P5W64 WS Pro - Reference Guide

[simonmaltby]

Just updated my p5WDH to the excellent P5W64 WS Pro and can not find much info on the board here in the forum. There seem to be odd bits here and there but no definative reference point.

The board seems a great deal more stable than the p5WDH. this seems to mainly be due to the ability to change more ram settings in the bios.
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Bios File links: (Thanks Icer for these )
0116 Offical Link
0117 Beta Link
0209 Beta Link
0212 Beta Link
0215 Offical Link
0301 Beta Link
0302 Beta Link
0303 Beta Link


Utility Config Files:
SpeedFan config file Link (My own creation - just uncompress and put this file in you speedfan directory)
ClockGen Version 1.0.5.0 workes with ICS954123 (ignore GSB/PCI)

Mod Links
vMCH and vDIMM mods here.

Vista
5840 beta...
Board installs perfectly. Intel drivers for Raid and Chipset work straight from install. ATI have RC2 drivers that work very well. On Board sound works perfectly and Optial out works. latest clockgen and Core temp work. Need to download the latest Asusprob to get that working the boards CD version of ProbeII and Booster (Aibooster does not install on Vista).

Issues
3D2001 SE Crashes when using Crossfire for SimonMaltby - SOLVED - ATI Tool caused issue.

Please post any info you have about the board here, I will update this first page to show any links or useful information
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I am currently stable at 455 x 9 = 4095Mhz ram at 1:1 1.6v Bios and 1.8vMCH fully unmodded board.

[vudoodoodoo]

Nice clock.

[Durzel]

Clockgen crashed on me last night when I tried upping my FSB from 430 to 440.

That said, my PC wouldn't boot with 440 FSB when vMCH was set to 1.6v. I had to bump it up to 1.7v.

[LazyBum]

Mine couldn't do more than 380 fsb, might have a bad NB chip. Sending back to Newegg, undecided on whether to try a different board or just stick with my DS3 until I find something better. Seems a lot of people with 6700 and 6800 processors are having great results with this board. However I haven't seen much for "real world" systems doing much with the 6600 processor on this board without vmods and phase. By "real" systems I mean a 24/7 system with multiple SATA drives, 1 or 2 top end video cards, maybe an Xfi, and installed in a case with air or water cooling. Bench results are fine for showing hardware capability when comparing apples to apples, but they don't mean jack when seeing how a board performs in everyday usage. A 12 sec superpi doesn't mean much if your system crashes trying to open outlook.

Edit:
After going back to my DS3 for a day or so I am starting to believe my FSB limitation is with the CPU itself, so I am not going to return the board after all. 380x9 with memory 4:5 is still pretty snappy and want to wait til I get another CPU to try on this board before I dismiss it. I had the impression that these Intel boards weren't CPU dependent on how much FSB they can run because of the architecture, but apparently the CPU is also quite important.

[Icer]

P5W64 WS Professional links

Info @ ASUS Link

ASUS Support Forum Link

ASUS Support Download Link

ASUS FTP Sites Link Or link

ASUS Utilities FTP Site Link


Bios files

0116 Official Link
0117 Beta Link
0209 Beta Link
0212 Beta Link
0215 Official Link
0301 Beta Link
0302 Beta Link
0303 Beta Link

P5W64 WS Pro Simple Pencil Mods Link

[Icer]

SetFSB crashes and Clockgen crashes when applied.

SetFSB crashes on mine but Clockgen works ok (as long as you don't set the FSB too high ), set "PLL Setup" to ICS 954123.

[vanovich]

anyone running sli on this board? i encountered better results when sli is on slot 2 and 4 . the two black ones. when i try on blue and black i loose performance in sli. anyone else try this?

[Dynasty]

anyone running sli on this board? i encountered better results when sli is on slot 2 and 4 . the two black ones. when i try on blue and black i loose performance in sli. anyone else try this?

yeah, I ran an pair of eVGA 7900 GTO's in top slot blue-1 & farthest black slot for 8/8x in sli no problems.....

[Durzel]

Anyone doing anything with the SB heatsink? (replacing with aftermarket, or just redoing TIM with AS5?)

Thinking about ditching my JingTing cooler that I have on mine as its just getting in the way when I'm trying to remove the battery, etc... plus the temperatures don't seem to be radically lower than if I just had the standard heatsink...

