A8R32-MVP what is it

Posted a week ago to say all was running fine. 260HTT on Air...

I have a vapo LS arriving later in the week, so the real test can start then.
Aiming for 310 HTT, this will be a proper test of the board.

Target:
X2 4400 10x310 = 3100Mhz
Gskill HZ4000 2GB Ram at 166 Divider (should be 257Mhz)

Lets see what happens. Any feedback that may help apprechiated.
 
I just built a new system with the A8R32-MVP and all is running really well.

Specs:

A8R32-MVP Deluxe (BIOS 311)
Athlon 64 3800+ X2 (@ 2600 10x260)
2 Gig OCZ PC4000 Gold GX XTC (@260 1:1 with HTT at 5x = 1300 HTT)
Thermaltake Big Typhoon CPU Cooler
Enermax Liberty 620W PSU
GeCube X1900XT
Zalman VF900 GPU Cooler (on back-order)
Sound Blaster Audigy
WD Raptor 74G
Seagate 120G
Pioneer 110 DVD-R
Antec P180 Case

This has been one of the easiest and most stable PC's I have built. No issues at all. I can overclock in large increments without issue. I don't have any reboot issues on changing bios overclocking settings - it just reboots fine. No games issues (yet...). No buzzing from the mosfets.

I have not pushed the CPU further yet as I was dying to get back into Oblivion, so we'll see how it goes with higher overclocks later.

Very happy with this build so far.
 
Ok, memory modules looked new, no paperwork to state what's been going on with my old. Booted with both new sticks, a BSOD stating my bios wasn't ACPI compliant. Rebooted, went into bios and put everything into 'auto' settings, booted again and realised my first boot was from hibernation, deleted that and performed a fresh boot, XP in ok. Now going to test with TOCA, if this doesn't work the only thing I can do is wait for the new bios to trundle along...
ChrisC
 
chriscatt said:
Hi, have you tried it with the onboard sound instead of the CT one. It might be that it is latency or the CT drivers that are causing the issue...
ChrisC
Click to expand...

its been a while but ive only just got round to trying this, big thanks to you mate.. played bf2 for 2 hours last night with no issues.. seems it was my cheapo creative oem soundcard.. according to a thread on another retailers website creative dont support this card so theres only 1 set of drivers for it with no updates in the pipeline :rolleyes:
i owe ya one ;)
 
daftVader said:
Hi all
Also I'm having some weirdness with the network adapter. Regardless of which socket I plug my network cable into, device manager reports Local Area Connection @ 10Mbps as active and Local Area Connection @ 1Gbps as non-operational :confused:
Click to expand...
might be a silly question but your not plugged into a 10Mbps hub or router are you? thats the only thing i can think of that would limit your speed :)

Karl
 
Hi powned, no poblems, that's what we're here for...

Played TOCA for 2 races, 10 laps each with no issues, couldn't even manage 4 with the old modules. Fingers crossed that all is well :) :) :)

Now down to my other issue, my partner now has a DVD RW as the new one also won't detect RW discs, I'm using InCD. Can you all just have a quick try and see if your DVD RW's will format Cd's or DVD RW's?
Thanks,
Chris

NB, I think I've fixed it, I'd actually trialed Nero 7 with no success, I'd uninstalled it and installed Nero 6. This time I tried a system restore just before I installed ver 7 then installed ver 6. Seems now to be formatting RW's ok now. Lets see how it goes....
ChrisC
 
Last edited:
powned said:
might be a silly question but your not plugged into a 10Mbps hub or router are you? thats the only thing i can think of that would limit your speed :)

Karl
Click to expand...
Ok, now don't laugh but... Doh!
Seriously though, yes, I'm on a 10Mbps router. What's strange is that whichever port the cable is plugged into, device manager still reports that there is a 1Gbps connection which is inactive. Surely when I'm connected via the PCIE lan's socket it should say 10Mbps active, 10Mbps non-operational, or even 1Gbps active (but with the appropriate 10Mbps limited graph) and 10Mbps non-operational?
It's not a problem, just a curiosity and a point of confusion when trying to work out which is the pcie port :)
 
Last edited:
squiffy said:
My board could possible be making a whining sound, it's not all the time, and it could just be the hard drive(s)
Click to expand...

It's definitely not the hard drives that make the whine that's been reported. It's a very high pitched sound.

