What mobo to replace my P5N-E SLi?

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 10:56

Howdy,

I have been having so many issues with the Asus P5N-E SLi, and my Asus days are over, my first asus hasd two faulty fans, and this new board is doing so many annoying things (that I have posted in the "official" thread) that I just want to get the lump outta my system and get a real board.

What board would you recommend (NON Asus) for my spec below, and more importanly, the best to overclock a E6600, cos I can only get 3.0ghz stable out of this current "motherboard"!

My spec is:

Antec Nine Hundred Case
C2D E6600 w\ Artic Freezer 7 Pro
GeIL 2GB PC6400 800mhz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 PSU
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II HDDs
BFG 8800 GTX OC 768mb
Pioneer DVR-112DBK 18x18 DVD RW Dual Layer
Sony Floppy Drive
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard

Preferably, I would like the board to be future proof to allow Intel Quad Core cpus?

Any recommendations will be appreciated!

ta

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:03

strange, I didn't know motherboards had fans :rolleyes:

there's plenty of people on here who would heartily recommend the board you have (myself included), maybe you're not using the right settings.... :confused:

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:04

the gigabyte ds3's are pretty well recommended though.

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:08

zytok said:
strange, I didn't know motherboards had fans

there's plenty of people on here who would heartily recommend the board you have (myself included), maybe you're not using the right settings....

Yeah my A8N had a small fan on the NB that was faulty, replaced it for free by Asus with a "new style" fan, and that done the same! Boaught a Zalman in the end!

And I am sure I am using the board right, I have done everything to get the best from it, and these faulty restarts I am getting are driving me up the wall!

zytok said:
the gigabyte ds3's are pretty well recommended though.

Do they support the Quad Cores?

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:12

how far did you get with your overclock on the P5N? There are quite a few FSB holes that you can push through......

The DS3P definitely supports quad core.

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:19

zytok said:
how far did you get with your overclock on the P5N? There are quite a few FSB holes that you can push through......

The DS3P definitely supports quad core.

Well I got to 3.4ghz at 1.5v vcore :eek:

and Orthos ran for 19hrs, but STALKER kept crashing out... but I'm still not 100% sure if that was the game?

I did get orthos running for 3hours at 3.5ghz on a crazy 1.525v vcore, but I stopped that at 3 hours cos I just wasnt happy with that many volts pumping thru.

What are the FSB holes in this board? What you got? And what overclock have you reached?

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:28

keogh said:
Well I got to 3.4ghz at 1.5v vcore and Orthos ran for 19hrs, but STALKER kept crashing out... but I'm still not 100% sure if that was the game?

I did get orthos running for 3hours at 3.5ghz on a crazy 1.525v vcore, but I stopped that at 3 hours cos I just wasnt happy with that many volts pumping thru.

What are the FSB holes in this board? What you got? And what overclock have you reached?

If you're running Vista then Stalker doesn't like the OS. Known issues. If XP then not too sure but I wouldn't **** off the board on the sole reason that one badly coded game crashes.

1.5V is nothing too excessive. As long as your temps are steady at around 40-50C. Have my 4300 (800FSB) at 3.15GHz totally stable and I think there's more to come from it yet. Found massive FSB holes though in between where the pc didn't even post or refused to boot.

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:30

zytok said:
If you're running Vista then Stalker doesn't like the OS. Known issues. If XP then not too sure but I wouldn't **** off the board on the sole reason that one badly coded game crashes.

1.5V is nothing too excessive. As long as your temps are steady at around 40-50C. Have my 4300 (800FSB) at 3.15GHz totally stable and I think there's more to come from it yet. Found massive FSB holes though in between where the pc didn't even post or refused to boot.

I'm on XP, and I dont blame STALKER cos I was playing STALKER on my last rig for hours on XP and didnt have a single crash, and I couldn;t play it for more than 30mins on this PC.

Although that was when I was at 3.4ghz, so maybe it will be ok at 3ghz?

I like the look of the, DS3P and its reasonably priced... I'll keep that one in mind, ta!

