A8R32-MVP what is it

Coolasmoo · 22 Apr 2006 at 10:08

Cheers raja,

I will give this a try later and report back

raja · 22 Apr 2006 at 10:09

Just to confirm my experience, I just played Oblivion with my 2.7ghz overclock, it works fine with HDR on, with the Asus on the 0311 bios I could not get it to run much above 2.53ghz, whether or not that was fixed with 0404, I don't know.

BTW, Anandtech has changed their policy of motherboard reviews, all boards are purchased just like end users. This should help eradicate any 'cherry picked' boards for future tests.

daftVader · 22 Apr 2006 at 10:59

raja said:
Just to confirm my experience, I just played Oblivion with my 2.7ghz overclock, it works fine with HDR on, with the Asus on the 0311 bios I could not get it to run much above 2.53ghz, whether or not that was fixed with 0404, I don't know.

That's odd. Under 0311 I was playing Oblivion at 2860Mhz. With 0404 i'm playing it at 3Ghz. 1920x1200 HDR on and all sliders maxed. It's never complained, apart from when exiting the game.

The only game I have a problem with is Quake 4 which for some reason seems to become more unstable as time goes by lol. Can't play it for more than ten minutes any more without it locking up completely and requiring a power down. Not sure what the problem is there but I'm more inclined to believe it's something do with the sound than the m/board or crossfire.

raja · 22 Apr 2006 at 11:03

Which is exactly why the Asus is still a mixed bag, some have really good results, others are still finding average (by average I mean those who are trying to hit the beloved 300htt 1:1) results with 0404, I've had a private email confirming this.

Sheesh I though I had a powerful system, yours is just off the chain......

Coolasmoo · 22 Apr 2006 at 12:41

Hey raja, that stress test is pretty intense, pretty cool find

Passed everything though

I just picked up the 700W Sparkle Epsilon to see if it helped a few Crossfire issues i am having , although i doubt it will.

Will fit it later

raja · 22 Apr 2006 at 13:37

let me know if it's any better. I may consider the Tagan 900w, it's available in the UK.

andyr · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:29

raja said:
let me know if it's any better. I may consider the Tagan 900w, it's available in the UK.

I have my eye on the Tagan 900w also as i think my 580w isn't really enough , im on the edge !!! i get the bottom border blacking out when i boot into windows and then as ccc launches it does it even worse and the reason i think its power is that just as a test i powered up with my 480w and it did the same but loads worse

cuke2u · 23 Apr 2006 at 15:49

Hi, I ran the 'S&M' stress test yesterday, all tests were passed ok so I decided to run it at max, again all tests were passed...
Make sure your PSU is ATI crossfire certified http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/certifiedcrossfire.html mine is but I haven't got the Master card to try it out with...
ChrisC

SLI_Fallen · 24 Apr 2006 at 13:05

That anandtech article (and somewhere else I read), does talk about flashing the BIOS TWICE to get it to properly "stick". Just passing it along here...

Oh and an EDIT: Uninstall your ATI drivers (use both the ATI uninstaller and DriverCleaner (3.0) to get them out completely) BEFORE Flashing the BIOS. After the two flashes then reinstall/or upgrade your ATI Drivers. This seems to help avoid some of the problems.

andyr · 24 Apr 2006 at 15:12

Coolasmoo said:
Hey raja, that stress test is pretty intense, pretty cool find

Passed everything though

I just picked up the 700W Sparkle Epsilon to see if it helped a few Crossfire issues i am having , although i doubt it will.

Will fit it later

Hi Coolasmoo , just wondered how that sparkle was doing , do you rate it and has it done anything for your graphics , only i am looking for another psu

Coolasmoo · 24 Apr 2006 at 17:52

andyr said:
Hi Coolasmoo , just wondered how that sparkle was doing , do you rate it and has it done anything for your graphics , only i am looking for another psu

Well, ive had no errors to report as of yet,

I would say that its more noisier than the Seasonic , so take that on board when buying.

If i run into any trouble i will let you know, as i dont want to give it the thumbs up just yet, until its run fine for at least a week.

UGURU is reporting:

ATX +12V (24Pin) 12.12v

ATX +12V (4Pin) 12.18v

5V - 4.98

PCIE 1.2v - 1.21

If you need any other volts, let me know

raja · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:05

Hi,

Will be waiting to see if you get any of the bsod's etc that could have been attributed to the PSU.

FWIW, Simonmaltby is using the Seasonic with a DFI CFX3200, he has pretty much the same setup as us, but he's uning anf FX60 which he managed to get upto 3ghz on air and 3.3ghz with phase.

If I do go for another PSU it'll be big, Tagan 900w seems pretty overkill future proof. If anything the Seasonic will be even more stable once the new line of processors are out from Intel, the TDP is way lower than the power used by the current cpu's.

Let us know if your system appear more immune to lock ups and bsod's.

