** OFFICIAL ** Intel DX38BT & DX48BT2 BoneTrail Thread

[s0lid]

Hehe these Intel Bios suxx ass =D
For exsample:
Multi set to 6 from bios and FSB to 415 and
In windows it's 8 and fsb 415 with 100% load.

Intels multiplier control doen't work in thier own mobo

[xMrBunglex]

i wouldn't recommend a BT either. get a DFI or Gigabyte.

[gtj]

Hehe these Intel Bios suxx ass =D
For exsample:
Multi set to 6 from bios and FSB to 415 and
In windows it's 8 and fsb 415 with 100% load.

Intels multiplier control doen't work in thier own mobo

Yeah, I just noticed that as well. It DID work at one time so it must have broken in this or the last BIOS.

[gtj]

Hi!

I´m thinking of bying this board but before I do I need to know if Intel fixed so Eist can be dissabled? Are ther any other major bug´s i need to know of. Will My STT ProdjectX work with the DX38T? This is not my first Intel rig but my first DDR3 Build.

EIST can be disabled in BIOS but C1E can't. You have to do it from the OS. The STT ProjectX should work but I haven't heard of anyone using them on a BT yet.

This board is pretty stable for me but it's definitely not "plug and play". You have to be prepared to do some work to get it stable.

What are your objectives for the board?

[s0lid]

i wouldn't recommend a BT either. get a DFI or Gigabyte.

Asus P5K3 DLX is good choice...

This mobo has too big problems:
- C1E
- Hard to sell :/

When i get rid of my board i'll buy that P5KE DLX :P

[Forsaken1]

Asus P5K3 DLX is good choice...

This mobo has too big problems:
- C1E
- Hard to sell :/

When i get rid of my board i'll buy that P5KE DLX :P

I could not in good conscience sell this board,unless intel straightens up the bios.Since they have not yet,chances are not good.Alot of bios relrease and 1507 is still the best.Maybe i should not use the term 'best" .

The board in my sig,is very nice .

[Mr Steveo]

Hey guys,

Ive had this randomly disappearing DVD drive the last few days. A bit confusing is that it works fine, even installs windows fine, but in Windows from time to time it disappears.

It really is acting like a software / BIOS thing (Vista SP1 issue, Intel ICH9 INF, BIOS 1521, etc.) I say that cuz a simple device manager refresh and the drive instantly returns.

OTOH, I swapped the drive itself with the good drive and the disappearing drive is the DVD drive attached to channel 5 (bottom most on the mobo.) This makes me wonder if in messing around with the hardware this weekend I damaged a mobo trace or something.

Any of you have any thoughts on the cause / fix?
Any of you see this with your systems that have a drive hooked to the bottom most SATA jack?


If a bad jack that kinda sux, cuz not many jacks remain - those Intel geniuses who designed this board stewpidly put the SATA 0 jack underneath the path of the video card :-(

[Mr Steveo]

One other quick question - Can anyone comment on the Marvell eSATA controller (stability / speed) ?

[Randy]

Hey check out the DDR3 memory prices. Tiger has Corsair 2GB kits for $109.
All of the DDR3 has been lowered.

[Sean-E-Boy]

1st time posting here, but been following for a while...can call me just Sean.

Have a memory timings question/issue. Prior to 1521, CPU was at 366x10 1.5v, FSB 1.450, MCH 1.250 and
memory at 333/1066 7-7-7-20 1.58v.

However, after 1521 (which btw I had to restore defaults in order to flash) it gets stuck on power on with above settings. Currently (and mostly because I havent had time to play around), running at stock CPU values and 266/1066 8-8-8-20 1.54 in order to boot.

Any ideas on what the additional memory settings need to be to boot 366x10 and 333/1066 7-7-7-20?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[xMrBunglex]

did you set the command rate to 2T? i know the earlier BIOSes for this board automatically set 1T if you had two sticks of RAM and only 2T if you had four sticks. check your memory timings and see what they're running at.

[xMrBunglex]

i've been running four days without so much as a hiccup, which is a pretty big accomplishment considering how bad things were before. i think all of my recent problems were related to IDCC. i uninstalled it last week and everything has been running smoothly since.

