New vs Old NF7-S v2's

dreammmatt said:

Well, i flashed trats d24, and i get into windows at 220, I can complete 3DMark2001SE but it's not Prime-stable At first it would fail after 13minutes, then after i kept restarting the torture test it started failing at 1 and 3 minutes. I dont think it's the cpu (voltage)...but...who knows...(@ 1.725 at the moment)

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Likely the symptom, Prime95 suddenly failing within 5 minutes after it was OK for 10 minutes is likely a warning sign of a cooling problem. You likely require more air blowing inside the PC case.

New NF7-S V2.0 WOO-HOO!!

Punched the button and took off like a bandit, set to run 2500 @ 3200 and posted 3200 slick as a whistle. Had trouble getting LAN to connect but read in manual you must Enable LAN in BIOS, manual very well written. Two 256MB sticks Kingston PC2700 and this puppy is flying. 7200 RPM Maxtor doesn't have 8MB Cache but still fast. Nice to see the ABITEQ utility showing same temps as SpeedFan, 43-44C idle using old EverCool CUD-725 cooler with AS & 80mm quiet fan. Temps would probably drop if I used EverCool 60mm fan but sort'a loud and I like quiet and temp will 'prolly drop a degree or two after burn in.

Been burning in 19 hours, reformatted a HD, installed OS and all other software so did a bunch of restarts and hasn't balked once.

Question: Are ya'll enabling Ultra DMA in the BIOS? Never saw that in BIOS on other boards and wondering if it will speed things up, not that I need more speed, just curious. I know what DMA does but read in another forum enabling it through Device Mgr (check the box) increased chance of data loss. I tried it both ways on all drives using Device Mgr and didn't see that much difference. Any other tips for settings in this whiz-bang BIOS would be greatly appreciated.

Very pleased with it thus far and since this 2500 is old and unlocked no telling how fats it'll go but at 3200 it's a rockin'. Huney.

manual very well written

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Well I guess your looking over all of the typo's and all of the sentences that make no sence at all

It's actually the worst manual I have ever read, but I can still understand it. If you figure out what they are tryin to say, then it's helpful.

To PCGuy.

Did four in the crypto vault in the military where our job was making sense out of nothing, so understanding a manual piece of cake and you should have seen some of the garbel-de-gook we deciphered. Huney.

I'm schitzo so I get all the 'garbel-de-gook' just as well too

And DIMM 1 is Dark Blue-Purple, and DIMMs 2 & 3 on mine are light blue

Dig...dig...dig... Here it is. I followed this thread back in the spring when I purchased a NF7 refurb from the Egg but I quickly mangled the bios and into the closet it went. Well, my trusty AN35NU died after doing a poor soldering job for the Vdd mod so I ended up purchasing a new bios chip for the NF7 from excaliberpc and I've been tinkering with it and my new pc4000 for a few days and the initial results look promising.

From what I've read, I think I have a v2.1 because I have all black connectors, old style NB cooler, metal lever, and missing mosfets. It came with the D21 BIOS but the previous owner may have flashed it though. The NB wasn't labled the same as my old shuttle's nforce 2 ultra 400 NB. I think someone else in this thread reported an oddly labled NB as well. It's OCing quite well for being straight out of the box for the second time. Currently running 238x10 1.7vdd and 3-3-3-11 2.7v single channel using the l12 mod and merlin's uber D25 BIOS. I'm desktop/sandra stable at 250MHz but only after increasing the Vdd and loosening the timings to 3-4-4-8. I've got some breaking-in to do......

I still say the BEST NF7-S to get is the first Rev. 2.0 boards. TicTac cut his teeth on these. They have a C3xxxx s/n which means made in 2003. They have all black IDE/floppy slots and the only missing mosfet is by the AGP slot. These boards overvolt big time! I have three of them, including a used one I picked up two weeks ago in Japan. VCORE overvolts by 0.03 and VDIMM by a whopping 0.17. 2.8 VDIMM gives 2.96 and 2.9 yields 3.06/3.07. Unmodded, the boards will run 2x512 MB XMS3500 at 223, 2-2-2-5, CPC enabled. SC is good for around 228. Doesn't matter metal or plastic lever.

I tried one of the late C4xxxx boards with colored IDE ports. It overclocked the same but didn't overvolt anywhere near as high (2.9 VDIMM give 2.93), and it had the infamous two-tone beep/shutdown problem.

As an experiment, I will take one of the good boards and try alone: L12 mod, massive sink/fan on NB, sink/fan on SB, modded BIOSs, mosfet cooling. Gonna separate the wheat from the chaff on what actually works.

Unfortunately, these early boards are hard to find unless you get them used.