Gigabyte MA790FX DQ6

[Lightman]

@Aussie FX
It is stable for me, very stable. I haven't tried much overclocking yet, but cold boots are gone, at least at HTT230, 2645MHz!

Update: I've now played for over an hour in GRID at 2760MHz! No problem!! On previous BIOS this setting was somewhat stable only to do 3DMark06 and that if I was lucky. Normally hang up was after 3-10 minutes !
So now I can tell that BIOS F5C is better and more stable for me! Let's try 2.8GHz (instant hang up before)...

[Aussie FX]

Good news.

I'm off to get it then.

[Rammsteiner]

Hmmm, my DQ6 should come back soon enough from RMA. So keep us updated please. Also Ill order a new 9850BE in hope for a better stepping so I hope I finally get some stuff rolling then.

[-= rtz =-]

Aussie,thx for the input

Can some of the more experienced clockers help me out a bit with tweaking 5000+ BE on this board? I tried 300x11 (3300 MHz) with 1.42v cpu,chipset and htt voltages +0.1v. When mem divider in bios was set to 533 MHz prime "max heat and power consumption test" ran fine for 30 minutes. However,when I raised mem divider in bios to 667 MHz which gave 942 MHz frequency,the blend test in prime crashes after 1 or 2 minutes.RAM is Crucial ballistix PC6400 and ive set all latencies manually in bios to slowest,with the 4 main ones beeing 5-5-5-15. Auto xpress is turned off. Not even 2.1v on ram helped here. If i need to raise voltages,which ones should I raise? If it helps at all,its always one core that crashes.Load temp in max heat test was 45C after 30 minutes with cpu on 1.42v/1,44 under load.

[Aussie FX]

Try small fft's just to rule the ram in/out, on the 667 divider. If it crashes it's the cpu if not, then it's ram.
Being a K8 you can afford to give the ram 2.2v, it's probably rated to 2.4v.

Try that and post back.

[-= rtz =-]

Try small fft's just to rule the ram in/out, on the 667 divider. If it crashes it's the cpu if not, then it's ram.
Being a K8 you can afford to give the ram 2.2v, it's probably rated to 2.4v.

Try that and post back.

Will do it today evening when I get home. Ram is rated 2.2v so Im a bit sceptical to go above 2.1v since I dont have active cooling on it (TRUE makes it impossible to put a blower on the modules).
Can u tell me how far can I go with chipset and htt voltages? ATM they are arround 1.35v.

BIOS was successfully flashed to F5c,just got a small error after flashing to F3 bios,it said "Backup BIOS checksum error" or sometn and then restarted,I guess thats normal process of updating the backup bios?


\\\edit: I just ran the small FFT test and it passed fine,for 15-20 min.After that I even tried lowering cpu voltage to 1.4v instead of 1.42v and it passed again.. blend test keeps crashing tho.I gave ram 2.2v for blend test and it didnt help.Chipset voltage and htt are 1.35v.HTR voltage IIRC is 1.30v. \\\edit 2: CPU runs for 30 mins on 1.37v,small FFT test,it crashes on 1.35v.

[Rammsteiner]

Årsak: A_Replacement for returned productVervanging voor teruggekeerd product, RMA 700466391. Het testresultaat komt overeen met de foutmelding.\

Meaning... IM GETTING A REPLACEMENT DQ6 BACK!

[-= rtz =-]

How many of u are using Easy tune pro for overclocking?
Im getting some weird issues lately,I cannot put 300x11 directly on 1.37v which proved stable in max FPU small FTT test in prime.I have to go 1.42v,then 1.4 and then 1.37v.Whenever I try to set 1.37v directly it crashes immediatly.Does someone know why is this happening? Should htt be increased slower,first 250 and then 300 or it doesnt matter? This could be the reason why i cant get ram stable on 942 MHz 5-5-5-15 on 2.2v.Maybe 2.3 is needed first and then lower it untill a stable voltage is found...Im confused to say the least

[G0ldBr1ck]

