790GX built-in DDR2 64MB - BIOSTAR TA790GX A2+ OC report

[Firestrider]

Are you able to run a single GFX card at PCI-E 2.0 x 16 in the slave slot with this board?

Do you need the molex power connecter for the input next to the northbridge?

[Daveburt714]

So from your post, seems like AOD is working well, or isnt? I also bought the thermalright mosfet cooler for it as well. Couple questions, i ve pre-empted and gone to biostars site. Downloaded several drivers, i noticed they had one specifically for the hdmi..but i believe it was to enable sound via hdmi. ARe you running the newest bios, i noticed one in there talking about screen blanks that your describing and it is a fix for it. What kind of Volts to the cpu are you pushing, what ram timings etc.. hehe a little breakdown if you have the time to list it out, just so i can get a feel for the board, I havent played with AMD's for a while, since my fx 57

Hey villa1n, I've really only had a few hours to play with this board so far (busy @ work). I'm running the newest release Bios "080014 11/11/08"

As far as AOD goes, it seems to work OK but has limited adjustments compared to the Asus 79-T and most other boards I've had. The sliders for CPUVid and NBVid act a little strange, if you don't set them to the same Vid they will jump to the lower of the 2. Actually, that is very similar to setting them in BIOS, IE: there is no adjustment for NBVid and setting CPUVid applies the same setting to the NB. If you want to give more juice to just the CPU you need to use the CPU offset voltage. Heres a SS of my best current OC:



This 9850 (0811 BPJW) is pretty weak, so that really isn't too bad considering the short time I've had to play with it....
You have a much newer week so hopefully you'll have a little better luck!

I think the mosfet cooling is a very good call, my wimpy solution seems to be working OK so far.. Well, company just came over so gotta go... I'll post more info later.

[Firestrider]

Are you able to change your HT multiplier? When lowering mine and applying, my system always locks up.

[gOtVoltage]

Are you able to change your HT multiplier? When lowering mine and applying, my system always locks up.

Hmm if i remeber correct the Second slot (lowest)runs 8x max.

primary top 16x,, both will Run PCI-E 2.0


As for HT in AOD its know not to work with many Mobo's if the BIOS on the particular Mobo is not optimized by the vendoer correctly.


On my78-T it did the same thing as well on the Biostar GX3. It seems to work on my ASUS 79-T yet. I usually only CLOCK through the Bios and use AOD to just Monitor or show me values compared to other monitoring tools.

[Firestrider]

Hmm if i remeber correct the Second slot (lowest)runs 8x max.

primary top 16x,, both will Run PCI-E 2.0


As for HT in AOD its know not to work with many Mobo's if the BIOS on the particular Mobo is not optimized by the vendoer correctly.


On my78-T it did the same thing as well on the Biostar GX3. It seems to work on my ASUS 79-T yet. I usually only CLOCK through the Bios and use AOD to just Monitor or show me values compared to other monitoring tools.

In GPU-Z if I put it in the master (bottom) slot with the paddle card I get 16x PCI-E 2.0. Without the paddle card I get 8x PCI-E 2.0. If I put the card in slave slot (top) I get 8x PCI-E 1.0 without the paddle card. With the paddle card the system will not POST.

Any BIOS settings to change this? I would really just like the card to run at 8x PCI-E 2.0 in the slave slot since then there would be no bottleneck from the interface and the location would give me better cooling.

[gOtVoltage]

In GPU-Z if I put it in the master (bottom) slot with the paddle card I get 16x PCI-E 2.0. Without the paddle card I get 8x PCI-E 2.0. If I put the card in slave slot (top) I get 8x PCI-E 1.0 without the paddle card. With the paddle card the system will not POST.

Any BIOS settings to change this? I would really just like the card to run at 8x PCI-E 2.0 in the slave slot since then there would be no bottleneck from the interface and the location would give me better cooling.

Im Bad ,, I said it backwords.. i forgot my GX3 was like the first post and my ASUS was Primary on bottom.. If its to run your Graphics @ 8x Either slot will still perform Even @ 1.1spec vs 2.0 and 8x.

Even Running My 3870x in PCI-E 1.1 @8x mode was no faster or Slower than PCI-E 2.0X16. That was on BiostarTA770//790 GX3 and ASUS 78-T. It did not get bottle necked from lack of throughput.

The Slave slot will always be 8x,, No 790-GX series uses 2x 16slots from BIOSTAR or ASUS unless using the 790/fx/sb750 like a 79-T which is 2x8 and 2x16 . Allowing a top and bottom to run X16 or x8 at the same time or in single mode.

