** OFFICIAL ** Intel DX38BT & DX48BT2 BoneTrail Thread

[JohnZS]

Hi
Sorry to thread crash has anyone here got a Quad Core QX9650 or 45nm Quad running 8GB of RAM?
Please could you post a memset screenshot.
I have an ASUS P5E3 and for some reason it requires 1.51V on the NB to be stable using 8GB of RAM with the FSB @ 400Mhz and the DDR3 @ 1333Mhz (1600Mhz on the RAM just can't be stabilised).
Thanks
Regards
John

[Sean-E-Boy]

Pontius,

ok, so does the Intel Burn In Self Test crash, hang or blue screen your system, or just give you results that indicate instability?

actually, nevermind that question...

So, since you are making it into windows and can run the intel burn test to some degree, you are hitting mild to moderate instability. In order to tune GTLs, you will need to keep pushing the host clock higher @6x without raising the vCore any (increasing vFSB and vMCH are fine).

Like I said before, there is a progression of overclocking to take here that results in having all areas stable, but you have to push the components in a particular order so that "interfering instability" from other components is minimized...basically making your life easier. and again, they are:

1. with the cpu at its lowest multi and your ram slow and loose, either
a) max out the vFSB and the vMCH (you will be fine here since your CPU and MCH are on water) and start increasing the host clock until the system freezes on boot. Write down the host clock at which the system freezes on boot. Since we are running a low multi, we are (in theory) finding the "maximum" that your FSB can run at.
or b) increase the host clock with vMCH and vFSB at default until instability occurs, then raise vFSB a notch or two...if the instability is gone, continue increasing the host clock until unstable again. if instability remains, increase the vMCH a notch or two and see if it helps. Keep doing this until you reach voltages that you do not want to go above. similar to above, this is the "maximum" that your FSB can run with the selected voltages.

2. once you know the "maximum" FSB for your selected voltages, you can begin tuning the GTLs found under "Reference voltage Override" in the CPU page of the BIOS. there are 3 GTLs that you will primarily be concerned with, 2 here (CPU GTL REF0 and 1), one later (MCH GTL REF), and possibly MCH DDR REF (not much performace or stability to be gained here, though.)

make sure you write down the values listed when you change from auto to manual. you will want to change them one at a time and they will most likely need to be raised, but this depends on the internals of your FSB and CPU cores, so you will need to go both up and down to find the best setting.

One thing to remember here is that while this fine tuning allows for higher FSBs and CPU clocks at lower voltages, the results you will see while testing are rather unimpressive. So with the host clock at the setting where windows freezes on boot and without changing the multi or the voltages, increase the first GTL ref by one. save, restart, and again count how many times the progress bar goes by on boot. now go back to BIOS and change the same GTL ref down one from default. save restart watch the bar.

now that you have gone both up and down one from default, you should be able to tell which direction increases the amount of times the status bar goes by before crashing. if you cannot, go 2 up and 2 down from default and compare. Now that you know which direction to go, change the ref by 1 in that direction save and reboot, count status bars, increase again, count status bars....once you increase beyond the optimal, the number of times the bar passes will start to go back down. then you know you went too far, change the setting back to the level that gives you the longest boot before crashing.

Now move on to the CPU GTL REF1 and repeat the same process. if changing these settings allows you to enter all the way into windows, simply increase the host clock until it freezes on boot.

Once both CPU GTL REF0 and 1 have been tuned DO NOT CHANGE your vFSB.

3. Now having found the optimal cpu refs, increase vCore some and the system should boot @6x multi. Start increasing the host clock again followed by increasing the vCore until you reach the point where you do not want to increase voltage anymore. this will give you the true maximum FSB (well, almost true, unless your vCore and vFSB are maxed).

4. now you know pretty much exactly how fast your FSB can go and can start tweaking memory. with all voltages untouched from #3, drop your host clock back to 333 and, while keeping memory timings loose, change the memory reference frequency to 333 and the memory frequency to 1333 (this is pretty much the fastest practical combination that the x38 as configured in this board can handle) and save and restart. once into windows, run burn in test at least 6 times and make sure that all numbers are the same.

