*****OFFICIAL OcUK/JW IP35 Pro THREAD*****

WJA96

WJA96

WJA96

Soldato
Joined
13 Jul 2005
Posts
19,348
Location
Norfolk, South Scotland
Basic Images and Specification

NOTE: The first 160 or so posts of this thread refer to the V1.2 BIOS that the board originally shipped with. V1.3 addresses 99% of the problems and you really should use the V1.3 (or higher) BIOS.

The Box

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The Bundle

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The Board

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The Backplane

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Unusual Socket Protector - This is very soft and I nearly damaged some pins trying to remove it - Take Care!

102_2361.jpg


Specification

LGA 775
Intel P35 with ICH9
1333 Front Side Bus
Dual DDR2 1066 (oc) / 800 / 667 MHz
2x PCI-E X16 with Crossfire Support (x16 on 1st Slot, x4 on 2nd Slot)
4 SATA Connectors - There is no option for AHCI in the BIOS so the board appears to operate only in SATA I mode without NCQ and at a maximum speed of 100Mb/sec. I would be grateful if someone from JW could confirm this. If this is incorrect I will change it ASAP.
eSATA
Dual Marvell Gigabit LAN Controllers
4 USB2.0 Connectors on the Backplate (and a further 8 by Motherboard Headers)
7.1 CH HD Audio
S/PDIF (Coaxial & Optical)
Onboard Debug LED
Dual AWARD BIOS
 
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DRIVERS, BIOS and COMPATIBLE HARDWARE

There are only 3 sets of drivers supplied on the CD - links are to the latest downloads.

Chipset - For XP (32 and 64 bit) and Vista (32 and 64 bit)
Audio - For XP (32 and 64 bit) and Vista (32 and 64 bit)
LAN - For XP (32 and 64 bit) and Vista (32 and 64 bit)

If you are trying to install the Vista drivers from the CD, there is nothing under the Automatic Install Option, you must go to Useful Utilities and there you will find the manual install option for the drivers.

BIOS Updates

V1.3 BIOS - This fixes almost all the issues discussed in the first 160 or so posts of this thread. Use it!
BIOS Flashing tutorial from J&W Website. The tools used here are guaranteed to work. I have tested them all and they are fine. If you do experience a bad BIOS flash, just move jumper JB1 (next to the power LED pins in the bottom right hand corner of the board) across from the right-hand two pins to the left-hand two pins and re-start the machine. When it boots up in recovery mode, press F5 to reflash the primary BIOS. Shutdown, then move the jumper back and reflash the primary BIOS with your upgrade again. It's very safe indeed.


Compatible Hardware

If you have tested anything with the board and you know it does or doesn't work, please post and I'll update the list

The system boots fine with the following RAM;

Corsair Value RAM (boots fine with 2 and 4 x 1Gb PC5300 Sticks) - No voltage adjustment required
Corsair PC6400 XMS2 CAS4 (boots fine with 2 Sticks) - Voltage adjustment to [+0.2] required to boot 4 sticks
Crucial PC8500 Ballistix (boots fine with 2 and 4 x 1Gb PC8500 Sticks) - No voltage adjustment required to boot up, adjust to [+0.3] for correct voltage
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-8000C5 (boots fine with 2 and 4 x 2Gb PC8000 Sticks) - No voltage adjustment required to boot up, adjust to [+0.3] for correct voltage
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency
 
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BIOS SCREENS

The BIOS has pretty much every possible BIOS option present

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And the bottom of that screen

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Oddly - the board has all the options present (and fully working) for onboard graphics (with DVI), but it doesn't actually have onboard graphics. One BIOS for all G31/P31/P35 series motherboards? Anyway - don't turn it on, as it makes the system hang for a few seconds longer than necessary while it checks what the video options are.

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This is the worrying screen for me - there is nowhere to set the drives to operate in SATA II mode, it seems to be fixed in IDE (PATA compatability) and I think that means 100Mb/sec only. That'd be really awful if it was correct, as the rest of the board seems 100%.

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The CPU fan control is excellent - almost as good as Abit's with full control of the slope of the PWM fan and stop, start and start 100% temperatures.

102_2373.jpg
 
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OVERCLOCKING BIOS SCREENS

The BIOS comes pretty much configured for fast and easy overclocking - all the power saving options are disabled, as is anything else I would normally automatically turn off.

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The CPU FSB is rather confusingly labelled "Startup" and "Linear Mode" for no overclock and manual respectively.

