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Motherboard Monitor on P5AD2-E? (Anyone have it working?)

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deam

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2001
Simply, I like motherboard monitor better than all the other temp and voltage monitoring programs. It doesn't work, at least not that I was able to, on the P5AD2-E. If anyone has figured out how, please share :)
 
You're in luck! I was just coming on to post my enlightenment and your thread was close enough to the top for me to catch it, so I will post here instead.

I had asked the same question in the Extreme Cooling section. No responses, surprise, surprise. I had tried MBM5 last year when I got my P5AD2-E, of course without any luck like everyone else.

After adding a pelt to my WC setup recently, I needed something that would auto shutdown if anything goes wrong since the BIOS apparently doesn't have this option for over-temp shutdown. MBM5 will do this in conjunction with an external app (runs the shutdown app on alarm). After coming up shorthanded on searches for another temp monitor prog that may work, I downloaded MBM5 again today and started messing around.

mbm_p5ad2-e.gif

SpeedFan and CPU-Z are up there to confirm MBM is reading the "correct" temps and this is in fact on a P5AD2-E.

After much messing around, it's actually very easy to get MBM working on this mobo. In Settings panel/Advanced tab, simply uncheck "Detect SMBus before detecting primary sensor chip..." AND uncheck "Do not reset sensor chip on start up of MBM". Restart MBM and that should be it...no sensor selections required. In fact, the Winbond chips will no longer be options (only LM-7x). Nothing is detected on the LMs and will give a reading of 0 if you do select them, so just do the above and restart and that should be it.

The only thing that is apparently not working correctly is the Vc reading (Core0 reads like 2.68V with a 1.28Vc set in BIOS). Unforunately, I have yet to find a way to correct that since the sensor option is unselectable and it just says "MBM Fixed". I may play with it some more, but the rest of the temps, fan speeds and voltages appear to be correct (at least the exact same reading I was seeing on SpeedFan).

You are all welcome! :D
 
Yeah, every P5AD2-E shows 127C for case and CPU in the default install. If you uncheck those two options I said above and restart MBM, that should be it. Maybe you need a restart of the PC to reset any sensors if you didn't do both at the same time.

IIRC, if you deselect the "Detect SMBus..." without deselecting the "Do not reset sensor..." at the same time, it doesn't work. The sensor needs to be reset on MBM start/restart every time. If it matters, I am using MBM version 5.3.7.0.

Hopefully someone else will give it a shot and reply back...I can't be lucky enough to be the only one this works for...
 
deam said:
I coudln't get hte tmpes to show...they showed 127.


Man oh man, my P5AD2-E was reading 127c as well on the NB and it was driving me crazy because I was not sure if the HSF was making good contact. Since I had attatched it with Arctic AluminaThermal Epoxy, I was trying to remove it to reseat it and I cracked the NB. I bought the P5WD2 but I like my P5AD2-E better. My P5AD2-E is hanging on my wall........
 
RangerXLT8 said:
Man oh man, my P5AD2-E was reading 127c as well on the NB and it was driving me crazy because I was not sure if the HSF was making good contact. Since I had attatched it with Arctic AluminaThermal Epoxy, I was trying to remove it to reseat it and I cracked the NB. I bought the P5WD2 but I like my P5AD2-E better. My P5AD2-E is hanging on my wall........

Well, both mine say 127 ;) It wasn't your NB...
 
Busta: thanks for letting us know...I started to think I was seeing things ;)

Ranger: that sucks! What don't you like about the P5WD2? Either it or the AW8-MAX are on "my list". I haven't seen much on the Abit yet, so I am waiting...
 
Ross said:
Busta: thanks for letting us know...I started to think I was seeing things ;)

Ranger: that sucks! What don't you like about the P5WD2? Either it or the AW8-MAX are on "my list". I haven't seen much on the Abit yet, so I am waiting...