***note*** On the x38/48 boards from intel, resulting memory speeds as seen on the first screen of the BIOS page cannot be higher than the FSB speed.

***also note***this board is f-ing stupid when it comes to changing memory settings....often times you will need to restart several times or even cut all power and then restart a few times to verify that the system will not boot with a particular setting.

5. if burn test results are good, increase the host clock by 20mhz or so and repeat testing. if your memory are good quality, you can probably get the mem frequency into the 1800s (at 333x1333 you will reach this at 450mhz host clock), but you may need to do some research on your ram to see how fast others have gotten it.

as you are working your way up and you start to have issues with booting, or instability or crashing during burn test, you will need to increase the vMCH to correct it. if you have reached either the max vMCH or the maximum you want to run, then you can start playing with MCH GTL REF in the same way you changed the CPU refs. you should know, though, that there is much less functional adjustability with the MCH GTL than with the CPU refs...a few steps is all you will be able to change and see a difference, but those small changes will result in very large gains.

6. once you max out the memory speed at 333x1333, be sure to write down the frequency and the host clock numbers for your reference later. also note that it is unlikely that you will be able to run at this speed at higher multi's, but at least you the max that either your memory can run or the max that the MCH can handle.

Next you will want to go to BIOS, drop the host clock by 20 or so, and then change the memory ref and speed to 400x1600 (results in the same DDR3-Speed, but internal timings of the MCH are loosened). this may or may not boot, but if it does, start increasing the host clock by 5 or 10 and run burn test. repeat until you find the max host clock and memory frequency at this memory setting and write down.

7. continue to work your way down in memory speed....333x1333, 400x1600, 400x1333, 333x1066, 266x800 (unlikely to boot), 400x1066, and finally 333x800 (you already know the max for 400x800, so you dont need to do this again.)

8. now that you know the fastest FSB and the fastest that your memory can run with different memory reference frequencies and memory frequencies, it is time to test the potential of the CPU.

so, set your memory back to 400x800, and go to the max host clock that you found in step #3. save and reboot just to make sure that it still boots. once into windows, restart, go to BIOS and increase the multi by 1 step. save, restart, and run burn test. if everything is ok, restart, go to BIOS, and increase again. Keep doing this until it isnt stable or wont boot.

when you get to the instability part, either increase vCore if you are comfortable doing so, or reduce the host clock until stability is reached.

do this all the way up to your highest multi and write down the highest host clock for each multi and the resulting CPU frequency as you go.

you will find yourself reducing host clock frequency quite a bit as you get closer to your max multi. for example, my q9550 @ 6x could boot at around 505Mhz x6, but at 8x somewhere around 490 was the highest that would boot and the highest stable at 8.5x is 485 and that is with a chit ton of vCore...1.565 or so.

9. now that you know the maximum processor speed at each multi, look at your memory testing and see which setting would run at or above that host clock. pick the fastest resulting DDR3-speed, set it up in BIOS and drop your host clock by 20-30 but stay at highest multi. save, restart and see if it boots. if it does, run burn test 6-10 iterations and see if it is stable. if it is, then increase host clock by 5 or so and try again. if it isnt stable, decrease the host clock and try again. once you know the fastest memory speed that the MCH can handle at your highest multi you can decide if that is good enough or if you want the CPU to be faster and the memory a little slower.

if you choose the faster cpu, leave your host clock at the stable from #9 and change memory settings to next fastest from step #7. save, restart, burn test. if good, increase host clock a few and repeat.

Once you get to a combination that you like that is "stable" run 30 iterations of burn test and see if it passes. if it does, you can start reducing memory timings (start with going from Command Rate of 2T to 1T and see how it goes) if ok, lower the first timing option in BIOS then 2nd and 3rd...if command rate 1T just crashes system (and it probably will) decide if you want faster memory speed or tighter timings and either stay at current mem ref and mem freq and reduce timings with Command Rate at 2T, or reduce host clock until 1T is stable, or reduce memory ref and memory frequency until 1T is stable at the higher host clock.


ok, i am done for now. this should keep you busy for quite some time.