[davidletterboyz]

i see, according to you, how much watt and temp to OCing deneb ? to use 24 / 7

No idea LOL.
In the link below, it shows almost half full load power consumption clock vs clock with Agena.
http://en.hardspell.com/doc/showcont...58&pageid=3150

If 3GHz Deneb has the same TDP as 2.6GHz Agena....then I think the Biostar can o/c higher than it can o/c an Agena.

[villa1n]

Hey villa1n, I've really only had a few hours to play with this board so far (busy @ work). I'm running the newest release Bios "080014 11/11/08"

As far as AOD goes, it seems to work OK but has limited adjustments compared to the Asus 79-T and most other boards I've had. The sliders for CPUVid and NBVid act a little strange, if you don't set them to the same Vid they will jump to the lower of the 2. Actually, that is very similar to setting them in BIOS, IE: there is no adjustment for NBVid and setting CPUVid applies the same setting to the NB. If you want to give more juice to just the CPU you need to use the CPU offset voltage. Heres a SS of my best current OC:



This 9850 (0811 BPJW) is pretty weak, so that really isn't too bad considering the short time I've had to play with it....
You have a much newer week so hopefully you'll have a little better luck!

I think the mosfet cooling is a very good call, my wimpy solution seems to be working OK so far.. Well, company just came over so gotta go... I'll post more info later.

Awesome, thanks for the pics. So the CPU offset voltage is a bios setting..and its a number that allows you to add voltage to the cpu.. so for your example you have the VID set at 1.4, does the cpu offst voltage work, like setting it to .05, would make the actual cpu voltage 1.45 while keeping the nb volts at 1.4? Just wanna clarify that hehe so i don't fry my chip :P I think i m gonna end up putting a 9950 in this mobo instead, and use the 9850 in the foxconn. If i can get over 3ghz i ll be happy I should be mucking about with it, either by tommorow or tuesday, so i ll post some results to see what i can get running :P

[Daveburt714]

Awesome, thanks for the pics. So the CPU offset voltage is a bios setting..and its a number that allows you to add voltage to the cpu.. so for your example you have the VID set at 1.4, does the cpu offst voltage work, like setting it to .05, would make the actual cpu voltage 1.45 while keeping the nb volts at 1.4?

Yep, thats the way it works... IMO, the verdict is still out on this board, it takes quite awhile to figure out Phenom OCing on any board but the Bios on this Biostar are downright confusing.... OCing adjustments are spread all over the place and duplicated in a few instances (ACC for example). Along with that the AOD implementation/options are weak and a little squirley.

One odd thing I noticed tonight was that using the P-State option to increase the IMC clock to 2200Mhz seems to STICK, IE: going back and lowering it will NOT actually lower it and you will be stuck at 2200 until you clear CMOS or reset defaults.

Memory Timings are another problem and the board seems to have trouble reading the SPD settings from the DIMMs.. If you have problems posting make sure you "ENABLE, Ignore Memory Errors". That was the only thing that actually got my OCZ Reapers to post.

On the bright side I can get this old 9850 to run fairly stable @ 3Ghz (haven't really tested thoroughly) which was it's limit on a number of other boards, but it takes alot of fidgeting...

I haven't had this board very long, and I've been pressed for time lately so if you figure out any tricks let me know...

On that note, if you have any questions just ask, if I can offer any advice I will.

BTW: I tried Polygons latest modded bios. If you use it don't try to change the "TLB Option" from Auto, it's nothing catastrophic but it locks up bios and you have to reset. I'm back on the latest release version...

[villa1n]

Yep, thats the way it works... IMO, the verdict is still out on this board, it takes quite awhile to figure out Phenom OCing on any board but the Bios on this Biostar are downright confusing.... OCing adjustments are spread all over the place and duplicated in a few instances (ACC for example). Along with that the AOD implementation/options are weak and a little squirley.

One odd thing I noticed tonight was that using the P-State option to increase the IMC clock to 2200Mhz seems to STICK, IE: going back and lowering it will NOT actually lower it and you will be stuck at 2200 until you clear CMOS or reset defaults.

Memory Timings are another problem and the board seems to have trouble reading the SPD settings from the DIMMs.. If you have problems posting make sure you "ENABLE, Ignore Memory Errors". That was the only thing that actually got my OCZ Reapers to post.

On the bright side I can get this old 9850 to run fairly stable @ 3Ghz (haven't really tested thoroughly) which was it's limit on a number of other boards, but it takes alot of fidgeting...