Blinder^ said:
Interesting - my FX60 (Zalman Aero Flower) wont go above 2800 in a stable fashion - although i'm not using AI N.O.S - I just upped the multiplier to 14 - i'll give the AI N.O.S a go tonight I think - been meaning to try it. Mem timings are stock 2-3-2-5 (which I think are a bit aggressive for overclocking) am using 1T as well. I've seen a good few reports of stable 3GHz on air - though i'm having trouble getting there =/ Any suggestions would be more than welcome. also looking forward to the new BIOS.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried slackening my memory timings to get to 15% with AI N.O.S. I might try setting the memory back to "auto" to see if the board will adjust the timings to get a higher overclock, and having another go at 15% tonight :)
 
Last edited:
Hi, put my settings back to where they were, A1 *** of 3%, taking it easy, set the CMD ADDR to 1T. Have played TOCA all afternoon with no crashes and no BSOD. Not bad considering it's been over a month, 21/2, since I originally placed my order for the first motherboard and its only now I can consider I've got a stable system. I guess I must have been really unlucky and had a bad board followed by a bad set of memory modules, still my instincts proved to be correct in the end....
Now for the new bios :eek: soon I hope....
Chrisc
 
chriscatt said:
Raja, you are a hero mate, keep up the good work...
;)
ChrisC
Click to expand...


You are giving me unfair praise, the hard work has been done by someone else.......

BTW, don't get your hopes up yet, there is no confirmation of a new bios yet!
I am not in a position to have such confirmation.
Logic dictates, it is invariable that there will be a new bios, some of Asus' boards are on what appears to be the 10th bios revision...............
 
Had a proper (feel free to substitute the word "noob" for proper :p ) go at overclocking this board last night... and believe it or not I can't get it to perform any better by using manual overclocking than the AI N.O.S. can do it automated.

With AI N.O.S. at 10% I get 13x 220Mhz = 2860 Mhz, with RAM clocked at 220 MHz 3-3-2-8 1T. It's dual channel ram so i guess that's really 440 Mhz?

Doing it manually I dropped the default x13 multiplier to x10 and managed to get the HTT up to 295 for 2950 MHz, at which point I had to increase DDR Volts from 2.6 to 2.65 to get it stable. But it just would not go to 300 :(
I couldn't get the multiplier up to 10.5 from there either, although I didn't try more than 1.4 Vcore as I've no idea how much an FX60 is supposed to be able to take.
Also, at 2950 MHz, I could not change the memory clock from being limited at 133Mhz in the bios setting, without all kinds of weirdness happening. Like for instance my X1900XT-X telling me it had a duff bios! There was a small amount of panic when that happened, I tell thee.

CPU-Z reported memory frequency as 196.7MHz at that point (?), and running 3DMark'06, super Pi and then having a quick blat on Oblivion proved there was no real gain between either the manual setting or the AI setting. Trouble is I know even less about clocking memory than I do about cpu's... so this is a learning curve for me :D If anyone knows of any good guides about clocking memory, link me up I'd appreciate it :)

I haven't fitted the watercooling setup I bought yet, but I'm not sure I'll need to. If Asus Probe is to believed, the cpu temp never went above 39 and the motherboard stayed at 34 the whole time lol. I feel like the cpu wants to do more but something is in the way (apart from my lack of knowledge). Just don't know what that is yet :/
 
Well I have managed to get my system to the following....
240*11=2.64 on an X2 4400.
Cooler is a big typhoon using a new stacker case, memory is GSkill 2gb HZ PC4000 with the default timings of 3-4-4-8. If I go higher i get rounding errors in prime.
The CPU is at 1.45V with a 4*HT bus.
Only issue is that when I power up it does not start the board, however if I press reset and wait it will? :confused:
My mouse freezing has gone due to changeing mouse from Saitek gaming mouse to a standard Logitech optical, maybe it was a USB issue or timing.
Other than that I am very pleased temps are 45 deg with both cores running a prime 95 each and 27 ate idle :D
Phil
 
daftVader said:
Doing it manually I dropped the default x13 multiplier to x10 and managed to get the HTT up to 295 for 2950 MHz...

If anyone knows of any good guides about clocking memory, link me up I'd appreciate it :)
Click to expand...

I also have a FX60 and I was able to get to 2.93GHz or so but I need a guide as well. I had most everything set to auto and it ran fine until I changed something, don't recall what and now I'm at 2.87GHz I think, with the 10% preset.

