**Official ASUS Striker II Formula Discussion/Review/Overclock/Guide/BIOS Thread**

[Marios]

"sfc /verifyonly" showed itegrity issues. i reviewed the file it made, but i havent a clue what it all means. I don't know where the spread spectrum settings are in the OS. i looked at the drives in device manager and nothing.

This problem began a few days after i got my new striker 2 to replace a broken striker 2. I was getting Bsod for no known reason. i reinstalled the os and still got them. I had learned later the issue might have been the sound card being on the same irg as both the video cards. so i swapped pci slots and the sound card is now on it's own irq. i believed the issue to be fixed utill today. I never had this issue with the old board. And all the hardware is the same. Perhaps cause the irq issue caused some damage to the OS software. and even when i reinstalled the OS i had the sound card still sharing the same irq as the video cards cause i didnt know of that issue. Maybe i need to reinstall the OS again. What do you think? And also how would Repair errors reported from the "sfc /verifyonly" if i can't figure out what the error is?

Also i dont need RAID, but how do i install just the sata drivers. Is there a download just for them?

Another thing. When i had issues with the last mobo i thought it might be the hard drive and i took out the main drive and installed vista on one of the 2 other drives i have in. Now that i erased the instal on that drive the drive is still showing up as a active partition. is this a problem?

You may repair errors in a few ways.
The first is to read the log file and check which files are corrupted. Then restore them from a backup. This is the best way. Another way is to run sfc /scannow. This automatically repairs the errors but not always.
You may also try to repair your installation by booting from the Vista DVD. Then there is an option to perform a repair. The best is to perform a new clean installation from a Vista SP1 DVD or a Vista DVD with internet enabled to check for updates during installation or with up to 2GB of system memory (then after the updates you add more memory).
Check your hard disks in case they have a jumper to enable or disable spread spectrum. There is also a spread spectrum option disabled by default on your BIOS. This motherboard does not corrupt the hard disks, unless the hard disk or the memory is defective or you messed up with BIOS settings.
You may check the memory if you press tab during start up or with the latest memtest96+ ISO burned on a CD. There are special programs to check the integrity of your hard disks. You may download them from your hard disk manufacturer.
Install your X-Fi later on, after you have checked everything works fine. Disable the audio on your BIOS before you install X-Fi. Do not install any drivers after installation. Check whether everything works OK. Then install the latest drivers. Avoid programs that read sensors. Even ASUS probe gives video corruption and crash the system.

JBOD
Kevin1970 you don't need it.
This trick is good only for those who need a RAID array like RAID-0 with two disks and they also have a few other SATA disks.
Do not go on reading, unless you already have a real RAID array.
In this case go on reading how to convert the simple SATA devices to JBOD.
This way you install only the SATA RAID drivers and you skip the proprietary SATA IDE drivers that conflict with RAID.

Make a backup of your files just in case you did something wrong.
JBOD is just a bunch of disks. You enable RAID form BIOS on all SATA ports.
Then enter the raid controller during boot by pressing F10.
Create a new array. Select JBOD. Add just one hard disk to the right pane. Save this array but be carefull to check not to delete the contents of the disk. Now you may do the same for the rest of your devices (hard disks and DVD drives) one by one.
Select as bootable the disk you have the operating system.
Enter the BIOS and check your boot devices. That's it.

[Marios]

In case you have Vista and a large perpendicular hard disk (over 700GB) could you please check whether you get errors from your hard disks?

This is the way to check.
Press Start type cmd.exe press enter.
Type winsat disk -flush -drive C.
You may change the letter C to the letter of the hard disk you want to check.
You should get a success response. If not please report back here and go on reading.

In case you did not get a success response, and you have large perpendicular hard disks in any form of raid with the latest Nvidia Nforce drivers installed, check for hard disk errors (nvstor or nvstor64 error) in your event viewer - custom views - Administrative events.

A parity error was detected on \Device\RaidPort1.