I haven't had this board very long, and I've been pressed for time lately so if you figure out any tricks let me know...

On that note, if you have any questions just ask, if I can offer any advice I will.

BTW: I tried Polygons latest modded bios. If you use it don't try to change the "TLB Option" from Auto, it's nothing catastrophic but it locks up bios and you have to reset. I'm back on the latest release version...

Just actually got it all up and running, and yes the bios is very confusing relative to what i m used too (gigabyte / asus and mainly intels. ) I have another coming tommorow the foxconn so i ll have a good compare and contrast.

So far with just a little playing , i m running 15.5 multi, 1.365 + overvoltage so its at 1.392 cpuz .. the problem i m encountering is that AOD wont apply any voltage settings.
I have my ram volts at 2.1v in bios, on the ocz SLI ram, 5 4 4 12 @ 1066 which is good, but when i load AOD, it shows 1.832 mem vddq voltage, and shows cpu and nb volts at 1.3v Trying to change them does nothing, pretty much all i can do in AOD is change the multi.. So i think i ll have to do all my oc'ing from bios, which is ok, but less convienient :P I have ACC enabled so hopefully that will create some stability. I had it posting at 3.4 with the 16.5 multi, but it would BSOD in windows with a machine check error.
I m also kind of worried about the nb thing, i set it too 2400mhz, but then set it back to 2200mhz.. where is it showing that it hasn't changed for you?

anyways gonna catch some sleep and play around with it tommorow probably, thanks for the update.
On the plus side, my toxic edition 4870 is 820mhz core and 1190mhz mem, idles at 42C and only 57 at load! So happy with that. It also seems the hybrid crossfire is working.. as the card idles quite a bit, and the windows vista experience for Graphics card is 1...so i m assuming its running on onboard video for that... although i hope that doesnt conflict with playing games, just installing COD4 as we speak.

[superpyton]

One odd thing I noticed tonight was that using the P-State option to increase the IMC clock to 2200Mhz seems to STICK, IE: going back and lowering it will NOT actually lower it and you will be stuck at 2200 until you clear CMOS or reset defaults.

After changing the IMC multiplier you need to turn off computer for few seconds.
I'ts a BIOS bug. I send info about this to Biostar a month ago.

[villa1n]

*after cod4 it turned into a BSOD party, ndis.sys error, but just means the driver after it is causing it to fail.
I ve downed the volts to 1.3875 and down clocked to to 3.0ghz running a stability test now.. through AOD... occt later when its more stable :P trying to figure out what happend. A 9950 should be able to run no prob at 3.2, on sb750, also have ram at dd2 800 instead of 1066, wiht loose timings.

[villa1n]

*after cod4 it turned into a BSOD party, ndis.sys error, but just means the driver after it is causing it to fail.
I ve downed the volts to 1.3875 and down clocked to to 3.0ghz running a stability test now.. through AOD... occt later when its more stable :P trying to figure out what happend. A 9950 should be able to run no prob at 3.2, on sb750, also have ram at dd2 800 instead of 1066, wiht loose timings.

Turn s out its my Ram Crashing it now, I have the NB to 2200, 16x multi 3.2 with 1.392v stable, but i have to keep my ram down ddr 800 , but timings ok, 4-4-4-12.. so i ll take that for now, since its my bro's christmas comp and not mine hehe, hopefully he wont notice the difference :P The foxconn a7da-s came today, so i ll see what i can do with that and the 9850

I will Add the vdroop is "Phenomenal!" hehe, on OCCT, 1.39 at idle, 1.38 at load... .1 !! thats impressive, considering just tried oc'ing a p965-ds3 with a q6600 with volts at 1.41, drooping to 1.34 under load.. and dont want to frack the board with a pencil mod, as i cant test resistance. But very impressed with the stability of the 790gx voltage wise.

[Daveburt714]

After changing the IMC multiplier you need to turn off computer for few seconds.
I'ts a BIOS bug. I send info about this to Biostar a month ago.

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that next time..

villa1n: You might want to try running you CPU multi @ 14.5x and raising your HTRef to around 220 at least that would give you a little speed back on your RAM. Just make sure you lower NB to 10x (2000) before you try it.

[villa1n]

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that next time..

villa1n: You might want to try running you CPU multi @ 14.5x and raising your HTRef to around 220 at least that would give you a little speed back on your RAM. Just make sure you lower NB to 10x (2000) before you try it.

