**Official ABIT IP-35 Pro Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

[IceWolf]

Hey guys - great thread.

I got the IP35 pro last friday and it's all installed and up. I read through the posts tonight and that's sorted out my problem - stupid cpu header lol. It wasn't running my 3 pin fan properly ; I thought it was just me 'almost tearing my hair out' now I know it's nothing I've done!

I hope they sort the issue out with a BIOS soon!

Once again great thread.

erm - is this something i should worry about? is there a problem with the cpu fan socket?

 

[RonanH]

erm - is this something i should worry about? is there a problem with the cpu fan socket?

Not unless you have a 3-pin fan on your cpu cooler. The mobo cpu fan controller will only auto-adjust the speed of a 4-pin cpu fan. If you have a 3-pin use another fan header on the board as the cpu fan controller and change the relevant settings for monitoring it in the bios.

I also have temperature reporting problems in any bios revision after 11, I get very low (lower than room temperature) readings in uGuru. The fact that I use another header for the fan and not the full 4-pin cpu fan might be the cause, but I have no 4-pin fan to test the theory.

 

[wuyanxu]

I also have temperature reporting problems in any bios revision after 11, I get very low (lower than room temperature) readings in uGuru. The fact that I use another header for the fan and not the full 4-pin cpu fan might be the cause, but I have no 4-pin fan to test the theory.

getting exact same issue with BIOS14.

the other day, temp was 19 for CPU, and then i loaded Prime, Everest says Cores are something like 55/54/50/52 but the uGuru temp was still 19

lucky i've just got Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, so even running passively in the mighty Antec p182 won't burn my chip

 

[ezhik]

I'm trying to find max FSB for this board and surprised to find I can't get any higher than ~367Mhz.

I 've dropped the multiplier to x6, and memory is 1:1 at speed. I've upped MCH to 1.37v, and hit a brick wall at such a low FSB. Anything I can try or have I got to RMA the board?

Anyone got any advice for me?

 

[wuyanxu]

I'm trying to find max FSB for this board and surprised to find I can't get any higher than ~367Mhz.

I 've dropped the multiplier to x6, and memory is 1:1 at speed. I've upped MCH to 1.37v, and hit a brick wall at such a low FSB. Anything I can try or have I got to RMA the board?

Anyone got any advice for me?

what have you raised your CPU VTT voltage?

 

[BUFF]

I'm trying to find max FSB for this board and surprised to find I can't get any higher than ~367Mhz.

I 've dropped the multiplier to x6, and memory is 1:1 at speed. I've upped MCH to 1.37v, and hit a brick wall at such a low FSB. Anything I can try or have I got to RMA the board?

disabled C1E & EIST?
you should be able to hit ~500fsb or so if your CPU/RAM can.

BIOS version?

 

[ezhik]

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't raise CPU core because even at 380x6 (if I could manage that), it will be well underclocked. (I can reach 334x9 and be prime stable for 8hrs with Vcore at stock by the way).

I'm using BIOS 16b, and didn't see a reason to disable C1E & EIST, but will try, after all 367x6 is such a modest setting to get stuck at.

OK, after your replies I raised Vcore and disabled C1E & EIST and checked again and I can now run a little faster, so I'm a little confused. Why should it it be neccessary to raise core volts when the CPU is still so much under clocked? It's now at 3.475v (stock is 2.875), and I can just about get to 395Mhz, still at x6 and so underclocked.

I was hoping to be able to get stable at say 400x8 with modest over volts, my thinking was to drop the multiplier to x6 and keep upping the FSB to find the board limit, then with the muliplier at x8 find the CPU limit within that range and with comfortable temperature/volts.

Now it seems I'm having to increase the core volts without seeing any gain from the CPU, or is my thinking all wrong - if I find the volts that will allow a higher FSB at x6 also will that be good enough at x8?

Thanks for the tips, it seems I can now try to creep the FSB up a bit at a time, though I'm surprised to have to have upped core volts at this stage. Is this normal?