I have finely had a problem come up with my 9850 that I have kept overvolted for a few weeks now. This has just been an experiment to see how longe it it could stay at 1.56 before degrading as I was going to RMA it anyways because core 0/2/3 are all stable at 1.38v@3.0ghz but takes 1.56v on core #1. In these almost 3 weeks it has not lost its stability from any degrading witch I was happy to see........BUT........yesterday when I came home from work and started up all the benchmarks I keep running on the machine to keep it working hard all night I noticed the Bench scores were all way down. After looking into what was going on I finely noticed the problem (wich should have been easy to spot but somhow took for ever to find). The 9850 was only reporting 3 cores on every piece of software i Have and even Vista. is listed as 9850be 3cores/3Threads. tryed clearing cmos=no change. The 3 cores are listed as 0/1/2 but they are stable at the 1.38v@3.0ghz so I assume it was core #1 that was weak to begin with thats missing.

Lastly i pulled the cpu from my DQ6 board its on and put into the DS5 system to rule out any wierd driver isues and still only 3 cores.

It appears that the cpu can keep operating if you loose a core and just go into tri core mode?

Just figured Id share this odd experiance with the rest of you if you havent allready heard of this........and im off to RMA my tri-core 9850BE That of coarse has never been overvolted (Wink,wink). And Im gonna order a DFI board as well to add to the collection of 790fx boards.

[Lightman]

I have finely had a problem come up with my 9850 that I have kept overvolted for a few weeks now. This has just been an experiment to see how longe it it could stay at 1.56 before degrading as I was going to RMA it anyways because core 0/2/3 are all stable at 3.8v@3.0ghz but takes 1.56v on core #1. In these almost 3 weeks it has not lost its stability from any degrading witch I was happy to see........BUT........yesterday when I came home from work and started up all the benchmarks I keep running on the machine to keep it working hard all night I noticed the Bench scores were all way down. After looking into what was going on I finely noticed the problem (wich should have been easy to spot but somhow took for ever to find). The 9850 was only reporting 3 cores on every piece of software i Have and even Vista. is listed as 9850be 3cores/3Threads. tryed clearing cmos=no change. The 3 cores are listed as 0/1/2 but they are stable at the 3.8v@3.0ghz so I assume it was core #1 that was weak to begin with thats missing.

Lastly i pulled the cpu from my DQ6 board its on and put into the DS5 system to rule out any wierd driver isues and still only 3 cores.

It appears that the cpu can keep operating if you loose a core and just go into tri core mode?

Just figured Id share this odd experiance with the rest of you if you havent allready heard of this........and im off to RMA my tri-core 9850BE That of coarse has never been overvolted (Wink,wink). And Im gonna order a DFI board as well to add to the collection of 790fx boards.

This is very interesting and sound like an automated self check build into CPU. Probably one of the server CPU features transfered to desktop.

[Daveburt714]

I have finely had a problem come up with my 9850 that I have kept overvolted for a few weeks now. This has just been an experiment to see how longe it it could stay at 1.56 before degrading as I was going to RMA it anyways because core 0/2/3 are all stable at 3.8v@3.0ghz but takes 1.56v on core #1. In these almost 3 weeks it has not lost its stability from any degrading witch I was happy to see........

DUDE... That is blatent BS!
I told you a while back that you were going to kill that chip running it
at 1.56v's and you said you were willing take the chance to see if it really degraded. Now your going to RMA it?

I hope they see that it's burnt and ing reject your RMA....

That's just sad Bro...

[-= rtz =-]

Im getting weird issues with this board lately...booting issues to be exact. I set certain values in bios and for some time cmos was accepting the values and booted after restart with no problem from first attempt...but lately the board just hangs after first reboot after setting bios values. Im not sure whats wrong here because values I set were tested in prime and were proved stable.

Sometimes the board hangs so hard that not even power button nor reset button work... only plugging out the power cord from power outlet works Sometimes it manages to reset values itself but not every time.. today for the very first time not even plugging out the power cord helped,i had to clear CMOS jumper. After I do that the board boots fine with the same settings it crashed from attempt no.1? Like I said allready,the values it is crashing in first attempt of reboot were tested stable in prime. I always loaded fail-safe defaults after flashing bios. I loaded fail-safe defaults again today after clearing CMOS. Anyone? What is going on?

[G0ldBr1ck]

DUDE... That is blatent BS!
I told you a while back that you were going to kill that chip running it
at 1.56v's and you said you were willing take the chance to see if it really degraded. Now your going to RMA it?

