Abit AW9D-MAX & E8400

Is Abit AW9D-MAX & E8400 E0 stepping compatible?

According to this page, it's presently under testing. So, I don't know if it does or not.

The new E0's are not working well so far with Abit boards.
There is a beta bios for the IP35's but it sucks from all accounts, and the mess Abit is in right now, who knows if we'll see a working one for that, let alone an older board like the AW9D-Max.

What's the latest here? I'd really like to know if I can stick a Q9550 in my Awd9-max. I'm running bios 16, and according to the abit site all quad-cores are "ok" to use with bios 15 or later.

Also, what happens when you stick a 1333fsb core in a 1066fsb mobo?

I'm looking to get a quad core, and I'd really like to use a 45nm one...

The AW9D was updated to work with a Q6x00 65nm quad and also with dual core E8x00 45nm CPUs, but they never planned for the Q9x00 45nm CPUs to work (from what I remember reading when their support site was still up).

The AW9D has native support for the 1333 FSB with the right BIOS update, but a board without support will either boot & run the CPU underclocked (then you can overclock to the right speed) or won't boot at all.

So it sounds like the only way to go quad-core is to run a 65nm one, correct?

wouldn't it just be better to use an e8400 then?

Hello everyone,

When I go from 380FSB to 381FSB, I get a BOOTMGR is missing... hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart error. Backing down to 380FSB does not resolve the issue. I end up having to re-install windows 7. However, I was just finished re-installing windows 7 while running at 381FSB. I'm doing a little stress testing to see if it's stable at (381x9=3430MHz). So far it's 20 minutes stable, I'm going to bump it up 1FSB to see if it causes the BOOTMGR error again.

edit #1: Okay, so looks like as long as I install windows 7 after I hit the 381FSB, the BOOTMGR error won't pop-up anymore. My temps are currently idling at 47C and hit 61C+ when I use ORTHOS.

edit #2: Currently at (389x9= 3501MHz). ORTHOS is 30MIN+ STABLE!

edit #3: Currently at (395x9= 3555MHz). ORTHOS is 1HR+ STABLE!

edit #4: Currently at (400x9= 3600MHz). ORTHOS is running...

I upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit yesterday from Vista. Had a few messages that looked concerning at the start. The first attempt complained about the file system. After the reboot, it upgraded and I don't see any problem that I could blame on windows 7. I do have this in the compatibility file:

These devices might not work properly after the upgrade. Before upgrading, we recommend updating the drivers for these devices. Cancel the upgrade, open Control Panel and search for "update device drivers", or go to the device manufacturer's website to search for updated drivers.

o Storage controllers: AE6TYQTQ IDE Controller
I couldn't find anything to update, so I'm ignoring this for now. I don't have any IDE devices.

I ran the following CPUs on the AW9 Series.
E6300 B2 - 2
E6420
E6600
E6750
E6850
E8400 C0.
All of them at least 400 FSB.

The 1333 FSB chips need to be run in the 1066 strap or you won't see accurate readings from the Memory Controller, for one thing. They also just OC better in the 1066 strap.
Quads and the AW9 Series were just not meant to be. Very few builders had much success at all overclocking Quads over at ABIT Forums back in the day.
The AW9 will run 1066 Quads - don't know how they measure up with the 1333s - they just can't seem to overclock them.
AW9 Series works best with 1066 Dual Cores.

Waja,

Is Windows 7 Running stably for you? Did you resolve your driver issues? I really wanna toss 7 on my rig, but I don't want to run into a bunch of driver issues as abit hasn't provided Windows 7 drivers...

Specifally, did you get UGuru and all the proprietary abit stuff to work?

LuminoZ said:

Waja,

Is Windows 7 Running stably for you? Did you resolve your driver issues? I really wanna toss 7 on my rig, but I don't want to run into a bunch of driver issues as abit hasn't provided Windows 7 drivers...

Specifally, did you get UGuru and all the proprietary abit stuff to work?

Click to expand...

A really hard question to answer. I am running Windows 7 and I have gotten only five hiccups that were of concern. So far I have been able to recover fine each time. I don't know if any of it is related to Windows 7. I still don't know what the AE6TYQTQ IDE controller is. I only have SATA HDD and DVD drives, so this may be why I have no issues. I can run uGuru in windows. I don't see an issue. The issues I have had are:
1. Slow copy from USB thumb drive to HDD. I mean real slow.
I have gotten my C drive to improve quite a bit by doing the following:
Enabled "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing.
Upgraded Intel Matrix Storage Console to version 8.9.0.1023
Enable "Volume Write-Back Cache" in Intel Matrix Storage Console.
2. Boot drive failure. C drive not bootable.
This was wierd. One of my Seagate drives got flagged for an error. I tried to rebuild the Raid 5 drives and somewhere around 98% done, my system rebooted. Then I could not boot up. After playing around and trying to boot using the windows 7 disk, the raid error changed to allow booting from the raid 5 drive. I booted and ran the rebuild for the third drive and now everything is fine.
3. Lock up on login. Happened twice where the system is non responsive. I just waited it out each time and after about 15 minutes, all is well. During the lock up the screen was off white.
4. Video crash in "Left 4 dead". Almost always recovers. I am trying to figure this one out currently. It could take a couple of weeks.
5. System doesn't boot. Stuck in BIOS screen. This will happen when I use USB drives. If I leave a USB drive or flash drive connected when I power down, I sometimes have the system get stuck during reboot. Doesn't appear to be related to Windows 7, but don't remember having this problem in WinXP.

That's it. I think that Windows 7 32-bit is fine for this motherboard. I have not tried 64-bit and probably won't go to 64-bit till I get new CPU/Motherboard/Memory.