1st look on asus P5K-VM: G33 matx board (56K warning!)

[pvhk]

no issue: i'm using an usb mouse (logitech G3)

[dogsx2]

anyone has problem with usb ports align within i/o shield?
the two first usb ports on the left, under keyboard port, can't be used.
devices don't plug in, because i/o shield partially covers them.

It's tight but usable on mine.

[damasko]

is there any modded bios for p5k-vm?

[zoob]

Anyone having problems with the board throttling way to early?
Even at 60C in Coretemp it'll pull my mult down to 6X :|
This is on a B3 with a 100C TJunction. I disabled the TM2 feature for the time being. On my P5K DLX and P35-DS3R having TM2 enabled is no problem.

[zoob]

Scratch that. My motherboard just exploded. Pics to follow :|

[__Miguel_]

Please tell me you were squeezing the board to find its max OC. If not, then probably you had a bad one...

Btw, is it me or solid caps are becoming projectiles more and more often? I didn't remember hearing about so many exploding caps when everything was "non-solid". What gives?

Cheers.

Miguel

[zoob]

Please tell me you were squeezing the board to find its max OC. If not, then probably you had a bad one...

Btw, is it me or solid caps are becoming projectiles more and more often? I didn't remember hearing about so many exploding caps when everything was "non-solid". What gives?

Cheers.

Miguel

Q6600 B3 @ 356 x 9 = 3.2 GHz
1.525 Vcore set BIOS, massive vDrop and vDroop gave me 1.280 V loaded.
I was running Prime95, loading at a comfortable 60C and POOF. I'm thinking the people designing these budget boards don't expect people to use quads on them and make them "good enough" for dual cores. Nowhere on this P5K-VM box does it say anything about quads. Infact, I see a "Supports intel Core 2 Duo inside" logo on the front.

[Lestat]

1.525 Vcore set BIOS, massive vDrop and vDroop gave me 1.280 V loaded

OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yup this follow suit with Asus's previous mATX boards just being a huge pile of sh|te

cripes even the Abit F-i90HD didnt do that.

looks to me like you guys arent getting any better fsb than the F-i90

the gigabyte G33 board was smoking from all the stuff i read about it.

[alpha0ne]

I'll stick with my Gigashat thanks

[The Nemesis]

I did the vdroop mod using a pencil. Idle & load voltages are within +/- .01v of each other. But if I set say 1.4v in bios, I get 1.34v in windows. A .06v difference from bios to windows is not favorable especially if your cpu needs more than 1.45v to achieve desired overclock. The board has been pretty solid for me. Of course my abit F-i90HD is still going strong too so I may just be lucky

[pvhk]

yes, the vdrop is important with the asus board!
selecting the vcore max 1.60v, gives 1.55v real (idle)
Now with the vdroop mod: in my case the vcore drops @1.50v on load insteed of 1.47v before. I need to pencil further to hit your excellent value!

And the fi90hd has still the better vcore value (up to 1.62v real) and the lower vdroop (0.01v) that enable my x6800 to hit max screen 3.9ghz on air (insteed 3.6ghz on the p5kvm)

[dogsx2]

Q6600 B3 @ 356 x 9 = 3.2 GHz
1.525 Vcore set BIOS, massive vDrop and vDroop gave me 1.280 V loaded.
I was running Prime95, loading at a comfortable 60C and POOF. I'm thinking the people designing these budget boards don't expect people to use quads on them and make them "good enough" for dual cores. Nowhere on this P5K-VM box does it say anything about quads. Infact, I see a "Supports intel Core 2 Duo inside" logo on the front.

Gave me a good laugh.
Look at the picture in the first post. My box doesn't say Visa but does say Quad.

[pvhk]

my box says both quad & vista ready!

[leifeinar]

been gooogeling all over, cant find any one that has tried crossfire on this MB. its supposed to be possible. silverstone did it on the gigabyte m.atx g33 MB, at comoputex.

a guy sendt a mail asking about this and they replied

Hi, thank you for interesting in SilverStone.

The motherboard used in SG03 in Computex 2007 is Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...e=GA-G33M-DS2R

There is a PCIEX16 and an unclosed PCIEX4 expansion slots and can be supported with crossfire.

The similar motherboard is ASUS P5K VM, which can be supported with crossfire, too.
.

Regards

Product and Marketing Dept. / ET Hong

[reswob]

I bought one today. The boxes are different now. It's a metallic blue color and on the box it states 45nm support along with C2D and C2Quad!

[damasko]

do somebody use windows with sata hd configured in ahci mode?

[__Miguel_]

do somebody use windows with sata hd configured in ahci mode?

AFAIK, this board doesn't support AHCI mode. At least on SATA ports on the Southbridge, since the P5K-VM only uses ICH9 (which doesn't have AHCI or RAID modes).

As for the extra controller (I don't really know if it has the extra SATA ports the P5B Deluxe has), if you set it to AHCI, be prepared to install the drivers and, in case you're using it for your system drive (big mistake if you ask me, the southbridge controller has a more direct link), you have to F6 install drivers with XP (and pray they work, AHCI is a little messy with XP).

Cheers.

Miguel

[damasko]

but in bios there is the setting to enable ahci, how can be present while not supported?
maybe bios is not right?

