Asus A8N32-SLI initial impression....WOW!

[Marios]

The BIOS DDR limit is the dividers you can use.
I said that just in case.

Don't even bother to find your memory limits.
Unless you need to get top Benchmark scores.
You can use a divider without any noticable performance loss.
Anyway this is what I got.
2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Z503 - Micron -5B D | 3-3-3-8 1T @ 280 MHz | 2.8v | CPUz verified! - SPi 1M Stable: Yes

Click the picture to open a bigger one.



Though I do not need to go so high.

[Brave]

Hmmm....i cant do 1T even at 280fsb with MemLimit at 166.

Cant really find the mem limits :P

Im testing more now

Update:

Ok...now im at 240fsb , MemLimit at 200, with 1T , Cas 3-4-4-10, and still give me error at SuperPI.

Damn

Update2:

At 240fsb, Memlimit at 200, With 2T, Cas 3-4-4-10 , SuperPI went fine.

So...i suppose this Patriot XBLK kit doesnt like 1T with this board....

Update3:

At 250fsb, Memlimit at 200mhz, 2T, Cas 3-4-4-10, Memtest went fine, but cant boot into winxp

At 245fsb...everthing ok.

So....whats the problem here ? ....weird

[Ic3man]

Thanks for the help marios.

Managed to get upto 2.7 p95 stable (well 4hrs stable before I tried something else!) so things are looking up. I may have well hit 'the wall' with this chip but I still have other things to try. Cpu temp loadx2 is 51c. Couple of questions...

The memory settings you posted were not in the right order for the 1009 bios, which bios are you using?

What are the drive strength/data strength settings. 32bit granularity and how do they affect the system/overclockability?

[Brave]

Yeah...Iceman...the timings settings ...thats was one of the things i notice.

At the screen of the memory settings it shows like this with this order:

CAS
TRCD
TRAS
TRP
TRRD
TRC
TRFC
FRWT

But when we enter at the timings to change it, the timings are in this order:

CAS
TRAS
TRP
TRCD
TRRD
TRC
TRFC
TRWT

[Marios]

Thanks for the help marios.

Managed to get upto 2.7 p95 stable (well 4hrs stable before I tried something else!) so things are looking up. I may have well hit 'the wall' with this chip but I still have other things to try. Cpu temp loadx2 is 51c. Couple of questions...

The memory settings you posted were not in the right order for the 1009 bios, which bios are you using?

What are the drive strength/data strength settings. 32bit granularity and how do they affect the system/overclockability?

I use 1009 BIOS.
I took the order from the latest user manual.

The best setting is to dissable 32 bit gran. You can only enable this when you set 1T and 2 beats for 32bit transfers instead of 64. The best setting is 4 beats though. This is more stable and fast.
DDR driving strength: I use normal. When OCing weak might be a good choice in a few cases to overclock more. It doesn't work for me.
DDR clock skew is also important for stability. Set it to auto or delay 450 when memory is overclocked and you get errors with normal.
I think the most relaxed settings for stability are tcl=3 tTrcd=4 Trp=4 tRAS=Trcd+Trp at least and usually add 2 more, tRC=tRAS+6, tRFC=tRAS+10 and Trwt=4.
You may also use 2T or a divider if nothing else helps.
FSB OCing gives much more speed than memory OC.
So do not bother if your memory is not so good as long as you get no errors.
You need to have a totally stable memory though.
No memory errors are acceptable.

Hmmm....i cant do 1T even at 280fsb with MemLimit at 166.

Update3:

At 250fsb, Memlimit at 200mhz, 2T, Cas 3-4-4-10, Memtest went fine, but cant boot into winxp

At 245fsb...everthing ok.

So....whats the problem here ? ....weird

The problem might be your CPU controller.
Relax your CPU multiplier to check this.
You might also try 2.85v, DDR Skew 450 or weak DDR drive strenght but don't.

245 is fine.
You need to use a divider though.
Try 166 limit at 1T.
You can OC using a CPU multi of 10 and FSB=270.
This will give you 2700MHz CPU and your memory will be at 207,69MHz.
Use 166 limit 10x265=2650, DDR at 203.85MHz (this is the best in your case)

With the above two setting you may also use more tight memory timings like 1T, 2,3,3,7,10,14,2 (see above for the order).

