**Official DFI LanParty UT 790FX-M2R Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[Rammsteiner]

Ahhh you have just bit the lions tail Sir (Miss? )

You see, Dear Mr Rammsteiner (Mrs? ), everything which doesn't make sense makes sense to Phenom, quite incredible don't you think

Yes

Ugh, I dont care if things make sense to Phenom, I WANT IT TO MAKE SENSE TO ME.

How does ganged vs unganged effect stability for DDR800 mode. Is this a general rule or just trial and error?

Oese, you disabled ODT pin fine delay? So what did it really gave you by disabling it? Might try it out as well although I use Micron IC's and that option looks like it stabilizes signals... And Micron doesnt like unstable signals lol.

Justapost, Ill try it when I build everything over on the DFI AGAIN. At least I know it's more likely Ive a crap CPU stepping than that my DFI was broken.

64 bit vs 32 bit OS's... Actually, I dont think it should matter in the end. And besides that, didnt Tony hit 3+Ghz on his with Vista 64? Im nowhere near that.

Ill wait a few weeks till after exams and maybe order a new 9850BE, or if it's close to release a 45nm one. I know at some point it's all stable at 2.7Ghz, just got to mess around again and note even more settings as ganged/unganged.

[Brother Esau]

Watch out, they usually die above 2.3v - I've had 3 kits of them. There's no point in feeding ProMOS kits that much voltage since they have an onboard regulator which won't allow more than ~ 2.25v to the MEM ICs and the rest will just get converted to heat

DFI ending M2R; well what do you expect. Every other individual runs to RMA at the tiniest problem or disaster they cause, and with very expensive, limited and very time taking projects like this, they're left no other choice. RMAs are very costly to the MFG

No not only that but the Heatpipe assembly is costly as well and only devout AMD people are buying AMD currently So jhust in general its cheaper to pimp the cheaper board. They did the same thing with the DFI X38 don't forget because X48 Board was going to be all the Rage. Also I might add D.F.I or any other manufacture can only build to spec what AMD set forth nothing more and nothing less. The 790FX is AMD's first release partnered up with ATI Merger so lets just look at this as growing pains and expect to see much better with future releases

[Rammsteiner]

Oh, on a sidenote. Ive one positive result:

I ran my RAM DDR800 3-3-3 with slightly tweaked subtimings, 75ns etc. That's awesome to know.

[Brother Esau]

Oh, on a sidenote. Ive one positive result:

I ran my RAM DDR800 3-3-3 with slightly tweaked subtimings, 75ns etc. That's awesome to know.

Ha..Ha .... I have you beat! I have successfully Overclocked my Mind with over a 1000 Hits of LSD @.001ns and my IQ is still 148 ...Now thats Awesome to know

[KTE]

I don't share or understand the sentiments of many onliners i.e. no ones guaranteed any overclock, simple as that. So if you get something good at oc, lucky you but if not, then unlucky you.

2900 or even 2800 stable is not crap compared to 9500/9600/9600BE in the last 3 months. No one should ever follow hype, I've no idea why users do that, typically look to detailed testings if you want to save yourself some pain and not become sheepish in following hyped headlines i.e. expecting 3100-3500 like Tony off your new 9850.

Some got good oc 9850 some got not so good. The lowest are still hitting 2800MHz stable, which for the price relative to B2, is still much better.

Camp, my P35 DFI whipped the trash out of any X38 or X48 I've seen for air, so the rest is not even on the map for me but just market deception apart from decent DDR3 support only

As for the M2R/M2RS, the problems are/were nearly all BIOS not hardware [apart from SB600] but thats what you get if you decide to make things complex, Oskar and the team should know that already - stability is the key or you'll only ever target a few rich extreme customers who have a habit of RMA after intentional damage or when they can't be asked working through minute problems. MSI and GBT failed to add many options DFI had not because they couldn't but because it would make the board so erratic, unstable and unpredictable. They said this many times, so the DFI team needs to test these issues before release better. Their offering only now got good for Phenom and now they've decided to end it

Anyway Foxconn is waiting to strike any minute.. has to be good and it comes with SB700

[LIKMARK]

Anyway Foxconn is waiting to strike any minute.. has to be good and it comes with SB700

Hopefully they'll follow up the Mars/Black Ops/Dreadnought boards with a tweakable AM2+ board with SB700. Hopefully

[Brother Esau]

I don't share or understand the sentiments of many onliners i.e. no ones guaranteed any overclock, simple as that. So if you get something good at oc, lucky you but if not, then unlucky you.

