"ASUS P5Q Deluxe discussion".

[Cob]

i) If I use the two Orange SATA ports, do I still have to install Windows using RAID drivers? I'm prepared to format the two drives & re-install Vista, that's not a problem - as long as I don't have to do something special, or something I haven't done before.

ii) So for example, I'll see a C: drive of about 600GB, on which I can do anything I want, like partitions, etc.

One last Query: I know that on RAID 0 if any disk fails, all is lost - whereas in RAID 1 if one disk fails, you can replace it & nothing is lost. But you do get twice the size using RAID 0 and half the size using RAID 1. Just exclusively performance wise - is there a difference between RAID 0 & RAID 1?

Thanks - I appreciate it!

If you use the two orange ports they will automatically set up a RAID0 (well you might have to do a bit of configuring), and therefore they will automatically wipe both drives. And yes you'll have to load the RAID drivers if you wish to install Windows to them.

Are you wanting to put Windows on the RAID? If so then use the red Intel SATA ports.

ii) You'll see an unformatted and unpartitioned 600gb space, just as you would with a brand new single 600gb drive.

RAID1 is slightly slower than non-RAID (it has to deal with writing twice the data to two hard drives). RAID0 is faster than non-RAID (it only needs to write half the data to each drive).

[ChaosMinionX]

Nice Cob, but like pointed out yaself : Try to keep them FSB Term below 1.4 plz... is it really necesarry to run 1.6...? I can do 1.3FSB with 500FSB and the quad... I would up them GTL's a bit more and try to lower FSB Term voltage... Also NB voltage is way up high...

Good show now, tweak those voltages

Q9450/8GB RAM/2 HD3870X2's needs like 1.65vNB stable for me above 400mhz on Maximus... on H20 you dont really have to worry about NB voltage too much, I just wouldnt go over 1.7v.

I will probably wait for the Premium, but the deluxe is looking like an ace board.

[Cob]

Yip I've an 80mm fan propped up against the NB and it never gets hot to the touch.

[LUCI5R]

Are you wanting to put Windows on the RAID? If so then use the red Intel SATA ports.

Definitely need to install Vista as the primary OS. Any particular reason for using the red Intel SATA ports?

RAID1 is slightly slower than non-RAID (it has to deal with writing twice the data to two hard drives). RAID0 is faster than non-RAID (it only needs to write half the data to each drive).

That's what I thought. I think RAID 0 sounds pretty good - considering I would be doing this whole exercise to boost my video encoding/editing.

I can read up a little bit about configuring & setting up in the manual, I'm assuming - I don't think it should be too hard, now that the fundamentals are clear.

[Cob]

Well the Intel southbridge has traditionally been pretty good for RAID, and ICH10R is no different. It's normally better than any 3rd party bolt-on controller.

Just be absoloutly sure that you back up often because twice the drives means twice the chance of failure, and recovering data from RAID'ed drives is an awful lot harder than doing so from a single drive (tho there is a good guide for doing so stickied at the top of this forum).

[LUCI5R]

Well the Intel southbridge has traditionally been pretty good for RAID, and ICH10R is no different. It's normally better than any 3rd party bolt-on controller.

Just be absoloutly sure that you back up often because twice the drives means twice the chance of failure, and recovering data from RAID'ed drives is an awful lot harder than doing so from a single drive (tho there is a good guide for doing so stickied at the top of this forum).

Definitely makes sense, about the Intel Southbridge/ICH10R. Will use the Intel ports, no doubts.

From what I had read, I didn't even know you "could" recover anything off failed RAID 0 drives. The fact that you can, (albeit painfully), only reaffirms my interest in RAID 0. I use my PC mainly for video editing/encoding and all that. All Critical/Archival data I can stash separately. All personal & private data is kept & used on my wife's notebook - so quite honestly, drive failure is really not that big an issue for me. I will have a third separate IDE hard drive installed in the system only for backing up purposes.

Thanks!

[JJU357]

Ok guys just got my new PC up and running. Completely confused as to what I should be setting the ten thousand different settings in the BIOS for this board.