[__Miguel_]

but in bios there is the setting to enable ahci, how can be present while not supported?
maybe bios is not right?

As I said, while the ICH9 southbridge doesn't support AHCI (only the ICH9R, ICH9DO and ICH9DH are AHCI and RAID-enabled), the same does not apply to the secondary PATA/SATA controller (from Promise, if memory serves me right). This one supports IDE, AHCI and RAID modes on the SATA ports, so if the P5K-VM has five or six SATA ports, the last two of them are from that controller, and you can use the advanced modes on them.

Cheers.

Miguel

[damasko]

but p5k-vm has not secondary sata controller, there are only 4 sata ports on sb.

[__Miguel_]

but p5k-vm has not secondary sata controller, there are only 4 sata ports on sb.

Then I'm lost. That AHCI mode should not be available on the BIOS unless the ICH9R or extra SATA ports were available on the board, from the Promise controller used on that board (which, btw, has one PATA and two SATA ports, though they might not be connected, which seems to be the case).

Ok, a wild guess here. Since you said the box is different, it may be a newer SKU, which might actually have the ICH9R southbridge. If this is true, the P5K-VM just became the best mATX motherboard on the market. That is, if it weren't for the BIOS battery blocking the open 4x PCI-E slot ; and, of course, the lack of a mouse port...

Let's just see how the P5E-VM HDMI behaves when it's lauched.

Can you check the box, the manual and, if you're feeling lucky, the southbridge itself? (That implies removing the southbridge heatsink, cleaning everything up and reading the southbridge itself; don't forget to re-paste it... hehehe)

Cheers.

Miguel

[damasko]

maybe my english is not good enough to understand you.
p5k-vm mounts ich9, and a secondary ide controller without extra sata ports.
in bios appears two possibilities for sata configuration: IDE or AHCI.
why asus put ahci setting if not supported by sb and if extra controller has not sata ports?

[__Miguel_]

maybe my english is not good enough to understand you.
p5k-vm mounts ich9, and a secondary ide controller without extra sata ports.
in bios appears two possibilities for sata configuration: IDE or AHCI.
why asus put ahci setting if not supported by sb and if extra controller has not sata ports?

That is exactly my point. That should NOT happen, unless something on the board (either the southbridge or the extra controller) had support for AHCI.

Since the extra controller on your board has no SATA ports, and the plain ICHx southbridges don't have ACHI capabilities (unless somehow Intel enabled it...), the only ways for that to happen would be 1) Intel enabling AHCI on plain ICHx (not a bad thing, though I don't think it's likely to happen, or even possible); 2) that board having in fact an ICH9R southbridge installed (for any reason, including new model revision); 3) Asus messing up the BIOS code.

Without more specific information (namely the actual information on the southbridge that particular mobo has - not the model, since slipups happen, and an ICH9R may have ended up in there), I'm guessing Asus messed up somehow.

As the box changed, try digging more information up (like using software to probe which SB is on the board, or info from the store you bought the board from - or Asus itself).

Cheers.

Miguel

[damasko]

i'll send an email to asus to clarify the question.
ps: my box is the old one but i'll read asap the sb installed on board.

[__Miguel_]

but in bios there is the setting to enable ahci, how can be present while not supported?
maybe bios is not right?

Ok, this issue has been bugging me since you first brought it up. I have been scavaging the Web for G33-based motherboards manuals to see how that could happen...

I think I cracked it. Finally! I knew I had read something about that a while back....

To my astonishment, MSI is actually good for something, and the manual for the G33M board (page 27 of the PDF) is pretty clear about this subject: the ICH9 base southbridge does in fact support AHCI and IDE modes. There are, however, a few quircks.

First one: AHCI mode is only available to Windows Vista. That's not really a problem, AHCI was never an option for XP, even since the ICH5R. I think it's an OS limitation.

Second one: ACHI mode is only partially available on ICH9 base. Meaning hot-plug (at least, and I'd assume hot swap too) is not possible using this chipset. So, in short, you only get NCQ and the (rather amazing, to be true, cached bursts go through the roof in Intel southbridges with ACHI/RAID enabled...) write caching option on the ICHx southbridges.

I hope this makes more sence to you, and that it actually helps.

Now, anyone can direct me to a good site explaining the ups and downs on NCQ? The reason for wanting a motherboard with an ICHxR southbridge was because of the advanced disk features, and since I don't need hot-plug or hot-swap, I'd be perfectly fine with only partial AHCI support (I'm planning to move to Vista, anyway...). Anyone knows if the ICH8 base southbridge also has this option?

Cheers.

Miguel


P.S.: Oh, just one thing I remembered: I found this a few hours ago. Anyone knows how the BIOS fares? It seems a very decent board...


[EDIT]So, since I like being thorough, I stop by the Intel website and looked for the ICH8 and ICH9 datasheets. The ICH8 datasheet is blurry on the information about AHCI support, but it seems to imply the base southbridge can also be configured to work in AHCI mode; the ICH9 datasheet, on the other hand, is quite clear on this subject:

ICH9 Base provides hardware support for AHCI functionality when enabled by appropriate
system configuration and software driver.

So, there you have, AHCI IS available on ICH9 base, it just needs to be enabled by the motherboard manufacturer. Clearly Asus and MSI have enabled this one. Any news on the other manufacturers that use the ICH9 instead?[/EDIT]