[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[Coroner Kyle]

Over on the Asus forum someone said they were sent bios 0612.

Anybody else heard of this or have a copy?

[w2richwood]

most likely a beta for the new quads 9450 or something like that c1 stepping
Rich

[holwill]

Posting this here as well as in the general hardware/psu section as this might be specific to this board however unlikely,running bios 204 now after reverting back from 404 and seeing no advantages.

I treated myself to a new psu a PCP&C Silencer 750w quad, to replace my Enermax 600w Noisetaker2. Reason why I upgraded was because I always felt that I was sailing close to the wind with it supplying 33a combined off the 2x18a rails and that 60a with 750w rms and 825 peak would be a safer bet for what I have and any future changes. When I fitted it last nightthe first thing I did was to check out the voltages in various sofware like,everest,pc wizard,asus pc probe2 and speedfan.
What I got was.
Everest 11.98v,5.01v,
Asus Probe 11.98,5.01v
PC Wizard 11.30v,4.98v
Speedfan 11.30v,4.98v
This was idle and with no movement priming @4.0ghz@1.6v
So next I pulled out a Fluke 117 Multi Meter and took direct readings from a spare molex.
12v=11.92v idle or loaded
5v=4.98v idle or loaded
A bit low I thought on the 12v rail but not outside the 5% margins, this was confirmed by PCP&C after a couple of very fast e-mails(they are amazingly quick to respond) who assured me all was ok.
So here is where things went a little wierd, my sound stopped working, the two fans that everest and any other software that can monitor appeared to be stuck at 50rpm,my mobo temp stuck ay 150c or there abouts and then said n/a,1 random blue screen while reading this forum. Never had a blue screen in the 7 months this system has been up! So I installed the latest update for the X-FI card that sorted that and played some cod4 and all appeared to be ok, even though the fans and mobo temp appeared stuck. Fired it up this morning before coming to work and all appears to be fine. So my question is has anyone else ever had any wierd things like this by just chaning say the psu and did you ever find the answer. Is there anything I should look out for apart from the normal, maybe I should unplug everything and replug to check for a bad contact point? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated

[w2richwood]

not sure here but i would unplug and plug in everything just to make sure im kind of wondering about mine also it's only a enermax 535 but it seems fine
Rich

[ReverendMaynard]

Over on the Asus forum someone said they were sent bios 0612.

Anybody else heard of this or have a copy?

haven't seen it yet, but that's a good sign. It'd be a shame if ASUS dropped support on this badboy.

[w2richwood]

haven't seen it yet, but that's a good sign. It'd be a shame if ASUS dropped support on this badboy.

no dont think they will there just draging there feet on a new bios even my old p5w dh supports the new quads 9450 and so on
Rich

[Leeghoofd]

What's the best bios here to use with an E8400 and 4 dimms of 1 gig ? 0504 ? some user told me he couldn't get good ramclocks with 0504 ?

[w2richwood]

0504 is the only bios that supports e8400 at this time 0402 is good with ram from what i've heard theres a new bios coming out to suppor the new quads e9450 but not sure when
Rich

[jonny_ftm]

I wanted to give a feedback on Western Digital hard drives
On the ASUS forums, some people reported bad expierience even with the new Caviar SE16 WD6400 AAKS. It is a new drive based on 320Mb high density plates.

Some people reported it was fixed with new motherboards they received from RMA

It looks like the serial numbers after 78xxxxx are ok (7 for 2007, 8 for month 8, that's august). By the way, they are all 2.00G

In my case, I have a 78xxx series, made in China PCB, and I took a risk buying this disk. It runs so great in my setup

So, this WD/Samsung issues should be abscent on new batches and all with serial numbers after 78xxx

Now, you can throw away your noisy and slow barracuda 7200.11 (they're only good for benches and s**ck in real world applications tests) for a Samsung/WD high performance disk.

[w2richwood]

i have 79xxx 2.00g made in china been using wd raptors in raido but no others drive so far havent had any problems at all with the board i think a lot of the problems on the asus forums are user problems but not all lol
Rich

[jonny_ftm]

i have 79xxx 2.00g made in china been using wd raptors in raido but no others drive so far havent had any problems at all with the board i think a lot of the problems on the asus forums are user problems but not all lol
Rich

79xxx versions are ok, but previous versions to 78xxx are broken, even early 78xxx versions has their SATA controller broken. It is not only users issues, it is a real bug for which ASUS is accepting RMA

[kup]

I've recently purchased one of these and I can't get over 410MHz for love nor money with my new Quad.

It either refuses to post or just crashes before it gets to the XP splash screen...

I'm looking for 450x8, can someone list their bios settings for that?

And also, what bios is generally thought of as the best for overclocking FSB and Quads?

[situman]

Over on the Asus forum someone said they were sent bios 0612.

Anybody else heard of this or have a copy?

I got a copy of it, but I'm not giving it out until I get a chance to test it myself. Don't want any hatemails you know.

[ReverendMaynard]

I've recently purchased one of these and I can't get over 410MHz for love nor money with my new Quad.

It either refuses to post or just crashes before it gets to the XP splash screen...

I'm looking for 450x8, can someone list their bios settings for that?

And also, what bios is generally thought of as the best for overclocking FSB and Quads?

The settings that I use are good from 400 - 475. I'll dig 'em up for ya.