[71 (Bryan)]

im pretty sure it isnt the keyboard since when it asks me to press enter , i do and its saays error in floppy Drive A again but imm gonna try somenew batteries and let you guys know how it goes

edit, i check out how the crashfreebios works and heres what i got:
"If you had done the crash free bios 'research' you claim, you would have learned it isn't intended to recover 'hosed' bios resulting from a failed flash. Nothing except eprom reprogramming can recover a 'hosed' flash eprom.

Crash free bios - follow this carefully now - is intended to permit simple recovery from a bios crash due to incorrect bios settings, as you will get from incrementing clock rates or timings during overclocking experiments. It simply lets you get back into bios so you can correct the bad settings"

Edit again, is there any jumpers i have to switch to make this work, i cant find my manual btw =(

[Marios]

No jumpers. The above info you gave us is wrong.
http://support.asus.com/technicaldoc...Language=en-us

Since you used the easy flash BIOS utility to flash a new BIOS you are safe.
There is no way to get a fully corrupted non bootable BIOS since the boot BIOS segment is not updated.
So you should be able to flash any BIOS you want.

[hmetro24]

Hey all,

I

for me, 450x9 is the sweet spot. FAST, but not, imo, too much juice. (orthos/everest/occt stable) Striker/8400 with the following settings:
vcore=1.43750v
nb=1.5v
sb=1.6v
cpuvtt=1.2v
cpupll=1.6v
8GB Mushkin #996599 @ 900 (1:1) 5-5-5-15 2.00v
(it works equally well with 8GB of Hyper-X)

At above 4.05Ghz, core temp's will MAX out around 64-65c under orthos/occt, and this is after a few hours. during Crysis they will not reach 50c...


Regarding the latency issue: Does this only apply to 8GB? I know with 4gb @ 475 I do not experience it. I will double check with 8gb. (most attached pics are with 4GB)


I just got the system stable @ 4275Mhz...
vcore=1.52500v (too much for 24/7)
vram=2.2v
cpugtl=+110
nbgtl=+110
nb=1.52v
sb=1.60v
cpuvtt=1.30v
cpupll=1.60v


Sam

I see that u get goood latency after u cross 1800 fbs
can u telll me about ur overclcok whats ur mem speeed
linkey unlinked sync thx alot

[sammajidi]

I see that u get goood latency after u cross 1800 fbs
can u telll me about ur overclcok whats ur mem speeed
linkey unlinked sync thx alot

I had similar results with both Hyper-X and Mushkin ddr2.
Both setup @ 5-5-5-15 @ 2.0 - 2.1v. Some of the screen caps i uploaded were with 5-5-5-18, but 5-5-5-15 works fine as well.

i set it up linked & sync'd.

4GB I can confirm has no latency issues.
8GB does slow down a little, but not by much (+/- 5ns)... I will re-test w/8GB and post my results when I get home from work.


Sam

[hmetro24]

any 1 have sb and nb cooling , not stock cooling that come with the mobo
and mosfet cooling ??
I only can find nb , cant find sb is it the same ,
what about the small cooler between x16 and x1 pci-x
does it need cooler tooo ??? thx

[71 (Bryan)]

yes but, it only asks me for a floppy, i tried putting in the cd but nothing....

ok i put the bin file on the floppy and now it just says insert systme disk or something like that, i know i have to put something on the floppy other than the bios but im kinda lost atm
pls help me

[nugzo]

In case you have Vista and a large perpendicular hard disk (over 700GB) could you please check whether you get errors from your hard disks?

This is the way to check.
Press Start type cmd.exe press enter.
Type winsat disk -flush -drive C.
You may change the letter C to the letter of the hard disk you want to check.
You should get a success response. If not please report back here and go on reading.

In case you did not get a success response, and you have large perpendicular hard disks in any form of raid with the latest Nvidia Nforce drivers installed, check for hard disk errors (nvstor or nvstor64 error) in your event viewer - custom views - Administrative events.