I hope they see that it's burnt and ing reject your RMA....

That's just sad Bro...

If they reject it then they just do. Ill buy another then no big deal.
What I dont understand is how this angers you! I mean come on It would be kinda crazy to not at least see if thay will RMA it. You act like I told you that you were wrong, I simply allready had a small isue with it from the start and figured I would take the opratunity to learn a bit more about the chip before I sent it back. If they reject then so be it. That was the chance I was willing to take.

Hope you wake up on the other side of the bed tomarow cause the side you got up on today isnt working for ya.

[keithlm]

.....and im off to RMA my tri-core 9850BE That of coarse has never been overvolted (Wink,wink).

Personally I'd never be able to live with myself if I was that deceitful. If you hold back any information, or if you feel the need to not reveal that information, then you are probably doing something that is less than truthful.

But hey, it takes all kinds of people to make up the world.

I would highly recommend that you NOT broadcast your devious actions on a public forum. BUT if you choose to do so... please DO NOT even pretend to act surprised when people get a bit angry with you. On some forums the moderators would ban you for revealing such dishonesty.

[G0ldBr1ck]

ok, to Daveburt714, keithlm, and Anyone else that takes offence that I would RMA an Overvolted CPU. I Apologise to you. I assume then it would be safe to say that those that are offended have never Downloaded music without the proper license to own it or have never used any trial software a day past the trial period and other such things. I cannot say the same for myself, so truely that makes you a much better people then me. I am not here to offend anyone but rather to share my findings with the rest of you. Like I said I Apologise for offending you with my poor ethics and I will not make such a mistake again so now maybe we can put all this behind and just focus on figuring out how to make these damn Gigabyte boards work.

-= rtz =- : I Also had the same problem but only after updating bios to F5c. Just about anything I changed in bios would work untill I shut down. On restart would get no post and had to reset cmos. As long as I didnt change settings in bois it was fine there fore after F5c I had to do all changes in AMD Overdrive.......did not have this problem with F4.

[-= rtz =-]

G0ldBr1ck: Thx man,its a big relief to hear that.I didnt have this on stock F2 bios neither.Also now when I find a setting that works after shutdown (boots from 1st attempt) it takes about 10+ seconds to show the POST screen.

I also noticed that 3dmark 06 cpu test and some games can crash the cpu even if it runs for over 60 minutes stable in prime max FPU stress test.

Im seriously considering re-flashing back to F2 or even F1 bios,I heard older bios on this board works better with X2's? I only wonder what will happen if the backup bios is F3 and is there a possibility to screw up something by reflashing to older bios? What happens to backup bios? It gets reflashed as well or it remains on F3 version?

[Brother Esau]

So hows everything going in Gigabyte and Fellas? Keith , Dave , Aussie , Etc , Etc

[LIKMARK]

Haha bro, nice sig had to see through the whole thing

[G0ldBr1ck]

-= rtz =- : I had my 6400+be on this board first before the phenom. I had it on bios F2 and never ran into any problems that i recall untill I dropped in the phenom. From what I understand F3 is the only bios that flashes the backup bios so it should be no problem for you to flash back to F2 but your backup bios will remain F3 so if you ever incounter a checksum error in bios and it re-wrights itself from the backup you will then be on F3. Im not so sure that there are any isues with the F3 bios and X2 cpu's anyway so you might just try going back to it instead first.

I was able to hit some near record breaking OC's with my X2 and this board on water on the older bios and was very, very happy with this board untill I swaped in the Phenom.

Also, I have not used the same ram your using on this board seems to be a bit picky with ram. If you havent allready you might check in AMD Overdrive or another program to verify that your ram timings are actualy set to its recomended spec's you may very well have a couple timings way off due to the boards inability to set the correct timing. Only reason I mention this is that i had some problems with my G.skill ram crashing somtimes in Games but having no problems with stress tests and mem tests............so might be worth a look.


Brother Esau: Is that OC stable thats noted in your Sig.......2.8ghz@under 1.3v?

