get it stable with SLI enabled. I spent around 3 nights figuring bios settings out. These are the settings I use:

Advanced menu -> Jumperfree configuration
AI overclocking [manual]

CPU core voltage [1.700V] <- board undervolts pretty badly IMO, real Vcore under load is 1.57V
FSB termination voltage [1.415V]
Memory voltage [2.4V]
NB chipset voltage [1.60V]
SB chipset voltage [1.60V]
CPU lockfree [disabled]
FSB optimize mode [enabled]
Memory optimize mode [enabled]
System clock mode [manual]
fsb [1066 Mhz]
PCIE Frequency [100.00]
Mamory clock [710]
Memory timings [manual]
then set to
Cas latency [3]
tRCD [2]
tRP [2]
tRAS [8]
tRC [8]
Address Mode [1T]

Spread Spectrum:
all values set to [disabled]

CPU configuration

All values default exept:
CPU Internal Thermal Control [disabled]
Intel Speed Step Technology [disabled]

Chipset.

All values default exept:
Memory Remap Feature [enabled]

Power Menu:
All values default exept:
ACPI 2.0 support [YES]

This is with bios 0202 (release bios) and the board seems to undervolt quite a bit, I get around 1.57V under full load. Of course I'm also on phase change cooling. These are 24/7 stable settings. Even so the board is a bit quirky, it neeeds to "warm up" and then the NB chip cannot get too hot either.

All 3dmarks/pcmarks run here, memtest86 error free for several passes, and prime stable too. Even so sometimes I need to reboot like 3 times when I just start the system up for 3d to work (otherwise I get at black screen when starting up anything 3d). I've got links in my sig for benchmarks @ 24/7 settings, I have tested 3dmarks up to around 271-272 Mhz fsb, and max fsb reached is 274 Mhz. I do suspect the NB would benefit from some additional cooling though.

Also this MB behaves like the older Nforce 4 IE chipsets, it just does NOT wnat to run high fsb (above 1066) with a 800 fsb chip. I would reckon the board would easily do 300+ with a 1066 chip, the P5ND2 did, but I don't have a 1066 fsb chip to test it with.

Forget running memory above ~DDR2-720 regardless of timings and regardless of what it will do in 955x chipset. Also note, I'm using Corsair PC5400UL memory, so unless your memory is Micron D9 (isn't that what the chips are called?) based, you'll need higher timings.

I'm not really sure exactly what to think of this motherboard just yet, but it does provide a great gaming experience with SLI, which is typically what I do on winter nights anyway.

[Charles Wirth]

Lars thanks for your detailed feedback

12K from the GTX is far better than I did with GT's.

[IluvIntel]

LarsK, the southbridge chipset goes up to 1.6v ! . . . tRC to 8 ?

Heck, what were they thinking when they made this board ?

[LarsK]

Lars thanks for your detailed feedback

12K from the GTX is far better than I did with GT's.

You're welcome. I've kinda wondered why nobody else came close to the same oc results, so I thought I'd share what works for me.

3dmark05 in very much cpu/memory bound when run on an SLI system. Best I did so far was 12399 @ ~5150 Mhz / 271 Mhz fsb.

[LarsK]

LarsK, the southbridge chipset goes up to 1.6v ! . . . tRC to 8 ?

Heck, what were they thinking when they made this board ?

Yes, at least according to the bios SB goes up to 1.60V.

As for what they were thinking I'm not sure (and I won't even guess...), but I get pretty much similar performance at the same fsb/mem speed as on the P5WD2, both in synthetic tests and in superpi runs.

Edit: A superpi 1M run @ 5.2 Ghz / 274 Mhz fsb http://www.hardware-test.dk/oc/bille...id=7913&pic=12 A time of 24.828 seconds really isn't that bad, especially for the rather low fsb, so memory performance is actually "ok" IMHO.

My main concern for this board isn't really performance, and stability is actually decent, considering the cpu overclock and voltages I use, but it does show what I would call "weird behaviour" from time to time. I'm not exactly sure how much of this is driver related, and how much is hw related...

[IluvIntel]

LarsK, such a difference in SB v. compared to P5WD2 - 1.2v maximum. I wonder why they made it like that.

[LarsK]

LarsK, such a difference in SB v. compared to P5WD2 - 1.2v maximum. I wonder why they made it like that.

Probably just because it's a different chipset I guess. Actually I can only choose 1.50V or 1.60V so default is definetely higher then on the 955x chipset.

[Rayman]

my nb is at 41c at jus surfin the net with firefox though lol is that good or bad?
btw nb is at 1.6 and so is sb

[LarsK]

my nb is at 41c at jus surfin the net with firefox though lol is that good or bad?
btw nb is at 1.6 and so is sb

It's definetely higher than mine, however I would expect yours to be higher. All the heat from my cpu is removed from the area completely because I use phase-change cooling for the cpu. Also I have fans blowing over my videocards and the mb as well. After about an hour of surfing and a little gaming, mine's sitting at 28&#176;C according to Asus Probe/AI booster. But those temps are way off. When I've been gaming for hours, the temp shows around 33&#176;C at which point I can hardly touch the heatsink on the northbridge, that's how hot it is. So the temp reading on the NB is WAY off. Regardless, if yours is reading 40+ I bet it's too hot to touch.

If your HS isn't hotter than hell, you should probably look into whether is has sufficient contact to the NB. I have a personal belief that the overclocking woes with all Nforce 4 Intel solutions are tightly connected to the NB/mem controller, particularly the temp of it. I'm still debating with myself whether I wan't to bother putting watercooling on the NB to further test my theory out.

[VictorWang]

Thx Larsk for ur good info. of P5N32 SLI Deluxe

I thinks the mobo really needs to be debugged more and ASUS should issue a perfect bios like P5WD2 premium.

My 840xe can only get 250*16 on P5N32, but actually it can run @ 300*14 stable on P5WD2 Premium