will an asus p5n-e sli support a new quad

[Bolerus]

hi

I have a had a look around but cant find a definate answer.

does anybody know if an asus p5n-e will support an Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

I know it would the older quads, but they have changed now havent they?


thanks

 

[El Jimben]

Well the Q6600 is an "older" quad now the Yorkfield 45nm versions are out, a quick look at the manual confirms that your mobo does support quads

 

[Bolerus]

just had a look on asus website, although there is no cpu list, it does state that it supports 45nm quads.

So I does that mean I can put any quad on straight from the box?

P5N-E SLI

The MB Supporting Intel® Quad-Core with NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI
- Support Intel® next generation 45nm Multi-core CPU
- Intel® Quad-Core
- Dual-channel DDR2 800/667/533
- Great performance and overclocking
- ASUS O.C. Profile
- ASUS Fanless Design
- 2 IEEE 1394a connector onboard (1 in back + 1 on board)
- 5 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s (including 1 x SATA On-the-Go)
- ASUS Q-Connector

Oh iwish we could go back to the good old days when it was easy to see which processor you need lol

thanks for the response btw

 

[El Jimben]

I would think that it supports the 65nm quads right out of the box you might need to update the BIOS for full 45nm support.

 

[Wiggins]

The P5N-E SLI will support the 65nm Quads with the 0608 bios and with the 0901 bios, 45nm Yorkfield Quads are also supported.

However, there is no definate answer as to whether you would get a good overclock out of them as the 650i Chipset is a little funny when it comes to overclocking Quads. I did get a Q6600 to 3Ghz stable though but I suffered bad vdroop so could not get it any higher.

Here is the list of supported processors for the P5N-E SLI

 

[reflux]

45nm Yorkfield quads are not supported. The nForce 6xx series architecture lacks the capability to run these chips, hence why the Q9300/Q9450/Q9550 are not listed on the CPU support list.

If you want to drop a quad into the P5N-E it'll have to be a Q6600 or Q6700. But the board is rubbish for overclocking quad cores, so don't expect to get much extra speed out of it.

 

[Wiggins]

I stand corrected, sorry

The Q9xx processors are not supported and by the looks of it after reading about it they will not.

You may be better off selling the board you have and getting a P35 instead.

I got £40 on the bay for mine and got a Gigabyte P35-DS3L.

 

[Bolerus]

thanks for the info...decisions decisions.

 

[Bolerus]

hope im not going to look too much of a noob here but...

if i get a quad and put it on the board, but the bios is too old can it damage the cpu?

the reason i ask, is the machine doesent have a floppy drive (has a multi card reader instead) so updating the bios is going to be a real beatch

on the other hand, I dont really want to buy a new board, because I bought an asrock 4core board from MM a couple of weeks ago, to put my current cpu on (E6400) when I moved to quad core. With the idea of building a bridge pc for my other half (she has a decent g.card but AGP and ddr1 memmory so thougt asrock woudl be ideal)

PS im not really too bothered with overclocking, the board has a built in (upto) 20% safe clocking function, and I have never gone beyond that on the 6400 and in fact it is at stock now (largly cos im a coward and dont want to rick frying anything)

 

[Wiggins]

Here you go

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-099-GI&groupid=595&catid=689&subcat=

B-Grade and at £35 its a steal. The only thing wrong with this would probably be either no manual, no leads or no disks. The motherboard will be in 100% working order

You can buy a cheap USB Flash Disk and flash the bios with that but with the new 650i bios' that Asus now develop, it is a complete arse to downgrade if you get problems. Thats the reason behind me selling mine, and the crappy vdroop also.

 

[Bolerus]

sory to keep harping on, on this

but what would be the advantage of going for a q9300 rather than the q6600

the q9300 is 2.5 ghz where as the q6600 is 2.4ghz, but is £60 cheaper (if i go for the this week only Q6600) both are 1333fsb (im assuming that is the oc on the q6600 to get it to 3gig) or 1024 for the non OC guranteed version

i know the obvios answer is later compatibility, but in all honesty I dont think that is a valid issue with how often the cpus change

 

[Bolerus]

You can buy a cheap USB Flash Disk and flash the bios with that but with the new 650i

flash disk? do you mean a usb flash drive dongle (got a 1 gig (i know 1 gig is tiny these days) I coudl use if that is what you mean) but how do you get pc to start up to read that? isnt the point of the floppy drives with bios flash so that they start up from floppy

my god i am really out of touch with modern technology, I used to thik I was pretty much on the edge of progress (before dual core and quad core stitched me)

 

[Wiggins]

If I remember rightly, there is an option in the bios called 'EZ Flash'.

Plug the Flash Drive with your bios added into the pc and boot into the bios. From there you can get into the EZ Flash Utility and the motherboard should read that the bios is present.

Then flash to your hearts content.

There is also a utility you can use to flash the bios from within windows called Asus Update. You can find it on the support pages of Asus here.

If you currently have the 0608 bios and will be going down the Q6600 route then I would definately reccommend fitting the processor first before you flash your bios as you may not need to.

There is no point in flashing the bios to see if a Yorkfield Quad Processor will work becasue it will not.

 

[Bolerus]

ok, thanks wiggins. I will check the bios when i get home and see if i can find whihc bios version i have.

wish me luck lol

 

[Matt26LFC]

The 0608 BIOS on the P5n-e sli does support Q6600 and Q6700, however the new yorkies (45nm Quads) are not, nor with any other BIOS for that board.

And i'd always recommend flashing from the BIOS and not Windows, seems more people have probs when flashing from the latter. Use Ez Flash as wiggins suggested.

 

[Bolerus]

my bios says revision 608 so that is good news because the q6600 was my target, freeing up thej E6400 to go on the asrock board.

now, and here comes more silly question, people have reported that the board isnt good for overclocking quads, I was thinking of getting the this week only 6600 that is guranteed to go to 3gig, but only becasue it is cheaper than the standard q6600.

I take it, If I stick that on and leave it at stock, it will be just the same as putting in the slightly more expensive one at stock, or are they physically different chips, (one is 1024 fsb, one is 1333 fsb) the board defintaly reports 1333 support so that shouldnt be an isuue --- should it

 

[Hesky82]

45nm Yorkfield quads are not supported. The nForce 6xx series architecture lacks the capability to run these chips, hence why the Q9300/Q9450/Q9550 are not listed on the CPU support list.

If you want to drop a quad into the P5N-E it'll have to be a Q6600 or Q6700. But the board is rubbish for overclocking quad cores, so don't expect to get much extra speed out of it.

That’s correct, the board supports wolfdale 45nm dual cores but not the yorkie 45nm quads. I ran a Q6600 G0 in that board and it hit a nasty brick wall at exactly 333*9 it was 100% stable at this clock and ran very cool with the cpu only needing 1.19v. 3GHz wasn’t all that bad but as my Q6600 G0 was a very good clocker and I had a decent watercooling setup I just had to change the board for something that could get the most out of it and not hold it back.

I take it, If I stick that on and leave it at stock, it will be just the same as putting in the slightly more expensive one at stock, or are they physically different chips, (one is 1024 fsb, one is 1333 fsb) the board defintaly reports 1333 support so that shouldnt be an isuue --- should it

Like I said my P5N-E only just managed to reach 1333 QDR and I mean only just! other people were not so lucky with this board and really struggled to get 2.8GHz out of there kentfield quads