[Rammsteiner]

ok, to Daveburt714, keithlm, and Anyone else that takes offence that I would RMA an Overvolted CPU. I Apologise to you. I assume then it would be safe to say that those that are offended have never Downloaded music without the proper license to own it or have never used any trial software a day past the trial period and other such things. I cannot say the same for myself, so truely that makes you a much better people then me. I am not here to offend anyone but rather to share my findings with the rest of you. Like I said I Apologise for offending you with my poor ethics and I will not make such a mistake again so now maybe we can put all this behind and just focus on figuring out how to make these damn Gigabyte boards work.

Well, you've my vote mate.

As it was borked right from the start already, then I only appreciate your testing since you only took a big chance of the shops not accepting RMA. If they find traces of Overvoltage and not your initial issues they just blaim you.

Although there should be a stopline somewhere, but well, everyone does things which aren't allowed in the first place. And the downloading part is a perfect example. Im not saying all these things are ok to do then, but dont flame people while you might not be such a sweet angel either.

Just stop over it, it's all about testing and not your feelings. Keep those for your self.

[-= rtz =-]

G0ldBr1ck: thx again,will flash to F3 bios when I get home and post back how it went.

[keithlm]

So hows everything going in Gigabyte and Fellas? Keith , Dave , Aussie , Etc , Etc

Hey Brother Esau --

I'm ready to ditch the good ship Gigabyte.

1. They have a problem releasing timely bios updates to support what they need to support.
2. Their boards don't work as well with various types of RAM. (Which some people like to claim is "intel" only RAM. But in reality... RAM is RAM. Besides this ram worked absolutely fine with no problems on the DFI; although I did only run Prime95 blend for about 8 hours. But that's better than this board's immediate failure of that same test.)
3. Apparently even when they do work "correctly" it appears they overclock a few hundred Mhz less than other boards. To me this indicates they have a problem; one that probably will never be fixed.

Any ONE of those reasons is enough to get me jumping ship. Now I'm just deciding... order a new NVidia chipset board TODAY or wait until the SB750 boards get released. I may wait for the SB750 reviews and still buy the NVidia.

The DS5 is the ONLY AVAILABLE 790FX chipset motherboard that does not support the 9850. (We know it's not for power reasons; it supports the 9750@125W. So the NT at 2.0Ghz instead of 1.8Ghz is the only "problem".)

OH and Goldbrick: I have nothing on my machine that I do not own. Either music or software. Period. Speeding on the freeway or going a day or two over on trial software is just a little bit different than blatantly doing something unethical. Justify your actions all you want; it does not suddenly make something ethical. But hey... if you can sleep with yourself then GO AHEAD. But again I highly recommend you don't broadcast your intentions to follow such actions on a public forum. When you do you need to expect to be called out on it.

[Rammsteiner]

But hey... if you can sleep with yourself then GO AHEAD.

I really think there should be something worse before someone cant sleep due to his/her actions man. I mean, in the end AMD should have exchanged all B2 steppings with B3's, they didnt do that either. I dont care really, but if you think 'ethical' they should have done. Im very sure all AMD employees sleep everyday nice.

[Brother Esau]

Brother Esau: Is that OC stable thats noted in your Sig.......2.8ghz@under 1.3v?

Yes its stable @ 1.23750vcore set in Bios Heres my settings on Template with a 4hr Prime95 run and it also did just under 5hrs OCCT High Priority CPU Test before a core failed but I believe that was do to Heat as it was 90F in my Room at that point Also will add that I am using OCZ Tony's Modified SPD File for my Reapers

Just to prove my theory that Phenom can overclock with Low Voltage and requires a light and artful Approach, heres a 4hr Prime Run.


DFI LANPARTY UT 790FX-M2R (BIOS 4/15/2008 "Beta")

AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition "B3"

Tuniq Tower 120

OCZ Reaper HPC (PC2-8500) 5-5-5-18 2X2GB

POWERCOLOR AX3870 X2 CROSSFIRE CATALYST 8.4

Auzentech XPlosion

Areca 1231 ML {Intel IOP 341} ~ 6 ~ 250gb Hitachi Sata II Raid 6 ~2~WD 74gb Raptors ~ Raid 0 ~

Plextor 750A

SilverStone OP1000

CM Stacker STC-T01

>HT Link Control:
 
