ASUS Maximus II Formula - new P45 king?

[Nevin]

This is my E8600. I finally managed to stabilize 8x533 and after 10 days (I will have new ram) I will try 8x575.
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[ViViD]

Hey seba84_2005 Tanx For Info About Your Setting It's Been Working Great For Me
Tanx Man

[Leeghoofd]

Hye guys,

I gat a bad new Cryptik : following the majority, i'm thinking about sell it , cus' an EP45T UD3P is commin' to my lab

Flash directly to F5 bios and take into account that Vdimm undervolts by about 0.06 here... with the F5 bios the board starts to work in a decent manner, before it was a complete pos...

Some more info on the EP45T UD3P here : EP45T UD3P short review

[Eeky NoX]

Thx for the link, I'll be there as soon as possible

For the MaximusII I'll check for some possible improvement before sell it of course...see you next ^^

[e.v.o]

So, finally it is done

I made a thread at the ASUS Forums with much much help from Cryptik. Thank you mate!
This thread is also linked at FdL, and if you also knew other forums, then please post it over there. This thread should canalize our needs and critique directly at Asus. There are still some things that should be corrected...

[radaja]

e.v.o,very nice.lets just pray that asus will read it and try to resolve these issues.cause its such a shame that this board,because of these issues cant really compete with these lesser priced boards.good job.

[CryptiK]

Thanks e.v.o, it would be nice if they fixed it. However as I mentioned earlier I'm now having some serious issues with stability over 4.23GHz and I'm thinking of selling off the board and trying something new, this just isn't good enough anymore, and I can't keep making excuses for it.

Today I tried my cpu, ram and video card & PSU with my mates EP45 - Extreme, and I had no trouble playing crysis and running 3D benches all the way to 4500 MHz (didn't try higher) using the same voltages (sometimes less) than I need in the M2F, so I can now say for certain it's the board causing my instability trouble.

I just have to now choose a board if I can somehow justify spending more money on s775 gear.

[radaja]

cryptik if you sell you maxII and then buy the UD3P there wont be much justifying to do cause you will have money leftover. good luck on your next board

[e.v.o]

Thank you all. Hope we're getting something done with this thread

As CryptiK also stated, the board is simply just a joke... you pay a lot of money and don't get real performance. those little extra gimmicks isn't worth the money
But for me there is no alternative out there... so i will stay with it.

I think no one would raise his voice if the MIIF would not be that expensive and won't be advertised as overclocking board (Republic of Crap < hey wtf is going on with that homepage? i paid for some f**king xtra content.. and it says "check back later" since 1 year? ^^). They made some real hardware mistakes and Asus just bought a huge amount of P45 rev. A2 and produced many many MIIF .. so no going "back" for a new board revision.

Another thing is: I bought a P5Q Premium and the extra PCIe switch chip is simply just as hot as hell @ idle. So i downloaded the spec sheet to have a look at the maximum temp this chip can handle. should i tell you what? the temp is now @ about 55°C up to 60°C and this one can only handle up to 70°C, so there is no really room to deal with. just thinking about getting a P5Q dlx or some other board.

[Grnfinger]

P45 was a huge risk, in all honestly what did it fill? What market was it aimed for?
X38/X48 is far superior in bandwidth/FSB, Asus filled a small void with eye candy and it worked, toss a few free boards out and let the forums market our board for us.
I am dissapointed with the price/performance from this board, there are other boards out there performing on par or better for way less money. Spending money has never been a issue for me, I just like to get what I pay for, I can spay paint some heat sink.....
Investing in 775 no matter how small seems rather pointless...i7 is here and really not any more costly than 775/DDR3
I do feel that if Asus was to actually put some effort into coding a WORKING bios it would unleash the boards full potential, maybe the Gigabyte UD3 team could have a go at it.
Untill that bios arrives I doubt we will ever know what it can really do.
My

[radaja]

+1.i think you right on that.i still think im going to wait until they have all the kinks ironed out and maybe a newer revision with the I7 setup.although they seem to be pretty good right now.but ill wait til there is one board that stands out amongst the rest(proven winner where if you ask you get 90% of the people voting for it)

[CryptiK]

Trouble is I don't quite trust the UD3P. DFI's build quality may not be up to quality standards set by other manufacturers, as there has been a few odd failures when really pushed hard, not that the tier 1 manufacturers are setting a very good example anyway. Add to that I don't really like any DDR2 X48 boards; there are a couple but each has negatives that make them not worth the expense IMO, the 2 X48's I really like, the Rampage Extreme and P5E3-Premium, are DDR3 and would require a ram upgrade, and the only DDR3 ram I want is double the price of the boards in question. I am between a rock and a hard place.

