DFI 965-S is here! For sale @ ewiz

[XtremeTiramisu]

I got this board about a week ago, been playing around with it...
Not very impressed either, not dissapointed too...

E6400 629b will run 8x500 on 680i mobo, 2x1gb Ballistix 1000 5-5-5-15, will not run 1000 on this board, slow settings, fast, doesnt matter, will not pass post..

@900 the rams will run 4-4-4-12 wtf..

is a nice board, but I was expecting more out of it, currently @ 8X450

Trying for 7x500 or better, but no, the rams wont go 1000...... tied geil and kingston cause i have them.. both ddr800 and will run 1100 on other boards..

Just don't know if its me or the board.

It's the board bud.
We're in the same condition that we had the same rams that we tested on other board that could do ddr2 1000 but on this board, we'd have a hard time to post at and beyond ddr2 1000. I mean in the end if we can all think about the price we paid for...only like a little more than $150 USD or $180 CDN...it's not tooo shabby afterall.

But since we're xtreme OC'ers, money isn't really the main point here IMHO. If I can take a $300 board overclocking-ability to the max...it's worth EVERY PENNY but a $150 board can only do a half ass decent job..it's the WHOLE $150 DOWN THE DRAIN IMHO. It's either an A+ or a F...no inbetween rule by my standard and I think a lot of overclocking enthusiasts will agree with me...

Time to move on to P35....this is happening sooner than I expected...


*Once again I've learned my lesson the hard way....despite the great reviews that have being brain washing many readers out there...the result on one's own case can never be promised...there's always a risk when comes to overclocking, you may be lucky or you don't.

[xTr33m sammich!]

10-4

I whole heartedly agree with you..
only reason i got this board is the crappy raid performance on the nvidia chips.. got 3xraps in zero and 3x500gb r5 - I guess this board is going to ebay as soon as the p35 comes my way..

[The Nemesis]

Guys this board takes a bit of tweaking on some ram modules. It likes micron D9's but not all of them. I know there was alot of hype about 500FSB right out the box with no increase in voltages, & for the most part that is true. But thats mostly with memory @ 1:1. I can't seem to get my board to run past 509FSB 1:1 X 8. No matter if I lower the multiplier or increase the voltages, I can't get back to the 515FSB I was running when I first got the board. I'm going to put together my second one tomorrow and see if it fairs any better. The RD600 also clocked my 6400 higher than this board. On the RD600 I got 3820 12hours orthos stable. On this board its topping out @ 3730. Funny thing is, it topped out there on the 680i boards as well, and on the P5B Deluxe a little over 3.6ghz was the max. So I believe every cpu won't reach identical clocks on different platforms. This board has gotten me the highest 1:1 overclock on the cpu though.

[xTr33m sammich!]

Question is, Nem, Are you able to run your rams above 1000?
doesnt matter, at 7 or 8 X400 no voltage increase and its up and running great, mems at 800, I believe this is 1:1
450 with slight V increase accross the cpu and nb is all good, mems at 900..
get close to 480 and it craps, 500 is a definate no go, I'll keep tweaking it, it was cheap at $130 and it seems the Raid performace is good.

also, if im running 8x400 and manually set the rams to 1000 it craps, was hoping it was just some stupid timing issue, but its probably my rams, suppose I should get some crappy patriots :P

Just why do these Ballistix make so much noise during memtest and orthos blend...
I'm not too sure it is the rams, could be coming from the caps or something... high pitched noisy noise..

[momomo6789]

guys pure easy to hit 600 ....



also just to make yall feel bad

[The Nemesis]

Question is, Nem, Are you able to run your rams above 1000?
doesnt matter, at 7 or 8 X400 no voltage increase and its up and running great, mems at 800, I believe this is 1:1
450 with slight V increase accross the cpu and nb is all good, mems at 900..
get close to 480 and it craps, 500 is a definate no go, I'll keep tweaking it, it was cheap at $130 and it seems the Raid performace is good.

also, if im running 8x400 and manually set the rams to 1000 it craps, was hoping it was just some stupid timing issue, but its probably my rams, suppose I should get some crappy patriots :P

Just why do these Ballistix make so much noise during memtest and orthos blend...
I'm not too sure it is the rams, could be coming from the caps or something... high pitched noisy noise..

