**Official ABIT IX38 QuadGT Review/Overclock/Guide Thread**

Dr. Prod said:
Rock monster I had exactly the same problem with my IP35 Pro this weekend.
Cutting a long story short my PCIEXP1 socket was borked, try the other socket. My thread is in the ABIT section if you want a look.

Hope this helps as I was pulling my hair out for 2 days.
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Hey Dr. Prod, cheers for the info. That was the problem alright. I swapped card to PCI EXP3, booted up no problem, same with PCI EXP2. But when I used PCI EXP1 wouldn't post past code 90. I've requested an RMA no. from OCUK so hopefully that will be sent out to me today so as to ship it back for a replacement.

Thanks again for the heads up. At least you have saved me the hair pulling.
 
I am considering buying this board next week when I do my complete rebuild. There seems to be quite a bit of clearance around the CPU for large heatsinks. Can anyone tell me if the Tuniq Tower will fit without any issues ? Thankyou. :)
 
By the way just after buying this i found out the maximus is ment to be better and ca be had for the same price. To alte now :( well i gues i could cancel my order but o well.

Yes to answer your question the turniq tower will fit.
 
at the end of the day they are all going to perform within a hair of each other but the layout & features are different.
 
2 things i really dislike about the IX38's layout and why i went with the Maximus

1. non uniform holes around the NB, what were they thinking? anyone looking for around 4ghz under a quad want the option of a mcw30 or a good air cooler when pumping more than 1.5v through the NB.

2. digital pwm - w/out active cooling they really burn up, i've never seen any evidence of more stability over analog pwm. in fact there's .01 vdrop on the maximus and quite a lot on the ix38 from what i can see.
 
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marscay said:
2 things i really dislike about the IX38's layout and why i went with the Maximus

1. non uniform holes around the NB, what were they thinking? anyone looking for around 4ghz under a quad want the option of a mcw30 or a good air cooler when pumping more than 1.5v through the NB.
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Whilst it's a valid complaint so far 4GHz on air with a quad seems perfectly achievable with the stock chipset cooling.

2. digital pwm - w/out active cooling they really burn up, i've never seen any evidence of more stability over analog pwm. in fact there's .01 vdrop on the maximus and quite a lot on the ix38 from what i can see.
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the newer generation (which the IX38 uses) seems much improved in terms of temps - not to mention that of course the previous generation were engineered to run at those temps anyway so whilst hot it wasn't a problem.
& the reports on XS & elsewhere show the IX38 to have very little Vdroop too even with a quad on load.
The 1 exception seems to be Bit-tech's review for some reason but it could be something as little as the difference in BIOS versions.

Oskar Wu seems to favour digital PWM too.
 
Having sorted through a few hardware failures, I can say I like this board.
I am running a mild over clock on my Q6600 Go running 3.2GHz on stock volts with 4 Gig of RAM temps are 55Deg on load stable with prime for 13 hours.

The only minor things I don't like is that uGuru crashes a lot, probably due to Vista64, can wait for a new version to come out and only 4 USB connectors on the rear IO panel..bit mean.

The plus points are a replaceble bios chip (don't think Asus do that) plus the area around the CPU is clutter free, my Tuniq easily fits.

As BUFF says, the stock chipset cooling seems more than adequate..unless you are looking for some world records ?
 
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ademcg, whats the temps currently at 3.2ghz with the Tuniq. . . just interested thats all. :)

ademcg said:
The only minor things I don't like is that uGuru crashes a lot, probably due to Vista64, can wait for a new version to come out.
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Their is a new uguru version out, thanks to Buff for spotting it:- Abit uGuru 3.1X v3.107 for 2000/XP/2003/Vista/64bit - 7th December 07 *NEW*

Let us know if the problem is still their, I haven't switched to Vista yet but was hoping to within the next week or so. . . .
 
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ademcg said:
As BUFF says, the stock chipset cooling seems more than adequate..unless you are looking for some world records ?
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when you approach 4ghz with a quad you are putting some serious pressure on both the NB and PWM area and as such cooling is paramount for stability.

3.2ghz on stock volts isn't really in the same league in terms of thermal requirements.

BUFF - do you work for abit? you seem to pop up in every abit thread in almost every forum on the net and defend them to the death.
 
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marscay said:
when you approach 4ghz with a quad you are putting some serious pressure on both the NB and PWM area and as such cooling is paramount for stability.

3.2ghz on stock volts isn't really in the same league in terms of thermal requirements.
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Yes I understand that, but for most people we are talking air cooling and as such we would be talking more 3.6 - 3.8 GHz and for that you don't need water cooling on the NB.

And Nelly:

1.) the link does work :P

2.) With the Fan speed on Medium (middle of dial) the Temps are 33 Deg idle and around 55 Deg full load, thats for 13 hours full stress testing.
Limited myself to 3.24 GHz with the 4 Gig of RAM for full 24 / 7 gaming stability. I might tweak some more this week.

I am using MX-2 paste too...which seems to be getting better and better all for £2.99 ;)
 
marscay said:
BUFF - do you work for abit? you seem to pop up in every abit thread in almost every forum on the net and defend them to the death.
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Nope but I do like their mobos (& yes, I also use/have used Asus, DFI, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Leadtek, MSI, Soltek & probably a few others).
I guess that I always root for the underdog -there are usually 2 sides to a story & I'm just making sure that the other 1 is espoused too.

I'm not above criticising them or advising people to buy other mobos though either.
If you look you'll see that I said that you have a legitimate complaint re. the hole spacing albeit it will affect only a relative few & I believe that those people will be clever enough to spot it.
Digital PWM I believe though brings something & will do even moreso in the future. Abit, DFI & others obviously do too - iirc AMDs reference mobos (at least for higher end chipsets) use it too.
 