I've read that to push above 400 FSB I'll need to push some more volts into the NB and FSB(or VTT on some boards?) So what are the CPU GTL and NB GTL settings supposed to be like, as well as the PLL voltage? My setup is as follows:

Q9450
P5Q
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 800 - Its corsair and supposedly clocks well. SPD for them at 400 MHz is 4-4-4-12-2T.
2 sata hard drives and 2 sata optical drives
9800GTX

I was also wondering what safe voltages are on air for the NB, CPU, and FSB, and PLL. I've see NB voltages up to 1.7, but that scares me. I've sen CPU voltages up around 1.5 but that also scares me. As for FSB and PLL I have no clue.

Mine will boot up with everything on auto at 8x375 just fine and blend just fine, but at 8x400 it starts to error quickly, but windows seems fine. I think the NB and FSB just need some more.

Sorry for the long post, but theres a lot of these things in this newer board don't understand. Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.

[Cob]

Shouldn't really need to move the chipset voltages off their lowest non-auto setting til 440-450mhz. But set your CPU voltage to 1.3v befoe you start clocking.

Some people are recommending using the auto voltages, but then you have no idea what they are being set to until we have software that can read them in Windows. Plus the 45nm quads are very sensitive to voltage. It's not just a case of setting the voltages high for high FSB. You have to balance them perfectly. Adding just 0.02v to one setting can make a previously rock-solid overclock non-bootable.

[Cob]

Definitely makes sense, about the Intel Southbridge/ICH10R. Will use the Intel ports, no doubts.

From what I had read, I didn't even know you "could" recover anything off failed RAID 0 drives. The fact that you can, (albeit painfully), only reaffirms my interest in RAID 0. I use my PC mainly for video editing/encoding and all that. All Critical/Archival data I can stash separately. All personal & private data is kept & used on my wife's notebook - so quite honestly, drive failure is really not that big an issue for me. I will have a third separate IDE hard drive installed in the system only for backing up purposes.

Thanks!

Now don't be expecting huge differences. But set the stripe size to about 125kb if you mostly deal with large files. I have mine set to 32kb because I have no large files on my RAID0, just Windows and a couple of games.

[Cob]

Nice Cob, but like pointed out yaself : Try to keep them FSB Term below 1.4 plz... is it really necesarry to run 1.6...? I can do 1.3FSB with 500FSB and the quad... I would up them GTL's a bit more and try to lower FSB Term voltage... Also NB voltage is way up high...

Good show now, tweak those voltages

Have you posted your settings for 500mhz stable? I'm now upto 1.5v FSB having tried every GTL from 0.60-0.72 from 1.3v onwards and I still haven't been able to run OCCT for more than 2 minutes. In fact I didn't get to open OCCT til 1.48 and 0.66. And you have to remember that Auto sets the FSB voltage to ~1.58v at 500mhz with the Q9450.

1.6v is coming ever closer again.

[Leeghoofd]

K will pop in the Quad again , will come back to you to see what works for me...

[Cob]

Thanks

[Leeghoofd]

Thanks

K popped in the quad, first tried everything on auto besides Vcore and Ram voltage... booted nicely into Windows, though opening CPU-Z gave an error... started to set things manually one setting at a time and tried again, after several lockups on prime (pc just frooze) these are the points of the Belgian Jury :

JumperFree Configuration Settings
AI Overclock tuner: Manual
CPU Ratio Setting: 8
FSB Strap to North Bridge: AUTO
FSB Frequency: 500
PCI-E Frequency: 101
DRAM Frequency: 1002
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A1: AUTO
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A2: AUTO
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B1: AUTO
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B2: AUTO
DRAM Timing Control: Manual

1st Information : 

CAS# Latency: 5
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay: 5
DRAM RAS# Precharge: 5
DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge: 15
RAS# to RAS# Delay : AUTO
Row Refresh Cycle Time: 45
Write Recovery Time: AUTO
Read to Precharge Time: AUTO


DRAM Static Read Control: Disabled
DRAM Read Training: AUTO
MEM. OC Charger: AUTO
AI Clock Twister: AUTO
AI Transaction Booster: AUTO
Common Performance Level [13]

CPU Voltage: 1.35
CPU GTL Voltage Reference (0/2): AUTO
CPU GTL Voltage Reference (1/3): AUTO
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.6
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.34
DRAM Voltage: 2.10
NB Voltage: 1.36 (2Gb RAM)
NB GTL Reference: AUTO
SBridge Voltage: AUTO
PCIE SATA Voltage: AUTO