A parity error was detected on \Device\RaidPort1.

I did not pass with either my single 1TB WD or My RAID 1TB array. It did pass on my 2 150 raptors array. I do not have any errors in event viewer pertaining to hard drives or controllers. I just copied the contents of the Western digital (465GB) to the RAID drives last night. I expected Event Viewer errors like in the 680i early days but found none. I am using 15.15 drivers on my MSI P7N diamond 780i ATM. I did not experience any issues with the Striker either.

[71 (Bryan)]

YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
my striker came back form the grave
im so happy, but i still have 1 dead pc on my hand =(, God my moms gonna kill me

[sammajidi]

I see that u get goood latency after u cross 1800 fbs
can u telll me about ur overclcok whats ur mem speeed
linkey unlinked sync thx alot

Attached pic with 8GB @ 475x2:950/2.1v/5-5-5-15. (Mushkin).

Its runs too hot to stress, but can play games...

[71 (Bryan)]

Marios, thank you so much, you saved my life, imgetting random bsods on 1305 but ill have to lower my clocks untill i flash again, i now have a recovery disk that i can use anytime something goes wrong so every thing should go much easier next time, thx again bro

[Guacamole]

I have to say that I am on bios 1202 with a QX9650 and 4gb of OCZ Reaper 1066 and I am pulling 11,000 read and 48 latency with awesome voltages... I am completely shocked at how well this board is OCing this Quad and the performance is outstanding!! The only problem with this bios is the half multipliers but I am linked and synced at 1680/840 at 4-4-4-12-2t at a 10 multiplier for 4.2 on my Quad and I am killing it... I have never had a better mobo experience this is my second Striker and the first one couldn't do squat but this one is out of control.. I can run 1800 FSB on my Quad all day long unbelievable for a 780i board.. In addition I am prime stable 3D stable and all is well.. And the best part is no corruption like the 790i with all of it's horrible hangups... I just defected from the 790i SIIE and it was the best decision I have ever made!!! Very happy!!!

[slim142]

Nice to hear that Guacomole, so thats the reason of your absence in the SIIE thread :P

[Guacamole]

Nice to hear that Guacomole, so thats the reason of your absence in the SIIE thread :P

Yeah man I am soooo glad to have sent that board back, I mean it was a real hard thing to do because the SIIE was such a great board to OC on and it just did anything you asked, but when it comes to functionality I couldn't do normal tasks which just ruins a borad that costs $450.00... Honestly for $250.00 I would totally put up with the SIIE but for $450.00n I shouldn't have to make any excuses EVER... Anyway Slim I know you have been rocking that board for a while did you ever figure out the video problem??

[Marios]

I did not pass with either my single 1TB WD or My RAID 1TB array. It did pass on my 2 150 raptors array. I do not have any errors in event viewer pertaining to hard drives or controllers. I just copied the contents of the Western digital (465GB) to the RAID drives last night. I expected Event Viewer errors like in the 680i early days but found none. I am using 15.15 drivers on my MSI P7N diamond 780i ATM. I did not experience any issues with the Striker either.

Thank you very much for your info.
You do not need to perform read write operations to get the error.
There is no corruption anyway. We only get one error in event log each time we start Windows. In case we install raidtool, then we get lots of errors and pop up messages. The problem is that there is no way to completely uninstall Raid tool, so I suggest you do not install this.

On first place, this error we get from large hard disks is probably a Vista bug, not an nForce drivers bug. This might be the source of other hard drive problems, like the one I see with JBOD and the latest Nvidia drivers on those drives failing this test.

Does your RAID 1TB array consist of 2X500GB perpendicular hard disks?

Your Western Digital Black WD1001FALS 1TB is a perpendicular hard disk. Could you please check again the driver version of your NVidia nForce RAID Controller? Is it 9.99.0.9 or is it 10.3.0.21?

9.99.0.9 is OK. This version is installed with nforce 9.64 package.
10.3.0.21 has problems under Vista 64. This version is installed with nforce 15.17 package.