[simonmaltby]

I am getting to grips with the board.

Is it better than the P5WDH? Well in some ways yes, in others i'm still not sure.

I have found that where the DH undervolts from that selected in the Bios the 64 Ws over volts until you get into the mid 1.6's. At 1.55v bios the board is actually recording 1.61 in windows... the DH would have reported 5.2ish. This would explain a lot of the increased stability of the WS and also why people see higher core temps.

I think the temperature readings are different to the DH because mine have certainly gone up on idle, but load seems much the same. The temp readings seem to always be a few degrees bellow Core Temp where as the DH was way behind.

I have now got Speed fan running with control for the cpu and chassis fans. It needs a manual change in the advanced settings to achieve this. I shall post a config file soon.

Clock Gen does seem to work, but only if the Pcie and Pci settings are turned off.

My one issue is with my favorite benchmark which is having none of Crossfire on this board. 3d2001se will not run, even at stock whith this board. All other 3d benchmarks and games run very well indeed.

SuperPi has been improved with the board. My best 1M with the DH was 12.7s i now get 12.3 with a slightly lower clock... the benifit is that the board will boot at 450 - 470fsb

[Funky Monkey]

Can anyone upload the 0022 BIOS? It's the only I know of allows you to set a multiplier greater than 12.

The recent ones I've tried (215 and 301) only go to 12.

[SamHughe]

Just updated my p5WDH to the excellent P5W64 WS Pro and can not find much info on the board here in the forum....

Are you sure?
I can see at least 2 threads on the first page, one of them titled "The best Conroe Work Station Motherboard ASUS P5W64 WS Pro"It's like 10 page long thread, very hard to miss.

[Durzel]

He's talking about retail boards though

[DarkSephiroth]

Anyone know why increasing fsb to over 1.4v my system would crash?

[sierra_bound]

Using the maximum VFSB setting can cause instability on some Asus boards.

[LazyBum]

He's talking about retail boards though

That's true, those threads are more geared toward the guys who are doing competitive benching, not those building a 24/7 home system.

[sierra_bound]

Most benchers use retail boards. Some of them have their boards modded.

I bought my P5W64 from a reseller. It has not been modded. It does 460+ FSB.

I see some sour grapes around here. People assume, often wrongly, that benchers are using cherry-picked boards. Most benchers buy their hardware at the same places where everyone else gets their stuff.

There are a lot of factors that determine an overclock

1) The board
2) The CPU
3) The skills of the user

[Icer]

Most benchers use retail boards. Some of them have their boards modded.

I bought my P5W64 from a reseller. It has not been modded. It does 460+ FSB.

I see some sour grapes around here. People assume, often wrongly, that benchers are using cherry-picked boards. Most benchers buy their hardware at the same places where everyone else gets their stuff.

There are a lot of factors that determine an overclock

1) The board
2) The CPU
3) The skills of the user

True, I do a lot of benching with my unmodded retail board and use the stock chipset cooling (as5 added). While some threads may have been started by some people that may have used a hand picked board, most the posts are from people with retail boards. I think it was a good Idea to start a thread like this because a lot of good info is spread throughout many threads...this may help to consolidate important info on this board.

Actually, there are 40 threads here that have been started with P5W64 in the thread title. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...archid=2343331 It would be nice if anyone would repost here anything they felt was very important info that pertains to this board.

[sierra_bound]

It would be nice if it was just a matter of copying someone else's bios settings. But overclocking involves a lot more than that. And you will see this same issue with just about every board. One guy can do 450FSB, while another can do only do 380FSB using the same board. I've used three different CPU's with some Conroe boards, and each processor maxed out at a different FSB speed. That of course tells me it's not just the board that determines maximum FSB.

I wish there were a simple answer. But there isn't.

[Durzel]

It would be nice if it was just a matter of copying someone else's bios settings. But overclocking involves a lot more than that. And you will see this same issue with just about every board. One guy can do 450FSB, while another can do only do 380FSB using the same board. I've used three different CPU's with some Conroe boards, and each processor maxed out at a different FSB speed. That of course tells me it's not just the board that determines maximum FSB.

I wish there were a simple answer. But there isn't.

