flexy

i remember 1 year+ back, when i got the dfi lanparty ultra-D, and all the bioses out there, including Oscar's beta bioses and the very good 704-bta modded by OCZ tony. I am running the latest factory bios 04/06/06 now. Many people were wondering about eg.settings like DRAM drive strength and DATA srive strength in the bios - and we STILL have the "Level 1" - "Level 7" options in the bios for DRAM drive strength and "Level 1 - Level 3" for Data drive strength. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Techni...39_7203,00.html You can download from AMD the "A64 bios and kernel developers" white-papers and in those you can see that the A64 only supports Dram drive strength "weak" and "normal", since there is only ONE bit in the register, two states, and not Level 1 - Level 7. Also....even since we have the "DATA drive strength" options in bios ever since the dfi lanprty is out....the papers say that this option was only added for the processor with revision E of the CPU.....so...before revision E setting data drive strength didn't do anything. I also read some info in the A64 revision papers that even now the "data drive strength" option doesn't work right (processor bug, still not solved) and should be best left at default, reduce 00% (which i THINK was "level 4, reduce 00%). Just as a sidenote. --- regarding the *** problems with coming back from S3 standby.....MOST of the time we have problems. Also in http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_ty..._docs/25759.pdf Errata issue 85 there is a workaround for bios-developers. If they initialize certain registers with certain values we shouldn't have problems with coming back from standby anymore. I have a dirty workaround for the "coming back from S3 standby" issue for overclocked systems, because the HTT will be set back to defaults...but i have a VBS script which calls clockgen each time after coming back from S3 and sets the speeds overclocked again which works ok. Still....50% of all times when it comes from S3 i have problems because that above issue mentioned in the revision guide. --- OTHER info regarding S3 standby and problems like immediate reboot etc.: I have a logitech mouse and keyboard, both on PS2 ports - i dont use USB for keyboard or mouse. If you disable "let this device power on computer" in bios (forgot where for both keyboard and mouse then those problems are gone. But if they're set in bios and i go into S3 i get immediate reboots after entering standby.

(using 704-BT bios) the new (03/06 or something) bios obviously does NOT fix the fact that it reverts back to stock (non overclocked) HTT after coming back from S3. The temp issues are fixed, but not the HTT issues. dfi, please fix this !?!?!? I dont have problems with Hibernation etc and i noticed it would all work fine if JUST my overcloked HTT would stay. But S3 is much nicer than hibernation.

I also think this is a big issue...somewhere (Angry ?) said like "oh..they wont fix that since only a small number of people overclock anyway..." But then he also writes "these boards are designed for overclocking" RIGHT ON ! But the bios obviously NOT. I'd HIGHLY appreciate it if dfi (Oscar) could fix that S3 issue - so it keeps the overclocked values instead of reverting back to default after coming back from S3.

i am planning to get two additional SATA HDs....now i realize on my ultra d i only have TYWO independent SATA channels (each with a primaryu and secondary). Now i know from old IDE times that you never should put a salve/master on ONE channel.....but what about SATA ? Is it better to run each HD on its own channel (would make a max TWO hds for max performance)...or does SATA provide enough bandwidth that i can plug 4 HDs in my ports and dont need to be concerned even if then always two HDs would be on ONE channel ? thanks btw. i am not talking about RAID...i just want the optimal configuration w/ multiple HDs..

i still think it's kind of ironic that one of the best bioses is one which had a serious bug which a 3rd person had to fix/work around

SORRY - had problems with this bios....constant bluescreens/pfn_list corrupt and similiar nonsense. Also..it woudl be nice if we had a definitve answer about how the new drive-strength patched values correspondend to the old bios, eg. 310p ? Guessing is NICE....but i dont want to. For TCCD i need DRAM drive strength of 7 and data drive strength of 2 - i set wo "weak 1" because i just did not know what to use. Myybe this was the reason for the crashes ? Please clarify this if possible. NOW FLASHING BACK AGAIN.....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...............and testing "weak 4"........otherwise i cant explain that everyone says this bios is great but i have such problems... Edit: Yeah......"weak 4" seems to do the trick.

predictable. People complain about BETA bioses and one or the other person had a CPU destroyed...BINGO....no beta bios for YOU. I knew it the minute i read the complaints months ago....and we havent seen a new beta bios ever since.