I was seeing some good improvement on Counter Strike: Source and the little FPS test that is in the main menu. I had all the video settings at low or off and at 2.6?GHz I would get 210FPS or so and went up to 241FPS at 2.93GHz as I recall. I have a list written down at home. So, it would seem to be worth something. Even if just to soften the blow when the FX?? comes out at 3GHz.

Anyone think a second X1900 is a good idea? Which games do you see an improvement and how much. The last review I found showed no improvement for Half-Life 2 or Oblivion. It seems like a lot of money just to get a 5 or 10% increase in a few games. They did say that it was just a mater of time with Oblivion but since ATI has to add the Crossfire tuning to the game and not the driver it’s at a disadvantage to SLI. ??? Is that true? Even if, what’s the difference between having to download a video driver update and having to download a game patch?
 
daftVader said:
I couldn't get the multiplier up to 10.5 from there either, although I didn't try more than 1.4 Vcore as I've no idea how much an FX60 is supposed to be able to take.
Click to expand...

If you managed 2950 mhz and a 295 htt @ 1.40v, that's pretty good, although the 1.4v that bios shows is more like 1.44v with thrse boards (that's just the Asus way, the voltage is never quite stable enough to set perfectly).

What cpu cooler are you using? Study your temps, if you are around 36-38 degrees at idle, there may be room for another .05 volts.

Try upping the voltage to 1.45v, that should at least stabilise your overclock, also it's more like the voltage required for 2950mhz.

Best way is to knock it back to 1.35v and add 100mv in the over voltage setting.

To get the best out of an fx60 you really need phase. Some have been trying to get 3ghz with air, but you would need good cooling and perhaps noisy fans to achieve stability at over voltage, reason being that under load, temps start hitting 49 celsius, whilst not high, these CPU's start to throw errors under load at that temp and above, which means crashing in games.


Raja
 
raja said:
If you managed 2950 mhz and a 295 htt @ 1.40v, that's pretty good, although the 1.4v that bios shows is more like 1.44v with thrse boards (that's just the Asus way, the voltage is never quite stable enough to set perfectly).

What cpu cooler are you using? Study your temps, if you are around 36-38 degrees at idle, there may be room for another .05 volts.

Try upping the voltage to 1.45v, that should at least stabilise your overclock, also it's more like the voltage required for 2950mhz.

Best way is to knock it back to 1.35v and add 100mv in the over voltage setting.

To get the best out of an fx60 you really need phase. Some have been trying to get 3ghz with air, but you would need good cooling and perhaps noisy fans to achieve stability at over voltage, reason being that under load, temps start hitting 49 celsius, whilst not high, these CPU's start to throw errors under load at that temp and above, which means crashing in games.


Raja
Click to expand...
For the moment I'm just using the stock AMD cooler! I'm waiting on a couple of Swiftech's MCW60 gpu blocks to arrive from the US and once they're here I'll switch over to water. The CPU block I'll be fitting is the Swiftech Apogee.

I'm sure you're right about the volts. I don't know how accurate pc probe is but volts do seem to fluctuate a fair bit. Apparently the FSP700 psu I have is supposed to be very stable, but i suppose there's no way of really telling whether it's that or the board which causes these fluctuations.

However, I can run @2950Mhz happily on DDR volts 2.65 and vCore 1.35. I don't need 1.4 for that (just needed the small increase in ddr volts) and it is stable. I set the overvoltage options to auto. The bios changed the southbridge overvoltage from auto to enable on it's own. Pc probe showed vcore fluctuating between 1.39 and 1.42, even with it set to 1.35 in the bios.

I only started increasing the vcore when trying to get above 2950 but as I said, going up to 1.4 made no difference. I could get past post and into windows but the machine would reset before it even finished loading all the drivers. I'll try upping it to 1.45 tonight to see if makes any difference. I'm happy that temperature wise it won't be a problem yet.

Tanquen said:
Anyone think a second X1900 is a good idea? Which games do you see an improvement and how much. The last review I found showed no improvement for Half-Life 2 or Oblivion. It seems like a lot of money just to get a 5 or 10% increase in a few games.
Click to expand...

I'd like to be able to give you an answer but I had a duff crossfire card and I'm not at all happy with the replacement :mad: so don't know yet lol. I think a lot depends on the resolution you want to play at. For me it's 1920x1200 with all the eye candy on, and at that kind of res every little bit helps
 
ok thx, I guess I could have worked that out really, when I'm in a game the CPU temp goes up to 51c, it's quite warm in this room. I'm still using the stock HSF, am I ok?
ChrisC
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom