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

[ArcticOC]

YIKES!! My fingers hurt just looking at the pics. Hope they're doing OK.

The should be in 2 monts or so.. But hurt they do not, had to use morphine first week, so you can say I have been quite drugged out lately

Any comunications with Intels PR division from yor side? (C1E and all that) Becuse the 1.row techies seam to give us all the same boring standard answers!

[shimmishim]

to GTJ - thanks for keeping this thread alive. it's rare one person is so dedicated to one board for so long. with that said, i need help!

I have raid enabled in the bios and i'm on the intel controllers.

i originally installed windows with the RAID drivers as I knew that I would be adding 2x36GB Raptors as RAID eventually.

However, in windows, I do not see my newly created "raptorraid" volume.

When I use intel matrix storage console, the raptors show up as being in raid, the status is normal, system volume says "no"... and this is what i can't figure out. Shouldn't system volume say "yes"?

Well if you could help me find my missing raptor raid and possibly move my windows from my 250GB to my new raid array, that'd be great as well.

thanks!

[gbeans99]

Picture one and two show why I`t have taking been so long/slow stressing/testing all parts, got BOTH my figners crushed by a falling 100KG cooling aggregat @ work and now they look like something from the movie hellraiser, with pins stikking out in all funny directios I guess one could say that my fingers are more modded than my PC right now
Picture 3 show some of the preps/beauty. Pic 4 show my RAM 4GB D9GMH)


But before I begin to really push it, what would anyone think of as an realistic OC on this config:
- E4300 Week 44 Malay
- Intel BadAxe 2 505 w/latest BIOS
- Nvidia 7900GT
- Very powerfull PCU (no CRAP)
- Good air cooling when stressing/testing on table (before putting in rig w/Water)
- 4 x 1GB sticks with D9GMH (paid 260$ in total before tax )

Voltages, timings, tips on anything is velcome I`m aiming for the high`est 24/7speed

OUCH! Those are some seriously sore looking fingers. Hope you're doing better with them... Must make turning a tool fun.


I have a week 44 4300 as well. Q644A448 is the code. With stock cooling and volts I've had it to 325 FSB. It runs pretty cool at that with 42c max running Orthos Blend for about 2-3 hours. For 335 FSB I had to use 1.4375 on the CPU and everything else at stock with temps at 45c max for 2-3 hour Orthos Blend run. It seemed pretty cool and happy at that. I'm still experimenting but ran 350 FSB at 1.45 VCore and 1.425 VFSB, VMCH at 1.525 with Ref Freq of 266 and Mem Freq at 667 for 878 at 4/5. Ran a little hotter at 62c max for 3 hour Orthos Blend. Considering it's a fairly recent 4300 on stock cooling, I'm pretty happy with it. You will probably do somewhat better with water. Ambient temps for all runs were around 20c. I'm looking for 360 FSB when I get better cooling for my final 7x24. Right now it's at a happy 325 on stock volts. I'm running 2g of GSkill 2GBK at 1.920v 4-4-4-12.

[ChaosMinionX]

Well heres a screeny of my most recent 24/7 setup with temps and whatnot.

[likewhoa]

why is orthos not showing?

[hotchoc]

The default memory freq is 800. As soon as you start to raise the FSB, because of the way the frequency settings interact, your memory will start to overclock as well. By lowering the memory frequency to 667, you'll be underclocking the memory so that if you do have problems, you'll know it's NOT the memory causing them. When you've got the CPU stable at a particular FSB, then you can start playing with the memory frequency again to see how high you can push the memory.

The PCIe frequency isn't tied to the FSB on this board so don't even worry about it.

There isn't a guide as of yet but I'm working on one.

for the ram settings, do i need to do anything for the latency or should leave it as default? vdimm at 1.8V ?

[hotchoc]

Gtj,

Before i start doing nething in the OCing, i noticed this:

BIOS >Performance
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bus Overrides

PCI Express Config
~~~~~~~~~~~
PCI Express burn in mode percentage = DEFAULT

PCI Config
~~~~~~~
PCI Bus Freq = 33.33Mhz
PCI Latency Timer = 32
HPET = Disable

Do i leave everything above as default?

I understand that if you increase the "PCI Express burn in mode percentage" to say 101.32Mhz, it actually translate to a minor OC for your gfx? Please correct me if i'm wrong. Is it advisable to do that ?

