The Maximus Formula Thread - Help/OCing/Guide/Rampage conversion

[OVERK|LL]

fine gtl control is the main thing...

Interesting, just did some reading up on it and it sounds like it could be extremely beneficial, so I see what you mean.

[OVERK|LL]

I have had this Maximus since November 2k7, seems once you sort one bug out another comes along the way.
Just flashed the board back to MF bios 1201, WOW what a performance hit on the boot time, I'm calling Asus now to start the RMA process I have an SE so I will get a Maximus Extreme, looks like I get to go DDR3
Still going to get the DFI once you post me some results

Do you feel the flashing of the board to the RF had any effect on it's demise? I think it's a novel idea, but am sort of concerned about any detriments to the board's life expectancy.......

Other than the chipset difference, are the RF and MF basically identical?

[Grnfinger]

Interesting, just did some reading up on it and it sounds like it could be extremely beneficial, so I see what you mean.

Out of curiosity what city are you in ??

[OVERK|LL]

Out of curiosity what city are you in ??

PTBO You?

[Grnfinger]

PTBO You?

Brockville, its between Ottawa and Kingston

[OVERK|LL]

Brockville, its between Ottawa and Kingston

Yep, I know where Brockville is, I'm about two hours from Kingston, it's where the 115 ends.

[Nuckin_Futs]

Is the RF hack adding any day to day benifits for the 45nm quads, more spacifically the Q9450 or Q9550? I seam to be at the 455FSB wall, but only gave it 1.48v and 1.648v PLL. FSBT was now way off from what it was before. my last setting to equal 1.472 became 1.34v Is there still anybody with a simular 45nm quad or just ones that dont feel like responding to mine?
Just curious!

[Grnfinger]

Is the RF hack adding any day to day benifits for the 45nm quads, more spacifically the Q9450 or Q9550? I seam to be at the 455FSB wall, but only gave it 1.48v and 1.648v PLL. FSBT was now way off from what it was before. my last setting to equal 1.472 became 1.34v Is there still anybody with a simular 45nm quad or just ones that dont feel like responding to mine?
Just curious!

I dont have a 45nm quad but from what I hear none or very few like high fsb.
This is why I bought another 65nm quad, I would rather have a little more heat for alot more oc. I honestly dont see the RF bios giving you any more headroom, it will give you better bandwidth tho. There has been talk of a FSB hole and if you can find it you should be able to get 3.8-4.0 but again its not every chip.

This might be of interest to you, its a rampage bios setting but it will work with little effort on a MAximus ( the bios are almost identical) http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=196

At 3.6GHz what are your temps like on the 45nm?

[dude_500]

I'm running 450x8 right now and I can't boot 451 or anything over 450. I've put up all my voltages a little across the board and can't even get one more megahertz on it. Any thoughts? Is it just the wall on my board?

[OVERK|LL]

So what exactly are the benefits of the Rampage conversion? I hear increased memory bandwidth and greater tunability, are there any detriments? Negative affects? I remember reading somebody talking about temperature skew?

[ZenEffect]

So what exactly are the benefits of the Rampage conversion? I hear increased memory bandwidth and greater tunability, are there any detriments? Negative affects? I remember reading somebody talking about temperature skew?

not just increased memory bandwidth... INSANE memory bandwidth. I dont think there were any negative effects what so ever, and the temperature skew was corrected in later bios... not that you should be reading the temp from any asus utility anyways

@ Grnfinger.

my first *absolute first* impression of the dfi is this. their website is slow as , and doesnt contain any bios for my motherboard. it wouldnt post with the E7200, so logically thinking, the bios it shipped with does not support this cpu (that is within reason to me)

[OVERK|LL]

not just increased memory bandwidth... INSANE memory bandwidth. I dont think there were any negative effects what so ever, and the temperature skew was corrected in later bios... not that you should be reading the temp from any asus utility anyways

@ Grnfinger.

my first *absolute first* impression of the dfi is this. their website is slow as , and doesnt contain any bios for my motherboard. it wouldnt post with the E7200, so logically thinking, the bios it shipped with does not support this cpu (that is within reason to me)

SWEET!!!!

