UNOFFICIAL BIOSTAR TPower I45 M/B

[HousERaT]

One thing I'll say about this board is I don't care for the lack of options with the voltage. Going from 1.4v to 1.45v is a huge leap for my 8400 & 8500 chips.

[HousERaT]

After benching with this board all weekend... I have realized this is a slow board... In order to make it fly you're going to have to use strap tweaks.

If you have everest, run the latency test to see what you get. The best I've been able to squeeze out of this board is around 50ns.

Are you running PL 7, 8 or 9? Also have you fooled around with all the straps yet? Are they easy to overclock? Currently I'm just working on FSB @ 1333 strap.

[Ace-a-Rue]

you can still put up some good benching numbers without having blistering low latencies...the best match for this board and pretty well all boards is a dual core processor...when you go to quads, it gets a little trickier to find the optimum balance between high FSB and performance...i.e., using 2 x 2gb PC6400 memory for my E8500, i could attain PL=9 at 520 FSB...same memory with my 9650, and at 490-495 FSB, i have to use PL=11 to complete a Super PI 32M run....big difference in performance.

[shimmishim]

I can run PL8 5-5-5 at 600 mhz as well as PL8 4-4-4 at 600 mhz.

Still the latency and pi times are slow without strap tweaks (jp pmem strap tweaks to be exact).

It's a great board again but... a bit on the slower side w/o tweaking the crap out of it! :0

[Ace-a-Rue]

I can run PL8 5-5-5 at 600 mhz as well as PL8 4-4-4 at 600 mhz.

Still the latency and pi times are slow without strap tweaks (jp pmem strap tweaks to be exact).

It's a great board again but... a bit on the slower side w/o tweaking the crap out of it! :0

how about splashing your 3D benches along with Super PI and Evrest benches so we can all see it!

[ddogg]

I can run PL8 5-5-5 at 600 mhz as well as PL8 4-4-4 at 600 mhz.

Still the latency and pi times are slow without strap tweaks (jp pmem strap tweaks to be exact).

It's a great board again but... a bit on the slower side w/o tweaking the crap out of it! :0

and how 'bout a little "how to" on the strap tweaks on this board. It would be highly appreciated.

/edit: hmm, you sure about your findings?

I tried these with no change in latency - can you suggest those you say you were able to improve with?

FED14034h => 10
FED1403Fh => 24
FED1403Eh => 03
FED14030h => 06
FED14040h => 09

[lionheart]

Pff, tropical storms...
In the wintertimes we get more than 300cm snow every year, and between -10º and -25º celcius. Dont complain!


New test, 3 hours and 30mins stable!

~ Mortis360

Pci-e clock is 124. May be damage your VGA ?

[mrcape]

Tested a P4 on air and e6600 on LN with this board last night -





Testing third and fourth e86 on it next week. So far tested e84 (e84 1m WR, Freq 3rd), 2x e86, e66 & P4 on this board and it pumps them all to their max no problem. I really beat the hell out of it last night and it just keeps going.

[Ace-a-Rue]

something i did not pickup on when i had my E8500 installed...maybe i overlooked it...in the CPU Configuration page in the bios, i now see a "VID" selection so i can set any VID as a minimum...so...on my 9650, i selected 1.40v for a minimum VID and then i can use smaller Vcore increases in "O.N.E." page to ensure a good save and boot into windows.

can someone with an E8500 go check their CPU Configuration page to see if you have a "VID" selection?

[HousERaT]

something i did not pickup on when i had my E8500 installed...maybe i overlooked it...in the CPU Configuration page in the bios, i now see a "VID" selection so i can set any VID as a minimum...so...on my 9650, i selected 1.40v for a minimum VID and then i can use smaller Vcore increases in "O.N.E." page to ensure a good save and boot into windows.

can someone with an E8500 go check their CPU Configuration page to see if you have a "VID" selection?

I will check that as soon as I finish this 32mb superpi

[ddogg]

...in the CPU Configuration page in the bios, i now see a "VID" selection so i can set any VID as a minimum...

I can't find such a setting

[HousERaT]

no VID section in either one of the CPU Configuration sections, using a E8400. 7-10 Bios.

[Ace-a-Rue]

maybe since i have an unlocked multi 9650, biostar bios shows a VID selection which might be part of intel's built in spec to be available....it is a nice feature!

bios 710 installed.

[shimmishim]

and how 'bout a little "how to" on the strap tweaks on this board. It would be highly appreciated.

/edit: hmm, you sure about your findings?

I tried these with no change in latency - can you suggest those you say you were able to improve with?

FED14034h => 10
FED1403Fh => 24
FED1403Eh => 03
FED14030h => 06
FED14040h => 09

I applied the ones you have listed above and went from about 58ns to 52ns IIRC. The file is on my laptop. I'll do some tests later and post my results.