as far as voltages go, yes, increasing them will shorten the life of the component for which they are increased, but whether you will still have this board and processor by the time it dies is unlikely. the most common issue with operating at speeds requiring high voltages is not board or component failure, but rather a degredation of stability at those voltages, requiring you to either increase them more, or overclock to become stable again. but like i said before, my system is running at max vFSB, vMCH, and 1.565 vCore for 6+months. No degredation, no need to increase voltages further. I will for sure let all of you know when these issues come up.

on that note, the 1 voltage to be careful with is the vCore. I havent read anything about peoples processors being killed by high voltage so long as good water cooling is installed. That being said, i wouldnt go over 1.5 if you are at all concerned about killing your CPU...if you are less concerned and may buy another computer in the next year, stay under 1.6.

[Sean-E-Boy]

Hi
Sorry to thread crash has anyone here got a Quad Core QX9650 or 45nm Quad running 8GB of RAM?
Please could you post a memset screenshot.
I have an ASUS P5E3 and for some reason it requires 1.51V on the NB to be stable using 8GB of RAM with the FSB @ 400Mhz and the DDR3 @ 1333Mhz (1600Mhz on the RAM just can't be stabilised).
Thanks
Regards
John

John,

no problem on crashing the board...different manufacturers, but surely the same component limitations.

The x38/48 chip is the limiting component on these boards. when all 4 dimms are populated, regardless of total ram size, it will take every volt that you can thow at it to be stable at DDR3-1600 with any respectable cpu frequency (host clock x multi). while the MCH can take every volt you can give it, you will need at the very least a 40mm fan bolted directly on the MCH heatsink, if not water cooling to keep it cool.

if you drop to 4GB of ram 2x2, you can get the DDR3-speed into the 1800s.

this being said, memory frequency is not everything. you can achieve real good memory performance by reducing your DDR3-speed and increasing the FSB.

With my setup, i am underclocking memory (DDR3-1617Mhz) with respect to the FSB (1940Mhz) and everest shows read/write/copy to be 10342/10286/10402MB/s. While not comparable to the Corei7s, its pretty damn fast, and much more well rounded than DDR3-1800 (450 host clock x multi 8.5) which tests out at 10608/9534/9593MB/s.

I also went down the road of trying to run 4 dimms of ram on this board, but with the intel version, 1.55 or 1.6 vMCH is the max. on others, you can get up to 1.7 or 1.8, which may be enough to get you stable in the 1600s with 4 dimms, but you will need water cooling for that!

Hope this helps.

Sean

[Pontius]

holy sean you are the ing man. I'm gonna have to read that about 5 more times and get to business, probably in the next few days or so. Ill let you know how it all goes. thanks again!

[JohnZS]

Thank you very much Sean
Not meaning to jack your thread too much, but all I am trying to do is run @ 1600Mhz FSB with the DDR3 @ 1333Mhz...it's just unstable without 1.51V on the NB
You are right though, with just 2x2GB I can run 1600Mhz CL7
I have contacted ASUS about this issue as this was the reason I had to RMA for a QX9650 as the 1600Mhz FSB Extreme Edition version did not work because of this very issue.
The Intel board does look nice, just a shame that it is still expensive otherwise I would jump on one.
John

[Manel]

New Intel Matrix up. Wrong date though

[Sean-E-Boy]

Thank you very much Sean
Not meaning to jack your thread too much, but all I am trying to do is run @ 1600Mhz FSB with the DDR3 @ 1333Mhz...it's just unstable without 1.51V on the NB
You are right though, with just 2x2GB I can run 1600Mhz CL7
I have contacted ASUS about this issue as this was the reason I had to RMA for a QX9650 as the 1600Mhz FSB Extreme Edition version did not work because of this very issue.
The Intel board does look nice, just a shame that it is still expensive otherwise I would jump on one.
John

on the intel board with the x48, you can run 1600mhz fsb processor and have memroy at 1600 too, but you have to use the black memory slots and only the black ones...cannot run 4 dimms @1600...according to their documentation.

[Sean-E-Boy]

cant get to the DL for the matrix drivers.

edit: not though the windows7 x64 page, anyway. got it from the x64 vista one and i am sure that it will work.

sean

[soccergeek24]

Okay, so I have been having a debate with a co-worker and wanted to know y'all's opinion:

Would it be better to have 2 GB of RAM running at 1600 MHz or 4 GB running at 1333 MHz..