Another option is the 183 limit (DDR366) 10x265=2650 DDR at 240.91MHz.

[ErikaeanLogic]

Thanks for the help marios.

Managed to get upto 2.7 p95 stable (well 4hrs stable before I tried something else!) so things are looking up. I may have well hit 'the wall' with this chip but I still have other things to try. Cpu temp loadx2 is 51c. Couple of questions...

The memory settings you posted were not in the right order for the 1009 bios, which bios are you using?

What are the drive strength/data strength settings. 32bit granularity and how do they affect the system/overclockability?

hey Ic3man,

so which setting seemed to do the trick? can you give the methodology? I have a 165 that I'm stuck at 2.7GHz with at 1.4Vcore; primes for hours, 3d stable, etc. but won't let me go past 300fsb on htt. just hoping that what worked for you would work for me, or at least give me a clue as to how to approach this "wall"

[Ic3man]

hey Ic3man,

so which setting seemed to do the trick? can you give the methodology? I have a 165 that I'm stuck at 2.7GHz with at 1.4Vcore; primes for hours, 3d stable, etc. but won't let me go past 300fsb on htt. just hoping that what worked for you would work for me, or at least give me a clue as to how to approach this "wall"

Well for starters I need 1.55 vcore to reach 2.7 so it sounds as though you have a better chip than me. Have you tried upping the vcore some more (keep an eye on cpu temps tho)?

The HTT multiplier settings are what swung it for me. For some reason my board defaulted to auto and 2x but after setting these :

3x
16 up 16 down
3x
16 up 16 down

I managed to get 2.7 stable along with relaxing the memory also ran a 133 divider. Although I cannot get any further now, I'm more than happy with 2.7 so I'll stick with that. Temps are a bit high so no doubt I will have to drop down to 2.6 and lower the vcore a little in the summer unless the wife lets me buy phase .

[ErikaeanLogic]

Well for starters I need 1.55 vcore to reach 2.7 so it sounds as though you have a better chip than me. Have you tried upping the vcore some more (keep an eye on cpu temps tho)?

The HTT multiplier settings are what swung it for me. For some reason my board defaulted to auto and 2x but after setting these :

3x
16 up 16 down
3x
16 up 16 down

I managed to get 2.7 stable along with relaxing the memory also ran a 133 divider. Although I cannot get any further now, I'm more than happy with 2.7 so I'll stick with that. Temps are a bit high so no doubt I will have to drop down to 2.6 and lower the vcore a little in the summer unless the wife lets me buy phase .

thx for the response, man

for the htt/sb->nb multi's, I'm using:

3x
16u/16d
4x
16u/16d

if i try to go 3x on the sb->nb things get crazy, i don't know why

initially, i had issues getting up to 166 divider with my GSkill HZ but i threw my "dying" ballistix back in and they'll do the 166 dance no problem.

another major issue i have are temps! i'm using a TTBT with a silverstone120 on it (which can really crank) but my cpu temps always seem much higher than everyone else's. this was true with my x2 on a dfi and this a8n32. if i go higher than 1.4Vcore the cpu temp will zoom up to ~60C and cause instability with 2 simul-instances of p95 unless i crank the silverstone fan (in which case temps drop to ~53C-ish in the 2.7+ range). i can't get my cpu to operate at higher than 300htt, no matter what. any suggestions? btw, how accurate are the cpu temps in Probe2?

[Ic3man]

I get around 51-53c when priming both cores depending on room temperature which is usually around 23-25c. The motherboard is around 36-38c.

The temperature your getting does seem very high especially if its at 1.4 (you sure you aint overvolted the vcore (+0.2v) making 1.6vcore? I wouldn't run my opty at more than 60c tbh. Have you got the fan setup right on the big typhoon? Blowing rather than sucking? And does your case have adequate ventillation. I'm using a p180 case with 2 120mm fans as exhaust and one as a blower.

As for asus probe imo, no it isn't very accurate it will just give you an 'idea' of temps.