GTJ, you think i can run 450 FSB on the 333 boot strap? i was thinking of setting 400/1333 at first, but i'll stay on the 333 boot strap if yours is stable the way you have it set up. does anyone know how high i can set the FSB on the 333 boot strap?

[gtj]

1st time posting here, but been following for a while...can call me just Sean.

Have a memory timings question/issue. Prior to 1521, CPU was at 366x10 1.5v, FSB 1.450, MCH 1.250 and
memory at 333/1066 7-7-7-20 1.58v.

However, after 1521 (which btw I had to restore defaults in order to flash) it gets stuck on power on with above settings. Currently (and mostly because I havent had time to play around), running at stock CPU values and 266/1066 8-8-8-20 1.54 in order to boot.

Any ideas on what the additional memory settings need to be to boot 366x10 and 333/1066 7-7-7-20?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hi Just Sean

You should be able to run 366x10 with stock FSB and MCH voltages. Your FSB voltage is WAY high. 1.200 should be just fine.

i've been running four days without so much as a hiccup, which is a pretty big accomplishment considering how bad things were before. i think all of my recent problems were related to IDCC. i uninstalled it last week and everything has been running smoothly since.

GTJ, you think i can run 450 FSB on the 333 boot strap? i was thinking of setting 400/1333 at first, but i'll stay on the 333 boot strap if yours is stable the way you have it set up. does anyone know how high i can set the FSB on the 333 boot strap?

450 FSB with 333 Reference Frequency is working great for me. I guessing it's probably the highest practical FSB for 333 strap. In order for me to go higher, I had to lower the multiplier to 8 (when lowering the multiplier worked) but the most I could get to was 480. Not worth it.

450FSB with 333/1333 is the sweet spot for me.

[Sean-E-Boy]

gtj, thanks for the tip, i'll give it a try. i do seem to remember hitting a wall around 320, but i dont remember what got me past it...

also, MB, i'll play around with the command rate and see if that will boot.

[Sean-E-Boy]

MB, setting the command rate to 2T has helped, thank you, but seems that something else is going on.

after some tinkering, had to:
1) increase FSB to 370 (which was never stable for more than a few minutes before) from 366 (wouldnt POST?)
2) bump FSB v to 1.3
3) drop memory to 400/1066 from 333
4) relax timings to 8-8-8-20 from 7-7-7-20
5) adjust command rate to 2T

[xMrBunglex]

i'm not sure why your settings would suddenly have to change. this board takes a little getting used to. it took me a while before i felt comfortable overclocking it and i'm usually pretty good at this stuff.

GTJ, i took it up to 450 FSB last night, but i wasn't able to do it in the 333 boot strap. i had to set my reference clocks to 400/1333 (my memory is at DDR 1500 now) to get it to post. i couldn't get any signs of life with 333/1333 or 333/1066. maybe you just got lucky and have a good board. all my other settings were known good values.

[Manel]

1521 worked fine for me so far, no boot after flashing but after a few tries it was up and running. My mem booted at 1600MHz though, although it's rated 1333 and intel chipsets don't support mem freq higher than PSB (1333). Anyway, so far it's looking good.
Still couldn't figure out the issue of IDT audio control panel not showing the Dolby tab and the SATA controllers showing as ATA in device manager. Maybe it was a bug in the initial 1251 BIOS version not setting the SATA mode to native but to IDE.

[Manel]

there are some quircks to this BIOS version though, screen repaint is somewhat strange at times, keying in settings also.
also, language changed to French when I opened this option but without changing language actually.
New timings are very comprehensive though.

[Randy]

With 1507, I could get the the FSB to 380 comfortably and the memory ran @ 1530(or so). Now I noticed the the memory was running @ 1235 (or so), according to Everest. FSB still @ 380, all my settings the same. So I booted into the bios to see what may have changed. Every setting was the same. I exited and could not boot to the desktop. I now have set everything to default to get back.

Why would the memory now run slower with the new bios, and what could I change to get back where I was ?

[gtj]

i'm not sure why your settings would suddenly have to change. this board takes a little getting used to. it took me a while before i felt comfortable overclocking it and i'm usually pretty good at this stuff.

GTJ, i took it up to 450 FSB last night, but i wasn't able to do it in the 333 boot strap. i had to set my reference clocks to 400/1333 (my memory is at DDR 1500 now) to get it to post. i couldn't get any signs of life with 333/1333 or 333/1066. maybe you just got lucky and have a good board. all my other settings were known good values.

