680i SLI is too expensive? Asus as the solution : P5N32-E SLI PLUS

[onthepulse]

i tried this bios at my own risk and I am well aware that stuff happens.....
anyhow, i finally messed around with making my own bat file with some switches that i found around the net for force flashing, programming, and clearing setting unattended. there will be a bad checksum error at the end of the flash, but just enter the bios and all is well.
1. format a boot floppy, delete everything but command.dos, io.sys, and msdos.sys.
2. create a text file named AUTOEXEC on the floppy and place this in the first line AWDFLASH.EXE P5N32-EP.BIN /CC /CD /CP /F /R /PY /SN
save the file on the floppy as a txt file then rename it to AUTOEXEC.BAT
3. place awdflash 1.31 and your bios file renamed to P5N32-EP on the floppy with the other files
4. roboot with floppy as first boot device and in a few minute any old version renamed to what i said will force flash and get rid of this crap 1002 bios.

Do you think this would work on a bootable CD?

[>GSXR<mrbusa]

Do you think this would work on a bootable CD?

not the way my little guide explains it, but yes, it can be done. bartspe has a whole guide on how to set up a boot cd with awdflash but you still have to mod the autoexec.exe because the 1002 bios is bugged. there are a bunch of ways and programs to create a dos boot cd but i sux at understanding most of the ways to do it. bartspe has a batch file that will build the cd for you. if it was not bugged then there would be no need to use the switches i listed to force the flash.

[zoson]

Hey guys,
Been tracking this thread for a few weeks now.
I've had my P5N32-E SLI Plus for about 6 months now. I started with 805 bios, which was absolutely terrible. I went to 801 and had much more success.
I flashed to 1002, and have noticed that I can run with lower voltages on the motherboard in general.

Anyway, everything is stock cooled. Here are my specs:
E6850 @ 3.6GHz (9x400) 1.456v
G.Skill PC8000 GBPQ 4GB(2x2GB) @ 800MHz 4-4-4-10 1T @ 2.35v
2x EVGA 8800GT Superclocked SLI (650/950 Stock overclock, these things can't seem to overclock even 1mhz?)
3x 150GB WD Raptor 10K RPM RAID5
NB: 1.45v
VTT: 1.35v
HT: 1.45v
SB: 1.55v

I am completely stable at 9x400... But I cannot seem to get ANY more FSB... Also, I can't seem to get my memory to run faster than 800MHz at 1T... I've tried maxing out the speed of my memory at 2T, but can't seem to match the bandwidth of 800MHz low latancy...

I think I might just be hitting the wall of heat on my CPU before I can get any real FSB above 400... Planning to watercool the whole thing with swiftech stuff once I save the funds.

What do you guys think? Heat? Or is there some trick I don't know about for getting that FSB up above 400?

[DIEHARD]

Gonna give Zosons settings a try

Wish me luck

[Radical_53]

You might even start with lower voltages. 1.25V for 1.2V HT and CPU VTT, maybe 1.35V for the NB (largely depending on the chip and FSB you're trying to get).
I'm still playing around with mine. It's something on its own, I still really like this board.

[DarkCow]

I want to update my bios to 1002 but after my last experiance i'm not too eager..

[Radical_53]

This is really weird. I was running my memory above 1100MHz for several weeks now without any problems.
Now I went back and put my dual core CPU in again. Well... I can't get the RAM stable anymore at any "nice" speed. I can run it at high latencies, but I can't get back to the spot were I always had them with the QX. Then I tried low latencies, as I was curious anyhow how the performance would be with 1T. Well, it doesn't even boot with them... I really don't get it. Unlinked memory doesn't seem to work at all right now, I'm really stuck. And all this just because of a "little" heat and some saved energy...

[DIEHARD]

You might even start with lower voltages. 1.25V for 1.2V HT and CPU VTT, maybe 1.35V for the NB (largely depending on the chip and FSB you're trying to get).
I'm still playing around with mine. It's something on its own, I still really like this board.

Im on a Q6600 at the moment - have had it at 3.6 but wasnt stable - managed to get a 3 dmark ok like

[Radical_53]

Yes, it can be quite time consuming to get this board from "ok for benchmarks" to "fully stable".
I've just finished a week of Memtest86, OCCT and Prime... I switched out the QX for my older E6600 as I didn't have any performance gain and it consumed much more energy.
So then I found that my RAM wasn't running as it was before, so I had to go through that whole thing again... now it seems to be ok, stable as I was used to it.

