- Joined
- Jun 16, 2001
Thought I would start a thread about this board since I imagine that a bunch of people would be getting the X2 3600+ / TForce 550 combo and this might start becoming popular.
First off, overclocking with this board is pretty good, but most of the bios versions will not boot past either 287 HTT or 295 HTT. The newest bios does not have this problem and I have booted into windows at 305HTT, and I imagine could go higher (CPU needed more voltage, I'll push it further later, right now I am just testing). I would flash the bios as soon as you get the board, the bios that shipped with the board did not properly lock the PCI bus, and I was running at 47mhz on the PCI bus at one point (and I was running an IDE hdd too).
For the price this board has a lot of great overclocking options, there is a ridiculous amount of memory timings most of which are a mystery to me. Voltage selection is pretty good, you can set CPU voltage to obscene levels (you can select voltages past 2V in the bios...I don't recommend it), VDimm up to 2.2V if you set the 2.2V jumper on the board (newer revisions have a 2.4V jumper, and RebelsHaven has a 2.4V mod for the earlier revs), also adjustable is chipset voltage and HT voltage.
The board looks pretty good, and has a clean layout, and being a single chip design the board is pretty small (a good inch or two more narrow than my 939Dual, and also component are placed neatly, rather than the haphazard assortment on the Dual). The only negative of the layout is the power connector which forces you to go around your CPU heatsink to plug in.
Expansion is decent, but not great. This board has the basics, no firewire, no eSata, no 2nd PCIE x16 slot. I am dissapointed by the one PATA connector, but I believe thats all the Nforce 550 supports (shame on Nvidia and Intel for trying to kill ATA off when SATA Optical drives are still so rare). Expansion card slot options are good with 2 PCIE x1 slots and 4 PCI slots. I like this because most cards on the market are still PCI. and even with a 2 slot GPU cooler you can still access all four PCI slots.
Unfortunately the NIC died on me after two days. I believe this is an isolated incident because I haven't heard of it elsewhere. Quite odd, its in device manager, but it would not pick up a DHCP address, and still wouldn't work after I used a static address. I'm going to RMA to newegg, but for now a PCI card is working fine.
If you are looking at a budget dual core system, I would definitely consider picking up this combo for $160. Sure a C2D is going to be quite a bit faster, but ultimately is going to cost you at least $100 more.
Check out this thread for some tips and workarounds for this board:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000259
You definitely want to sink the mosfet pointed out there because it is HOT, I can't hold my finger to it for more than a couple seconds.
Here is the 2.4Vdimm mod:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000274
Here is a thread with a ton of great info:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000255
Thats it from me for now.
edit:
Here is a page with all the bios versions:
http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/6100-550/6100550bios.html
The unmodded 207 is working great for me right now.
First off, overclocking with this board is pretty good, but most of the bios versions will not boot past either 287 HTT or 295 HTT. The newest bios does not have this problem and I have booted into windows at 305HTT, and I imagine could go higher (CPU needed more voltage, I'll push it further later, right now I am just testing). I would flash the bios as soon as you get the board, the bios that shipped with the board did not properly lock the PCI bus, and I was running at 47mhz on the PCI bus at one point (and I was running an IDE hdd too).
For the price this board has a lot of great overclocking options, there is a ridiculous amount of memory timings most of which are a mystery to me. Voltage selection is pretty good, you can set CPU voltage to obscene levels (you can select voltages past 2V in the bios...I don't recommend it), VDimm up to 2.2V if you set the 2.2V jumper on the board (newer revisions have a 2.4V jumper, and RebelsHaven has a 2.4V mod for the earlier revs), also adjustable is chipset voltage and HT voltage.
The board looks pretty good, and has a clean layout, and being a single chip design the board is pretty small (a good inch or two more narrow than my 939Dual, and also component are placed neatly, rather than the haphazard assortment on the Dual). The only negative of the layout is the power connector which forces you to go around your CPU heatsink to plug in.
Expansion is decent, but not great. This board has the basics, no firewire, no eSata, no 2nd PCIE x16 slot. I am dissapointed by the one PATA connector, but I believe thats all the Nforce 550 supports (shame on Nvidia and Intel for trying to kill ATA off when SATA Optical drives are still so rare). Expansion card slot options are good with 2 PCIE x1 slots and 4 PCI slots. I like this because most cards on the market are still PCI. and even with a 2 slot GPU cooler you can still access all four PCI slots.
Unfortunately the NIC died on me after two days. I believe this is an isolated incident because I haven't heard of it elsewhere. Quite odd, its in device manager, but it would not pick up a DHCP address, and still wouldn't work after I used a static address. I'm going to RMA to newegg, but for now a PCI card is working fine.
If you are looking at a budget dual core system, I would definitely consider picking up this combo for $160. Sure a C2D is going to be quite a bit faster, but ultimately is going to cost you at least $100 more.
Check out this thread for some tips and workarounds for this board:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000259
You definitely want to sink the mosfet pointed out there because it is HOT, I can't hold my finger to it for more than a couple seconds.
Here is the 2.4Vdimm mod:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000274
Here is a thread with a ton of great info:
http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/sisubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=53;t=000255
Thats it from me for now.
edit:
Here is a page with all the bios versions:
http://www.lejabeach.com/Biostar/6100-550/6100550bios.html
The unmodded 207 is working great for me right now.
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