ASUS P5W DH - Problems + Fixes Thread

[Xeon Zombie]

I just wondered if 800Mhz XMS was intended to go higher but some batches were bad, or if getting 10Mhz out of it was lucky...

Sorry if I misunderstood, It's been a long day already, and I'll be leaving the office no time soon, lol.

Depends on what kind you get... I have had awesome success with my most recent kit (800MHz 4-4-4-12) They run just fine at 1000MHz 5-5-5-15, which is a pretty monster OC.

The non-SLI variety, I think they're rated for 5-5-5-12 ( I may be wrong) do not OC as well.

You should definitely be able to get more out of the 4-4-4-12 version. I am really suprised at the 10MHz increase. I am thinking it is related to something else. (poor BIOS support for the processor, etc.) Do you have another system you can test them in?

[mikepaul]

You should definitely be able to get more out of the 4-4-4-12 version. I am really suprised at the 10MHz increase. I am thinking it is related to something else. (poor BIOS support for the processor, etc.) Do you have another system you can test them in?

Nope. And again, 10Mhz was established a long time back now. I just ran with what worked best, then when adding the extra 2GB forced me back from 1:1 I just sucked it up and hoped the extra RAM helped.

Now with the Q9450, currently underclocked to 2Ghz to keep it from crashing, I see I need all the help I can get. WinAVI uses 4 cores when converting MPEG-2 to WMV, apparently ONLY if all 4 are really empty when it starts. Kaspersky's rootkit scan had already started on its daily schedule, and I saw that WInAVI was barely hitting 9 frames per second. So thinking it'd pick up the pace if I killed the scan, I did that and now see one lousy core doing all the work with a vague rumble on the other 3. No sign that WinAVI is capable of looking at the current status of the machine and rethreading if the coast is clear.

So it looks like I have to check the Process list every time I want to do something intense, and if the coast is clear I can kick off a Power Application like WinAVI. Otherwise I end up waiting longer than I ever expected after $300 and (still ongoing) work getting my 4 cores. Nearly 30 frames per second during the few days 2.66Ghz ran right.

ASUS Tech Support wrote back, saying they don't know when a better BIOS for a Q9450 is due. Seems like they could have gotten word from the developers, if they all worked for the same company and the company actually cared. Must not work that way.

At least now I cut the rootkit scan back to every 4 days to balance paranoia against hardware flaws...