HT Link Width......................... - 16 bit
HT Frequency.......................... - 2GHZ MHz
IH Flow Control Mode.................. - Disabled
HT Link Tristate...................... - Disabled
2x LCLK Mode.......................... - Disabled
Unit Id Clumping...................... - Disabled
 
>CPU Feature:
 
CPU DID.............................. - 1
CPU FID.............................. - 0C
CPU-NB DID........................... - 1
CPU-NB FID........................... - 06
AMD CPU stepping..................... - P0

>DRAM Configuration:

MCT Memory Timing.................... - Manual
2T Mode.............................. - Auto
Cas Latency Time..................... - 5
Pre Charge Delay (tRAS).............. - 18
DRAM RAS# Precharge.................. - 5
DRAN RAS# to CAS# Delay.............. - 5
Bank to Bank Cmd (TRRD).............. - Auto
TRC.................................. - 23T
TRTP................................. - Auto
Write Recovery (TWR)................. - Auto
Write-Read Command (TWTR)............ - Auto
TRFC0................................ - 195ns
TRFC1................................ - 195ns
TRFC2................................ - 195ns
TRFC3................................ - 195ns
Trdrd................................ - Auto
TrwtT0............................... - Auto
Twrrd................................ - Auto
Twrwr................................ - Auto
CS/ODT Pin Fine Delay................ - Enabled
Bank Swizzle Mode.................... - Enabled
Auto Tweak Performance............... - Enabled
Optimal Performance Mode............. - Enabled

>ODC Control Mode:

DRAM Drivers Weak Mode.............. - Normal
Output Drivers Comp................. - Normal
>Channel A:
CPU On-die Termination.............. - 300 ohms +/- 20%
DQS Drive Strength.................. - 1.00x
Data Drive Strength................. - 1.00x
MEMCLK Drive Strength............... - 1.00x
Addr/Cmd Drive Strength............. - 1.50x
CS/ODT Drive Strength............... - 1.50x
CKE Drive Strenght.................. - 1.50x
>Channel B:
CPU On-die Termination.............. - 300 ohms +/- 20%
DQS Drive Strength.................. - 1.00x
Data Drive Strength................. - 1.00x
MEMCLK Drive Strength............... - 1.00x
Addr/Cmd Drive Strength............. - 1.50x
CS/ODT Drive Strength............... - 1.50x
CKE Drive Strenght.................. - 1.50x


>PWM Settings:
 
PWM Control.......................... - Enabled
CPU VID Control...................... - 1.23750v
CPU Vid Special Add.................. - Auto
CPU NB Vlotage Control............... - 1.23750v
CPU NB Vid Special Add............... - Auto
DRAM Voltage Control................. - 1.88v
SB PLL 1.2V Voltage.................. - 1.20v
NB Core Voltage...................... - 1.200v
NB PCI-E Voltage..................... - 1.120v
NB HT Voltage........................ - 1.270v

 
Genie BIOS Settings:
 
Timing Mode.......................... - Manual
Memory Clock value or Limit.......... - DDR 1066
PCIE 3,4 State....................... - Auto
PCIE 2 State......................... - x2
CPU TLB Cache Fix.................... - Disabled
AMD K8 Cool & Quiet control.......... - Disabled
CPU Clock Ratio...................... - Auto
Spread Spectrum...................... - Disabled
CPU Host/HTT Clock................... - 200mhz
CPU Host/HTT Boot Up Clock........... - 200mhz
CPU Host/HTT Adjustment Gap.......... - 5mhz
PCIE Clock........................... - 100mhz

[-= rtz =-]

Allright,reflashed to F3 bios and now a new problem appeared which I didnt have on F5c bios I must mention that I never tested F3 so far,only quickly flashed to it cause of backup bios and immediatly continued with flashing F5c.

330x10 with ram on 533 MHz (826 MHz) will NOT boot on F3 no matter what latencies I set in bios...it will only boot successfully when I set timings to AUTO.
Even if I set slowest/highest timings it refuses to boot,on F5c it was booting with ram on 667 MHz which was actually 1100 MHz,hey,maybe not from 1st attempt but still,it booted when latencies were set manually.

Anyway,here is a screen from AOD with the settings on AUTO.If someone sees anything wrong or weird there,pls,dont hesitate to point me to the light