FSB fluctuation on AA8XE.... help!!!

[boshuter]

Is it normal the fsb to fluctuate on the AA8XE? I'm running the latest bios and have tried it with 3 cpu's; 560 3.6es, 571 3.8es, and a 650 3.4es. It doesn't matter what fsb I select, the board will fluctuate up to 4 fsb from what I have it set at. For example, I was running the 3.4 at 275fsb X 15 multi (which it's perfectly stable at on an Asus P5AD2). If I open cpuz and run SuperPi I can watch the fsb run up to 278.8 and now and then my system will crash from the extra fsb. Is this a problem with these boards, or do I need to rma mine? I went to the Abit for the XE chipset but the way it is I could run better oc's with the Asus 925e board.

[Northwood]

this seems a little strange, i had the opposite where the FSB would go down, which is commonly known as thermal throttling, never seen a processor throttle upwards before though.

[boshuter]

I've never seen it before either. It's definitley not thermal throttling. I have good water cooling and the temps are fine. It doesn't matter what fsb I set, as soon as it's under a load it will start fluctuating up to 4fsb over what I have it set at. It doesn't stay there, it fluctuates up and down, but never goes below the setting I have in bios. I'd just like to find out if this is common to this board, or if I need to rma it. If it's common to the board, I'll sell it and get another Asus. My oc has gone to crap on this board compared to the P5AD2 I had before. I've tried emailing Abit with no success. I heard a lot of good things about this board before I bought it, but I think it may be my first and last Abit if I can't find some help with this problem.

[Northwood]

try the northbridge strap to 1066FSB and see if that helps, my board seems more stable when i strap it.

[boshuter]

I'll try that to see what happens. I set everything at defaults last night just to see what happend and if anything it was worse than oc'd; it went up 8fsb over default. It's hard to find the highest stable oc when you can't get a stable fsb.

Are you running the same board? If so, could you open cpuz and run a 1m superpi and watch the fsb in cpuz to see if yours does the same thing? I'd sure appreciate it. I've tried all 3 of my cpu's and they all do it, none of them will oc or bench as high as they would on the Asus board either.

[Northwood]

just did a 1million pi run and its stable as a rock, the FSB doesn't flinch 1 single bit.

whats your northbridge voltage set to? i've got mine at 1.7v

[boshuter]

Mine is set to 1.6, that should be enough for no faster than I'm running it but I'll try 1.7. I think I should just rma this board, there has to be something wrong with it. I really appreciate you running that test, at least I know it isn't something normal for the board.

[Technonut]

My board does the same thing....

I have the FSB set @ 275, and CPU-Z shows between 274.2 to 275.7....

I have set the NB to 1.7, and made no difference.

The system is rock-solid, so I really have not paid much attention to it.

[boshuter]

My board does the same thing....

I have the FSB set @ 275, and CPU-Z shows between 274.2 to 275.7....

I have set the NB to 1.7, and made no difference.

The system is rock-solid, so I really have not paid much attention to it.

Mine moves a lot more than that, if mine is set to 275 it will go up to 279 or more. At "daily use" speeds it doesn't really matter, but trying to run benches at the highest possible oc is impossible. I probably would haven't noticed it either if I hadn't been trying to figure out why this board wasn't as stable or overclocked as well as the other.

[boshuter]

Well I've tried 1.7v on the NB, strapping it to 1066, and every other setting I can think of and it's no better. I'm going to try to RMA the board and hope the new one is better. If not, it's back to Asus for me. This board would be fine for running daily at a 100% prime stable oc, but it's usesless for trying to run benches at the max oc the way it is now. If my cpu will bench at 275 X 16 on the other board, I have to set this AA8XE to 270 X 16 to make it through a benchmark; and that's on a good day

[charlie]

totally common...
my 630 will fluctuate 15mhz when OC'ed HIGH.
POS!
C

[boshuter]

totally common...
my 630 will fluctuate 15mhz when OC'ed HIGH.
POS!
C

Well that's not good news I assume it's the board, I've had 2 different 500 series cpu's and 1 650 in it and they all did it.

[death metal]

boshutter, turn off Game Accelerator =)...it'll stabilize ...

[Kunaak]

its not the motherboard, its the CPU.

I say this cause when I was overclocking with my old Prescott 505.
that CPU had no Hyperthreading, no J feature, no EIST, no selectable Multipliers, no throttling support, nothing... it's a plain CPU, just like you would normally expect.

that CPU was steady as a rock.
results from it, were like clock work, predictable and consistant.

now I have 3.6ES, that has tons of features on it, and my results are definatly up, but the headaches this CPU brings are endless...
I have never been so discouraged from overclocking, as with this CPU.

one minute it will do 4.5 ghz easy, reboot, and then it will never make it into windows again... reboot, does nothing, clear the CMOS it does nothing... wait a few days, it will start working again.
the C1E feature is the biggest headache I have ever had to deal with from any CPU, Ever. Hyperthreading, definatly gives impressive results, when compared to a non hyperthreaded P4 at the same speed.
but the combination of C1E, and Hyperthreading, just makes overclocking with this CPU a nightmare.
this CPU with C1E enabled will drop from 18x multiplier, to 14x, and the Vcore by .2, which when overclocking, that means your CPU is constantly running underclocked, then jumping to heavily overclocked... making it extremely prone to freezing in windows... oh man the pain in the ass this CPU is, is just endless.
by comparison, my winchester 3200 is a pure joy to work with, cause it reminds me of my prescott 505

my 3.6ES jumps all over the place, even with C1E disabled.
underload, it will drop or jump by as much as 20 mhz or more.
this thing just feel flakey.
it's fast, but a pain in the ass to work with.

since my old 505 was perfectly steady on this board, but this very featured 3.6 is flakey as hell, I would say it's the CPU doing this, not the board.

[Sentential]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...738#post876738

^^ See there. Its an issue with the chipset ive been told. Alot of times the chipset VTT does not track correctally and thus causes it.

[Technonut]

The issue seems to have been a bug in CPU-Z....

Download the latest version (1.29) Here ...

New PCI devices report.
Switch for VCore report in .ini file.
VCore report on some uGuru mainboards.
Improved clocks computation.
Improved support for latest AMD CPUs, Celeron D 3x1 (EM64T).
Improved support for SiS 649, 650 and 656 chipsets, Intel 915PM chipset.
Improved stability when several instances of CPU-Z are running in the same time.
Restored html report in ghost mode (see "Parameters" chapter above).