Thanks, will try that. Will raising the HT 220, heat up the board much?

[Rammsteiner]

Just got a Biostar 790GX3 A2+ for my dad. He's using my old Opteron 146 @ 2.8Ghz rig now with a X1800XT. Although they hardly do anything which needs raw power, my dad is a bit of a now and then and let all the drivers load at start up Although the CPU is a lot faster than they need, due to all the programs running in the back ground it's slow as really.

Since Ive a 9850BE spare which suffers badly from idle freezing (even if it's OC'd just 1Mhz), also some OCZ Reaper X PC6400 4-4-3-12 4GB kit, I thought this would be a nice thingy for them. With this motherboard they dont have that power sucking GPU anymore either.

I bought a Thermalright HR-09S Type 2 for the MOSFETs just in case, I dont trust stock (or in this case non) cooling for the MOSFETs on any board anymore.

Although this CPU cant OC, I do hope I can drop the Voltages of it so it runs cool and as well doesnt use a lot of power. Ill also try to mess around with P-States and CnQ eventually although I dont see my parents using that since they most of the time shut the PC off when they dont use it anyway

Ill try reducing Vcore after I gave it for christmas and when they dont use it.

My first impression of this board is very good though. It doesnt look all fancied and hyped up, just a nice and solid board. I hope this impression becomes true, but I guess it will, especially since there wont be OC'ing involved

I hope they'll like this christmas present but Im sure they do. In the end with all the background apps my dad is running this should be quite an upgrade

[Daveburt714]

superpyton: Thanks man, changing the IMC clock in P-States and then shutting down for 30 secs does reset the NB multi, big help!

villa1n: I've been playing with this board a little more tonight and I have a few more observations for ya... I'm running it on a bench, so I can do the finger test on most components (call me Old School, but I've always found this to be reliable )...

In "Voltage Control" upping the Chipset and HT V's to 1.5v seems to help stability quite a bit and neither one of them get hot to the touch (I'm NOT running IGP though, so watch that, it may make a difference on the NBchip if you are!)...

Like I said before, my 9850BE is old and pretty weak, but I did manage to get it stable at 3.0Ghz/2200NB and 1066 Memory, so the board is capable even though it's very squirley compared to other boards..

I pushed MAX HTRef tonight with everything else lowered, and 235 was the best I could get (may be my chip), but the board didn't seem to heat up too much other than the PWM section.. If there is a weak part to this board that would be it, even after my mods and the fan on top of the FET's that section still got toasty, especially the chokes.

Good luck man... Hope this helps a little...

[superpyton]

I pushed MAX HTRef tonight with everything else lowered, and 235 was the best I could get (may be my chip), but the board didn't seem to heat up too much other than the PWM section..

Try to play with other memory sticks and timings (5-5-5-18-26 2T TRFC 127ns/195ns, TRRD 5T etc.).
I was able to get 295MHz stable and 298MHz for validation with four memory sticks so it can't be problem with motherboard .

[villa1n]

superpyton: Thanks man, changing the IMC clock in P-States and then shutting down for 30 secs does reset the NB multi, big help!

villa1n: I've been playing with this board a little more tonight and I have a few more observations for ya... I'm running it on a bench, so I can do the finger test on most components (call me Old School, but I've always found this to be reliable )...

In "Voltage Control" upping the Chipset and HT V's to 1.5v seems to help stability quite a bit and neither one of them get hot to the touch (I'm NOT running IGP though, so watch that, it may make a difference on the NBchip if you are!)...

Like I said before, my 9850BE is old and pretty weak, but I did manage to get it stable at 3.0Ghz/2200NB and 1066 Memory, so the board is capable even though it's very squirley compared to other boards..

I pushed MAX HTRef tonight with everything else lowered, and 235 was the best I could get (may be my chip), but the board didn't seem to heat up too much other than the PWM section.. If there is a weak part to this board that would be it, even after my mods and the fan on top of the FET's that section still got toasty, especially the chokes.

Good luck man... Hope this helps a little...

Yeah, oldschool way is the best, but alas even though i m playing with this machine, its main purpose is for someone elses gaming enjoyment :P

Here is the RAM i m using in the board, but for the life of me I cant seem to play with the timings above ddr800 to any degree to get them to hold. I have the Volts on it 2.1 at the moment in bios, but AOD doesn't show this.
So you think i should change the chipset and ht volts... i have the ht low now, and don't really want to tax the mosfets anymore than necessary, i think this chip is capable of 3.2-3.3 under 1.4 volts if i can find the right settings, I don't use IGP atm, as i have a 4870toxic in there to stay. So that shouldnt be an issue. here 's a screen of what i m running stable at the moment.