Btw, in my CPU-Z, i noticed that my multiplier keeps changing from 9 to 6 and then 6 to 9 every 5 seconds or so. This resulted in my core speed to change from 2400 to 1596 and so forth. Any idea why is this happening? Is it a bug or just my settings? A right click on my comp and system shows that i'm running at 2.4Ghz though.

[hotchoc]

If you refer to the pic above, changed my mem frequency to 667Mhz as advised. left my timings at 5-5-5-12 and my voltage at 1.84V

Next is this (sorry for the noob posts, everyone starts from sumwhere


I did this:
CPU Voltage Override = 1.3250 V (stock)
Enhanced Power Slope = nfi what this is. Should it be disabled or enabled. What the main purpose of it?
FSB Voltage Override = rough idea of what this is, would be great if someone can explain more on it. I left it as default
MCH/ICH Voltage Override = nfi what this is. What the main purpose of it? Left it as default
Processor Multiplier Override = Heard that there's a bug right? Heard that we can't lower it or increase the multiplier but i may be wrong. Left it as default. Ideally i would prefer it to be places as 9.
Host Clock Frequency Override = nfi what this is. What the main purpose of it? Left it as default
Processor Multiplier = 9
Host Clock Frequency = [300]
Processor Speed = 2.7 Ghz

The it comes back to this: http://www.peakin.com/xbx2/calculator.html

How do i interpret the meanings of it.

Have yet to conduct any orthos tests yet

[shimmishim]

Gtj,

Before i start doing nething in the OCing, i noticed this:

BIOS >Performance
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bus Overrides

PCI Express Config
~~~~~~~~~~~
PCI Express burn in mode percentage = DEFAULT

PCI Config
~~~~~~~
PCI Bus Freq = 33.33Mhz
PCI Latency Timer = 32
HPET = Disable

Do i leave everything above as default?

I understand that if you increase the "PCI Express burn in mode percentage" to say 101.32Mhz, it actually translate to a minor OC for your gfx? Please correct me if i'm wrong. Is it advisable to do that ?

Btw, in my CPU-Z, i noticed that my multiplier keeps changing from 9 to 6 and then 6 to 9 every 5 seconds or so. This resulted in my core speed to change from 2400 to 1596 and so forth. Any idea why is this happening? Is it a bug or just my settings? A right click on my comp and system shows that i'm running at 2.4Ghz though.

if you change the pci-e frequency ever so slightly to lets say 101 or 102, you'll be perfectly fine. i dont think you'll see a performance increase due to the slight pci-e frequency increase.

as for the 6 to 9 issue... this is a bug with the bios. C1E cannot be disabled in the bios even if you set it on disable. so when you are in windows and you are idling (no load on cpu) your cpu will be running with the 6x mult. when you put a load on the cpu your cpu will be running with the 9x mult. if you could get C1E disabled, then your cpu would be constantly at 9x.

this has been an issue that many users have been trying to get cleared up with intel but intel CS has been kind of dumb and is blaming the CPU for the problem (at least from what i remember reading in this thread).

[shimmishim]

If you refer to the pic above, changed my mem frequency to 667Mhz as advised. left my timings at 5-5-5-12 and my voltage at 1.84V

Next is this (sorry for the noob posts, everyone starts from sumwhere


I did this:
CPU Voltage Override = 1.3250 V (stock)
Enhanced Power Slope = nfi what this is. Should it be disabled or enabled. What the main purpose of it?
FSB Voltage Override = rough idea of what this is, would be great if someone can explain more on it. I left it as default
MCH/ICH Voltage Override = nfi what this is. What the main purpose of it? Left it as default
Processor Multiplier Override = Heard that there's a bug right? Heard that we can't lower it or increase the multiplier but i may be wrong. Left it as default. Ideally i would prefer it to be places as 9.
Host Clock Frequency Override = nfi what this is. What the main purpose of it? Left it as default
Processor Multiplier = 9
Host Clock Frequency = [300]
Processor Speed = 2.7 Ghz

The it comes back to this: http://www.peakin.com/xbx2/calculator.html

How do i interpret the meanings of it.

Have yet to conduct any orthos tests yet

reference frequency = strap control. 266 = 1066 strap, 333 = 1333 strap.

the "higher" the strap, the more FSB you should be able to o/c however at the expense of increased latency (which si bad).

reference frequency effects your mem frequency

when you set ref frequency to 266, mem frequency 533 means you are running your FSB and MEM at 1:1.
266 , 667 = 4:5
266 , 800 = 2:3

at ref frequency 333, mem frequency 667 means you are running your FSB and MEM at 1:1 and then the divders are different for 333, 800 (not sure what the divider is for this one bu i'm going to guess 5:6).