2900 or even 2800 stable is not crap compared to 9500/9600/9600BE in the last 3 months. No one should ever follow hype, I've no idea why users do that, typically look to detailed testings if you want to save yourself some pain and not become sheepish in following hyped headlines i.e. expecting 3100-3500 like Tony off your new 9850.

Some got good oc 9850 some got not so good. The lowest are still hitting 2800MHz stable, which for the price relative to B2, is still much better.

Camp, my P35 DFI whipped the trash out of any X38 or X48 I've seen for air, so the rest is not even on the map for me but just market deception apart from decent DDR3 support only

As for the M2R/M2RS, the problems are/were nearly all BIOS not hardware [apart from SB600] but thats what you get if you decide to make things complex, Oskar and the team should know that already - stability is the key or you'll only ever target a few rich extreme customers who have a habit of RMA after intentional damage or when they can't be asked working through minute problems. MSI and GBT failed to add many options DFI had not because they couldn't but because it would make the board so erratic, unstable and unpredictable. They said this many times, so the DFI team needs to test these issues before release better. Their offering only now got good for Phenom and now they've decided to end it

Anyway Foxconn is waiting to strike any minute.. has to be good and it comes with SB700

Oh how true that is Tye how true that is indeed

As for the M2R/M2RS, the problems are/were nearly all BIOS not hardware [apart from SB600] but thats what you get if you decide to make things complex, Oskar and the team should know that already - stability is the key or you'll only ever target a few rich extreme customers who have a habit of RMA after intentional damage or when they can't be asked working through minute problems. MSI and GBT failed to add many options DFI had not because they couldn't but because it would make the board so erratic, unstable and unpredictable. They said this many times, so the DFI team needs to test these issues before release better. Their offering only now got good for Phenom and now they've decided to end it

I agree in every way with that statement! In the Beginning you could just see D.F.I waving good bye as they drive away in the process of abandoning this Motherboard ...I have worked really hard to keep that from happening all of these months by pushing really hard on the Bios front even offering FREE Re-Programming to Beta Testers for Bios Release just knowing that D.F.I watches this forum and they see whats going on in this thread I am really grateful that I have managed to instill enough confidence in future owners of this board for them to actually go out and purchase it and am equally grateful that I have been able to do so and have the member base grow in the manner it has and have so many positive contributers to this thread and towards AMD's cause Its been allot of Hard work but apparently I have pulled it off and now with B3 here its like Spring Break and the Parties Just getting started

NOW......WE will see the kind of Bios Releases that define D.F.I apart from all others!

[Brother Esau]

Now back to Business..........The 4/15/2008 "Beta" Bios is Indeed very stable and a Good Bios! Anyone wishing to try this Beta Release should take confidence in Knowing no Harm will come from it! Just be Mindful that there is Over Volting going on with current Official and Beta Candidates so please tone down the Juice and Test....Test ....Test

Thank you for listening

[Oese]

@ Rammsteiner: disabling ODT pin fine delay gave me 50 real mhz (100ddr) minimum with those rams, virtually at no cost. in fact, i didnt get them to somewhere above 1040 stable with this option enabled, no matter how much vdimm i pushed into them...

to me, it looks like this is some skew option and my corsair ram simply is not compatible to how these things are detremined in the bios..

@ be: of course, igp is nice if thinking about office, but for gaming etc i'll always use a graphics card, especially if the igp would use ram.. i think, for high performance systems an igp does not make sense?

besides, i think its sad that dfi discontinues its high end amd series... i understand perhaps the market volume is too small and there're too many RMAs, but honestly i'd rather pay double the price compared with a gigabyte for all those additional tweaking options... i think that'll be sad if DFI would go away from that philosophie...