Could you post your bios settings? I think you have a value or two that may need to be changed. Also could you make a sig with your hardware or maybe just list your ram etc. I've had no trouble running my ram @ 500FSB & above. I just want more than the 509FSB I've reached.

[Raja@ASUS]

set dq to around 4 and work from there, i have friends who are running 535-540 fsb on around 1.4vnb, the dq setting is proving pivotal for them...
Remember you are dealing with a locked 266 strap over 400 fsb , unlike the earlier 965 boards that auto set 1333 fsb when up in the 500's, giving the oc'er and easier time getting to that point, unless you clock gen'd up from the 266 strap within xp...

regards
raja

[G H Z]

Guys having problems need to work on their configs, and be sure the 266 strap is set. This board is very capable when set up right. I see you got 400 2:3 working Nemesis, without all the vdimm

[The Nemesis]

set dq to around 4 and work from there, i have friends who are running 535-540 fsb on around 1.4vnb, the dq setting is proving pivotal for them...
Remember you are dealing with a locked 266 strap over 400 fsb , unlike the earlier 965 boards that auto set 1333 fsb when up in the 500's, giving the oc'er and easier time getting to that point, unless you clock gen'd up from the 266 strap within xp...

regards
raja

Which direction do you suggest to go from there first? Up or Down for Micron GMH?

Guys having problems need to work on their configs, and be sure the 266 strap is set. This board is very capable when set up right. I see you got 400 2:3 working Nemesis, without all the vdimm

Yes, I'm having so much fun tweaking this board to see what it can do, I haven't opened the second one yet. I also have the DFI 680i LT on the way too. Should be a fun next couple of weeks

[XtremeTiramisu]

^ above, it's either you've too much money or the place you get all your boards has too good to be true return policy..:p

Anyways...I think I'm back stable at 3.7Ghz....it's weird that I've to max the VTT to 1.5v and that seems to do the trick to make my CPU stable at this speed. I was not able to pass orthos more than 30min ~ 1 hour under Small FFT or blend and now it's priming away +2 hours with additional 2 instance memtest to stress the mem...but the temp does get kinda high for my E6700 at low-mid 60's but at only 1.43v under load...

Indeed, I'll try a bit more tweaking, hopefully I'll get a fair bit more improvment from every aspect higher clock speed vs lower voltage here and there..

[Raja@ASUS]

4 seems the central point, Kris thinks, lower skews left and higher skews right. Oskar did say that each cpu/mem config will need tuning for dq. Don't forget that MCH's vary in overall ability too, and that's something that neither you or the board can change..

[ziddey]

I got this board about a week ago, been playing around with it...
Not very impressed either, not dissapointed too...

E6400 629b will run 8x500 on 680i mobo, 2x1gb Ballistix 1000 5-5-5-15, will not run 1000 on this board, slow settings, fast, doesnt matter, will not pass post..

@900 the rams will run 4-4-4-12 wtf..

is a nice board, but I was expecting more out of it, currently @ 8X450

Trying for 7x500 or better, but no, the rams wont go 1000...... tied geil and kingston cause i have them.. both ddr800 and will run 1100 on other boards..

Just don't know if its me or the board.

Definitely try tweaking DQ calibration and see if it helps. I'm in the exact same boat as you with 500fsb not being stable at all, and 450x8 working just fine.

It does have its great appeal when memory enhance are on fast, so I'm trying my best to get the thing going.


I had the exact same symptoms as you, but doing the following seems to have bought me general stability, with the ability to pass 6+ hours of orthos large / blend. However, I won't accept that as stable, so am still working on it, hoping to get it fully stable.

But what I have done was this: bump pcie to 105. change vsb to 1.6v. and fiddle with dq calibration. I've found that 1, 3, and 4 (auto) result in poor conditions with it getting stuck on post or windows boot. Then I tried 7 and managed to get in windows, but orthos small fails right away with rounding error (usually 0.4 when should be 0.5). Then I tried 6, and it crashed after 8 hours. 5 was the same. But 5 and 6 have gotten me the farthest I was able to get. Wonder if there's anything else I'm missing that needs tweaking some how.