Enhanced power slope supposedly gives you more stable vcore voltage (less droop and fluctuation) at least from what i read.

vMCH is the northbridge voltage. usually you will increase this as you increase your FSB. at 300 mhz (what you are at), I'm not sure what the default is. As a reference, I run 370 mhz and use only 1.6 with vFSB at 1.3.

same applies for vFSB, you increase this as you increase your FSB. Most people report not gaining anything above the 1.4-1.45 range FWIW.

[hotchoc]

. C1E cannot be disabled in the bios even if you set it on disable. so when you are in windows and you are idling (no load on cpu) your cpu will be running with the 6x mult. when you put a load on the cpu your cpu will be running with the 9x mult. if you could get C1E disabled, then your cpu would be constantly at 9x.

thought i disabled it already in the maintainence bios

[shimmishim]

thought i disabled it already in the maintainence bios

even in maintenance mode, it does not get disabled, hence a bios bug.

one way to disable it is to use a program called RMSclock in windows and disable it that way.

[hotchoc]

reference frequency = strap control. 266 = 1066 strap, 333 = 1333 strap.

the "higher" the strap, the more FSB you should be able to o/c however at the expense of increased latency (which si bad).

reference frequency effects your mem frequency

when you set ref frequency to 266, mem frequency 533 means you are running your FSB and MEM at 1:1.
266 , 667 = 4:5
266 , 800 = 2:3

at ref frequency 333, mem frequency 667 means you are running your FSB and MEM at 1:1 and then the divders are different for 333, 800 (not sure what the divider is for this one bu i'm going to guess 5:6).

Enhanced power slope supposedly gives you more stable vcore voltage (less droop and fluctuation) at least from what i read.

1. Would it be recommended to set ur strap at 266 in this case given that a higher strap means a higher latency (what does higher latency means btw? slower response time?)
2. Anyone tried 333:800 while being stable? I think my ram is rated to run at 800. Might be wrong in this
3. Enhanced power slope supposedly gives you more stable vcore voltage (less droop and fluctuation) at least from what i read. In order words, enable it?

vMCH is the northbridge voltage. usually you will increase this as you increase your FSB. at 300 mhz (what you are at), I'm not sure what the default is. As a reference, I run 370 mhz and use only 1.6 with vFSB at 1.3.

same applies for vFSB, you increase this as you increase your FSB. Most people report not gaining anything above the 1.4-1.45 range FWIW.

4. vMCH/ICH = northbridge right? What's the optimal voltage to do so ? What's the danger level as well ? What i did in my previous P5B Deluxe mobo is to set my vMCH as default and to increase my frequency bit by bit. Eventually when the CPU frequency maxed out on the max vcore level say 1.5 V, i will then slowly increase the VMCh followed by the CPU freq/voltage. Is this the correct way you guys do it?
5. What about the vFSB ? Which part does it control again and what's the safe range for it ?

p.s. What type of orthos tests i should be running ?

[hotchoc]

Found out the fsb and mch default settings as i didn't touch em yet:
FSB voltage = 1.25V
MCH/ICH voltage = 1.525V

[Forceman]

1. Would it be recommended to set ur strap at 266 in this case given that a higher strap means a higher latency (what does higher latency means btw? slower response time?)
2. Anyone tried 333:800 while being stable? I think my ram is rated to run at 800. Might be wrong in this
3. Enhanced power slope supposedly gives you more stable vcore voltage (less droop and fluctuation) at least from what i read. In order words, enable it?

p.s. What type of orthos tests i should be running ?

It is best to keep the memory reference freq at 266 as long as you can - going to the 333 freq increases latencies in the NB and so decreases performance - its a trade-off though because if the higher latencies let you run a higher freq then you might end up better in the long run.

2. I think it has been found that keeping the memory at 1:1 is best performance-wise - going to the asynchronous 4:5 or whatever increases memory speed but the realworld gain is not very significant. Remember that the 266:533 is based on default FSB speed, so setting the memory to 333:800 like you mention would mean that your memory is actually running faster than 800 when you overclock the FSB. Personally, I'd set it to 266:533 and see how high you can go, and then start playing with it to see if a higher divisor gives you better performance, or if going to 333:667 gives you more FSB headroom.