Here are the assumptions: The processor and MoBo being used can handle either 1600 or 1333 MHz. Everything else is the same.

My thoughts are even if the speed limit is 80 MPH a 2 lane highway can not handle as much traffic as a 4 lane highway doing 70 MPH (at full utilization).

(Sorry Sean...that's as good as my analogies can get . I need years of practice to catch up to yours.)

[Manel]

SG, depends on what you´re doing, really. Some tasks will take advantage of the extra RAM, others will benefit from the increased speed.
Lanes is not an issue since both will pump data through 2x64bit dual channel bus. Bandwidth will increase with speed though.

[soccergeek24]

SG, depends on what you´re doing, really. Some tasks will take advantage of the extra RAM, others will benefit from the increased speed.

All of this was based on a general overall view. If you were utilizing all cores on your CPU, and all the RAM that was available (be it 2 or 4 GB). Would speed or "leg room" be the preference?

[Manel]

I'd say most benches will improve with speed, as well as many games although others will benefit from additional mem (textures, AA...) and also encoding a bit.
Still, speed will surelly always beat quantity in performance I'd say, if you don't need more that is.

[Sean-E-Boy]

It really depends on what you are doing to stress the cores to 100%, because that can have little to do with the RAM since many operations can be queued and processed within the cache of the processor and never touch ram.

Now look at it from another direction:

If you have photoshop, open any regular camera image that you have and go to Image>Image Size>and change the ppi to 2400. Why does this take so long? If you look at the performance monitor, you will see that your processor is barely being taxed, but in the memory section there are page faults flying all over the place. In this case, neither the cache of the cpu cannot nor the currently paged bits of info in the memory suffice all the requirements of what the process demands. If you increase the RAM speed, sure it will help, but if you double the amount of RAM and leave the speed the same you will see great improvements in this process (fast hard drives help too).

there are two analogies that i want to throw into this discussion:
1) it works a bit like hard drives do...imagine you have a 32gb 7200rpm drive and you are copying files to it. as that drive become more and more full, the write speed slows down because there are fewer contiguous blocks of free space to write into and the drive has to search for an open space (or at least realign to one) before it can write. take the same 32gb capacity and increase the speed to 10k rpm and things go better, but it still slows down when it gets close to being full.

now if you replace that drive with another 7200rpm one, but the capacity is 64gb, it can maintain its higher rate of writing (although still slower initially than the 10k drive) much longer because there is ample free space to write into without having to search for it.

2) (this one is much more my style) Ok, so you have a family with 4 children (6 people total) and you need to get the whole family to an event 200 miles away. your family has 2 vehicles, a McClaren SLR 722S Roadster...0-60 in 3.7, max speed 208 mph, capacity 2) and a ford winstar minivan (0-60 ~10 sec, max speed 100mph going down hill with the wind, capacity 8) but only 1 person can drive. which vehicle will get everyone to the event faster (assuming we can go as fast as we like)? with the McClaren, you would have to average 8x faster than the minivan because you would have to make 5 trips (9 legs...5 there, 4 back) to get all 6 people to the event, but the minivan can do it in 1 trip (1 leg).

Now if only 2 of you needed to go to the event which vehicle is faster?

Manel, you are right that speed will beat quantity so long as you dont need more ram capacity than what you have...most of the time. there is a point where if you need large transfers to the memory (that are within your capacity) that slower memory will perform better than ultra fast and tight, simply because the MCH cannot load up the RAM before the clock cycle is over and the time to wait for the next cycle to load and finish (may have to wait 2 cycles, even) is longer than if the ram were just slightly slower to begin with and could load everything into one cycle, due to #1, above.

Sean

[Manel]

Sean, your analogies really are unbeatable!
I would take the McClaren anyday though.
Sorry I can't write much, my MS keyboard went dead. Using on-screen kb, believe it?

[soccergeek24]

Sean, your analogies really are unbeatable!
I would take the McClaren anyday though.

Agreed! On both parts... lol

Thanks for the input guys.

