Testing / comparing : Intel D975XBX2 / Asus P5B DX ***56K WARNING***

[jmpage2]

Anyone have a problem where the bios takes awhile to post? All of a sudden its just taking awhile to post, it sits at the bar from load and waits awhile to show the Intel screen. Any ideas?

Mine does that too. I think it started to do it after I disabled watchdog.

As far as the heatsink retention mechanism orientation goes on the 9700, I did flip it around to vertical and my temps are 1C lower, although maybe the ambient temp drifted a little bit.

PS, I don't recommend going vertical with the retention bracket on the 9700, it's a serious pain to install, I had to take the power supply out to do it.

[argylesocks]

Mine does that too. I think it started to do it after I disabled watchdog.

As far as the heatsink retention mechanism orientation goes on the 9700, I did flip it around to vertical and my temps are 1C lower, although maybe the ambient temp drifted a little bit.

PS, I don't recommend going vertical with the retention bracket on the 9700, it's a serious pain to install, I had to take the power supply out to do it.

hmmm. i just re-read the instructions again and i guess i did it worng

thats what i get for installing a heatsink at 1am, right? oh well, i aint changing it now... that thing was a pain to install (the wrong way)!!

sorry to have pointed you in the wrong direction.

[Zucker2k]

Anyone have a problem where the bios takes awhile to post? All of a sudden its just taking awhile to post, it sits at the bar from load and waits awhile to show the Intel screen. Any ideas?

Your current overclock isn't sitting at a "sweet" spot. Lots of verification taking place before actual bootup initialization.

[Zucker2k]

This doesnt happen all the time, but at least 50% of the time. When my computer comes OUT of sleep mode, it often reboots itself when i start up media center... or if i was in MC, when it went to sleep, it will start to boot, then reboot again...

I know the beta version of the Nvidia drivers solves "GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS: Display does not resume from S3 or S4
suspend mode", but based on other's opinions, i have not installed these drivers.

I have have installed the Viiv 1.6 software, as well as the Intel Quick Resume software (and turned on in the bios).

running vista x86. thoughts?

Intel quick resume is the culprit. If you disable that, you should be fine. It's a pity since the technology sounds good on paper but my actual experience with it has been crappy.

[jmpage2]

Intel quick resume is the culprit. If you disable that, you should be fine. It's a pity since the technology sounds good on paper but my actual experience with it has been crappy.

Where do you turn it off?

[argylesocks]

Intel quick resume is the culprit. If you disable that, you should be fine. It's a pity since the technology sounds good on paper but my actual experience with it has been crappy.

so shut it off in the bios? do i need to uninstall the drivers as well?
will i still be able to put my computer in 'sleep' mode? if so, whats the actual difference with or without QR?

where you having the same issues as me?

thanks!

[slappynutz]

Anyone have a problem where the bios takes awhile to post? All of a sudden its just taking awhile to post, it sits at the bar from load and waits awhile to show the Intel screen. Any ideas?

Could be extra overclock verification, but it could also be the USB ports. The two upper motherboard ports (directly below the ethernet and firewire) are very touchy and don't like hubs, the mouse, or the keyboard plugged in directly. Startup will hang for a long time, and the bios will lock up from time to time if the keyboard or mouse is plugged into one of these upper USB ports..

This was true with the 2507 bios and I believe it's still true. I had a long hang before booting and it was the USB port. It still takes a while to get to the Intel screen, probably the longest boot sequence of any board I've owned. One of the few negatives I've found.

[Charloz24]

I received my Bad Axe 2 a couple of days ago and I must admit I do not have good time overclocking with it. The Bad Axe replace the DS3 in my sig (with eveything else mentionned) and could'nt do the overclock I was doing before with the DS3. It simply not booting . I disabled watchdog, EIST, C1E, VT. Even 350 fsb is not booting. There must be something wrong.

[theonlybabyface]

Anyone try using either the OCZ XTC Memory Airflow Cooler or the Corsair Dominator Airflow Memory Fan on this board?

I am curious to see if they'll clamp on with the vid card and memory tabs so close to each other.

Thanks in advance....

