My Dual Harper - Asus Z7S WS living review *56K warning*

[Jaco]

New bios is installed on my Asus Z7S.
No new options in the bios at first sight.

First impressions :

CpuZ opens up normal (took 4-5 min with the 0201 bios)
Small performance increase : judging by some quick Superpi runs.
Looks fine to me as far as i can tell.

E5420 2.5Ghz overclocked 430 x 7 = 3010Mhz
With the old bios (0201):

superpi 1M 16.344
superpi 2M 42.235
superpi 16M 8m57.641

E5420 2.5Ghz overclocked 430 x 7 =3010Mhz
New bios (0302)

superpi 1M 16.156
superpi 2M 41.781
superpi 16M 8m54.969

[jcool]

New bios is installed on my Asus Z7S.
No new options in the bios at first sight.

First impressions :

CpuZ opens up normal (took 4-5 min with the 0201 bios)
Small performance increase : judging by some quick Superpi runs.
Looks fine to me as far as i can tell.

E5420 2.5Ghz overclocked 430 x 7 = 3010Mhz
With the old bios (0201):

superpi 1M 16.344
superpi 2M 42.235
superpi 16M 8m57.641

E5420 2.5Ghz overclocked 430 x 7 =3010Mhz
New bios (0302)

superpi 1M 16.156
superpi 2M 41.781
superpi 16M 8m54.969

Yeah I think Cinebench improved a bit, too.
Other than that, there aren't any major changes, what I noticed:

- FSB spread spectrum option is gone, had it disabled anyways
- they added something to the SATA menu, like compatible or enhanced mode for IDE... don't really get it so I left it alone (there still is the main Sata mode option with enhanced, compatible, IDE; AHCI, Raid etc)

@redmodel: I don't know about 667 mems, but I can assure you I am 24h prime blend stable at FSB 430 with mem running synced. However, a friend of mine noticed strange behaviour with 667 ram when running a FSB 333 CPU. His measured ram bandwidth was extremely low, especially when he overclocked the system to FSB400. Didn't have that problem with 800 rams, and we're all using them around here, hence no problems. The Z7S doesn't seem to like 667 mem.
Dunno about LAN teaming, I'm hard-pressed to get my gigabit network to perform (always stuck between 15 and 22% grrr). Oh and I don't use eSATA, can't help you there either.

@Dustin:

Glad you finally managed to register with XS forums
I don't really see a problem with shortening the mobo, I ran it for like 3 weeks on a table and I use stadnard metal standoffs in the case, no problems whatsoever.
I do recommend using a case featuring the mountings for the CPU coolers, otherwise you'll be stuck with a bending mobo, especially if you use HR-01 X heatsinks.

About the temps, I'd recommend replacing the NB sink with a Thermalright HR-05 IFX or, if you can get it, the Alpenföhn Ötzi (has a bigger base plate).
You'll have to actively cool the mems too, unless you mount special heatsinks on them.

[drewhemm]

Dunno about LAN teaming, I'm hard-pressed to get my gigabit network to perform (always stuck between 15 and 22% grrr).

Hi Jcool, did you have any other problems with LAN teaming? I am trying to get my two adapters to work together as one as they are connected to a gigabit switch. One thing I find weird is that one of the adapters will only negotiate at 100MBPs half duplex and the other at 1000MBPs full duplex. I have tried under XP and Vista (both x64) and also tried setting the speed manually via the driver, which causes negotiation to fail completely...

When I team the adapters, web browsing almost grinds to a halt, something is definitely wrong - any help would be appreciated.

Regards

Andrew