I'm not too impressed with the P5WD2 Premium SO FAR. It lacks a few functions of SpeedStep that the P5AD2-E had, so therefore I cannot run the 14x multi with my 650. On the P5AD2-E I set SpeedStep to *Minimum* and that locked the 14x multi in. On the P5WD2-Premium the only SpeedStep configurations are *Automatic* or *Disable*. The build quality is not that of the P5AD2-E either, they used aluminum for the "Zero Noise Fanless Design MOSFET on the P5WD2 instead of Cu.

But then there are the pros, Dual-Core support, dual PCI-E graphics card compatibility, external SATA. As of right now I wish I could use the P5AD2-E, but once ATI releases Cross-Fire I'll be one happy camper. I'm hoping the SpeedStep issue will be resolved with a bios upgrade in the future.
 
Ross,
With respect to the voltage, while the initial number is off, do the changes remain the same in magnitude as compared to CPUZ or Asus Probe?
 
Ranger: that sucks that there is no enable for the multi. I am kind of surprised since it works so well on the P5AD2-E. It use it religiously, in fact, I bought a 550 with the multi just a month or two after I got a 540 just so I could use it. Both OC to the same speed, but I can run 300+FSB at 14x. That's 40+ extra FSB for mem between when not stuck at 16x. Made a big diff in my mem bandwidth.

Guess I'll need to look a little more towards getting my first Abit unless a BIOS fixes that soon.

deam: to be honest, I haven't looked. I actually just did a fresh XP install on a new HDD and loaded only MBM. I'll reinstall SpeedFan and get back to you...
 
deam: It doesn't look like it. While the idle voltages for Core0 seem to move pretty steadily with increase, the load drops are all over the place. Idle is idle of course, MIN is lowest recorded during Sandra2005 CPU bench and Diff is the difference between idle and min for SpeedFan and MBM...

1.2875Vc set in BIOS:
Idle: 1.34V (SF) : 2.68V (MBM)
Min: 1.27V (SF) : 2.58V (MBM)
Diff: .07V .vs .09V

1.3375Vc BIOS (.05Vc increase):
Idle: 1.39V (SF) : 2.78V (MBM)
Min: 1.38V (SF) : 2.64 (MBM)
Diff: .01V .vs .16V

1.3875Vc BIOS (.05Vc increase):
Idle: 1.44V (SF) : 2.88V (MBM)
Min: 1.38 (SF) : 2.72 (MBM)
Diff: .06V .vs .16V

As you can see for every .05Vc increase in BIOS, SpeedFan goes up .05Vc where MBM Core0 goes up .10Vc instead. That is at least pretty consistent. As for minimums recorded by both during loads, there doesn't seem to be any sort of consistency at all. FYI, I had both SpeedFan and MBM open during benches, so they recorded at the exact same times/loads.

BTW, Core1 doesn't seem to move much, if at all. It always seems to stay at 3.94, though High/Low is recorded at 3.96/3.92. Just watching it in the dashboard though, I've never seen it move once :)
 
Not me! Otherwise I would've messed with it a little longer last year when I first got my mobo ;)
 
which motherboard are you putting in during the instal wizard? If I cancel that, I get driver load error
 
it worked, with the P5A...
However, I think it is more than just the VCore that is off. I think the entire array of voltage numbers is off. If we could get that working, I'd be one really happy guy, as I find MBM to be superior to other monitoring programs.

EDIT:
There are custmoizations within the MBM voltage.ini files..I will check..it's a mulitplication factor....
 
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I think I did it. :D

If you go into the voltage INI, you will find National LM
"ational LM78j]
VT=2

V0=LM78j Standard
V0V1=$20*0.008
V0V2=$21
V0V3=$22
V0V4=$23*0.016*1.68
V0V5=$24*0.016*3.8
V0V6=$25*(-0.016)*3.47
V0V7=$26*(-0.016)*1.5"

Set that as your voltage and start messing with the calculation. I changed the V0V1 from 0.016 to 0.08, and the Vcore now matches up perfectly with Asus Probe!!!
I guess it will take some tinkering to get them all to match up.

EDIT: I found the voltages other than Vcore required less of a change from the default of .016, such as .0155. I guess the differences you were seeing, Ross, had to do wiht the mulitplication factor being set incorrectly.
 
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