this seems to be a pretty common case (Antec SLK 3000B) and it looks very good to me so i consider getting it. My question is how good the side air-duct lines up with the A64 on the dfi lanparty. I have a XP-120 w/ 120mm fan. thanks

thanks this was very insightful - i didnt even know that Ghost needed special treatment and that nvraid can quite be problematic. I will PROBABLY go with three Hitachi 7k80 drives and already did some preperations.....eg. i made me a bart's pe (reatogo) WinPE bootdisk with all the drivers, nvraid, Acronis trueimage, Ghost etc. and more tools. This is great since i will be able to boot into a a semi/mini XP environment right off the CD (!) and can use all those tools to (hopefully) restore my image. Exactly what i need. I will, however, still read further especially regarding change of cluster sizes w/ progs like acronis disk director, partitionmagic etc..if they work right with nvraid and my setup.

you dont get the point. She doesnt need to spend an additional $3500 to put a X850XT in her system (if she wanted)....the X850 would only increase the cost of her system maybe a few hundreds......this STILL doesnt legitimate the "notion" that you needed a $5000 system to play BF or D3 or whatsoever w/ AA and AF. You just need a good gfxcard and they do NOT put a system in $5000 ranges (NOT that i say the current gfxcard pricing is ok, but still i think you get my idea

Very Nice ! Like that !

this is my PERSONAL opinion, but: You can recognize a knowledgeable computer/hw geek by looking how wise he spent his money...and (it contradicts itself) we actually KNOW that the step from a VERY FAST to a "ULTRA VERY FAST, THE BEST" system is usually VERY, VERY small..it doesnt really MATTER whether your CPU is 2% clocked faster or your ram is clocked 2% faster....its only psychological and maybe something like a "tweak" OCD In my opinion (dont feel offended not my intention)....but i read a LOT on forums about people who spend INSANE amounts of money on hardware....$5000 and up.....so....me is a VERY poor a$$ and maybe others dont have to sequeeze every penny....but i always chuckle because i KNOW that i can have the same performance at about 1/4 of what the other dude paid....maybe even better since OFTEN peiple who pay $5000 for a system like alienware etc. dont overclock....so my $1200 system beats the $5000 system Its always very dumb (IMHO) to spend a lot of money on hardware.....but then i contradict myself since i am a BIG fanatic for the best and greatuest gfxcards out there, EVEV IF I KNOW THAT THERE IS NO GAME/ENGINE RIGHT NOW which could utilize a current $500-$800 gfx-card. MAYBE doom3, is the ONLY one. But then you feel like an idiot spending $500 (like i did) on a X850XT, overclocking each and any component in the system and then run a game like GTA:San AN, which (scuse me) looks like a$$ and could've run fine on my old 9800 Pro The steps from a $1200 system with all the basicss , eg r3ecent CPU, gfxcard, mobo and memory to a $5000 system are VERY small and IMHO absolutely not worth it. Let aside big-screen LCD etc...but once you get the biggest bada$$ motherboard, the biggest bada$$ CPU and the currently best gfx-card there just *IS* nothing more where you can sqeueeze out performance with an addition $3000 to spend (EXCEPT maybe some special cooling like phasecooling etc. and then try to brteak some OC records or similiar...as compared to the cheap system based on the same components.) ALso...congrats on your raptor raid - but if'd to feel the urge to build me an array then for sure not based on raptors (i also dont have the money) just a bunch of MUCH CHEAPER Hitachi deskstars and i am screaming and at the same time saved a LOT of money

nice thread...i always say the hitachis are kicka$$ drives and often underrated....they beat the &!^$@ out of WD , seagate, maxtor and i also dont have any reliability problems with mine. (7k250 160gb sata) NOW i really, really want to look into raid0 and the 7k80 for $52 off newegg 3x or 4x....looks just amazing. Very nice benchies eva2000 ! I just have a question and posting around like mad....how to get my old XP install on a new Raid0 withour losing data since i really do not want to reinstall all my stuff ! I am wondering if i can just build an array with, say, 3 Hitachi SATAII and then use Ghost or another tool to image over my XP install and data from my old HD ? Also....what about cluster sizes ? Can i image my stuff over with ghost, have a BOOTABLE SATA array/system then and can i change cluster sizes with Partitionmagic ? (in the nvraid docs it LOOKS like you cannot have a bootable raid0 with Sata !!!) is 32k/8 or 64/16 much better than 16/4 ??? Can anyone help me out there ?'

"futire" = future Anyone an idea ? Did someone ever use ghost to copy an XP install on a new RAID ? What about cluster sizes ?

scenario: 2 SATA HDs a+b (each Hitachi 7k50 160gb) in raid 0 1 old HD c with my old XP install Symantec Ghost to copy old XP install from c to a/b in Raid0. * can i setup a BOOTABLE Raid0 array with SATA ? * can i ( after i set up a new bootable raid0 sata array) use Ghost and image/copy my XP install over to Raid and then still able to boot ? Or would the imaging overwrite something and then i cant boot ? [looking for easiest way to setup RAID0 on sata and get my old data over there] thanks