[faior]

Why does these boards have limited AOD and ACC function? It does have 790GX and SB750 on the paper, but seems to lack some of the features. Why is this? I've read some reviews where the ACC does seem to go ON or AUTO, but it doesnt do anything, processor maybe clocks more but the scores are the same as the lower clock.

Its like when I bought a MSI KA790GX board which has 790GX and SB750 .. when I got it there was no ACC in the bios and it was very very hard to get to post or boot with phenom. Had to do many tricks to get to Windows. Then I updated the bios and it worked fine then, even thought it still lacks of the ACC-support and MSI says it never adds ACC on it.

The KA790GX is the same board as KA780G(it even has the 780G stickers on it http://faior.miumau.net/271120082572.jpg), only that it really has the new chips (790GX and SB750), but the PCB doesnt have the lines for ACC for example(because of the old PCB..). I was really disappointed with MSI :/

Also the AOD looks like this:
http://faior.miumau.net/MSI/msicrap.JPG .. its like running an old SB600 ? wtf? And all the settings are very limited. Even the HD3300 IGP was LOWERclocked than it should.(700MHz -> 500MHz) and the MSI website says it should be default at 650MHz@1000MHz with this board.. lol? + I didnt never reach 2000 points in 3dmark 2006 with this, my best was CPU OCd to 3100MHz(phenom x4) and the HD3300 OCd to default 700MHz, I still got only 1900 marks. For some reviews HD3300 should get around 2200points. All default it gives 1600 marks with 2.6GHz phenom


Sorry for offtopic but its very similar to this Biostar functionality, except biostar seems to work very much better still.

[W.I.T.C.H.]

Hi,

I liked this board pushed it reassonably far, but as soon as I hit 1,5v Vcore
The mosfets die. they did on both boards I had! So for those worried be warned!

Other than that it actually did everything I wanted, just don't really enjoy it when they die! It isn't a really bad clocker but than again I didn't get to play with very long!

I did a 23,6 sec superpi, but that's all.
Anyways, I think I'll buy another board but $$$ ...

[superpyton]

Its like when I bought a MSI KA790GX board which has 790GX and SB750 .. when I got it there was no ACC in the bios and it was very very hard to get to post or boot with phenom. Had to do many tricks to get to Windows. Then I updated the bios and it worked fine then, even thought it still lacks of the ACC-support and MSI says it never adds ACC on it.

The KA790GX is the same board as KA780G(it even has the 780G stickers on it http://faior.miumau.net/271120082572.jpg), only that it really has the new chips (790GX and SB750), but the PCB doesnt have the lines for ACC for example(because of the old PCB..). I was really disappointed with MSI :/

This explains why KA790GX is so cheap (comparing to other 790GX mobo's).

Even the HD3300 IGP was LOWERclocked than it should.(700MHz -> 500MHz) and the MSI website says it should be default at 650MHz@1000MHz with this board.. lol? + I didnt never reach 2000 points in 3dmark 2006 with this, my best was CPU OCd to 3100MHz(phenom x4) and the HD3300 OCd to default 700MHz, I still got only 1900 marks.

I was not able to get stable 1GHz (NB@1,5V) on integrated GPU even on a more expensive DKA790GX Platinum.
In my opinion this Biostar with heatsinks on power section is a lot better motherboard for overclocking than DKA790GX Platinum. It even runs my four XTune sticks on divider 1066 without problems.

[Firestrider]

Whats the max HT ref clock you can get with this board?

I'm trying to get my lowly 9550 to 3 Ghz stable but that would require 273 HT ref clock. Is this a function of the chip rather than the board? In other words if a chip could hit 3 Ghz with an unlocked multiplier and the board can hit 280 HT ref clock, could the chip theoretically hit 3 Ghz with a locked multi?

Of course this is taking in account keeping the HT link and NB freq. under stock spec since my chip doesn't seem to like anything over 2000 Mhz for HT link or NB.

Is 3 Ghz at 1.375v 24/7 stable?

[superpyton]

Whats the max HT ref clock you can get with this board?

Biostar TA790GX A2+ HTT @298MHz with 4x1GB.

[Firestrider]

Ok thanks I remember you posted that :P

It's good to know that this board can push that high, but can HT ref clock still be limited by the CPU? Or as long as the board can do it then the CPU should do it also... negating the Core clock.