Load Line Calibration: Enabled
CPU Spread Spectrum: Disabled
PCIE Spread Spectrum: Disabled
CPU Clock Skew : AUTO (in fact I'm on 0604)
NB Clock Skew : AUTO

Advance CPU Settings
CPU Ratio Setting: Manual
CPU VID: Default
C1E Suppport: Disabled
Max CPUID Value Limit: Disabled
Intel® Virtualization Tech: Disabled
Vanderpool Technology: Disabled
CPU TM Function: Disabled
Execute Disable Bit: Disabled 

Temps are way over what I'm used too with this Quad at 4Ghz (with 10x) so I dropped Vcore to 1.325 and temps dropped 4°C This is an amasing Quad...

[Cob]

It certainly is

CPU Clock Skew : AUTO (in fact I'm on 0604)

Do you mean BIOS 0604? And if you are, why?

[Leeghoofd]

Still looking for that 600/1200 stability thing, was trying some older biosses... and I get to iteneration 24 now so it just has to complete the result lol... maybe a cold nite will help But I think we have to wait for some new biosses to get there... don't think we can count passing SuperPI 32Mb as stable but it's fun to do...

I never touched the CPU and NB Skew function ever... no idea what it does

[Cob]

Yeah anything other than Auto or Normal on the skews results on a non-boot for me.

[Leeghoofd]

Well funny thing i I lauched this no boot thing with 1.3NB voltage and now I cannot replicate it anymore...bummer...Pmp will eat me alive 4 sure...

[R@ptor =]]]

Guys, what is the option on CPU Clock Skew ???
thx

[iboomalot]

MY RAM SUCKS

this twinX is killing me

stable at DDR900 then nothing stable clear down to DDR800

wouldn't boot this morning until I took out a stick now running better.


Can I jump up to DDR3 with the P5Q dlx or do you have to use the P5Q3 mobo

I though I saw a diagram where the P45 can run DDR2 or 3


if running DDR3 what would you suggest?? Mushkin , Ballistix , corsair ???

also keep in mind if I use DDR3 this will have to last and be competitive with bloomfield


thanks for the suggestions

[Cob]

The P5Q Deluxe is DDR2 only. You'll need the P5Q3 for DDR3.

[iboomalot]

I tried reaper 8500 and couldn't even load windows without blue screen or restart

so DDR2 who has 4 ghz + speeds with 500 FSB or better from their DD2 sticks with this board???

[Rise]

I just wanted to mention that I'm up and running with Vista 64-bit (home premium) and it recognized all 8GB of my OCZ Reapers (8500s) no problem. with the exception of one odd crash (just installed drivers) everything is running smooth.

too bad i don't know how to update the bios /newbie

what programs should i get? i've seen a lot of people using CPU-Z, anything else?

[TouGe]

I'm stable @ 8x450 using 5:4 divider using PL8.




I was actually quite easy.
5-5-5-15 tRFC 30
CPU Voltage: 1.26V
CPU GTL (0/2): 0.63
CPU GTL (1/3): 0.67
CPU PLL: 1.50V
FSB Term: 1.20V
DRAM: 2.14V
NB: 1.28V
NB GTL: 0.67
SB: 1.10V
PCIE: 1.50V

LLC: Enabled
CPU/NB Clock Skew: Auto

I was pretty happy with Everest Rd/Wt/Copy but I wish I could drag the latency down a few more points.

[jVIDIA]

Is that 100% error free ?

How do you test it ?

I'm like this :



2x2gb
8 x 450
4:5 ( 1128MHz )
5-5-5-15 trfc 55
PL 8

[TouGe]

^^
I first tested memory: 3 concurrent tests using MemTestPro set at 900 each and ran it until I reached 200% which took about an hour. I then ran Prime95 blend for 6 hours. All of this was done while @ 6.5x450. I then bumped my multiplier up to 8 and ran Prime95 small FFT's for 3 hours. After all was shown to be stable I ran Prime95 blend overnight which came out to be 9 hours without error. I am also currently converting a movie using DivX Author and was just playing FakeFactory's HL2 mod for about an hour w/o any blue screens. So I am pretty sure all is well.

Nice L2 Cache scores. Where is the 4:5 divider @, what strap? I'm on the 266 Strap right now.