If you had to go to the 400 strap then chances are that your vMCH isn't high enough or your memory can't take the DDR3-1800 speed which results from 333/1333@450FSB.

With 1507, I could get the the FSB to 380 comfortably and the memory ran @ 1530(or so). Now I noticed the the memory was running @ 1235 (or so), according to Everest. FSB still @ 380, all my settings the same. So I booted into the bios to see what may have changed. Every setting was the same. I exited and could not boot to the desktop. I now have set everything to default to get back.

Why would the memory now run slower with the new bios, and what could I change to get back where I was ?

The new memory settings may be defaulting to something slower. Did you do a BIOS reset to defaults after applying 1521? It may help.

[xMrBunglex]

If you had to go to the 400 strap then chances are that your vMCH isn't high enough or your memory can't take the DDR3-1800 speed which results from 333/1333@450FSB.

my vMCH is at 1.450, which i believe is as high as i care to go. i also tried 333/1066, which actually underclocked my memory, so i know my RAM wasn't the weak link there. then i changed my reference clocks to 400/1333 and it booted right up.


Sean, boot into Maintenance Mode and make sure the Watchdog is disabled. that could be the source of your newest roadblock. i just noticed that mine had turned itself back on at some point and was making overclocks just about impossible.

on a side note, i hit 4.2 GHz tonight and broke 19,000 on 3Dmark06. not bad for an ATI guy with a dual core CPU

[Randy]

If you had to go to the 400 strap then chances are that your vMCH isn't high enough or your memory can't take the DDR3-1800 speed which results from 333/1333@450FSB.



The new memory settings may be defaulting to something slower. Did you do a BIOS reset to defaults after applying 1521? It may help.

Yes I have reset many times. I am back to 1507 bios now, but I cannot return to where I was with the bios settings, as I get a bsod at the Windows splash screen. If I wanted to get the CPU back to 3.8 and the memory @ 1521, how would you set it ? I can now set the memory to 1333 in the bios, and everest says it is actually there.

[Sly Fox]

I've read through a bit of this topic and I'm shocked at all the problems with this board.

I'd figure an Intel made enthusiast board would be rock steady. Guess I was mistaken.

[xMrBunglex]

Yes I have reset many times. I am back to 1507 bios now, but I cannot return to where I was with the bios settings, as I get a bsod at the Windows splash screen. If I wanted to get the CPU back to 3.8 and the memory @ 1521, how would you set it ? I can now set the memory to 1333 in the bios, and everest says it is actually there.

set your FSB to 380 with the appropriate vCore. you can probably leave the vFSB and vMCH at default values for that relatively low FSB. you'll probably want Voltage Offset disabled and Enhanced Power Slope enabled. in the Memory section, set your reference frequencies at 333/1333 and then manually set your vMem and latencies to whatever is good for your memory at DDR 1521. that will get you running with a 1:2 ratio. none of the above settings should pose any problem for the Bone Trail at all. i also set my PCI-E frequency to 101.32, but i'm not sure if that's necessary.

once you get to know how this motherboard works, overclocking it is pretty painless. i got up to 467 FSB last night with low volts. it was real quick and easy. none of my motherboard components get remotely hot.

GTJ, i'm gonna go for 333/1333 when i have some time and figure out what latencies and voltage to set my memory at. i think i have this figured out now.

Sly, a lot of my earlier problems were due to other things. my first board had to be RMA'ed, which wasn't real conducive to me trusting the replacement that Intel sent me (FedEx Priority, btw. they shipped the replacement the day after they received my bad one. Asus would never do that.) after that, i had a software conflict which was causing problems that i was quick to blame on the motherboard. it turns out that the Bone Trail is a very solid enthusiast board that just takes a little get-to-know-you time. certainly not the best mobo i've ever owned, but not nearly as bad as my earlier posts suggest. i've really grown to like it over the past month.

[WingHeart]

How stable/reliable is this board if you don't plan on overclocking at all? Are there issues with it if you plan to run all the default speeds, etc.? Seems like a lot of the problems I've been seeing here is w/ overclocking the cpu/fsb/memory.

Never really considered Intel boards made for overclocking. Then again, I haven't been following them too close lately.