[FishGlobal]

What about coldbug on XBX2? I can't start it under Vapo the second day! With water cooling all is normal

[gtj]

I received my Bad Axe 2 a couple of days ago and I must admit I do not have good time overclocking with it. The Bad Axe replace the DS3 in my sig (with eveything else mentionned) and could'nt do the overclock I was doing before with the DS3. It simply not booting . I disabled watchdog, EIST, C1E, VT. Even 350 fsb is not booting. There must be something wrong.

How about a little more info...
core, mch and fsb voltages.
ref/memory frequencies, timing, voltage

[Zucker2k]

so shut it off in the bios? do i need to uninstall the drivers as well?
will i still be able to put my computer in 'sleep' mode? if so, whats the actual difference with or without QR?

where you having the same issues as me?

thanks!

First, uninstall the driver, then reboot and go into bios, then disable it. QR takes over your power saving features in order to improve your viiv experience - ie. run your machine like a regular vcr with quick turn-off, turn-on times.

[SiGfever]

This weekend I plan on starting my over-clocking attempts. I would appreciate suggestions on where to start, I will be going for 3Ghz then 3.2, 3.4 and finally 3.6. Right now I am at 2.8Ghz and stock volts. Coretemp = 20c & 19c idle.

My system is listed in my sig and is as follows...
Thanks.


e6600 (L628F028)
BadAxe2 rev 505 2333
Corsair 2x1Gb 5400c4 675Mhz 4-4-4-12
eVGA 7600GT KO 256mb
WD Sata II 320GB 16Mb
WD EIDE 160GB
FuZion>Maze4GPUAcetal>D5 @5>PA120.3 w/Yate Loon D12SM-12>MicroRes
U2-UFO

[ChaosMinionX]

Problem fixed! it was a usb hub like it was said. Thanks guys.

[screwtech02]

Don't worry about the voltage.

If you really want to see what you're rig will do, set as follows...
vCore 1.5500
vMCH 1.6
vFSB 1.4
Ref/Mem 333/667

Watch your temps of course. If this gets you stable at 400 and your temps are acceptable, try moving the FSB up. If you're stable but your temps are too high for your liking, move the voltage down until you're not stable anymore at 400. Etc, Etc.

Man, tried these settings, keep getiing the 3 beep memory error deal. Using 4x1024 OCZ ATI cert DDR2/800. I know this memory will run almost 900 on my old P5WD2-E, what gives???

[gtj]

Man, tried these settings, keep getiing the 3 beep memory error deal. Using 4x1024 OCZ ATI cert DDR2/800. I know this memory will run almost 900 on my old P5WD2-E, what gives???

Go back to 266/533 and try it.

[scorpion]

gtj what do you think of the thermaltake cl-w0040 watercooling kit for the 975xbx2.

[Charloz24]

How about a little more info...
core, mch and fsb voltages.
ref/memory frequencies, timing, voltage

Yeah sure! ---> (to myself)

vcore: 1.4625V (that was the stable voltage on my DS3)
vmch: tried up to 1.6V (didn't tried higher, because it's only 400 fsb)
vfsb: 1.4V

mem:
ref 266/ 533
4-4-4-11
2.3V

So that's about it tried for 400 fsb no more and no boot at all.

[gtj]

gtj what do you think of the thermaltake cl-w0040 watercooling kit for the 975xbx2.

Not something I'd go with. For one thing, it mixes aluminum and copper which is generally not a good idea. For about the same money you could put together a better solution. Check out the Liquid Cooling section for some good ideas. Think about what your objectives are though. How aggressive do you intend to overclock, which video solution are you going to use, how much noise will you tolerate, etc.

Just FYI, my 3 systems are equipped with Swiftech Apogee GTs (cpu), MCW60s (video) and MCW30s (chipset). A set of those will run around $150. Maybe another $150 for reservior, radiator, pump, fans. The cl-w0040 is at least $300 isn't it?

[gtj]

Yeah sure! ---> (to myself)

vcore: 1.4625V (that was the stable voltage on my DS3)
vmch: tried up to 1.6V (didn't tried higher, because it's only 400 fsb)
vfsb: 1.4V

mem:
ref 266/ 533
4-4-4-11
2.3V

So that's about it tried for 400 fsb no more and no boot at all.

My advice would be to go up to 1.5500v on the vcore and try it. Not suggesting you stay there, just try it and see if you can at least boot. Watch your temps of course. You might also try relaxing the memory timings a little. Again, not suggesting you stay there but get the system to boot and be stable first.