OK, that sounds reasonable. So, 401 is a good choice then? My temps are read via the kernel and displayed via GKRELLM.

[Dostoyevsky77]

I have had this Maximus since November 2k7, seems once you sort one bug out another comes along the way.
Just flashed the board back to MF bios 1201, WOW what a performance hit on the boot time, I'm calling Asus now to start the RMA process I have an SE so I will get a Maximus Extreme, looks like I get to go DDR3
Still going to get the DFI once you post me some results

I'm with you. Let me know what you decide, because I'm ready to dump this board too. I'm thinking DFI X48.

[Lestat]

i dont know what you all are complaniing about i have the stuff in my sig and has been running solid for quite a long time. I am still on the 0907 board.

granted i do get the dredded "DET DRAM" error once in a while on boot but other than that,, i couldn't be happier.
thank jesus this board never cost me retail though cuz i would never pay this much for a board.

a final thought though,, i have yet, out of the many boards i hae had, seen a board with the ram overclocking abilities of my old faithful P5N-E SLI.. i have yet to have any baord run as high of mhz as that board did.
so much that i am tempest to sell this baord and get the 750i board...

[OVERK|LL]

Rampage conversion done, used the 403 BIOS. Just running revdep-rebuild on that box right now, had a few package issues related to a world update I did prior to reboot so I'm on my lappy right now. I have had ZERO problems with this board thus far, and am quite impressed with this CPU.

[Zucker2k]

not just increased memory bandwidth... INSANE memory bandwidth. I dont think there were any negative effects what so ever, and the temperature skew was corrected in later bios... not that you should be reading the temp from any asus utility anyways

I've always wondered what the fuss was about the so-called "increased memory bandwidth" of the RF bioses over MF bioses. The little comparison I did with Grnfinger was a draw at best: postcount 2719

Grnfinger's response: postcount2838

My response: postcount 2846

Grnfinger's post: postcount 2857

My response: postcount 2863

My final post on the subject: postcount 2882 This actually favored the MF bios over the RF per the comparison with Grnfinger. Yes, the RF gives you more control over how to tweak certain settings, but the MF bios offer the same performance, if not more, if you know how to tweak it.

[ZenEffect]

I've always wondered what the fuss was about the so-called "increased memory bandwidth" of the RF bioses over MF bioses. The little comparison I did with Grnfinger was a draw at best: postcount 2719

Grnfinger's response: postcount2838

My response: postcount 2846

Grnfinger's post: postcount 2857

My response: postcount 2863

My final post on the subject: postcount 2882 This actually favored the MF bios over the RF per the comparison with Grnfinger. Yes, the RF gives you more control over how to tweak certain settings, but the MF bios offer the same performance, if not more, if you know how to tweak it.

your fsb has a lot to do w/ your results. lower your fsb to 450 and compare results. perhaps my i should re-state what i said. it gives an insane bandwidth increase @ lower fsb.

*edit*
im missing the crash free bios right about now... dfi bios is DEEP.

[Zucker2k]

your fsb has a lot to do w/ your results. lower your fsb to 450 and compare results. perhaps my i should re-state what i said. it gives an insane bandwidth increase @ lower fsb.

Zen, it's all in strap/trd manipulation. No advantage to the RF bios, except I repeat, better/direct control over these settings.

[ZenEffect]

Zen, it's all in strap/trd manipulation. No advantage to the RF bios, except I repeat, better/direct control over these settings.

the trd manipulation is what makes the rampage. otherwise you are right, there pretty much is no difference. in my case, the trd manipulation allowed me to go from pl8 to 6, which increased my bandwidth. i was unable to do this on mf. i will conceded to usage may vary.

[Nuckin_Futs]

I dont have a 45nm quad but from what I hear none or very few like high fsb.
This is why I bought another 65nm quad, I would rather have a little more heat for alot more oc. I honestly dont see the RF bios giving you any more headroom, it will give you better bandwidth tho. There has been talk of a FSB hole and if you can find it you should be able to get 3.8-4.0 but again its not every chip.

This might be of interest to you, its a rampage bios setting but it will work with little effort on a MAximus ( the bios are almost identical) http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=196

At 3.6GHz what are your temps like on the 45nm?

