P5WD2 x 660 Goodness

First of all... thanks to Ross for setting me in the right direction.

I now have my 660 running nicely on a new P5WD2-Premium board with a pair of 512 Crucial Ballistic's, a couple of W/D SATA2 250's in a RAID0 array, all powered up by an Enermax Noisetaker 600.

Currently using the 509 BIOS, with default settings, except for the following...

FSB is @ 300
Mem is @ 750
PCI is @ 33.3

4.2Ghz ... Prime stable (but a bit temp limited) at 56 - 62 degrees for 2 hrs (enough for me for the moment with my XP90... wait until the new Zalman's are available here!)

Don't know how to tighten things up from here, but Sandra results are...

cpu Dhrystone: 12487 Whetstone: 5114/8957
mem ... just re-checking after a reboot.

Should I start playing with memory timings, or just leave it and wait until I get a better cooler?

it's easy to play with the ram with so many dividers and AI booster

crucial is owned (or owns) micron, so maybe those ballistix have micron d9 chips which are great clockers. good luck!

Cheers

It's currently at 5;4;4;15;4 as I read it down the BIOS.

I had it running at 800, but had a restart (and I know it's not the cpu) so dropped it back again.

Hehe, you're welcome

If you can't really play with the CPU anymore until you get a better a cooler, I'd be playing around with mem right now!

I personally wouldn't worry too much about maxing out the DDR voltage in the BIOS since you'll get less actual, but that's just me. I really don't think any DDR could be hurt with what the board can do stock and given the max BIOS options.

The only Crucial Ballistix DDR667 I saw was 3-3-3-12 timings and 2.1V defaults, so if that's what you have, you'll want to set the BIOS mem voltage to 2.20V to get 2.1V actual to the sticks and then see what you can do for tighter timings at DDR750 or DDR800. If you want to play around some more, leave the looser timings and see if it will boot and memtest/SuperPi at DDR900 or DDR1000

Hey guys... is this a Board issue or is it normal?

Whenever the PC is restarted now... there is a point where the screen led normally goes orange and there is no signal, you know... right at the restart-point, where the PC actually switches off for about 3 seconds... fans stop, etc, and then it restarts.

It didn't do that when I first put her all together, so I wonder whether I have changed a setting in the BIOS, or whether I have developed a problem with the board/psu/cpu/mem or what?

Have to check the Q-Fan settings when I get back home.

B

I know mine doesn't give no signal indicator even if the vid card is just laying on the desk with the cable plugged in (ie. out of the PC completely), but I have an LCD monitor....not sure what you are using.

I can't really see any reason that changes in BIOS would make any difference in that department at all?

fritzman said:

Hey guys... is this a Board issue or is it normal?

Whenever the PC is restarted now... there is a point where the screen led normally goes orange and there is no signal, you know... right at the restart-point, where the PC actually switches off for about 3 seconds... fans stop, etc, and then it restarts.

It didn't do that when I first put her all together, so I wonder whether I have changed a setting in the BIOS, or whether I have developed a problem with the board/psu/cpu/mem or what?

Have to check the Q-Fan settings when I get back home.

B

Click to expand...

you will have to learn to live with it. it has nothing to do with the bios setting, it's more the bios itself, did you change the bios at all? if yes, then all bioses out there will cause that at every restart when raising your FSB to 250 or more. the stock bios that comes with the board does not do that, but it does not overclock for crap. bottom line is, it's the price you will have to pay to get a decent overclock at high FSB.

Whew!

Thanks for that... I changed to the 509 that everyone is raving about, and yep... she overclocks really well, but then this started happening and I though... Oh Crap.. what have I done.

I actually think it's quite a cool feature.

Bruce

fritzman said:

Whew!

Thanks for that... I changed to the 509 that everyone is raving about, and yep... she overclocks really well, but then this started happening and I though... Oh Crap.. what have I done.

I actually think it's quite a cool feature.

Bruce

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I sometimes get an overclocking error after the startup halts at the bios screen. Doesn't happen too often (maybe 1/10 startups). My OC isn't really the issue (it's rock-solid and has been for a while now). Aparently we're not alone and Asus doesn't care to fix it. I also had problems with mystery ide controllers with newer bios versions too, so I've had my fair share of quirks already. Aside from the minor annoyances, it really is an awesome board. I'm going to enjoy doing some real oc'ing someday this winter when I get stuck inside and bored.