The things that make i7 not very practical right now, is decent DDR3 ram (2000MHz+ CL7 @ <1.65v) is ridiculously expensive (ordinary DDR3 is weak, if it clocks well it's barely any better than DDR2 at 600MHz CL5), and the board I like most (EVGA Classified) is not out yet, plus the platform/cpu's are so new it may be markedly improved by hardware updates. I want my i7 build to be a really good improvement, not mildly better than my current setup. I will definitely wait before upgrading platforms.

**All that said though, I'm tempted by the DFI UT P45-T2RS. It looks to be a pretty solid board, better than the M2F, and with a stronger PWM than the UD3P. I just wish DFI would get with the program and put a BIOS update feature in the BIOS, flashing with DOS is arcane. I also worry about BIOS updates.

[radaja]

cryptik,i think your right about the UT-P45-T2RS.i was just looking at the everest scores that C-N posted on the first page of his thread and the are very impressive.he is getting some very low latencies compared to my 520fsb and 540 fsb runs on my UD3P.also higher read write and copy scores too.here is my run at 544fsb and then go look at his 540fsb run on the first page of his thread.i dont understand how his scores beat mine by so much?http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=973http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...90&postcount=1

[e.v.o]

**All that said though, I'm tempted by the DFI UT P45-T2RS. It looks to be a pretty solid board, better than the M2F, and with a stronger PWM than the UD3P. I just wish DFI would get with the program and put a BIOS update feature in the BIOS, flashing with DOS is arcane. I also worry about BIOS updates.

Thats the point. This is the difference between a big manufactuer and DFi and why i stay with my MIIF. All benchmarks i've seen are showing that the DFi P45 boards are going extremly well. I don't want to push everything to the max, but it'll be nice to have 500+ FSB with 24/7 settings...

[CryptiK]

Yeah I'm really liking that board, it has 8 phase digital PWM and appears to be quite solid. I think DFI have really tweaked the BIOS and chipset timings to give the best performance out of the P45, clock for clock I have not seen another P45 board come close to it bandwidth/latency wise. Also the it comes with the A3 revision chipset. Theres a q9650 clocked at 4.35GHz 9HRs+ stable, so it can clock quads well it seems too. i have also seen everest benches at DDR2-1350 and no way can my M2F even load windows at DDR2-1333, I can pass 32M at DDR2-1302 at only 2.24 vdimm, then nothing over that can be stabilized, and its not my ram obviously, I just run into a wall and it has to be the board.

The thing about the BIOS updates doesnt concern me if the latest BIOS actually works as it should, which it seems to.

[radaja]

thanks for the info,thats awesome they have the A3revision,thats going to be a very lethal combo digital pwm and the A3 and great memory performance. going to see if i can find one.

[e.v.o]

Also i don't know why Asus isn't switching to PWM.
I don't think it is only the BIOS that Asus messed up. There must be a hardware issue why the MIIF isn't running that good against other boards in that class. The BIOS is like the ones from the P5Q Series and the P5Q Dlx runs even better than the MIIF.

[Gunnz Akimbo]

ICH10 IS on the PCI bus, along with loads of other devices (not all as is displayed, but enough to clog it up)



Everest 5.00

[Grnfinger]

Trouble is I don't quite trust the UD3P. DFI's build quality may not be up to quality standards set by other manufacturers, as there has been a few odd failures when really pushed hard, not that the tier 1 manufacturers are setting a very good example anyway. Add to that I don't really like any DDR2 X48 boards; there are a couple but each has negatives that make them not worth the expense IMO, the 2 X48's I really like, the Rampage Extreme and P5E3-Premium, are DDR3 and would require a ram upgrade, and the only DDR3 ram I want is double the price of the boards in question. I am between a rock and a hard place.

The things that make i7 not very practical right now, is decent DDR3 ram (2000MHz+ CL7 @ <1.65v) is ridiculously expensive (ordinary DDR3 is weak, if it clocks well it's barely any better than DDR2 at 600MHz CL5), and the board I like most (EVGA Classified) is not out yet, plus the platform/cpu's are so new it may be markedly improved by hardware updates. I want my i7 build to be a really good improvement, not mildly better than my current setup. I will definitely wait before upgrading platforms.