[Brother Esau]

Well I will say this again .......The Heatpipe Assembly for the M2R or any other DFI board that has it in the design or spec D.F.I needs to secure Heatpipe Assemblies for that Line up. Yes ? Sounds easy right and nothing to it? Wrong!!!

The Heatpipe Assemblies have to be made to such strict standards so that they are Flat and perfectly in spec from start to Finish just a tiny bit off and you have a worthless pile of unusable Now getting a Company to make these with such strict tolerances number one is not easy let alone getting a company to do it a a reasonable price is also a huge challenge too.

So you see I am willing to wager money on this when I say that it is not cost effective to continue to keep Marketing this Board Due to [A:] Lack of AMD Supporters...[B:] Heatpipe Assembly Not being cost effective due to the ammount of or lack of [A:]

[Rammsteiner]

KTE, Im aware of OC's not being guaranteed. I planned a Phenom for a long time now but I heard about TLB problem and decided to wait for the fix. The fix is here, saw awesome results and got even more excited as I ordered it.

But since the skt 939 Opteron days I dont expect my single CPU to OC like someone else his in like US. Many people hit 2.9~3Ghz back then, I only got to 2.8Ghz. At some point I thought ít's still as fast as a FX-57 anyway, it's faster than what I paid for... Lets play games.

It's 'frustrating' to see worse OC results than other users get, but in the end the tweaking and tuning is damn awesome, and 2.7Ghz is nothing WR breaking but it will do for 24/7 usage. Besides that, I still think it's possible to get at least close to 2.8Ghz if I test some more.

And I didnt OC'd the NB a lot yet, will try that as well.

As I said, Ill wait a few weeks or even wait for 45nm and buy another one. After all B3 is very young.

Brother, LSD is bad for you. Only Amphetamine+caffeine mix is good . And btw, 75ns was for tRFC btw, not latency test in Everest.

Oese, good to know. I might try it out. Another thing which helps a lot for RAM OC's is setting DRAM Driver Weak Mode to Weak. Although this might be IC depending, it worked very well for me.

[EDIT]
And if more VOlts dont help to get RAM better try to play around with Drive Strengths as well, they help a lot.

[Brother Esau]

Brother, LSD is bad for you. Only Amphetamine+caffeine mix is good . And btw, 75ns was for tRFC btw, not latency test in Everest.

LSD @.001ns

[Rammsteiner]

Amphetamine and Caffeine will make you faster though...

Hmmm, real life is comparable to Phenom?

LSD is 'ganged' and makes you faster in brain (synthetic).
Amph+Caf is 'unganged' and makes you faster overal.

[Oese]

weak mode is very ic dependend.. same as with ddr1.. which ram do you use??

[Rammsteiner]

It's in my sig,

4x 1GB Transcend Axe RAM DDR1066+ with D9GMH's

[Brother Esau]

Announcement:........."NEW" D.F.I 790FX-M2R - M2RS / Phenom Thread now open for Business http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=185498

[Oese]

@ rammsteiner: lol i see

@ be

[AlabamaCajun]

OK guys, stop licking the AS5 off the heatsinks

About the Ganged mode. From looking at the AMD developer feeds, running unganged helps with multiple apps and virtualization where they get to have there own ram controller per channel. Ganged works better for gaming including the new multi threaded games since a lot is shared between the threads. This proved true on one of my 4 thread rendering tools. As for stability I've seen no difference yet.

BTW I got the last MR2 "neener-neener-neener"

[KTE]

Post#1561: I can understand

Work at it, if I was near ya, I'd come round and test your chip or take it [with your leave] to test in MBs and drop my own off for you to play with meanwhile but.... I'm not near most of you <sigh>

I expect higher 2800MHz or higher fully stable, if not, then something seems like the barrier to me.

[Jaivan]

Well it turns out that buzzing/screeching noises coming from the PWM inductors wasn't just annoying but a sign that my board was dying.

This is actually the second board that broke on me.

The first board developed the buzzing PWM after about the first week then 2 of the USB ports on the back panels stopped working, so RMAed it.

