X48 Rampage Formula Preview.

[Fritz_the_germ]

Don't tell me you are surprised.

Nop, I am not surprised at all. ASUS made the rampage formula to a part in the history and they won´t warm it up again - no matter if the consumer realize it or not.

[greg.m]

Nop, I am not surprised at all. ASUS made the rampage formula to a part in the history and they won´t warm it up again - no matter if the consumer realize it or not.

As long as we have a board we have the obligation to try to achieve the best, by any mean. You, Fritz, have not this board anymore so you dont care and you just saying what you think without any inhibitions, BUT if you still had this board you might had another opinion...
Am i right?
We are desperate, we need one last new bios

[Alien Grey]

well I tried Ai Clock Twister Moderate & Light going one notch higher on all the voltages with no success at 460FSB I didn't seem to have changed anything since my everest scores were roughly the same as at Ai Clock Twister Strong, which I found strange. I thought that would take some strain off the NB, maybe I am wrong & the PL is causing all this.

I will try another round with higher CPU & NB Skew delays lets hope that helps...
Lets hope that is the answer to my FSB wall.

Well, I'm not surprised that you don't see any changes in your EVEREST score. My best score at FSB 470MHz is with Ai Clock Twister Lighter. That's exactly the reason why I think that Ai Clock Twister causes the problems with high FSB.

ASUS confirmed that and said that they are going to try to fix that and I didn't hear them saying that it would be impossible to do that.

Nop, I am not surprised at all. ASUS made the rampage formula to a part in the history and they won´t warm it up again - no matter if the consumer realize it or not.

You're wrong they already confirmed the issues with the BIOS and this could only be done if they fired up the board.

[kuebk]

Senator isn't your vCPU to high?

[Senator]

kuebk well that is always your personal preference with what you are comfortable with.
Heck, I ran my E6600 for over a year with 1.65vCore & 1.60v FSBT/VTT no degrading what so ever. Ran my XP2500+ with 2.0v back in the days. Have yet to kill a CPU. MOBOs, well thats a different story...

For me 1.48vCore is fine since I'm watercooling and my temps are in check. Still going strong after 6 months.
Although I have to admit that I did a remount after lapping my CPU, my sensor is stuck at 18°C no matter what I do.

I stumbled across a thread of a guy here testing several 45nm CPUs at crazy voltages like 1.8vCore, 2.0 PLL 1.6FSBT/VTT running stress tests 24/7. At some point he gave up because nothing happend. But I can't seem to find the thread atm. Maybe someone here can link you.

A-Grey, sorry I haven't gotten round to testing different skew settings on CPU & NB yet, work is keeping me rather busy, but I'll keep you posted.

[kuebk]

E6600 is 65nm but E8500 is 45nm, for which using such voltage is kinda risky.

[Fritz_the_germ]

As long as we have a board we have the obligation to try to achieve the best, by any mean. You, Fritz, have not this board anymore so you dont care and you just saying what you think without any inhibitions, BUT if you still had this board you might had another opinion...
Am i right?
We are desperate, we need one last new bios

It isn´t my intension to hurt anyones feelings.
I realy understand what you mean, greg. You guys definetly need a better BIOS. The ones you have got are not made for a FSB greater than 450 MHz plus a high memory speed.
I myself blamed it -togehter with Alien Grey- many times to the ASUS-Support. The answeres were nothing but a sweet talking bull That was about eight months ago. But still up today ASUS won´t do anything to help their costumers as far as I see.
I realy hope for you guys that Alien Grey is right and ASUS is getting out the corner.
Don´t be mad at me when I tell you how much I am disapointed - it is directed to ASUS not to you my friends.

[Alien Grey]

Here's some good new and some bad news.


The bad news is that the new BIOS isn't ready. The good news is that ASUS didn't say that they couldn't fix what should be fixed in the BIOS.

[Senator]

A-Grey great to hear that! Lets really hope they keep their promise & are getting right to it and don't keep us waiting for another few months!

Sometimes I really wonder whether it is really that hard to fix the RF BIOS. With all the ASUS x38, x48 & x58 boards around, there surely must be similarities between them. What works for them should surely work for the RF.
But then again I really don't have the faintest clue about BIOS coding...

[Alien Grey]

A-Grey great to hear that! Lets really hope they keep their promise & are getting right to it and don't keep us waiting for another few months!