Raja

Coolasmoo · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:34

Will do raja,

All fine at the moment

andyr · 24 Apr 2006 at 18:38

raja said:
Hi,

Will be waiting to see if you get any of the bsod's etc that could have been attributed to the PSU.

FWIW, Simonmaltby is using the Seasonic with a DFI CFX3200, he has pretty much the same setup as us, but he's uning anf FX60 which he managed to get upto 3ghz on air and 3.3ghz with phase.

If I do go for another PSU it'll be big, Tagan 900w seems pretty overkill future proof. If anything the Seasonic will be even more stable once the new line of processors are out from Intel, the TDP is way lower than the power used by the current cpu's.

Let us know if your system appear more immune to lock ups and bsod's.

Raja

i have looked at the Tagan and its a quad power supply , 4 pcie connectors so its basically 2 x 450w , ie. 2 transformers so i dont think its going to give as much power as a sparkle 700 delivering 2 times 15A just for graphics alone

daftVader · 24 Apr 2006 at 21:13

As far as I'm concerned the FSP is a great psu. Certainly no problems using crossfire with it

The rails do wobble a bit, but not overly. Right now Asus Probe reports mine as +3.3=3.23, +5=4.95, +12=12.04.

I wanted to share my bios settings with you all because hopefully this might help anyone else new who's struggling to achieve something similar. And since I'm still pretty new at this, if anyone spots anything glaringly wrong perhaps they'd give me a nudge. I haven't pushed it past 3Ghz at the moment, although I will probably try going a bit higher again at the weekend.

Here's what I have on my FX60 so far (this is with the 0404 bios, flashed once):

CPU Frequency 250 (default for the FX60 is 200)
PCIE Frequency 100

Processor Multiplier x12 (default for the FX60 is x13)
Processor voltage 1.375 (up one notch from the default)
DDR Voltage 2.7
VCore Overvoltage +100MV
Northbridge Overvoltage - Enabled
- Core voltage +1.2
- Hypertransport bus voltage +1.4
- PCI Express voltage +1.2
Southbridge Overvoltage - Enabled
PEG Link Mode - Auto
PEG Buffer Length - Auto
AI Clock Skew Channel A - Auto (Delay 150ps)
AI Clock Skew Channel B - Auto (Delay 150ps)

HT Link Speed - 600MHz (I left this on Auto at first and found the bios had knocked it down to 400Mhz, but it handles the higher setting of 600 just fine)

With the memory settings, I put everything on auto (defaults to a 2T command rate) when i was clocking up the processor, then used A64 Tweaker from Windows to gradually tighten the timings. Had to increase the DDR voltage. Here's the best, stable (prime95, S&M etc) I can get at the moment.

Memclock Mode - Limit 216Mhz (RAM is now running at 272.7 Mhz. Default was 200Mhz)
CAS Latency 3.0
TRAS 7
TRP 2
TRCD 3
TRRD 2
TRC 8
TRFC 14
TRWT 3
TREF 7.8

DDR Input Strobe Skew - Disabled
DDR Data Driving Strength - Disabled
Burst20P - Enabled
Read preamble 5.5ns
Max Asyc Latency 7.0ns
CMD ADDR Timing 1T
Bank interleaving Auto
Burst Length 4 Beats
Hardware memory hole disabled

Feel free to comment.

andyr · 24 Apr 2006 at 22:01

Hi how have you gone on with all the cables on the sparkle epsilon in the v1000 case , are they ok to get rid of all the slack

daftVader · 24 Apr 2006 at 23:06

andyr said:
Hi how have you gone on with all the cables on the sparkle epsilon in the v1000 case , are they ok to get rid of all the slack

Hi mate. Replied to you in the water cooled cases thread

andyr · 25 Apr 2006 at 10:20

daftVader said:
Hi mate. Replied to you in the water cooled cases thread

Hi , yeah sorry for the double post but i wasnt sure how often you went to the Watercase gallery , still not made my mind up on the psu coz i have my rad in the bottom of my case and the extra cables might be a problem , there is a psu called xclio , a 750w modular that looks nice but i havnt heard of them before , i have e mailed the company and asked if they are good for x- fire and for dimensions . thanks for the info on the cathods btw

daftVader · 25 Apr 2006 at 13:53

No Problem. I considered a modular psu too, but didn't think any would fit without removing the separator between the psu compartment and the hard drives area.

Blinder^ · 25 Apr 2006 at 14:23

daftVader said:
...
I wanted to share my bios settings with you all because hopefully this might help anyone else new who's struggling to achieve something similar...

It definitely will - I would really like to see 3GHz from my FX60, and a nice detailed post like yours should help me do it - it's stable at 2.8 on an aero flower at the moment - but in my excitement I flashed to 0404 via remote desktop from work a couple of hours ago (stupidly thinking it would reboot unattended) and now my machine is sitting at home on the bios screen asking me to hit either f1 or f2 - I just know it - but i'll deffo be trying this tonight - will post results. Cheers again for the post.