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:52

keogh said:
I'm on XP, and I dont blame STALKER cos I was playing STALKER on my last rig for hours on XP and didnt have a single crash, and I couldn;t play it for more than 30mins on this PC.

Although that was when I was at 3.4ghz, so maybe it will be ok at 3ghz?

I like the look of the, DS3P and its reasonably priced... I'll keep that one in mind, ta!

Your 6600 should go way above 3GHz on this board. Reasonably confident I can get 3.4GHz on a 4300 with a bit more tweaking.

Have you turned off speedstep, C1E etc,etc? Have you manually input voltage for cpu, nb and RAM? Have you tried pushing through a supposed limit "just to see"?

zytok · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:54

Think there were some issues with the nVidia drivers as well on stalker. Does your other pc have the same 8800GTX in it? Have you tried other drivers? Have you tried any other games?

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:57

zytok said:
Your 6600 should go way above 3GHz on this board. Reasonably confident I can get 3.4GHz on a 4300 with a bit more tweaking.

Have you turned off speedstep, C1E etc,etc? Have you manually input voltage for cpu, nb and RAM? Have you tried pushing through a supposed limit "just to see"?

Think I have done everything, but Im thinking its the NB that screwing it, I went up to 1.5v there, but didnt want to go higher cos I have no colling on it and it gets very hot.

But I tried 1600x9 (3.6) to see what I could get and on 1.525v vcore orthos died instantly. I tried 1.4500 +100mv too, that was pushing my vcore to 1.57 at times according to PC Probe, I actually didnt try orthos then cos that volt was too high, but I tired it at 1.425v and it died straight away too.

When ever I was clocking my CPU I had my RAM set to 5-5-5-21 2T 700mhz so I knew it wasn't that hindering my overclock.

But I do have the dodgy batch of E6600 that are no so overclockable, so that doesn't help!

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 11:59

zytok said:
Think there were some issues with the nVidia drivers as well on stalker. Does your other pc have the same 8800GTX in it? Have you tried other drivers? Have you tried any other games?

Well this is what I thought, cos I heard that STALKER didnt like the 8800GTX, and my old rig had a 7800GTX in it.

Ive got the latest drivers though, but once I started thinking it could be the game, windows just rebooted for no reason when I wasn't even doing anything. SO I went back to 3.2ghz then... and at 3.2ghz I got these random boot failures, so thats wy I am back at 3ghz to see if that stops all woes.

I'm just having a nightmare with the clock

So Im gonna stick at 3ghz if it stays stable all the time!

The Running Man · 11 Apr 2007 at 12:09

mm i managed E6600 3.3ghz # stable on my 650i chipset mobo....

1.425v core
1.39nb
1.39 VTT

any higher and it requires a big volt jump from the CPU so ive left it there and see how it goes.

i get a 15.3s SuperPi 1M so im relatively happy.

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 12:18

Nickg said:
mm i managed E6600 3.3ghz # stable on my 650i chipset mobo....

1.425v core
1.39nb
1.39 VTT

any higher and it requires a big volt jump from the CPU so ive left it there and see how it goes.

i get a 15.3s SuperPi 1M so im relatively happy.

You on the P5N-E SLi board? Cos I do not have the option to change my VTT or 1.2HT voltage? I only have the 4, Vcore, DDR, NB and Vcore offset?

The Running Man · 11 Apr 2007 at 12:22

no, im using an Abit FP-IN9 which uses the same chipset.

hmm id say that it is important to up the VTT f possible. do you have the latest BIOS revision from ASUS?

keogh · 11 Apr 2007 at 12:24

Nickg said:
no, im using an Abit FP-IN9 which uses the same chipset.

hmm id say that it is important to up the VTT f possible. do you have the latest BIOS revision from ASUS?

Yeah I thought it would be important to up that and the 1.2HT, but it dont allow me.

I just flashed the latest bios from ASUS about 1hr ago, and my system would not boot no matter what I tried, had to reset CMOS to get back to the old BIOS... another reason why Asus suck!