Sometimes I really wonder whether it is really that hard to fix the RF BIOS. With all the ASUS x38, x48 & x58 boards around, there surely must be similarities between them. What works for them should surely work for the RF.
But then again I really don't have the faintest clue about BIOS coding...

I don't think that the BIOS coding is the problem. The problem is that they don't have any socket 775 board that can do FSB 500MHz+ stable with a Quad so they have to do some research to find out how you can get it stable at FSB 500MHz+ with a Quad.

Anyway I'm glad that they take this serious and don't say that it's a limitation of my hardware.


Do you realy have a revision 1.03G board?

If that is true I wonder what the difference is between the 1.03G and a 1.00G.

[Senator]

A-Grey, yes I in deed have a 1.03G revision board. To be honest I don't know the differences either. I've actually never looked into that.

But what I can tell you is that I have some S3 and cold boot issues.
What happens is that I get irregular BSODs and it sometimes takes up to 4 reboots until the system is stable. Once it is it passes all the stress tests.
My hunch is that its most probably the Ai Clock Twister which runs too tight, but since I can't change it, I've gotten used to this state.

[greg.m]

It isn´t my intension to hurt anyones feelings.
I realy understand what you mean, greg. You guys definetly need a better BIOS. The ones you have got are not made for a FSB greater than 450 MHz plus a high memory speed.
I myself blamed it -togehter with Alien Grey- many times to the ASUS-Support. The answeres were nothing but a sweet talking bull That was about eight months ago. But still up today ASUS won´t do anything to help their costumers as far as I see.
I realy hope for you guys that Alien Grey is right and ASUS is getting out the corner.
Don´t be mad at me when I tell you how much I am disapointed - it is directed to ASUS not to you my friends.

No hurt feelings my friend, just wanted to be sure that IF someone watches us would see that there still are some poor guys who wait and wait and wait....

[Alien Grey]

This is why we need a BIOS that can do 500FSB stable with a Quad.





It would be a waste if I couldn't get that stable running on my board don't you think.

[Alien Grey]

I thought that I've seen it all with BIOS 0902 but I missed the best part. If you 're using the 3/4 divider it doesn't matter what Ai Clock Twister setting that you use in the BIOS because it's always the same bandwidth so I thought why not try Ai Clock Twister Lighter.

Did you ever see a Q9650 running Prime95 Blend stable at 4.05GHz and DDR 1199MHz with tRD 6 and tREF at 16383 with these voltages.

Ai Overclock Tuner [Manual]
CPU Ratio Setting [9.0]
FSB Strap to North Bridge [400MHz]
FSB Frequency [450MHz]
PCIE Frequency [100MHz]
DRAM Frequency [1199MHz]
DRAM Command Rate [2N]
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A/B [Auto]
DRAM TimingControl [Auto]
DRAM Static Read Control [Disabled]
Ai Clock Twister [Lighter]
Ai Transaction Booster [Manual]
Common Performance Level [06]
Pull-In of CH A/B all disabled
CPU Voltage [1.30000V]
CPU PLL Voltage [1.50V]
North Bridge Voltage [1.27V]
DRAM Voltage [1.80V]
FSB Termination Voltage [1.20V]
South Bridge Voltage [1.05V]
SB 1.5V Voltage [1.50V]
Loadline Calibration [Disabled]
CPU GTL Voltage Reference [0.63X]
NB GTL Voltage Reference [0.67X]
DRAM Controller Voltage REF [Auto]
DRAM Channel A/B Voltage REF [Auto]
CPU Spread Spectrum [Disabled]
PCIE Spread Spectrum [Disabled]
CPU Clock Skew [Delay 300ps]
NB Clock Skew [Delay 200ps]

Don't be afraid to use more CPU and NB Clock Skew Delay because these are the most important settings in the BIOS to obtain stability with low voltage. A delay difference of 100ps between the CPU and the NB is necessary. Without the delay difference it's impossible to keep it stable with low voltage.

Disabling DRAM Static Read also gave me a small bandwidth increase so I've got better performance and lower voltage than with my old settings. Using Ai Clock Twister Lighter didn't only make it possible to use lower NB Voltage, it also makes it possible to use lower FSB termination Voltage.

