Crossfire + Intel?

[Angry_Games]

allllll right

 

I am NOT here to bash Asus lol

 

but I've just encountered a couple of serious headaches that seem to plague ALL motherboard makers...so those of you who thought DFI was the most back-asswards when it came ot providing instructions and drivers etc...have no fear...all companies that make motherboards seem to be lacking seriously in this area...

 

flashing the bios on these boards...can be a total nightmare (lets begin with the fact they are AMI bioses and not the Awards that we are used to here...and their BIOS flashing...leaves a lot to be desired as well as making you chew your nails down to the bloody stumps while actually flashing because you don't know if the damn thing will decide to reboot after a flash lol)

 

then getting RAID to install...can be quite a chore (whether it is the Intel ICH7R or the Marvell 88SE6141...which according to Asus forums doesn't really work anyway lol)

 

so anyway...I'm not bashing them...it is just good to know that DFI isn't the only crazy company out there that doesn't really give the right info or enough of it for their products and it is left up to us end users to decipher the right and wrong ways to do things lol

[Angry_Games]

ooook

 

i guess when using the stock heatsink that comes with teh 930 cpu, and you tell the Asus bios to make the fan silent (1000-1250rpm), it easily allows the cpu to get over 75C quickly...but if you tell it to run at full speed (ie 2600rpm), it seems to run about 47C...i guess lol

 

anyway....its getting a nice load of WindowsXP 32-bit right now with everything at stock speeds...and it really needs to hurry because the twin-turbine engine fans on the X1900XT's are about to drive me ABSOLUTELY #%@#$ INSANE!!!! hehe

 

man i cant wait to get them watercooled!

[Angry_Games]

and then on top of everything, every time it reboots, get no video...

 

which makes me wonder if it is still loading windows with no video, or...what lol

 

 

edit: well it seems to be loading windows...but I got the black screen of doom...

 

maybe I should not do the crossfire thing until windows is already installed eh? lol

[Angry_Games]

ooook lol

 

one more spammer post from me

 

in windows, Crossfire enabled, doing my 'tweaks' from my video etc (and installed an Arctic Silencer Accelero on a 7800GT so testing that thing out at same time running back and forth...btw, at guru3d.com there was a new 84.66 beta Nvdia driver so check that out if ya want)

[Angry_Games]

i just realized that teh OCZ memory that was sent to me was NOT PC6400 DDR2-800Mhz

 

here was busting up a divider all this time...

 

when I happened to see the cpu-z tab SPD setting saying 500Mhz (1000Mhz DDR2)

 

wtf?

 

heh

 

PC8000 2GB kits...holy!!!

 

so now I'm rerunning everything at 250x15 @ 3750Mhz 1:1 lol

 

 

oh

 

 

and pss I installed that dual-core fix for dual core cpu's from microsoft...chewed off about 5k off my 3dmark2003 score just for installing this...more later

[red930]

Sounds like you're having a blast Travis....kinda like the first time I put a DFI system together.

 

Amazing how the slight differences in Intel/AMD, DFI/ASUS, and Ati/Nvidia seem to make such a huge difference in how things go together.

[Angry_Games]

well

 

even at 3750Mhz per core...I don't think this thing can touch a seriously overclocked X2 A64 (but don't worry, I will be comparing it to a 2500Mhz or 2600Mhz X2 4400+ on the CFX3200-DR ATI board with Xfire lol)

 

I just dropped this monster into the old test-case w/water:

 

 

 

this is old mobo...I just put the Asus P4 board in there...what a pain in the butt lol

 

I also went from 2x80GB SATA II to a single 36GB Raptor drive...and if I can find a second one, I will RAID that (though the ICH7R SATA II RAID-0 scores were not that impressive...but easily 108MB/s which is about the ATI's throughput)

 

I don't know if I would say having a blast...

 

but

 

I am getting more interested

 

and the scary thing is now that I am using this 250x15 @ 1:1, instead of a soft reboot when I tell it to reboot...this sucker like slams off all the way (like a total power down) and then hard reboots lol...

 

 

but

 

the great thing is...I went from 66C @ 3750Mhz per core on teh stock cooler to about 40C @ 3750Mhz with a single TDX waterblock from Danger Den and a single 120mm rad with a fan pushing through one side and a fan pulling through the other (look at the frankenstein freak in the pics!!!)

[Angry_Games]

^$@$@#$#@^@#%#@$ !!!!!

 

 

woke up and the rig was off...

 

so I turned it back on (we had big thunderstorms all night last night) and went to brush my teeth

 

 

came back and it was off again

 

turned it on and got into the bios..and looked at the hardware monitor section thinking that the pump probably froze up and didn't turn on

 

yep...95C instantly *sigh*

 

so, it being an old defective (but it worked all this time until now lol) C-Systems pump that was known to seize up...I banged on it with a hammer a few times (this can jump-start these older C-System pumps that are prone to this lol)

 

no-can-do my friend...all my banging did was cause the mofo to start leaking UV-reactive coolant all over hehe

 

 

so I'll change her out to a very reliable DDC 12v pump now that I have more!

[Super Nade]

Man I hope youa re taking a video of all this? Its always fun to see a water spill live.

[v_lestat]

Angry,

 

Im using the -E Premium board too so i'll throw out a few words for you to chew on and maybe we can help each other a little.

 

My cpu is the Pent D 955 eXtreme the Dual core Hyper threading. yeah $1000+ cpu that aint worth 1/2 the cost.

My cooling right now is with an XP-120

 

1)

what type of droop are you seeing with this board.

at stock everything idle or load i am seeing 0.05v droop.

With a nice heavy overclock of 4.5ghz @ 1.45v im seeing up to 0.07v droop. nearly a full 10th of a volt.!!

You have to mod this mobo right out of the box and i think that is the biggest pile of crap ever !!!!! a $230 baord that has to be droop modded right out of the box!

I may call asus on this one and demand a hand tested non drooping board.

2)

i too have the issue where the mobo will just flat out power off when your in the bios and tell it Save and Exit.

3)

let the PCI-E freq stay auto but lock the PCI at 33.

4)

Dram Termination - 1.5v MCH - 1.5v ICH - 1.2v

5)

all that hyper crap turn it off. its only going to hurt your clocks.

6)

all that PEG stuff leave it on auto

7)

the Marvell Raid/SATA controller isnt Raid and there is no sign that Asus plans on fixing this. i think its bull crap and everyone else does to. you gotta use the Intel

I'll double check but it maybe that you have to turn the intel sata OFF in order to use the marvell sata raid

8)

this board DOES SUPPORT SLI!!!! you have to use the hacked drivers to do it though! nvidia has said they wont do it but its all politics.. it does work

9)

i ran my FSB up to 350mhz 100% stable. do you have the open multi's to test yours ? i dropped the multi to 12 and mem to 200mhz and cranked the fsb up and up

10)

I'm using the 0601 bios which are you on ?

11)

i'll more as i find more

[Angry_Games]

heh

 

i got a big reply for this, but I'm typing on the server as my main rig is being rebuilt with the ATI 3200DR board (4400+ and X1900XT Crossfires), and my workstation rig is capturing the video from the DV that I made while cursing up a storm as I made it lol.

 

when I have my comfortable chair and both rigs available, I'll pop a good reply up. Won't be until tomorrow though but it gives me time to think about some of the stuff you raised.

[v_lestat]

oh yeah and one comment you made is 100% correct.

a good x2 or opti will still kick the living . of out this mobo and cpu any day. even my 955 XE would be put to shame by a killer X2 or dual opti.