There is an obvious difference between those two drivers, since the latest supports Acoustic Management Control on Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller in device manager.

In case your driver version is actually 10.3.0.21, could you convert your 1TB hard disk to jbod and check again the event log for errors (you do not need to perform reed write tests)? Converting your drive to jbod is a safe and very fast procedure and you don't loose anything. I have described this procedure step by step a few posts earlier.

EDIT
nugzo, thank you again for your reply and your efforts. Just in case you didn't know, there are other hard disk drive benches you might run the same way you already did. Here they are.
1. winsat disk -seq -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsize 65536 -v
2. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384 -v
3. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 524288 -v
4. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 2 -iocount 256 -ransize 1048576 -v
5. winsat disk -ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384 -v

You may change the drive the count number or anything you want.
The best test to check your hard drive speed is the first one.
Enjoy

[spajdr]

Thank you very much guys with tips, mems runs alot better now

[slim142]

Yeah man I am soooo glad to have sent that board back, I mean it was a real hard thing to do because the SIIE was such a great board to OC on and it just did anything you asked, but when it comes to functionality I couldn't do normal tasks which just ruins a borad that costs $450.00... Honestly for $250.00 I would totally put up with the SIIE but for $450.00n I shouldn't have to make any excuses EVER... Anyway Slim I know you have been rocking that board for a while did you ever figure out the video problem??

Im almost sure I almost got it
At least now Im able to watch videos (sometimes) without freezes , but will still freeze sometimes, specially with 1080p movies. Its ironic cause I can run 20 hours prime95 but I will freeze in idle, then I could play a movie and will play fine, but if I restart the pc and play a movie it might freeze anytime.
This led me to conclude that is either LLC (Anandtech explained this and makes me think this is the responsable for my issues) or another component might not be getting enough voltage like the SB since I have all 6 ports in use and only at 1.50v.
Whatever the case is, I want to see if I can fix this board before RMAing it with ASUS. Many others including Tyke and OBR say that after RMAing 4 times, they finally got a rock solid board, well we will see how it goes with my testing.

Btw, once again congrats on getting that board working, you using 1401 I suppose right?

[molotov]

Just up to 1401 and set to 445x9 with ram sync linked (4-4-4-12 1T) for the first oc try in 1401. Seems very good because orthos (stress CPU) is stable at:
vcore 1.375 (cpu-z read 1.296) <- may be even lower, will try later
cpu pll 1.5
cpu vtt 1.2
vdimm 1.9
nb 1.4
sb 1.5
HT/Bridge 1.2
GTLs Auto
LLC On

Most of the above are the lowest values I tried set before. Core temps are both 53C and NB is 42C.
I feel this version got a better control on each device/bus/bridge at lower voltages. (Before I can only get stable by increase voltages)
Will start OC to extreme values and I guess better result will be yielded since this sweet bios version.

Do you guys agree?

[Marios]

In my case the problem is not the chipset.
The NB needs 1.34v only to overclock at 420 FSB.
780i SLI chip is great.
CPU PLL is not so important. CPU gtlref at +30 and NB gtlref at +20 are important though.
CPU PLL at 1.44v, HT at 1.3 and CPU VTT at 1.34 are enough to be stable at 420X8.
My Q6700 CPU needs 1.48v (1.44 real with no load line calibration) to keep up at 420x8=3360. This is too much.
On the other hand, I only need a vcore setting under 1.3v to overclock at 337.5X10=3375 (FSB 1350).
My FSB is definitely CPU limited.
Could I do something about it?

BIOS 1401
I found another "bug" on 1401 BIOS.
With all memory timings set manually, any tWR value (3, or 4 or 5) gives a BIOS reading of 4 and an Everest reading of 5.
When overclocked with the same mem timings, I get a tWR BIOS reading of 3 although I set it at 4.
This is strange. My BIOS knows better.