The second board was working fine I even put a 92mm fan to blow at the PWM and heatsinks on the inductors thinking that the high temperatures were the culprit. This worked fine for a month and then the buzzing came back. Since everything was still working fine I thought it was just an annoyance that I could deal with. Then about a week ago after i updated the BIOS to one of the beta ones I noticed that the vCore was about .2v lower than usual. Thinking nothing of this i just upped the vCore a little to compensate. Then just yesterday i woke up to see my comp crashed I was a little baffled since i have been running my 9850BE at 2.9GHz for about 10 days without a hitch. So I rebooted it wouldn't load windows, fine rested the CMOS (no overclock) and windows booted decided to run BOINC instant crash. Needed to reset CMOS again got back into windows let i idle for about and hour was completely stable then decided to load up p95 as soon as the test started BAM!! crash. Okay that led me to believe the processor had something worng with it so I put my 9500 in loaded up and ran BOINC it ran fine for ~3 hours at stock speeds. So I went to RMA my 9850 thinking it was somehow dying or half dead. Got a new 9850 popped it in and loaded up windows...okay so far so good...try p95... 10 mins later crash. So at that point I was like WTF!! Go and pull out my Gigabyte 790fx-DS5 and put in the the 9850 the it booted and ran BOINC for about and hour. This led me to believe that the PWM had some sh*t wrong with it and got it RMAed today.

Hopefully 3rd times a charm

[AlabamaCajun]

AC is now officially in the Lan Party

Not uneventfull. The onboard power switch was decapitated in transit. Must had dropped it and ripped the plastic crappy box the mobo sits in. Cardboard and bag works better. Rebuilt the switch, pain in the AS5 with my aging eyes but had to get 2 small gold contacts back onto the contact rails, one spring that was captured by the buzzer magnet back into the switch body and put the black presser thingy into the slot while getting the two gold contacts into their clips. Then replaced the gray cap on the switch to restore the board to new. So it has not caused any problems but I've not tried to use it.
Build went well after moving all the components from the Chenbro to the Armour. The dealing with some annoying wiring hassles and moving video card, the drive cage and fans around a little.

Power connected back switch on and the little LEDs on the board saying lets play. OK hit the power switch fans kick in then idle back a little signaling an instant boot and ready to go to BIOS. Wait, what, pop-fzzzt Oh **** look down to see and unwelcome glow and a few small sparks WTF Press the front switch, by now smoke is pouring out of the CD area I can see a short in the wiring, system is still booting. Power Off, Power Off, **** Power shuts off for a second and restarts, **** graps PSU switch OFF Upon inspecting the scene of the crime I discover the only floppy cable on this PSU that powers my front panel is a roasted spaghetti. What I figured out was when I slid the DVD/CDR in I caught that wire and skinned it on the yellow. The PSU should have shut down but did not have a problem dropping a few amperes into a smoldering wire. After cutting the destroyed wire from the cable I was able to boot, pull in all the drivers and in business. I thought it was the board but saved from disaster I get to see this thing strut this weekend. For the next few days, Ill dig around and maybe bump the hz to 2.6G for some testing. Now I feel the spider power

[Kayin]

Hey bro, what part of AL? We might have to get our heads together and bench sometime, as we seem to be the only ones in this state with AM2+...

[Oese]

AC lucky you... sounds like a real adventure there..

[AlabamaCajun]

No clocks yet until I can spend more time watching temps and checking everything. So far, I love the board, even more than my P35-DS3P that is just a sweet board. This one is a dream. Actually has a temp diode in the VReg area "S-weet". Compared the the GBT board, the idle temps are 7C cooler even without all my fans put in. BIOS readings were 45-CPU, 52-VR, 37-MOBO/case. I did run a couple of sims last night and did not see any hickups that I saw on occasion with the GBT. Tonight, I'll venture into a few more settings and a little gaming to see where this thing will go. As for the Front Panel (Old Nexus with fan ctrler and temps) it may have bit the dust, not sure if it got -12v through the +5V circuits but the connector was scorched. I'm just ready to see what the Phenom can do on a REAL MOBO!

Lesson learned, don't always expect the PSU to shutdown in a short, not when it can deliver 60 welding AMPs at 12V and not bat a MOSFET. On a cheap PSU it would have either shutdown or popped.

[Brother Esau]

Boards alright Alabama?