What quad are you using? 45nm? 65nm? I am still on the 0204 bios and it has been absolutely stable.

[kup]

The settings that I use are good from 400 - 475. I'll dig 'em up for ya.

What quad are you using? 45nm? 65nm? I am still on the 0204 bios and it has been absolutely stable.

Q6600 65nm. I'm just stumped by this board because the ram in it can do 900MHz 4-4-4-12 (generic crap but still ok clocks) and the Quad can't be limited to barely 400MHz FSB...it just can't...

Cheers dude, I look forward to trying your settings. Right now I'm, @ 415MHz which primes for about 10mins (if I'm lucky) and then crashes the system... Or I just get errors and XP dies...

EDIT: 415MHz just crashed...

[ReverendMaynard]

which strap are you using? 400 is a no go on these bad boys.

Still at work, but I take some pics of my bios when I get home very shortly.

Cheers

[kup]

which strap are you using? 400 is a no go on these bad boys.

Still at work, but I take some pics of my bios when I get home very shortly.

Cheers

I was using the 400 Strap just now but I'll give the 333 Strap another try and report back in a sec. Cheers for the help, Rev'.

[w2richwood]

put your strap settong on auto see if that helps
Rich

[kup]

415MHz @ Performance Level 15 held for 20mins before I stopped it and rebooted, a new personal best (lol)...

Now @ Performance Level 11 (333 Strap, Booster Enabled Level 0).

[situman]

How does the Performance Level work? I never understood that.

[kup]

How does the Performance Level work? I never understood that.

I found this here in another thread...

Enable: 1,2,3
no try level = 0, too slow

266Strap, Level 1 = Performance Level 6
266Strap, Level 2 = Performance Level 5
266Strap, Level 3 = Performance Level 4 <== I think, result in no boot

333Strap, Level 1 = Performance Level 9
333Strap, Level 2 = Performance Level 8
333Strap, Level 3 = Performance Level 7

You can check out your Performance Level in Everest under the chipset listing.

OK, does anyone know how to read the NB volts? Or the vDimm, because this sodding board only reads vCore and the PSU rails on every bios I've tried. It's makes it near impossible to work out voltages when it's stable @ AUTO volts but unstable @ manual volts...

[stepinrazor]

I wanted to give a feedback on Western Digital hard drives
On the ASUS forums, some people reported bad expierience even with the new Caviar SE16 WD6400 AAKS. It is a new drive based on 320Mb high density plates.

Some people reported it was fixed with new motherboards they received from RMA

It looks like the serial numbers after 78xxxxx are ok (7 for 2007, 8 for month 8, that's august). By the way, they are all 2.00G

In my case, I have a 78xxx series, made in China PCB, and I took a risk buying this disk. It runs so great in my setup

So, this WD/Samsung issues should be abscent on new batches and all with serial numbers after 78xxx

Now, you can throw away your noisy and slow barracuda 7200.11 (they're only good for benches and s**ck in real world applications tests) for a Samsung/WD high performance disk.

Just got my RMA # and gonna get rid of this damn problem once and for all. I love this board! Compared to my Maximus Formula (now Rampage), much better board. I can leave all the voltages (including NB) to stock except CPU @ lowest settings @ 444FSB / 4x1GB 1066MEM + transaction booster enabled -3. No way I could do that on the Maximus.

Now hopefully the fix the S3 Wake for the 45nm chips in the new bios

[kup]

Just got my RMA # and gonna get rid of this damn problem once and for all. I love this board! Compared to my Maximus Formula (now Rampage), much better board. I can leave all the voltages (including NB) to stock except CPU @ lowest settings @ 444FSB / 4x1GB 1066MEM + transaction booster enabled -3. No way I could do that on the Maximus.

Now hopefully the fix the S3 Wake for the 45nm chips in the new bios

What is "stock" on this board?

[ReverendMaynard]

I found this here in another thread...



You can check out your Performance Level in Everest under the chipset listing.

umm what? lol





my settings 3.6ghz...super solid, the only thing that I change for 3.825ghz and up is the vcore.

[Coroner Kyle]

I wanted to give a feedback on Western Digital hard drives
On the ASUS forums, some people reported bad expierience even with the new Caviar SE16 WD6400 AAKS. It is a new drive based on 320Mb high density plates.

Some people reported it was fixed with new motherboards they received from RMA

It looks like the serial numbers after 78xxxxx are ok (7 for 2007, 8 for month 8, that's august). By the way, they are all 2.00G

In my case, I have a 78xxx series, made in China PCB, and I took a risk buying this disk. It runs so great in my setup

So, this WD/Samsung issues should be abscent on new batches and all with serial numbers after 78xxx

Now, you can throw away your noisy and slow barracuda 7200.11 (they're only good for benches and s**ck in real world applications tests) for a Samsung/WD high performance disk.

I just wanted to say that I have got a some of the new WD6400AAKS's and they do work with my board, serial no. 77xxxx.

However, it appears that my sata controller has been very erratic lately.

I have two raptors, one was an OS drive and the other for games. The game drive would just drop when I went to access it in Windows. Now, my OS raptor experiences random slow downs (ex. Vista takes 5+ minutes to load on a 3.6 Quad).

My WD2500KS's that I took off of my raid card will not work on the board. The 250's show up in Windows, but I cannot access them. Looks like I need to RMA.