New AW9D-Max owner, couple of ??'s

I just recently purchased an ABIT AW9D-MAX MB, everything seems to be working pretty good. I have a couple of questions.

1)My pc will boot up at a clock multiplier of 8x, but shortly after bootup it will go to a 6x multiplier, I also notice a CPU voltage drop. This is according to CPU-Z. Is this due to the Speedstep technology?

2)I was trying to load the intel thermal analysis tool and it installs properly (or at least error free), but it will not load?

3)I also had a question about flashing the bios, do you have to flash the bios via floppy disk or is there a Windows GUI that can do it?

Sorry for the multiple questions in one thread, just a couple of small issues.

1. Yes, this is because of the normal speedstep function. A lot of people disable the function in the BIOS. Personally, I leave it on. Doesn't seem to affect my overclock, so dropping the speed at idle is a good thing in my opinion. Oh yeah, ignore the CPU-Z vcore, it won't read the AW9D accurately.

2. Don't think TAT works right on this setup. I used Core Temp.

3. Yes, you can flash the BIOS in Windows. Your install CD should have Abit FlashMenu, think it installs with uGuru. I've used it plenty of times, works great. Just make sure you go back to default speed first. I prefer downloading the desired BIOS version first and then using the load from file method instead of letting it do the auto update thing.

Thanks for answering all my questions batboy, gives me a great sense of comfort now with my new setup.

I'm still having an issue with my setup. I turned off thermal management and speedstep technology. CPU-Z still shows me a 266Mhz bus x 6.0x multiplier. I dont understand?? I cannot get it to show up at the 8x multiplier set up in bios. I even upgraded the bios to the 1.3 version.

Are you running vista, if so its a power setting and I can help with that.

Control panel, power options and set it to performance and your done.

Deanzo said:

Are you running vista, if so its a power setting and I can help with that.

Control panel, power options and set it to performance and your done.

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No.. I'm running Windows XP sp2.

I figured out I am unable to disable speedstep, no matter what I use for the setting it is enabled. Is this something with the allendale cpu's?? It does go to the regular cpu rating when I run Orthos.

You disabled EIST in the BIOS, right?

Make sure the multiplier is set to 8X also.

Batboy, yeah.. EIST is disabled in bios along with thermal management. The multiplier is set to 8x @ 272Mhz. It appears to me that no matter what EIST is set to, XP will still step down the cpu unless the power setting is changed to "always on". I've gone back in to bios to verify that the changes stayed and they were still disabled. I guess there's no point in disabling EIST in bios at least on my MB.

projectrps13 said:

Batboy, yeah.. EIST is disabled in bios along with thermal management. The multiplier is set to 8x @ 272Mhz. It appears to me that no matter what EIST is set to, XP will still step down the cpu unless the power setting is changed to "always on". I've gone back in to bios to verify that the changes stayed and they were still disabled. I guess there's no point in disabling EIST in bios at least on my MB.

Click to expand...

I have had a similar issue with EIST as i dont take a performance hit leaving it switched on i dont think it will be a problem.