[OldChap]

Anyone tell me if there is any kind of formula/rule of thumb for determining a fsb vtt voltage? I have 4.0 (10*400) on my qx9650 but 4.2 (10.5*400) is not quite stable (and more volts than I expected)

I'm originally on a maximus formula and q6600 so all this 45nm stuff is new to me. I'm watercooled and still sub 40 Deg loaded (WCG) so I have room to go higher if I can only learn more about this setup

[MaynardX]

Hello everyone

I'd like to ask some of you guys Q9650, QX9650 users.

I've been lately thinking about changing my Q9450 CPU for Q9650. Even QX9650 as there were few in my area secondhand same priced as new Q9650s. That might be a little upgrade as I don't want to switch to I7, DDR3 because of lack of funds for it.

I just wonder how much performance in games would I gain while using CPU let's say 4.2- 4.3GHz (well, because I use quite efficient cooling, might be 4.5 GHz for 24/7) as compared with 3.8GHz? That's the CPU clock I've been running lately. What do you guys think? I consider here only CPU clocks speed and how it affects the games performance.

[papatsonis]

practically ZERO.... (form 3.8 to 4.2-4.3), u already use a good clocked full fledged 12mb Quad. if u had it at 3-3.2 i could "sympathy" your "consumer hunger", but from 3.8.... . After all of course.. its your pocket..

[Alien Grey]

This is what I've found using UT2004 and Prime95 as a stability checker.


If you are using a 32 bit OS you don't need more than 3.6GHz. Everything higher than 3.6GHz isn't used by UT2004 and was used by Prime95. If you use a 64 bit OS than you can use more than 4GHz before it will be used by Prime95.


That's all I know about gaming and I don't know if it has something to do with my poor graphicscard, that should have been replaced already if I wasn't still waiting for nVidia, or not.


What I do know is that you don't want to buy a QX9650 second hand for the same price of a new Q9650. This is going to be wasted money for sure because you don't find a lot of QX9650 that can do 4GHz+ with reasonable voltage and still run stable. If you want to replace it look for a good Q9650.

[Antineutrino]

Hi A-Grey!
I read many of your very interesting posts here and on Asus VIP official forum.
With all your advices I managed to get my rig with Q9650 stable at 460*9 = 4150 MHz. I really wish Asus could give us a new 1xxx BIOS to unleash the full power of Q9650.
Many thanks for your great help!!!

Cheers!

[Alien Grey]

Hi A-Grey!
I read many of your very interesting posts here and on Asus VIP official forum.
With all your advices I managed to get my rig with Q9650 stable at 460*9 = 4150 MHz. I really wish Asus could give us a new 1xxx BIOS to unleash the full power of Q9650.
Many thanks for your great help!!!

Cheers!

My last 2 screenshots that I've posted should be enough to convince ASUS to make a new BIOS to overclock our Quads. There isn't a problem with the hardware to run a Quad at FSB 500MHz it's the BIOS that isn't optimized for FSB 500MHz.

When you've got to bump the NB Voltage from 1.25V at FSB 450MHz to 1.70V for FSB 500MHz than something is really wrong. I think that the FSB Strap to North Bridge should be more relaxed at FSB 450MHz+.

[MaynardX]

Thanks Guys for quite infomative posts For me it's only curiosity of the CPU related gaming performance, as there haven't been any real comparison between 45nm at different clocks. Believe me Papatsonis, my wallet wont be satisfied at all as I've lately purchased some other upgrades to my sports equipment (yes I believe the winter will give up sooner).
And of course the upgrade of the CPU is related with limited oc potential of Q9450 (mostly because of his high VID, my is 1.23V) as compared with Q9650. I already need very high Vcore to stabilize at 3.80GHz, FSB475.


(But at this point one needs to mention here comes our "immemorial" RF BIOS problem, which causes so much FSBTerm, NB voltages problems above FSB450; it's obvious, all you need is just to lower the CPUs multiplier for example to x7.0 and raise only FSB to see there is really a problem, how current hungry chipset becomes, it doesn't exist at some other mobos. I don't know, maybe it's the X48 chipset issue. As we all know, there are the P45 mobos that shows the best 45nm CPU OC performance, not the X48 ones.)

Quite interesting is what Alien Grey says about 32- and 64-bit OSes. I think generally it's up to the game engine if it's 32 or 64-bit version, and if it's installed on 64-bit OS. Then the game can (maybe) utilize more computing power of the CPU. I think the comparison should be made. These are only my empirical thoughts as I'm not any of the IT specialist.