FWIW, if I leave dq to auto, memtest test5 will lock up after about 4-8 passes. I have dq set to 5 at the moment and am on my 22nd test and chugging along.

[XtremeTiramisu]

Thanks for your share of infos on the DQ setting, I've tried 5 but it doesn't quite help with the settings I set...I've a feeling that this board definetely needs a combination of right settings to shine better. Only one or two changes here and there won't make much significant...This board does take a lot more patient and skills to work with...and I'm working with it as every min goes by...I'll keep you guys updated..

[ziddey]

yeah, it definitely seems to be a lot of effort. I was driven to exhaust all the settings because of dfi's track record, and it has helped a little, but I'm not there yet. I am quite a bit jealous though of all the people who got 500+ without touching a thing. just my luck i guess

[XtremeTiramisu]

I am quite a bit jealous though of all the people who got 500+ without touching a thing. just my luck i guess

Exact how I feel too, I envy those suckers!!
They may just have the right components that's feeding the mobo and making it happy to work with...

This board may be a keeper becouse I suspect with various tweakings and the right components for it will probably make him the king of the hill.

[momomo6789]

my nb @ 517 right there is 1.35

[awhir]

guys on ideas on this probelem i am having :

P965-S - windwos install raid problem:

hi,
i have 2 hard drives both seagates (300,320) when i set raid in bios and then set them up in intel storge to be raid 0 64k.

but when i try to install windows xp in raid i have problems.i hit f6 and have the disk in the floppy and when it asks me to specify i click on the "intel desktop raid drivers" and then load them and then when it says "loading windwos" i get a blue screen saying "stop:0x0000007b" i have googled this and it seems to be a driver issue but i have tried the drivers on 2 diffrent foppys.i have also flashed the bios to the newest.and i have tried the installation in single/non raid arrey and windows get past the part where i usally get the blue screen and i can then seee my 2 hdds.

also when i click on speciy and click on the intel drivers it pops up saying "the driver provided seems to be newer then the default driver"

windwos allready has a driver that you can use for "intel ***************** sata raid controller"

i try using the windwos default drivers as it says allso but it does not show any hard drives up in the install area.


any advice apricated.

[momomo6789]

make a new floppy works fine for me

[G H Z]

This DFI board is an Infinity version, wait until you get your hands on a Lanparty if you think this BIOS is tricky

awhir,

Make sure you have the correct drivers, try the installation on a single drive to be sure your installation settings/media is OK.

[awhir]

yep i am using the right drivers and have tried with both hdds in single and they worked with windows.

i have tried 2 foppys also.

im getting really annyoed since i really want to use raid.

[Praz]

@ awhir

You said you are using the newest bios. If you are using a SATA optical drive check that that the bios is 04/24. That is the only version that will work. Also try to zero out both drives. RAID setup on this board should be flawless.

[Bail_w]

Finally after changing DQ setting to 5, i was able to get my system pass OCCT.

[yenclas]

Yes.

Small addition: I noticed that when i disconnect mouse and ethernet cable it works fine.

Another update: POST and BIOS works fine now. Still I have problems with booting up the computer. It turns on, then off, then on again ( rarely ), usually just turns off.

Anyone?

Dylus,

I have the same problem here, and others which I wrote three or four posts again.

We need help !

Anyone ?

[yenclas]

Hello.

I have new info of my problem.

Finally I think the problem is vdimm that I apply to my memory.

My memory is G. Skill 2GB F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ with Micron D9GMH.

If I put 2,1v the systems seems to be totally stable, but If I put 2,2v Orthos hangs in no more than 1 minute. If I put 2,3v sometimes windows don`t start.

I think my memory is very good and I saw more people that have the vdimm with this memo set to 2,2 or 2,3.

My PSU is Tagan 480W, but I test with a Antec 550W and have the same problem.

What is my problem ?

[XtremeTiramisu]

Since DQ configuration setting is under DRAM section so tweaking with it will only effects the stability of the rams am I correct?!

If you're more likely to have an instability with the CPU then tweaking with the DQ won't help right?