I guess I'm somewhat of an Abit fan, if everyone bought Asus motherboards life in the motherboard world would be pretty boring woudn't it, besides the fact that Asus have 97,000 employees worldwide you would expect them to have better motherboards all the time - its not always the case, I've used both Asus & Abit motherboards for well over 10 years when I 1st built my pc using a 486.

Would suck if companys like Abit, DFI etc went out of business as it would mean less competition & companys like Asus could monopolise the motherboard market more than they already are.
Look at Soltek & Soyo for example. . . they dont manufacture motherboards anymore, probally because they have been driven out of it by massive companys such as Asus.

I'm actually tempted to buy an Asus Maximus Formula, I like the fact that Asus use voltage dampener to remove v droop, I wish Abit would adopt this - it was Abit who first brought out motherboards using Silent Heatpipes not long ago. . .

ademcg said:
Yes I understand that, but for most people we are talking air cooling and as such we would be talking more 3.6 - 3.8 GHz and for that you don't need water cooling on the NB.

And Nelly:

1.) the link does work :P

2.) With the Fan speed on Medium (middle of dial) the Temps are 33 Deg idle and around 55 Deg full load, thats for 13 hours full stress testing.
Limited myself to 3.24 GHz with the 4 Gig of RAM for full 24 / 7 gaming stability. I might tweak some more this week.

I am using MX-2 paste too...which seems to be getting better and better all for £2.99 ;)
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1) I've fixed the link, it did work yesterday but the Abit Webmaster has changed a few things that I requested, they put some files in the wrong places.
Heres a better link for you:- Abit uGuru 3.1X v3.107 for 2000/XP/2003/Vista/64bit - 7th December 07 *NEW*

2) Nice one, what you using to read the temps?

Funny you should mention the MX-2 Paste, I've just bought some for £2.99 having previously used Artic Silver 1, 3 & 5 - it should be better by a few celsius. (hopefully) :)
 
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BUFF said:
Nope but I do like their mobos (& yes, I also use/have used Asus, DFI, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Leadtek, MSI, Soltek & probably a few others).
I guess that I always root for the underdog -there are usually 2 sides to a story & I'm just making sure that the other 1 is espoused too.

I'm not above criticising them or advising people to buy other mobos though either.
If you look you'll see that I said that you have a legitimate complaint re. the hole spacing albeit it will affect only a relative few & I believe that those people will be clever enough to spot it.
Digital PWM I believe though brings something & will do even moreso in the future. Abit, DFI & others obviously do too - iirc AMDs reference mobos (at least for higher end chipsets) use it too.
Click to expand...

it might have sounded like an attack, sorry it wasn't intended that way i just though you might have some affiliation someway.

it's good news that abit are back in the enthausiast arena again, now that DFI have slipped away somewhat there's only really asus, abit and gigabyte making decent boards for intel chipsets.
i was using abit way back in the day on my Cel 300A :p when they were the boss boards, they're getting back to where they once were.

it's just dissapointing that manufacturers can't stick to a single schematic for things like NB spacing, mosfets etc etc - makes things a lot easier. i really wanted to try this board but that issue forced me into the maximus.
 
Nelly said:
I guess I'm somewhat of an Abit fan, if everyone bought Asus motherboards life in the motherboard world would be pretty boring woudn't it, besides the fact that Asus have 97,000 employees worldwide you would expect them to have better motherboards all the time - its not always the case, I've used both Asus & Abit motherboards for well over 10 years when I 1st built my pc using a 486.

Would suck if companys like Abit, DFI etc went out of business as it would mean less competition & companys like Asus could monopolise the motherboard market more than they already are.
Look at Soltek & Soyo for example. . . they dont manufacture motherboards anymore, probally because they have been driven out of it by massive companys such as Asus.

I'm actually tempted to buy an Asus Maximus Formula, I like the fact that Asus use voltage dampener to remove v droop, I wish Abit would adopt this - it was Abit who first brought out motherboards using Silent Heatpipes not long ago. . .

1) I've fixed the link, it did work yesterday but the Abit Webmaster has changed a few things that I requested, they put some files in the wrong places.
Heres a better link for you:- Abit uGuru 3.1X v3.107 for 2000/XP/2003/Vista/64bit - 7th December 07 *NEW*

2) Nice one, what you using to read the temps?

Funny you should mention the MX-2 Paste, I've just bought some for £2.99 having previously used Artic Silver 1, 3 & 5 - it should be better by a few celsius. (hopefully) :)
Click to expand...

RE: Temp monitoring:

I am using the hacked Core Temp to be able to use it on Vista 64 :) works a treat, I will see if I can find a linky.

you basically run a hacked batch file first, before opening the actual core temp application.

Thanks for the updated link;)
 
marscay said:
it's just dissapointing that manufacturers can't stick to a single schematic for things like NB spacing, mosfets etc etc - makes things a lot easier. i really wanted to try this board but that issue forced me into the maximus.
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As I said, for you it's a legitimate complaint & obviously resulted in a lost sale for abit.

isn't the Asus X38 series known for having a very hard to remove nb cooler though?
I'm sure that I've seen pics somewhere where a guy actually had the nb come away from the board with the hs ...:eek:
 
yes asus is using thermal concrete under the NB, if you don't heat the board up with a hair dryer you can pry the heatsink/ihs/nb off in one piece as the poor guy did on XS.

-1 for asus there, touche :D
 
hey, building friends pc which is same as mine. and I can change two memory voltages, one is ddr2 voltage which goes up in points and is at 1.975 right now i belive.

But i can also change refference memory voltage which goes up by 10mV a time, what does that do?
 
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