X48 Rampage Formula Preview.

[Engage]

i just did a fresh install of windows 7 pro 64 bit and i want to for the first time have my computer running stable for once.... I am willing to pay for some help, yes i am that desperate lol. i have had my computer since the formula rampage came out and i am running the following; cpu e8500, 4gb 1066 corsair, ati hd4870 1gb, 1 wd raptor 150gb, 1 seagate barricuda 7200 700gb, xfi titanium sound card, 850 watt corsair power supply, after market cpu fan : CoolerMaster Hyper TX Universal Socket 775 AM2 CPU Cooler "POS". i have never overclocked it and its never been stable and also never lived up to its potential. i am very smart and take directions well and i know i can do whatever you want me to do, like i said i will pay you pay pal or whatever you want to help me . im broke so please dont take advantage lol as i am just a college student with a part time job and no parents. so yea i am just looking for some help as i know you guys are the best when it comes to asus rampage formula motherboards. pm me for vent info or email info or any info.

[phelan1777]

Can someone post a high def close up of the bare socket I need to compare with a pin on my socket because it seems off and I want to make sure before I see about a possible RMA.


If someone could post a pic I would greatly appreciate it.

[phelan1777]

I admit that I haven't really tried to push my 3370 on the formula but I am going to play around with the current bios, see what I can get for 24/7 stable then try the new bios and see if I have any luck.

Though my RAM is rated for 8500 so I don't think it will be to forgiving.

I have three sets to play with, Geil Dragon, OCZ Reaper and Corsair Doms.

[Engage]

well I am running bios 902 atm. and after the fresh install everything seems stable but not as fast as it should be...so i guess I am just interested in finding a nice stable overclock profile. what do you guys think about the 3 in 1 overclocking suite from asus that came with the mobo. i chose not to install it this time because of the past problems with it. but my offers still on the table.

[DonNiger]

What a heck is wrong with the CPU voltages? I have to set 1,54v in bios to see 1,11v.
(Q9650 def, all other options auto)

[Antineutrino]

Alien Grey,
did you manage to get more stability with the new bios?
Or we have to wait for the special 133 FSB mode?

[Alien Grey]

Alien Grey,
did you manage to get more stability with the new bios?
Or we have to wait for the special 133 FSB mode?

No, can't get it stable at 9 X 470MHz with DDR 1253MHz.

I'm waiting on an answer from ASUS about the Special 133 Mode. Perhaps they needed to know how far you can push it without loosing stability before they can add the feature.

[Antineutrino]

No, can't get it stable at 9 X 470MHz with DDR 1253MHz.

I'm waiting on an answer from ASUS about the Special 133 Mode. Perhaps they needed to know how far you can push it without loosing stability before they can add the feature.

I can't go further than 465x9.... Our only hope is that Asus will answer you soon...

[Alien Grey]

Is there anyone who's using a refresh period of 16120T for 24/7 use?

I've tried that but Ubuntu 64 bit doesn't like it as much as Windows XP X64.

[OC_Newbee]

So far bois 0001 is pretty good. Increased my fsb by four from 470 to 474 fsb x8 with my Q6600 @ 1.49 Vcore and 1.47v Northbridge fully LinX 25 times stable and Prime 64bit 12 hours stable.

Refresh period - Auto
Ai Clock Twister - Auto
PL - 7
Fsb Strap - Auto
OCZ Blade 1066 LV @ 1138 mhz 5,5,5,15
Vdram @ 1.88 bios

Will test more when I have the time!

[DonNiger]

Does anybody has / had a problem with Raid setup? I'm trying to run Raid5 over 3 Samsung F3's but I’m getting blue screens (indicating drive failures) under stress. After restart, the Matrix rebuilds and verifies data.

[SoLoR]

Does anybody has / had a problem with Raid setup? I'm trying to run Raid5 over 3 Samsung F3's but I’m getting blue screens (indicating drive failures) under stress. After restart, the Matrix rebuilds and verifies data.

no im having only 2 disks in raid0 tho... if you want i can give you bios with latest intel option rom v9.6.0.1014 that im using.

[Per Hansson]

Does anybody has / had a problem with Raid setup? I'm trying to run Raid5 over 3 Samsung F3's but I’m getting blue screens (indicating drive failures) under stress. After restart, the Matrix rebuilds and verifies data.

I've tried it and had nothing but problems
The array needing a rebuild / verify just like you say after BSOD
I also had 2 HDD's that died on me at different times, and I was so unimpressed by how the controller handled that so I just said to hell with it and bought a good RAID card instead, a LSI 8704ELP
Everything has worked so much better since then!

http://forums.storagereview.com/inde...aid-5-rebuild/

[DonNiger]

I tried the other conf - two Maxtors (I know that they are good) in Raid1 and the same problem. I do not have blue screens (not the boot) but just after restart it starts rebuild and verifie. And that just without any reasons! That MB really sucks concerning Raid controller (and some other stuff as well). Thinking of putting my old P965 MB back in again. I was useing Raid0 and Raid1 with that one for 2 years without any single problem.

SoLor - I might try your bios, it can not hurt anyway Send me a PM.

[Chemjsal]

Hi guys!
Just wanted to let you know that I have moved on. I am a happy owner of the Gigabut EP45-UD3P v1.6 mobo. I got it for $50 off ebay. Go figure! And, let me tell you, things are different with this baby, as I am able to pull 500x8.5 no sweat! Also, the good thing about it is that I've successfully been using the LLC option for quite some time now. NB core is set at 1.38V

[Alien Grey]

It looks great but is it really that great?