 

[BUFF]

there is a fair chance that with C1E & EIST enabled that the board was still trying to boot at the default multi.
& 9x376 for most CPUs probably needs a voltage bump especially as with a quad you'll have vdroop.
I do hope that it's not really at 3.475V though ...

 

[ezhik]

I see...however I was booting at default under uGURU which was 334Mhz (x6 in BIOS), and increasing FSB in uGURU until it crashed ~367Mhz.

Yes in order to reach 380Mhz at x6 (or x8 as I've now tried) core is at.... OOPS just noticed my mitake!...1.3475v... that's better. Crashes at ~386Mhz

This is not how I remember it from my last set up. i'm sure I left CPU volts at stock, added a bit to the Northbridge, lowered the multiplier and just kept increasing FSB to find the board max, then went back to play with CPU volts/FSB/temps at a higher multiplier.

Is something wrong? How does it work for you, do you get high FSB at low multiplier with stock volts, or do you have to do what I'm doing?

Bye the way, VTT is at 1.27, is that about right?

 

[BUFF]

I see...however I was booting at default under uGURU which was 334Mhz (x6 in BIOS), and increasing FSB in uGURU until it crashed ~367Mhz.

did you check with something like CPU-Z (although that can conflict with uGuru) whether you were actually getting x6 or x8?

Yes in order to reach 380Mhz at x6 (or x8 as I've now tried) core is at.... OOPS just noticed my mitake!...1.3475v... that's better. Crashes at ~386Mhz

This is not how I remember it from my last set up. i'm sure I left CPU volts at stock, added a bit to the Northbridge, lowered the multiplier and just kept increasing FSB to find the board max, then went back to play with CPU volts/FSB/temps at a higher multiplier.

was your last setup a quad?
the quad pulls more power so leads to increased Vdroop - check what your real on load Vcore is against your BIOS setting & it'll probably be ~0.08V below it.

Is something wrong? How does it work for you, do you get high FSB at low multiplier with stock volts, or do you have to do what I'm doing?

Bye the way, VTT is at 1.27, is that about right?

Don't have a quad so it's a bit different plus I've also got a 9x multi to play with - I tend to max core freq. rather than fsb.

 

[ezhik]

did you check with something like CPU-Z (although that can conflict with uGuru) whether you were actually getting x6 or x8?.

Using Everest CPUID (cpu-z crashes my system due to the conflict you mention), and yes getting the expexted multi.

was your last setup a quad?
the quad pulls more power so leads to increased Vdroop - check what your real on load Vcore is against your BIOS setting & it'll probably be ~0.08V below it..

My last set up was a dual core Opteron on a DFI Lanparty. I'm not doing so badly on this board, Vdroop is about 0.06v under load.

Don't have a quad so it's a bit different plus I've also got a 9x multi to play with - I tend to max core freq. rather than fsb.

I think I may be making progress, seems to be uGuru, or rather my reliance on it to do the overclocking. I noticed that DRAM/FSB ratio was not as as expected, (1:1 in BIOS and 10:8 in CPUID), so I decided to set the FSB properly in BIOS instead of in windows with uGuru, and now I'm getting better results.

So I think I'm sorted out and back on track, for example I'm at 6x420 on stock volts and stable. This was what I wanted to do! uGuru seemed the easy way, but I think it screwed me around a bit.

So many thanks for the pointers, looks like I'm going to find the overclock I was hoping for.

 

[garethrobinson1]

hi guys, i was thinking of buying this board but was just reading a mediocre review of it in Custom PC. They've given it a poorer score than the Asus P5K Premium because "the FSB voltage can't be raised above 1.23v resulting in a maximum stable FSB of just 470Mhz" - i presume they're talking about the CPU VTT ?

Is this true?

 

[Shash]

I was origionally gonna get an IX38 quad GT but with all the problems I'm thinking about IP35.

What advantages does IP35pro have over IP35? Is it just e-sata or are there important ones such as build quality or overclockability?

 

[ezhik]

There is a new beta BIOS just out for this board, not many details yet though.