[71 (Bryan)]

lol, i got 1 extra mhz on the fsb with 1305 over 1303 lol
validations:
1303
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=382970
1305
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=383869
and apparently that just half a mhz =(

[nugzo]

Thank you very much for your info.
You do not need to perform read write operations to get the error.
There is no corruption anyway. We only get one error in event log each time we start Windows. In case we install raidtool, then we get lots of errors and pop up messages. The problem is that there is no way to completely uninstall Raid tool, so I suggest you do not install this.

On first place, this error we get from large hard disks is probably a Vista bug, not an nForce drivers bug. This might be the source of other hard drive problems, like the one I see with JBOD and the latest Nvidia drivers on those drives failing this test.

Does your RAID 1TB array consist of 2X500GB perpendicular hard disks?

Your Western Digital Black WD1001FALS 1TB is a perpendicular hard disk. Could you please check again the driver version of your NVidia nForce RAID Controller? Is it 9.99.0.9 or is it 10.3.0.21?

9.99.0.9 is OK. This version is installed with nforce 9.64 package.
10.3.0.21 has problems under Vista 64. This version is installed with nforce 15.17 package.

There is an obvious difference between those two drivers, since the latest supports Acoustic Management Control on Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controller in device manager.

In case your driver version is actually 10.3.0.21, could you convert your 1TB hard disk to jbod and check again the event log for errors (you do not need to perform reed write tests)? Converting your drive to jbod is a safe and very fast procedure and you don't loose anything. I have described this procedure step by step a few posts earlier.

EDIT
nugzo, thank you again for your reply and your efforts. Just in case you didn't know, there are other hard disk drive benches you might run the same way you already did. Here they are.
1. winsat disk -seq -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -seqsize 65536 -v
2. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384 -v
3. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 524288 -v
4. winsat disk -ran -read -drive c -count 2 -iocount 256 -ransize 1048576 -v
5. winsat disk -ran -write -drive c -count 1 -iocount 256 -ransize 16384 -v

You may change the drive the count number or anything you want.
The best test to check your hard drive speed is the first one.
Enjoy

Remember i'm testing a P7N diamond ATM. I'll try to change over to JBOD and test further tomorrow.

[Kevin1970]

I reinstalled the os. then ran sfc /verifyonly. it passed. i continued the install everything else. I got BSOD after i installed call of duty 4 and tried to run it. the same cause like before nvidia sata controler. My question is, is for some reason the files i am keeping on the pc(game patches and stuff) corrupted. I installed call of duty from disk but the patches are on the hard drive in another partition. Also while audio seems perfect with music and videos. i am getting issues when playing games. company of hereos has a slight static crackling sound, not all the time and not loud. I installed the brand new X-fi beta drivers that i heard where really good for vista.

[nugzo]

I reinstalled the os. then ran sfc /verifyonly. it passed. i continued the install everything else. I got BSOD after i installed call of duty 4 and tried to run it. the same cause like before nvidia sata controler. My question is, is for some reason the files i am keeping on the pc(game patches and stuff) corrupted. I installed call of duty from disk but the patches are on the hard drive in another partition. Also while audio seems perfect with music and videos. i am getting issues when playing games. company of hereos has a slight static crackling sound, not all the time and not loud. I installed the brand new X-fi beta drivers that i heard where really good for vista.

I was having file corruption with vtt over 1.2. My test was installing nero 7 or 8. i would get CFC errors with anything over the 1.2. Try lowering vtt and see what happens.

[Kevin1970]

I Changed vtt to 1.2, i was told if i wanted stock e8400 settings that the following is good.

loadline cal - enabled
pll 1.6
vtt 1.28
nb 1.36
ht 1.3

are these settings wrong. if so what should they be set at?

and would this be harming my audio?

and would the vtt be doing lots of damage to the tons of stuff i have on these hard drives?

edit
i changed the vtt to 1.2, still have audio issues in company of hereoes. i will try reinstalling it and redownloading the patches to see if that helps.

and what other settings should i worry about with stock e8400 speeds?