[mrcape]

ddogg -

My board is dismantled right now, but here is a good start to learn more about the pmem tweaks -

http://i4memory.com/f54/guide-asus-p...p-tweaks-4268/

Also, I know you are a pi hater :P, but check out Monteboy's tool, it has a tab with a little form based strap tweaker -

http://www.ocxtreme.org/forumenus/showthread.php?t=3469

[ddogg]

I applied the ones you have listed above and went from about 58ns to 52ns IIRC. The file is on my laptop. I'll do some tests later and post my results.

ddogg -

My board is dismantled right now, but here is a good start to learn more about the pmem tweaks -

http://i4memory.com/f54/guide-asus-p...p-tweaks-4268/

Also, I know you are a pi hater :P, but check out Monteboy's tool, it has a tab with a little form based strap tweaker -

http://www.ocxtreme.org/forumenus/showthread.php?t=3469

Thanks for the replies, guys - I'm thinking the tweaks might not have much effect while I'm using lazy 5's for ram timing. I've tried to tighten them up with no joy. Always get lockups. Maybe some magic bios setting/ tweak will turn up later so I can have more room to play with the ram timings. As for now, 500 @5-5-5-15 is pretty much it for this RAM, MB, and CPU combination.

I'll reapply the strap tweaks and retest when I get a few minutes. Maybe I did it wrong the first time as I had never used them before. I think I got it right, though.

[mrcape]

Hmm, you can't run cas 4? What type of ics on your sticks, 2 or 4 gb, how much vdimm, what mem settings, divider etc. cas4 should be totally doable @500mhz.

[HousERaT]

I'm also finding that my D9GMH Ballistix aren't as powerful on this board as with others. I seem to have to use more voltage. The board didn't like my Tracers at all. I'd love to know what settings you folks are using to get 600Mhz stable. 1mb superpi is great but that ain't necessarily stable. What's the highest you guys can get on the fsb 32mb superpi stable?

[shimmishim]

I'm also finding that my D9GMH Ballistix aren't as powerful on this board as with others. I seem to have to use more voltage. The board didn't like my Tracers at all. I'd love to know what settings you folks are using to get 600Mhz stable. 1mb superpi is great but that ain't necessarily stable. What's the highest you guys can get on the fsb 32mb superpi stable?

I can do 575 5-5-5 with some ballistix superpi 32M.

I haven't tried 5-5-5 32M at 600 though. Might be interesting to try nonetheless.

[chaos_being]

Wow, this board looks really nice. A few years ago I wouldn't have even considered Biostar, but now I'd love to have one of these! The fact that Biostar has some ex-Abit engineers working for them now just sweetens the deal (I've used Abit boards for a looooong time.)

I think this would be a nice replacement for my AB9 Quad GT...it's a nice board, but it balks at running higher FSB without absolutely frying the NB with voltage. My 4.2ghz overclock isn't stable in Vista (it is with XP,) mainly because of FSB issues I believe. That, along with PCI-Express 2.0 and support for half multipliers, would be a decent upgrade

[Ace-a-Rue]

What's the highest you guys can get on the fsb 32mb superpi stable?

with my E8500, it was 520 FSB @ 8.5x (4420 Mhz)...i was able to do all the the benches including 32M, which is the most difficult one to complete if anything is out of tolerance.

my 9650 is touchy...it looks like i will be limited to about 4232 mhz with the same memory (GSkill PC6400) that was used with the E8500 bench.

i have been toying with getting some GSkill PC9600 (DDR-1200) but at $300 USD at newegg, i am not to excited about investing that much in memory that is going to be outdated within a year.

[HousERaT]

I can do 575 5-5-5 with some ballistix superpi 32M.

I haven't tried 5-5-5 32M at 600 though. Might be interesting to try nonetheless.

Well that's promising. What multi did you use? I'm using 8 thru 9.5. Also has anyone encountered issues with half multis?

Should we be keeping the nb/vtt voltages below 1.4?

[mrcape]

32m @ 600+ is doable for sure. I can't show any settings of my own right now that aren't from a 9x620+ LN session, with TRD loose, but look at Young Pro and Dinos' low clock challenge runs if you want high FSB with good efficiency on this board.

Look here -

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=201

And yes, you need a lot of juice to run mem like that.

[HousERaT]

mrcape: Thanks. I will "study" that thread tonight. I feel like I'm only a setting or two away from getting this where I want it. I used your settings from your LN2 session and went from 520 to 530 last night. Seem to have hit a wall at 540 on the 32mb superpi.

[mrcape]

You will get it. I bet it's just vdimm or vmch in addition to gtl and mem settings. lol sounds like a lot, but you can get it I'm sure. Maybe try cpu gtls at default 63,67 nb gtl auto and give it some more nb juice. Did you try to loosen trd to 10 manually in bios, then boot up, then raise fsb? If that works, you can notch trd back down with memset.

I don't think it will be healthy to have much more than 540 fsb for 24/7 though with the vmch it would require. Is this for benching or just 24/7?