[Patyabc]

Dear Friends:

My MB Intel DX48BT2 is totally compatible with windows 7?

Intel assures me with total support about this compatibility or Intel has discontinued all support for my MB?

thanks for your help.

[xMrBunglex]

100% compatible. as far as your operating system is concerned, you just have a regular X48 motherboard, and that's all it needs to know. X48 is not old or obsolete in any way. it's just that by now, all (most) of the software and drivers that needed to be written for it have all matured and shouldn't need further development.

[Manel]

Hey MB, haven't seen you around for a while.
Yes, no probs for either X38 or X48 with 7. Probably drivers for Vista will work in 7 too. Still, Intel is updating everything for 7, lots of beta stuff for 7 if you go to the downloads site.
We should see almost all development being made for 7 now, ancient Vista and XP will be slowly seeing less frequent updated software and drivers.
Look at network (82566 in our case) drivers, beta version for 7 is now 14.2 while we are still stuck at 13.5, there is a 14.0 though but somehow never got to the download page.
7 will be RTMed next monday (13th) so I guess drivers should be final by then. Many will have final 7 installed next week, TechNet and MSDN, sure it will leak out too (Torrent).
Don't much like the new task bar but it seems it can be made to look like the Vista one.

[Manel]

It seems there will be a Family Pack (3 licenses for a household) for 7. Cool!! M$ does it again. About time, Office has this for ages. It seems they are doing it right this time to avoid piracy.
I wonder, will the upgrade version of 7 work as a full install like Vista does? Just curious, M$ didn't stop it with Vista SP1, not sure with SP2 but guess not also. Will they allow it as well in 7?

[Patyabc]

Dear Friends:

I hope Intel will have enough support for windows 7, because my Intel GT Pro 1000 Card has no compatibility with the new OS, and we need a full .inf file with all components for my MB, and a new Bios maybe trying to fix the electrical issues too.

CPU Q9650 stepping E0
MB DX48BT2 205
Mushkin 4 Gb's XMP 1600
SapphireRadeon 4870 512
CPU Cooler Zalman 12"Fan
Thermaltake 1000
PSU Be-Quiet 650 W

[Sean-E-Boy]

Paty,

While there is no category for Windows 7 drivers for the Intel GT Pro 1000, there are Vista drivers. In my experience with W7 I have yet to have a vista driver not work in W7.

I am sure that there are exceptions to this, or maybe some limitations to the functionality (such as no connection teaming in W7 with the integrated LAN, while there is in Vista with the same driver) but W7s operating core is not vastly different from Vista (at least not in the way that Vista is different from XP) and the Vista drivers, including x64 should work in W7.

Sean

[Manel]

New INF 9.1.1.1015 up, dated 12 July. Funny the link works for the 7 version but not the XP/Vista one. Anyway, the 7 file says it's an all OS install, same as the Vista one, and both have the same size - they should be the same file I guess. Intel style.
Patyabc, doesn't the beta 14.2 for 7 work with your card? I haven't checked yet, nor do I know the GT Pro 1000, but it should support most Intel cards. If not, try the Vista drives like Sean said, they should work.

[Manel]

INF 9.1.1.1015 link for Vista seems to work now.
7 RTM was delayed it seems, guess it was not ready yet. Not good!!

[Manel]

Marvell RAID v1.2.0.69 is up. Again can't dl from the Vista link. Come on Intel, this is getting boring!!
Also, there's a link missing for an integrator... whatever.

[Patyabc]

Dear friends in this forum:

I was trying to understand why Intel is formerly unsupporting my MB, because they have no more Bioses for update and correct the electrical Issues.

That's the time to broke the obvius reference to another MB (58), to forget us, the X48 users.

Yeah you are Intel, the best of the best in the electronic World, and we will be happy with a new Bioses for our MB's, called 2000 or 2040 for THESE MB X38 AND X48, I am sure a lot of friends of this forum will so good for the confidence to Intel.

Well, I was thinking aloud.


CPU Q9650 stepping E0
MB DX48BT2 205
Mushkin 4 Gb's XMP 1600
SapphireRadeon 4870 512
CPU Cooler Zalman 12"Fan
Thermaltake 1000
PSU Be-Quiet 650 W