**All that said though, I'm tempted by the DFI UT P45-T2RS PLUS. It looks to be a pretty solid board, better than the M2F, and with a stronger PWM than the UD3P. I just wish DFI would get with the program and put a BIOS update feature in the BIOS, flashing with DOS is arcane. I also worry about BIOS updates.

Actually flashing through DOS is the safest method, Making a bootable USB stick takes about 3 seconds and with a ES version of AFUDOS you should NEVER have a single issue unless you have a power failure.
Flashing with AFUDOS is the only way I update any bios, it has never let me down


Now how come all you MIIF fanbois are changing tune late in the game
I tried to tell you the Rampage was a superior board
Seriously are you going to jump ship?

[jason4207]

ICH10 IS on the PCI bus, along with loads of other devices (not all as is displayed, but enough to clog it up)



Everest 5.00

Take your 2 raptors and put them on the 'speeding HDD' in RAID0. Wait...you already did:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1672


OK, now take those same 2 raptors and put them on the ICH10R, and see what happens...


The 'speeding hdd' is capping you at about 120MB/s. That is not much faster than a single raptor. W/ 2 raptors you should be getting something closer to 180MB/s. If you really believe the 'speeding hdd' is faster then that is your call, but the numbers speak for themselves IMO. Best thing to do is disable the Marvel altogether unless you need extra ports. All it does is give mediocre results and slow down your boot process.



Here is a thread I just found where a couple 150-raptors were tested alone, and then in various RAID0 configs using ICH10. See for yourself which looks faster.

[humeyboy]

ICH10 IS on the PCI bus, along with loads of other devices (not all as is displayed, but enough to clog it up)



Everest 5.00

I don't know what you are smoking but the ICH10 IS NOT on the PCI BUS, if it was it would be limited to 133MB/Sec shared with all other devices.

IT IS on the PCI-E 2.0 BUS and has plenty of Bandwidth.

[radaja]

i think gunns is refering to this thread.maybe?does make you wonder whats going on
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=217135

[jason4207]

i think gunns is refering to this thread.maybe?does make you wonder whats going on
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=217135

That is interesting, but even if ICH10 is somehow restricted on X58, it is still a heck of a lot faster than any secondary on-board RAID controller I've ever seen.

[CryptiK]

Actually flashing through DOS is the safest method, Making a bootable USB stick takes about 3 seconds and with a ES version of AFUDOS you should NEVER have a single issue unless you have a power failure.
Flashing with AFUDOS is the only way I update any bios, it has never let me down


Now how come all you MIIF fanbois are changing tune late in the game
I tried to tell you the Rampage was a superior board
Seriously are you going to jump ship?

Yeah I know its safer, and my flashdrive is set up as bootable anyway as I was using it for videocards. I just find it a little arcane, although of course it works fine.

I was 'ok' with this board until I got my new 8400 and stated hitting my boards limit much earlier than I would have liked. It has some kind of issue with FSB between 470 and 499, 500 FSB/DDR2-1200 is way more stable (but not totally) than 478 FSB/DDR2-1147 at exactly the same settings, and 478 FSB/DDR2-1195 is terribly unstable.

The weird thing is, the higher the FSB I use, the more negative I have to set the NB GTL Ref, and if using a high clock, it is terribly unstable in 3D apps although it can pass linpack, orthos, memtest etc.

I can be stable at 478 x 8/DDR2-1147, but as soon as I use 9x MP, it falls apart. Skewing helps but cannot stabilize it.

I just want a stable 24/7 board at either 4.25GHz, 500 FSB/DDR2-1200, 4.3GHz, 506 FSB/DDR2-1214 or 4.3GHz, 478FSB/DDR2-1195.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I cant get a DFI UT P45, so I'm strongly considering the DK X48-T2RSB Plus.

[529th]

I bought this board MIIF in hopes for a new home for my Q9650. Reading this thread sorta depresses me. I've not pushed my Q9650 beyond 3.6Ghz on this board but I do know its better than my old Asus P5Q3 Del which required 1.345vcore to hit 4ghz; with this it comes across at 3.6Ghz with 1.20v which at the same speed required 1.2500+v on the P5Q3 (running 1901 bios too btw)