3. Enable the power slope - it gives more consistent Vcore behavior.

ps - Most people run Orthos in blend, but I've found that running it in the small FTT setting (the top one in the drop-down box) stresses the CPU more and gives a better indication of CPU stability. Blend is good for overall stability, but I can pass blend at speeds that I can't pass small FTTs. The small FTT one also generates more heat, so good for testing cooling.

[shimmishim]

4. vMCH/ICH = northbridge right? What's the optimal voltage to do so ? What's the danger level as well ? What i did in my previous P5B Deluxe mobo is to set my vMCH as default and to increase my frequency bit by bit. Eventually when the CPU frequency maxed out on the max vcore level say 1.5 V, i will then slowly increase the VMCh followed by the CPU freq/voltage. Is this the correct way you guys do it?
5. What about the vFSB ? Which part does it control again and what's the safe range for it ?

p.s. What type of orthos tests i should be running ?

4. Just leave it at default value as you stated. For 300, you don't need a lot.
5. Same thing. Leave it close to default.

As for orthos, I like to do blend now for at least 10+ hours but small is good too. Others say large is best for C2D (not sure though).

if you want to be completely thorough, you could always do like 8 hours of each.

For me though, I did orthos blend for 8 hours last time i checked and I have had zero crashes, bsod's since I had my bad axe 2 setup.

[hotchoc]

2. I think it has been found that keeping the memory at 1:1 is best performance-wise - going to the asynchronous 4:5 or whatever increases memory speed but the realworld gain is not very significant. Remember that the 266:533 is based on default FSB speed, so setting the memory to 333:800 like you mention would mean that your memory is actually running faster than 800 when you overclock the FSB. Personally, I'd set it to 266:533 and see how high you can go, and then start playing with it to see if a higher divisor gives you better performance, or if going to 333:667 gives you more FSB headroom.

Yup i heard about the 1:1 performance thingy but at the same time heard that it's pretty hard to achieve it isn't it?

I assume the reason why gtj is asking me to use the 667Mhz (mem freq) is because he is assuming that i'll be using 333 as the reference frequency which will give me a 1:1 ratio right?

However you already stated that setting the ref frequency at 333 (1333 strap) is bad as it increases latency. I remembered you said something bout the trade off in terms of higher latencies vs high frequency. So is there a break even point where you are able to contain the latency while increasing the frequency at teh same time?

Am i correct ?

[ChaosMinionX]

why is orthos not showing?

I only used it to get enough load to show that it was running 3600mhz 400x9 and have it stay that way, since C1E is dumb on this board... Id be glad to give you a 24hr orthos though if youd like

[hotchoc]

Oh btw, besides orthos and superpi. what other stability tests can i run ?

[theonlybabyface]

Hey hotchoc,

What bios are you running exactly? Never heard of 0305???

[hotchoc]

sorry my bad. i meant bios 2674

[shimmishim]

Yup i heard about the 1:1 performance thingy but at the same time heard that it's pretty hard to achieve it isn't it?

I assume the reason why gtj is asking me to use the 667Mhz (mem freq) is because he is assuming that i'll be using 333 as the reference frequency which will give me a 1:1 ratio right?

However you already stated that setting the ref frequency at 333 (1333 strap) is bad as it increases latency. I remembered you said something bout the trade off in terms of higher latencies vs high frequency. So is there a break even point where you are able to contain the latency while increasing the frequency at teh same time?

Am i correct ?

yes, there is a point where the higher frequency will get you that latency you lose. As for the point it occurs, that is something you'll have to find out for yourself.

Everest is a program I use to see latency.

and yes, i'm assuming gtj asked you to use 667 since he assumed possibly (not sure) that you'd be on the 333 reference frequency.

just use 266 and 533 and you should be fine.

[hotchoc]

Can you teach me how to use Everest to find the latency ? Been hearing there's a bug with BX2 and Everest though.

Btw, where's the link to Super Pi Mod? Can't seem to get it off the net

[shimmishim]

Can you teach me how to use Everest to find the latency ? Been hearing there's a bug with BX2 and Everest though.

Btw, where's the link to Super Pi Mod? Can't seem to get it off the net

look in the xtreme overclocking section then the xtreme pi subsection.

there are beta versions floating areound that work with this board.

[hotchoc]

found the super pi and everest 2006 3.50 version

hwo do u check out the latency via everest. btw, it's quite a neat tool