The point I was making really is that us end-users generally don't have the luxury of being sent or having several sets of memory, several CPUs, several boards, etc to test on. Victor's P5W64 is clearly a pre-release board because it has 4 hooks for the NB whereas retail (68M0AG onwards) do not. I can only hazard a guess as to whether there is anything else different about it. The point is - people who don't know this is potentially pre-release/cherry-picked equipment are going to be disappointed if they think their 100% retail board/CPU/memory is going to get them anything like the same results.

The point is - not to take anything at all away from any of the Xtreme people on this board that have these industry contacts, but posting a thread saying "this is the best board ever" is misleading until other people who actually buy them from a shop can confirm it.

That's not to say they shouldn't do it obviously, but I can see the value in a thread like this where its actually people who've bought the board, CPU and memory from a regular shop/reseller are commenting on real-world performance, not performance with cherry picked memory, CPU and board....

[LazyBum]

It would be nice if it was just a matter of copying someone else's bios settings. But overclocking involves a lot more than that. And you will see this same issue with just about every board. One guy can do 450FSB, while another can do only do 380FSB using the same board. I've used three different CPU's with some Conroe boards, and each processor maxed out at a different FSB speed. That of course tells me it's not just the board that determines maximum FSB.

I wish there were a simple answer. But there isn't.

I totally understand that, and I am not trying to invalidate any of the accomplishments of the high end benchers, just pointing out that their results don't translate automatically into the amount of potential my hardware has.

One big misconception I am just realizing is that I thought the board FSB capability was more or less independent of CPU, and mostly dependent on your luck on getting a good NB chip, cooling, and voltage. Hence most of the higher FSB coming from 6700 and 6800 users. If my chip had that much potential it probably would have been binned at 6700 or 6800 instead of 6600. I didn't have a lucky draw, guess I need to save up and try again All a part of overclocking, guess I had mostly good luck of the draw on my 939 chips and forget that sometimes you get a lame duck (relatively speaking)

[Ic3man]

The point I was making really is that us end-users generally don't have the luxury of being sent or having several sets of memory, several CPUs, several boards, etc to test on. Victor's P5W64 is clearly a pre-release board because it has 4 hooks for the NB whereas retail (68M0AG onwards) do not. I can only hazard a guess as to whether there is anything else different about it. The point is - people who don't know this is potentially pre-release/cherry-picked equipment are going to be disappointed if they think their 100% retail board/CPU/memory is going to get them anything like the same results.

The point is - not to take anything at all away from any of the Xtreme people on this board that have these industry contacts, but posting a thread saying "this is the best board ever" is misleading until other people who actually buy them from a shop can confirm it.

That's not to say they shouldn't do it obviously, but I can see the value in a thread like this where its actually people who've bought the board, CPU and memory from a regular shop/reseller are commenting on real-world performance, not performance with cherry picked memory, CPU and board....

I'm in total agreement. While I appreciate all the hard work the 'top' clockers put into sourcing and then sometimes modding the latest equipment it can only serve as an indication of what the retail boards/cpu's will do. More often than not these products ARE cherry picked and while skill obviously plays an important part you can only go so far with inferior equipment. I always take a 'pinch of salt' when someone with pre-release equipment states that this is the next big thing as it is sometimes a poor comparison to retail products that the average Joe buys. I tend to purchase equipment based on reviews, comments and tests by users of retail produce rather than the 'next big thing'. However, this is XS and 'the next big thing' is usually first to be tested here so I don't think anyone has cause to complain. Variety of reviews can only be a good thing so hats off to those at lucky enough to be at the cutting edge of PC hardware

[sierra_bound]

This thread is getting way off-topic. My apologies if I contributed to discussion going off course. Why don't we talk about the board instead.

[vudoodoodoo]

vMCH and vDIMM mods here.
http://sg.vr-zone.com/?i=4060

I did the pencil mod today. +0.1 to vMCH and +0.2 to vDIMM. It's as far as I can go w/ a No.2 pencil. I suck at soldering so I'm not gonna to solder on a VR.

[rithina]

Anyone doing anything with the SB heatsink? (replacing with aftermarket, or just redoing TIM with AS5?)

Thinking about ditching my JingTing cooler that I have on mine as its just getting in the way when I'm trying to remove the battery, etc... plus the temperatures don't seem to be radically lower than if I just had the standard heatsink...

My jingting dont have problem and been happy with it. just that i mount the cooler 90 degree of your current position ( away from the first VGA card )