You can lock the PCIe Bus to a value you set (PCIe PLL SOURCE) and the SATA speed can also be controlled in the same way - either fixed to the true stock value, or linked to the PCIe Bus, or just left to float with the FSB (Startup).

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Someone seems to have decided on yet another multiplier scheme - at least what we all call 1:1 is actually 1:1!

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DRAM Voltages are pretty standard - what these pictures can't show is that the red numbers flash. It might help warn you, or it might just annoy you.

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FSB Voltage can be adjusted a bit

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And the Chipset voltage can be adjusted a bit too

102_2379.jpg
 
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Maximum stable overclock is currently 3.2GHz on a Q6600 G0, but then I haven't actually tried yet, either. Easier than falling off a log.

EVERYTHING at Stock, just dialled in 360 FSB and fixed PCIe Express and SATA speeds, booted straight into 3.2GHz. Literally it was that easy.

Primed for 45 minutes, but it's a bit pointless as this CPU and RAM (PC8500 Ballistix) is know to be stable at 3.8GHz in a Gigabyte P35-DS4 so I need to figure out the BIOS voltages required to boot this board at those speeds if possible. It's late and I wanted to post as much stuff as possible. I'll tidy this up tomorrow after I've had a chance to play about with it.
 
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No RAID.
No firewire.

Judging from the BIOS shown no AHCI either as yet which also rules out hotplugging for eSATA.
& now I see how they have eSATA on the back plane - if they are going to do that I think that Gigabyte's way is better.

thanks for the info WJA96.
 
Jokester said:
Is the NB heatsink mount the typical style for P35?
Click to expand...

Yes. What I don't understand is that it's a tiny little heatsink, but it's running 3.2GHz and it's cool to the touch. Not even warm. The Southbridge cooler is a little warm to the touch, but definitely not hot.
 
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RAID no, firewire support isn't mentioned so I'm guessing no...

AFAIK IDE mode just means you don't have NCQ and Hot-plug features enabled on the SATA, it should still run GEN2... but don't quote me on that.
 
One thing about the overclocking - when it carps out - it just clicks loudly and restarts in default straight away. I've tried several silly things and every time it just restarts immediately. It seems very robust at resisting a bad overclock. Mind you, so far it's resisting everything over 3.4GHz:(

But I really haven't had a proper go yet.;)
 
Rroff said:
RAID no, firewire support isn't mentioned so I'm guessing no...

AFAIK IDE mode just means you don't have NCQ and Hot-plug features enabled on the SATA, it should still run GEN2.
Click to expand...

I'm booting off a 36Gb 16Mb cache raptor and it doesn't feel like it - it feels slow.

[Edit]The Raptor is definitely running UDMA 5 (100Mb/sec)

According to Everest, the two (?) ICH9 controllers are capable of running AHCI, it's just not enabled, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere in the BIOS to turn it on.

Also according to Everest, the third controller is a Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd) 6121 SATA2 Controller which is also AHCI enabled (but you can't turn it on). Without AHCI you can't have NCQ or hot-plug (I think) which could make the eSATA a bit ropey?[/Edit]

I just can't believe that such a decent motherboard could be so completely hobbled by the disk subsystem. There has to be a BIOS update or something for this, surely?
 
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Iirc IDE mode means UDMA5 on Intel SATA controllers or 100Mb/s limit.
Mind you, no current SATA HDD will give you that in continuous transfer afaik but it obviously limits burst transfer to that too.
 
16Mb cache raptor only does about 70-75MB/s max transfer rate doesn't it? which wouldn't max out SATA150.

EDIT: Looks like they hit 90MB/s - but SATA1 would have a small impact on your burst performance... still you shouldn't be able to notice a significant difference when loading the OS.

EDIT2: HD Tach results would be quite interesting to compare to other P35 boards.
 
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Rroff said:
EDIT2: HD Tach results would be quite interesting to compare to other P35 boards.
Click to expand...

I'll do some tomorrow, but I'm fairly certain that it will go faster if they unlock the SATA II functions in the BIOS.
 
My initial estimate on the Vdroop is about 0.02 at 1.22V start (1.20V under load).
 
Thats pretty decent, the one downside to the P35 DS3R I'm using (other than no SLI support :P) the vdroop can be upto 0.064 which makes it hard to hit higher clocks if you need much over 1.5v as after 1.6v the next jump is 1.8 iirc and I'm not sure I want to test the 1.8 option on my E6600 just yet...
 
My initial overclock doesn't seem to have been too stable after all - One core failed after about 90 minutes, the others seem to have been OK, so I'll just touch the CPU VCore up and try and again.

FAILOC.jpg
 
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