PS: By the way, does any one of you have a "funky" NB voltage reading with the newest bios?
I set voltages as normally, I "need" them as before, but the monitor says something like 1.7x V or so instead of 1.40V (when 1.35 is set). The bios tells me this, Everest tells me this and even the newest Everest version shows me an SPP temperature that's really high (above 80°C, where my backside board sensor says it's around 30°C).

[RareBit]

im on a q6600, was using 801 bios.. flashed to 1002 and im running 3.6 solid as a rock!
Jultsu knows his stuff with this board read his sig for voltages, tho i crank my HT voltage a little more than him.
ive been able to bench running a 458 FSB on 801 but its not fully stable, i have not tried it yet with the new bios.

[Snyxxx]

My MCP temperature according to Everest is 84&#176;C as I type. This machine is on air and my other is almost finished where it has water on NB and SB. I will inform what that temp is once complete. I am really curious.

[Radical_53]

That would be really nice to know. I do get readings from the software now for both parts of the chipset, I do also have sensors on the backside of both chips to measure temps independently.
The onboard sensor shows me something like 30&#176;C for one part and above 80&#176;C for the other part. My own sensors show something like 30&#176;C for both of them. It's just a strange gut feeling because of the high temperature readout and the high voltage readout.

[Leeghoofd]

im on a q6600, was using 801 bios.. flashed to 1002 and im running 3.6 solid as a rock!
Jultsu knows his stuff with this board read his sig for voltages, tho i crank my HT voltage a little more than him.
ive been able to bench running a 458 FSB on 801 but its not fully stable, i have not tried it yet with the new bios.

Great news, I have the same on the Striker Extreme with 1503 bios, 3.6ghz with 8 x 400

Vcore : 1.3750
1.2 HT : 1.4
NB : 1.4
SB : 1.5
CPU VTT : 1.35

I keep ram in sync and at 2T loose timings 5-5-5-15, if I go 4-4-4-12 1T I need 1.5NB voltage... not worth it for me on this old board as it's hardly noticeable in my games...

[Radical_53]

The only difference, considering RAM, that I could measure in games had to do with tweaked sub-timings. The difference there was far more than something like 4-4-4 800MHz 1T to 5-5-5 1000MHz 2T.

[panfist]

So I'm trying to figure out what's bottlenecking my overclock. I'm stuck somehere around 375MHz FSB with an e8400. I should be able to do better, right?

I won't bore you with the details but if you want you can feel free to check out these two threads on anandtech where I've already had a bit of discussion:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...39&STARTPAGE=1

and this one specifically about my PSU. I got a lot of help from jonnyGURU.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...95&STARTPAGE=1

Anyway I'm up to 400MHz fsb stable as I type this running Orthos, with my multiplier dropped down to 6x. However I'm getting some funny vcore readings. nvidia monitor reports 1.44Vcore! ASUS pc probe reports 1.31 or 1.30...which is very close to what I set in the BIOS. And finally, CPUz tells me that my voltage is 1.36. So what's the deal?

On a side note...all programs that report temps agree that my CPU is 50C idle, 60C load. This seems ridiculous as I have a thermaltake sonic tower with a 120mm fan between the towers, and the thing feels barely warmer than ambient. Even at load, it barely gets warm. The NB, on the other hand, always feels hot.

Also, I was running my NB at 1.35V before, now at 1.55V, and it's reporting the same temps. That's weird, right?

[Radical_53]

No, that's not weird, as you don't get a proper reading from the NB concerning temperatures.
Newer versions of Everest for example do show *some* temperatures for MCP and SPP, but that's not a real temperature from what I can say so far. There's no sensor on the chip.

You may want to try to put a fan onto your graphics card to cool your NB heatsink, just to try if it does help you somewhere. Also, there was (?) a FSB hole around 400MHz FSB, so closely below and slightly above the board always needed much more voltage.
For example, I do need really high voltages around 360-380, but it's really stable with much lower voltages around 420. Maybe also worth a try.

What I got from another thread here -> it seems as all the temperature programs are quite off with the newer 45nm CPUs. I can't comment this as I haven't gotten mine yet, at least that's what I've seen on a couple of forums so far.

[panfist]

No, that's not weird, as you don't get a proper
You may want to try to put a fan onto your graphics card to cool your NB heatsink, just to try if it does help you somewhere. Also, there was (?) a FSB hole around 400MHz FSB, so closely below and slightly above the board always needed much more voltage.