[Charloz24]

My advice would be to go up to 1.5500v on the vcore and try it. Not suggesting you stay there, just try it and see if you can at least boot. Watch your temps of course. You might also try relaxing the memory timings a little. Again, not suggesting you stay there but get the system to boot and be stable first.

It's not even working at 1.550V, 1.625Vmch, 1.4vfsb, 266/533 5-5-5-15 2.2V

Also, I was wondering, my board never beeps during boot-up, but I do notice that there is a speaker, so is it normal or not? Maybe getting the non-boxed version wasn't a great idea...

[gtj]

It's not even working at 1.550V, 1.625Vmch, 1.4vfsb, 266/533 5-5-5-15 2.2V

Also, I was wondering, my board never beeps during boot-up, but I do notice that there is a speaker, so is it normal or not? Maybe getting the non-boxed version wasn't a great idea...

Normal boot = no beeps. Clarify though... Does no boot mean the POST is successful but the OS doesn't boot or does it mean no POST either?

Are you completely removing power from the motherboard (I.E. unplug or turn off the PSU) when you make voltage changes?

[nanoprobe32]

Anyone have a problem where the bios takes awhile to post? All of a sudden its just taking awhile to post, it sits at the bar from load and waits awhile to show the Intel screen. Any ideas?

a bad dvd rom or writer on the ide channel can also cause
very slow boot up time. thats what caused mine to
sit at blinking cursor replaced it, now boots up without
even seeing intel splash screen

[Zucker2k]

Yeah sure! ---> (to myself)

vcore: 1.4625V (that was the stable voltage on my DS3)
vmch: tried up to 1.6V (didn't tried higher, because it's only 400 fsb)
vfsb: 1.4V

mem:
ref 266/ 533
4-4-4-11
2.3V

So that's about it tried for 400 fsb no more and no boot at all.

Sometimes it helps to ease off the voltages a bit. I have a strong suspicion you're feeding your cpu too much juice. Keep all settings at stock and raise fsb to 333, set memory timings to 4-4-4-12 (I strongly recommend 5-5-5-15 to eliminate RAM instability as a factor) 1:1. I'm pretty sure your cpu would do 350 fsb on stock vcore. My voltage hogging E6700 posts with stock settings at 340fsb x10 @ 3.4Ghz.

Another thing, those team group rams need high voltages to run stable at DDR2 1000 cas 4. mine needs 4.8v to ran at DDR2 1000 cas 4. I have the PC2 6400 rated at 4-4-4-10. It is supposedly the same as the PC2 5400 or DDR2 667 rated at 3-3-3-8. So you may wanna feed those sticks some more juice too. Goodluck.

[scaryogre]

Thanks gtj. I appreciate all your help...I don't know what this forum would do without ya!

I will report back and let you know if it was a bad drive or if maybe Vista has some issues with RAID5 on this controller (if I can validate that).

OK, I found out what the problem was with my RAID5 config. I have *not* tested this with another RAID configuration (i.e. RAID0,1,10, etc), but I am confident what caused my RAID5 to go in a degraded state was Apple iTunes.

Yes, I know it is odd, but my RAID5 has been fine since I installed it 3 days ago. Nothing has been causing me problems until tonight. Once I installed iTunes, immediately everything went to hell again. This is the same thing that happened 3 days ago. I installed iTunes, downloaded a music video and BAM....RAID problems.

Tonight I was simply installing it and after installation it was "importing" music files from my hard drive and again my RAID array was immediately degraded. I am 100% positive that iTunes is the problem. Keep in mind that this is AFTER transferring many GB worth of other types of files from my old PC. Never an issue...things were going well. As soon as I installed iTunes and allowed it to "import" files it bombed.

I have no idea how to fix this (or IF I can fix it), but that was the culprit...I'm feeling pretty pissed at the moment since I have spent many hundreds of dollars on my iTunes music.

This may be a problem with iTunes and Windows Vista32 or it may just be a problem in general. I am not an Apple basher...I own 3 Macs...but this is really ticking me off. I burned 3 days on thinking my system was good...and after installing iTunes it completely took a digger on me. NO overclocking or anything else that could be blamed for the problem...it is solely iTunes (and probably RAID5 since not many people use this configuration).

-scaryogre