Can be downloaded from here

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/abit/ip35-pro/M629B1603AT.rar

 

[wuyanxu]

hi guys, i was thinking of buying this board but was just reading a mediocre review of it in Custom PC. They've given it a poorer score than the Asus P5K Premium because "the FSB voltage can't be raised above 1.23v resulting in a maximum stable FSB of just 470Mhz" - i presume they're talking about the CPU VTT ?

Is this true?

CustomPC are stupid.

the CPU VTT is a divider from MCH, so if you don't raise MCH, there's no chance you can raise VTT higher than 1.23. currently running VTT 1.31 with MCH 1.33.

i've never tryed for max FSB, but im pretty sure my quad core will be bottlenecking me. if you go with this motherboard, you won't go wrong.


@ezhik, CPU VTT isn't CPU core voltage, raising it means more voltage applys to the CPU FSB, which is what's needed to achieve high FSB, low multi overclocks.

 

[BUFF]

hi guys, i was thinking of buying this board but was just reading a mediocre review of it in Custom PC. They've given it a poorer score than the Asus P5K Premium because "the FSB voltage can't be raised above 1.23v resulting in a maximum stable FSB of just 470Mhz" - i presume they're talking about the CPU VTT ?

Is this true?

You've got to wonder how long they spent with the mobo that they didn't discover what wuyanxu so eloquently described ...
Almost as good as Trusted Reviews saying that there are 2 mobos in the IP35 series when there are 4 ...

What advantages does IP35pro have over IP35? Is it just e-sata or are there important ones such as build quality or overclockability?

It's principally extra features:
uGuru
2nd x16 physical (x4 electrical) PCI-E slot
2nd gigabit Nic
2x eSATA
external clearCMOS switch plus onboard power & reset switches
all caps are solid instead of just the more important ones
different chipset cooling
slightly richer BIOS

 

[wormvortex]

speaking of this motherboard, I changed my FSB to 333 to give 3ghz on my Q6600. Pc wouldn't boot past the POST. Went back into bios and my Cpuram speed was 1:1.50 (DDR999) when overclocked changed that to 1:1.25(DDR833) and it works fine anyways my question is what the heck did I change?

I know the 1:1 means the ram runs the same speed as the processor but whats the next part mean? Also is what I'm on .25 good or do I want it on something else or not even 1:1? Using PC6400 OCZ ram.

 

[kennethsross]

IP-35 Pro + Corsair TwinX XMS2 (PC6400 4-4-4-12)

Hi guys

Just ordered these today. Ram is 4x1GB. Just wanted to check combination OK.

One other question. System will have 3 WD Caviar AAKS disks: 2x250GB, 1x500GB. OS wise, will have Vista Home Premium 64Bit on one 250GB, XP Pro 32bit on the other; 500GB for storage. (Gives dual boot for a couple of programmes which aren't 64-bit capable)

E2180, 7300GT, 2 Pioneer IDE DVD drives rounds off the spec. (Used for image editing and office apps (small amount of video editing too).

Wondering if my Enermax Liberty 400W will cope with this?

 

[BUFF]

I know the 1:1 means the ram runs the same speed as the processor but whats the next part mean? Also is what I'm on .25 good or do I want it on something else or not even 1:1? Using PC6400 OCZ ram.

CPU:RAM ratio of 1:1.25 means that the RAM bus is running at 1.25x times the CPU bus e.g. if your CPU is running at 300fsb then the RAM is at 1.25x300=375 (& times 2 for DDR so DDR2 750).

iirc 1:1.25 on the IP35 Pro also means that you're on the 1066 strap (1:1 is 1333 strap) so that should improve your performance too.

 

[C64]

Had mine since they first came out solid board never given me any troubles.I even had to hard reset when flashmenu froze up just made a bios saviour on a floppy restored the board no problemo don't hesitate getting this board it has vdroop but then what doesn't.
MY advice is get yourself a floppy drive for bios updates though comes in handy for graphics cards bios updates and changes too.