This pic shows my basic setup, and considering the size of my tower cooler I was not able to get an 80mm fan aimed at the NB very well.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ses1984/...02076447274642

I just ran a whole crapload of tests at a multiplier of 6 and now it looks like I'm stable @400mhz FSB, 1.55v on the NB core, 9x multiplier. Which is funny because I'm literally right in the FSB hole. 405, 410, 420MHz, 425MHz FSB did NOT work at any voltage 1.50-1.70. I was afraid to push it past 1.7, and I figured if none of those FSB values worked, anything past it probably would not.

The [auto] assigned values of the 1.2V HT seems high though... PC Probe is reading it as 1.47V. Is this bad? Can I / should I lower it? Can I aim a fan at it or apply some extra vga ram sinks I have anywhere?

[Snyxxx]

No, that's not weird, as you don't get a proper reading from the NB concerning temperatures.
Newer versions of Everest for example do show *some* temperatures for MCP and SPP, but that's not a real temperature from what I can say so far. There's no sensor on the chip.

.

I am using EU 4.20.1277 Beta, a month or two old and I only see MCP temps. I do not see SPP temps.

What version are you using?

Here is screen shot.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...1&d=1207267581

[panfist]

Ok I'm getting some weird results in Everest...Core #1 is always 37C, Core #2 varies from 23-31C??? First pic is idle temps, next pic is load temps. I have tried re-seating my heat sink twice, switching orientations each time. Also, I don't know if there is a correlation between Core#1 and #2 in everest, and CPU#0 and #1 in Orthos, because in Orthos it's always #1 that gets a rounding error.

I'm using Everest 4.50.1330.

[Snyxxx]

panfist,

There is another thread in this sub-forum on "realtemp" that discusses problems with the whole E8XXX series of chips and stuck temperature sensors. This may be the issue for your chip. Re-seating will not help.

[Radical_53]

I'm using 4.50.1347 which is dated April 1st (no it's not a joke ).

They very high readout is gone, yet I'm pretty sure those numbers don't mean a thing.
Right now, it shows me 40&#176;C for the NB (my sensor says 30&#176 and 29&#176; for the SB (my sensor says 25&#176. MCP was at above 80&#176; like in your picture there, maybe even the exact same temperature... Everest's "motherboard" temperature says 28&#176;C btw.
I don't give a thing on those onboard readings, even the one mainboard reading usually is just a sensor somewhere on the board.

Btw., what bios are you using? You don't seem to have that strange Vnb reading I get.

[panfist]

So I decided that for every day use I'd rather undervolt than overclock. I saved my BIOS profile to CMOS, reset everything to default, and then built my new undervolt profile from defaults.

Except now some of my settings just won't stick. I'm using the 1002 BIOS. Has anyone figured out a fix for the settings not sticking?
------
Edit: I got my settings to stick again by doing a standard AI overclock 5&#37;, returning to manual, then I was free to change whatever I wanted again.

[Radical_53]

The one thing I found when the settings didn't stay and reverted to default:

Set some really high clocks. Like 2000MHz FSB or something. Then it does the ROMSIP update, the overclock protection kicks in and you can set your "real" clocks.

[panfist]

This is the first "enthusiast" board I've ever bought...previously I have always just bought cheap stuff and never tried overclocking. This was supposed to be a very highly rated board, and it seems like it has been everything but consistent.

Are all enthusiast boards this fickle? Are there any that just work all the time?

No one has to answer that question...I'm just ranting...

[Radical_53]

Not every board is like this one, but many of the highest rated boards are, or were, like this.
It depends highly on what you want to achieve. Aiming for the absolutely highest CPU clock, really high FSB, high RAM clocks, all combined, will be kinda hard with no matter what board you choose. No matter which one you choose, it'll take quite some time for testing, trying out different setups and so on.
This board here is really picky about voltages I think, plus it has those mean FSB holes. If you run your RAM unlinked, it has holes there too. Clock rates that are much harder to "stabilize" than maybe a little higher or lower would be. All this adds to the very time consuming task to get a stable, high overclock with it.
But: After you're done, it's set. It shouldn't be acting strange anymore then and it's a very fast and capable platform.
If you want something that's rather easy to clock, it might have been better to choose a board with an Intel chipset. I don't like them very much personally, but most of the time they're much easier to get to a higher FSB.