37~39c depending on vcore of up to 1.48v I will try again to see if I can get past that hole. I may have been using more vcore then needed. Everest and other OS based monitors read the temps different, much higher all across on cores. It is sticking around 55c since stock and on as high as 1.48 when idle but maxed to 75c on the highest and 69c on lowest in Prime95. No throttling even at said 75c and TR120 feels cool narely warm at base and tips. Believe me, the Q6600 @ 1.48v felt nice and hot even to the tips of heat pipes w/ pleny of warm air out the back. So this thing isnt running out of CPU cooler just yet. What other core temp monitoring can read the 45nm quads correctly or is it the BIOS v1004? Is it worth testing RF 401 or mentioned 403? If S3 will work, I'm all there. Just to note, S3 still doesnt work even by changeing to 45nm so it is my BIOS.

But how high is still safe for 45nm quads?

[aussie-revhead]

Have you tried realtemp ? For me it seems to read lower than coretemp , so I hope its more correct.

[Nuckin_Futs]

Good deal, It worked, core Temp was reading 10c over same for Everest. I cant get it stable over 460 even upping FSBT to 1.504v and PLL to 1.648 and vcore to 1.45v NB as much as 1.6 (never had to use that high before on this mobo but it stayed rather cool surprisingly. 45nm has less stress on the chipset I guess. Even at that vcore it hasnt throttled yet (testing 1.45v @ 450FSB not more then 65c

In a nut shell I'm not liking the so little overclockability, even if general performance feels smoother then Q6600 at if the same FSV & FID levels. I may just go back to 65nm untill I see more improvements or hear more about X3350 to at least 480x8FSB as a 24/7 CPU.

[XtremeTiramisu]

Have you tried realtemp ? For me it seems to read lower than coretemp , so I hope its more correct.

Lower than Core Temp becouse Real Temp reads the Tj max temp 5 degrees below Core Temp. Take Q6600 G0 fore example, Core Temp reads its Tjmax = 100 and Real Temp reads its Tjmax at 95. Tjmax minus delta temp = core temp reads from the diodode. In this case, there is always an exact temp difference by 5 degree from each core.

[aussie-revhead]

Thats fair , so which is accurate ?

[Grnfinger]

37~39c depending on vcore of up to 1.48v I will try again to see if I can get past that hole. I may have been using more vcore then needed. Everest and other OS based monitors read the temps different, much higher all across on cores. It is sticking around 55c since stock and on as high as 1.48 when idle but maxed to 75c on the highest and 69c on lowest in Prime95. No throttling even at said 75c and TR120 feels cool narely warm at base and tips. Believe me, the Q6600 @ 1.48v felt nice and hot even to the tips of heat pipes w/ pleny of warm air out the back. So this thing isnt running out of CPU cooler just yet. What other core temp monitoring can read the 45nm quads correctly or is it the BIOS v1004? Is it worth testing RF 401 or mentioned 403? If S3 will work, I'm all there. Just to note, S3 still doesnt work even by changeing to 45nm so it is my BIOS.

But how high is still safe for 45nm quads?

I was one of the first to flash to the RF bios, I have ran FSB@489 24/7 for months and I have never experienced ANY negative effects from the conversion. My USB controller issue was user error I changed NB/SB volts for a test and when I resumed my regular quad overclock I forgot to up my NB/SB volts RF bios 403 is rather stable and seems to have the det dram issues solved.
I have never had an issue with S3, I set it to S3 Only in bios and has always worked for me for maximus or rampage bios. Flashing will take less than a min, it will take you longer to make the usb boot disk. Maybe try it out for a few hours and if you dont like it flash back. I just flashed back to MF yesterday and there was no need to re do my OS, everything played nicely.
And now that my self inflicted USB problem is gone I'm going to flash back to Rampage today

For 45nm c2d the claim is keep cpu volts below 1.45 and I think FSBT max was 1.40. I think cooling plays a large part so if your running cool enough then you should be safe. I was going to buy a Q9450 but the rumors around were very disturbing, so thats why I bought another ( better, lower vid ) 65nm quad. I like the wolfdales speed, the bandwidth is very impressive, but you cant match the power of a quad