At 4.05GHz I've got higher GFlops with my ASUS Rampage Formula. Maybe there's to much running in the background and that's why you've got lower GFlops at 4.25GHz.


That makes me believe that the problem with overclocking on the ASUS Rampage Formula is because everything is to tight and there's no way to change that so we're stuck with lower clocks.


It was great running at 9 X 465MHz and DDR 1239MHz with tRD 6 and tREF at 16120T and I thought that this time it was really stable but I was wrong and I'm back at 9 X 450MHz and DDR 1199MHz with tRD 6 and tREF at 16120T to try to find out if it's possible to use a refresh delay of 16120T for 24/7 use.

[Chemjsal]

You bet it is.
The reason for low speed was the amount of memory I was using. Here is an update using just a tad more memory (1200). As you can see from the pic, there is an increase by about 1.3 Gflops in average. So, I guess this Gflop thing is somewhat related with memory. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway, this is with 1.36V on MCH.

[Alien Grey]

That looks better. Now it's around 1 to 1.5 GFlops higher than my Q9650@4.05GHz if I use the same amount of memory to use with IBT.

The most important thing is that you're happy with your purchase and you that you see progress.


When I bought this board my goal was to run it a Q9450@3.6GHz. Than I switched my memory and bought the G.SKILL F2-9600CL5D-4GBPI to run at least at DDR 1199MHz and tRD 6.

Switched the Q9450 for a Q9650 to run at least 4.05GHz and all of this seems to be working very well with low voltage so I reached my goal but like everyone else I'm beginning to ask questions why this is all possible at such a low voltage and I can't seem to do any better without loosing stability somewhere.

There's two things that you can do then. Replace the board like you did or ask ASUS to fix the mees they left behind. Since I already reached the minimum expectations I had with my hardware there's no reasson to replace the board and I'm hoping that ASUS is going to fix the mess they left behind, if they can, so they can keep me happy.


I think that most of us are going to do the same and when the time comes to build a new computer and you're still not happy than it's time to make the switch to another manufacturer.

[leo27]

Exactly right A-Grey.

And also to Chemjsal you can't directly compare GFlops from LinX and Intelburntest cause they produce slightly different values even if used with the same amount of memory.

[Alien Grey]

Well damned... I knew that I had to test BIOS 0001 at 4.05GHz first to see if there's difference between this BIOS and BIOS 0902.

Something is ed up with this BIOS. They changed something that they shouldn't have and know it fails at FSB 450MHz. The DRAM Clock Fine delays aren't the same anymore as with BIOS 0902 and it's enough to make it fail over time.

With BIOS 0902 they were always 11-9-11-9 and know they are at 10-8-10-8 with the same settings as with BIOS 0902 and I can't seem to fix it.

[Alien Grey]

Forget what I said about the DRAM clock Fine delays. I flashed it back to 0902 and they are exactly the same. They are only at 11-9-11-9 with my old settings with Ai Clock Twister Moderate.

I think that I'm going to have to give it some more CPU Voltage to have it stable again.

[kuebk]

In case of performance X48 is way much better than P45.

[Chemjsal]

ok, here is another run at 480x8.5 with a set of G.Skills. As you can see, LinX 0.6.4 produces slightly higher speeds than those of IntelBurn test 2.4. This is at 4.08 GHz while running the memory at 1150-ish MHz (PL8). I am not going to argue which is faster. I simply don't care about it as much. This mobo simply boots faster, it's more hackintosh friendly, cost-U-less, and overclocks better. Therefore, it's more enjoyable. So, there you have it

[Alien Grey]

Can you believe this .

You know how I always tell that there's something wrong that causes us to use almost exactly the same voltage to run our Q9650 at 4.05GHz. It doesn't matter how low your vid is the minimum voltage is always around 1.20-122V or it's BSOD time.

Well I just fixed my problem with my Q9650 running at 4.05GHz. Whatever I did I couldn't get it stable anymore with the same voltage as it was stable before. Clear CMOS and flashing back to older BIOS revisions didn't help.

I fixed it with enabling LLC in the BIOS (that doesn't work with my board and always ends up with a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION BSOD ). Disabled it again in the BIOS and now my Q9650 is running happy again with the same voltage as before.

And also if you want to change the refresh period in the BIOS you should always go back to AUTO before changing to the value you would like to use. It triggers the board to power off when saving the settings and that seems to be the way it should be done.

You can try it yourself. Change it without using AUTO first to a value that you didn't use before. Than go into the BIOS and change the DRAM Timing Control back to AUTO. Go back in the BIOS and change it back to MANUAL and watch the refresh period. Is it exactly the same as it was before you went back to the DRAM timing Control on AUTO or is it back on your first used value?

[Alien Grey]

ok, here is another run at 480x8.5 with a set of G.Skills. As you can see, LinX 0.6.4 produces slightly higher speeds than those of IntelBurn test 2.4. This is at 4.08 GHz while running the memory at 1150-ish MHz (PL8). I am not going to argue which is faster. I simply don't care about it as much. This mobo simply boots faster, it's more hackintosh friendly, cost-U-less, and overclocks better. Therefore, it's more enjoyable. So, there you have it

The GFlops are almost the same and if there's any difference it isn't much and you'll never notice it anyway.