[Senator]

Great results A-Grey! I'm sure you're very happy with your OC.

BTW I found the thread about high voltages: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=198614

I tried Ai Clock Twister Lighter, delaying the CPU uptp 400ps & NB 300ps, I even uped all the voltages by 2 steps with the result that IBT is sometimes stable & sometimes its not. That makes it even more complicated.

I would like to know if greg.m is using 1.77v on the NB 24/7.

I am also getting the feeling that Win7 x64 requires higher voltages. On top of that I have APIC + ACPI 2.0 enabled. A-Grey have you got those enabled aswell?

[Alien Grey]

Great results A-Grey! I'm sure you're very happy with your OC.

BTW I found the thread about high voltages: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=198614

I tried Ai Clock Twister Lighter, delaying the CPU uptp 400ps & NB 300ps, I even uped all the voltages by 2 steps with the result that IBT is sometimes stable & sometimes its not. That makes it even more complicated.

I would like to know if greg.m is using 1.77v on the NB 24/7.

I am also getting the feeling that Win7 x64 requires higher voltages. On top of that I have APIC + ACPI 2.0 enabled. A-Grey have you got those enabled aswell?

I've got them both enabled.


Try to fine tune your settings first with using AI Clock Twister Lighter and the CPU and NB Clock Skew on a really stable overclock before you try it again at FSB 455MHz.

When you use the CPU and NB Clock Skew and you're using to much voltage than you would actually need than you can be sure that you won't get it stable.

[m4gg0t]

I can't even overclock my CPU or my RAM anymore. BSOD when loading windows. CPU or RAM dead?

[Spyrus]

I thought that I've seen it all with BIOS 0902 but I missed the best part. If you 're using the 3/4 divider it doesn't matter what Ai Clock Twister setting that you use in the BIOS because it's always the same bandwidth so I thought why not try Ai Clock Twister Lighter.

Did you ever see a Q9650 running Prime95 Blend stable at 4.05GHz and DDR 1199MHz with tRD 6 and tREF at 16383 with these voltages.

Ai Overclock Tuner [Manual]
CPU Ratio Setting [9.0]
FSB Strap to North Bridge [400MHz]
FSB Frequency [450MHz]
PCIE Frequency [100MHz]
DRAM Frequency [1199MHz]
DRAM Command Rate [2N]
DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A/B [Auto]
DRAM TimingControl [Auto]
DRAM Static Read Control [Disabled]
Ai Clock Twister [Lighter]
Ai Transaction Booster [Manual]
Common Performance Level [06]
Pull-In of CH A/B all disabled
CPU Voltage [1.30000V]
CPU PLL Voltage [1.50V]
North Bridge Voltage [1.27V]
DRAM Voltage [1.80V]
FSB Termination Voltage [1.20V]
South Bridge Voltage [1.05V]
SB 1.5V Voltage [1.50V]
Loadline Calibration [Disabled]
CPU GTL Voltage Reference [0.63X]
NB GTL Voltage Reference [0.67X]
DRAM Controller Voltage REF [Auto]
DRAM Channel A/B Voltage REF [Auto]
CPU Spread Spectrum [Disabled]
PCIE Spread Spectrum [Disabled]
CPU Clock Skew [Delay 300ps]
NB Clock Skew [Delay 200ps]

Don't be afraid to use more CPU and NB Clock Skew Delay because these are the most important settings in the BIOS to obtain stability with low voltage. A delay difference of 100ps between the CPU and the NB is necessary. Without the delay difference it's impossible to keep it stable with low voltage.

Disabling DRAM Static Read also gave me a small bandwidth increase so I've got better performance and lower voltage than with my old settings. Using Ai Clock Twister Lighter didn't only make it possible to use lower NB Voltage, it also makes it possible to use lower FSB termination Voltage.

I have a previous post where i wrote to use FSB Voltage and PLL to minimum values.
Dram Static Enabled + Moderate are my settings, so i guess there are
2 ways to minimize the voltages.

If i remember correctly setting Twister from Strong to Moderate to Light needs lower nb voltage but decreases bandwidth.
Not sure with Dram static Enabled / Disabled, i remember not seeing any difference in both voltages and bandwidth