Quote Originally Posted by webwilli View Post
I still like my STRIIEX

I found two FSB Holes (400 + 475) thats right. No other issues yet. My cellshock RAM works very well on the STRIIEX. No Problems.

But i still have only a crap E6600 and no SLI.
Donīt forget: iīm completely nvidia-n00b... only use intel-boards before. I must learn a lot.

Next week i get two 9800GTX i hope. No E8500 is available Should i buy the E8200? I donīt know...
I have used different CPUs on the S2E and here are my findings;
Using the QX9650 I can only run at default FSB. Multiplayer has no effect on stability, so I can run at 4Ghz/333FSB fine.
Using the E8400 only up to 3.8Ghz
Using the QX6850 up to 3.6Ghz, 450Mhz FSB, and using only 1.28V!!! (usually need about 1.4V)

note: Using BIOS 0507

Quote Originally Posted by sonofander View Post
just replaced my reference board with the SIIE... thought I'd throw up some impressions and observations.

The reference board is definately easier to oc. DEFINATELY! lol
while the Striker is taking a bit more work, I've noticed some performance improvements. Seems like clock for clock, the STriker has better mem performance as well as 3D performance.

My mem read/write/copy are all up by at least 1000 (per everest) and latency is down by 30ns or so

3D benches are up by about 400 points or so

this is a great board... lots of nice touches tha the ref board doesn't have and increased performance from my experience. Again, it is definaely harder to work with, but it seems to me that the time spent in really figuring out your overclock is time well spent

sending my ref board back this afternoon
The third thing I notice of the reference board (after the stability and droop) is that the memory performance on the EVGA is totally lacking compared to the ASUS. at the same FSB and CPU/RAM speed my memory performance dropped by 1500MB/s read, and an increase of around 15s latency, from 49ns to 64ns. My PCMark Vantage score also show a drop of around 1500 points.

Quote Originally Posted by sonofander View Post
On the ref board, you can jump in perfectly stable at 400+ FSB without changing a thing. Not so on the striker... Takes some tinkering. I've been able to get to 470 so far, but its taking some work. The upside is you have alot more control with the striker bios



Not 3... 30!!!
and I'm pretty sure I accounted for all available settings on the EVGA. Thing is, I haven't even started tweaking mem timings on the striker!

Again, if you want easy, get the ref board. Its not a bad board and it handles itself well. Its just my opinion that there are gains to be had, and if you're willing to spend a day tweaking the bios,working through the bsods and instability, the striker is just a better board once you get it dialed in
I have spent around a week trying to get my S2E stable with the QX9650 with any sort of FSB overclock. As said in my previous post it all seems perfectly stable stressing using ORTHOS or OCCT for hours, but BSOD for no reason, and happens during PCMarkVantage runs almost always, and sometimes during shutdown/restart.

sonofander, Which version BIOS are you using? can you do a file integrity check in vista? and also can you post your BIOS settings on the S2E, as I can duplicate your setup with CellShock Memory and QX9650 CPU. Lastly can you run PCMark Vantage on your overclock setup? it always seem to bring my S2E system down with any sort of FSB overclock. Thanks!!