8rda+ Rev 1.1

[RichardKemp]

I've just recieved my second one of these as I blew the vdimm controller on the first.

I was hoping to run my sig rig at 200mhz fsb with an 11 multi out of the box.. but it doesnt seem to be happening.

It can more or less do it but seems to require overly large amounts of vcore, so.. a few questions!

- Does cpu-z have a voltage detection bug with athlon XPs? As it always shows 1.584..
- Is VDD meant to increase in line with VCore or stay quite constant?
- What sort of temperature can the southbridge tolerate? I have the northy cooler from by old 8rda+ (which was actually living on the southy of that) slapped on top of the southy of my current board, but do to an unfortunate lack of thermal paste, i dont think its doing much! (My ceramique has dried up!! )
- I am currently running blend stress test on prime 95 with the following settings:

8 multi
200 mhz fsb
memory at 83% to give 166 mhz. Stock timings, it is rated for 200mhz.

Is this a worthwhile way to test the fsb limits? Because I know there is very little benefit from raising ram past fsb.. so does it apply the other way? Slow ram impedes fsb in this sense? I want to be able to test each aspect (Ram, fsb, cpu) separately..

Any tips appreciated. FYI my best SPI 1M is an impressive 48 secs or so...woot! Up from 55 or so on my old board, which was reluctant to even run all the components at stock speeds.


PS! The old board had ramsinks on the mosfets, and an old pentium cooler on the northbridge.. should I watch out for the heat of these components on this relatively unmodified board? I dont plan to go past 200 fsb..

Thanks!!



Edit: Prime just failed at the settings above... got an error at one hour 49, during the 12k FFT. Mean anything to anyone?

 

[Chixofnix]

since my previous mobo was the exact make/model as you, i feel strongly compelled to lend my assistance... hopefully it'll have a postive effect for you ^_~

I've just recieved my second one of these as I blew the vdimm controller on the first.

I was hoping to run my sig rig at 200mhz fsb with an 11 multi out of the box.. but it doesnt seem to be happening.

It can more or less do it but seems to require overly large amounts of vcore, so.. a few questions!

Actually, i think a quick question at this point will help to clarify and will help us to help you more: did you have no issues hitting 200x11 with your previous 8rda+? And is it correct for us to assume all of the other hardware in your sig is identical to that previous setup?

- Does cpu-z have a voltage detection bug with athlon XPs? As it always shows 1.584..

hmm, just checked with my cpu-z copy... as you can see I also am running an athlon (barton), and the voltage i'm seeing is 1.632V at the moment. spamming the refresh button i see that value jump to 1.648 and back... If the value you are seeing isn't varying at all after hitting refresh a few times, that may just mean the voltage supplied to your CPU is very stable... I'm curious to know what your PSU make and model are...

at any rate, i wouldn't worry about this if our main goal is to hit 11x200 and you were able to hit that speed with your previous PSU...

- Is VDD meant to increase in line with VCore or stay quite constant?

To my knowledge, the value you set for VDD and Vcore are independent... raising or lowering one shouldn't affect the value of the other. Are you seeing values (like in CPU-Z's) that would lead you think otherwise?

- What sort of temperature can the southbridge tolerate? I have the northy cooler from by old 8rda+ (which was actually living on the southy of that) slapped on top of the southy of my current board, but do to an unfortunate lack of thermal paste, i dont think its doing much! (My ceramique has dried up!! )

I'm not much of a gambler, but if I had to bet on the root of your overclocking woes... I would put a chip on this one.

Undercooling my southbridge on my 8rda+ was a serious bottleneck for me. I did wind up using the stock NB on the SB, just as you are, but I did use thermal paste as well. If you can't snag any off of your friends... don't use nothing! As you may have read/heard, there are many materials out there that will do almost, if not as good a job as thermal paste... as in toothpaste. Though personally I would recommend spending a few bucks for a tiny tube of thermal paste+shipping (which should last you a good while if you remember that you never need more than a film applied to any surface), I would defnintely advise NOT overclocking without some kind of thermal transfer medium... This board, as you probably know, really CAN'T do too much before some sort of cooling is applied to the SB, and I think some kind of thermal transfer material between the SB and it's HS will help a lot.

To answer your question directly... I dunno what temperature the SB is rated for... I never cared enough to set up thermal probes around the SB... and I doubt many would want to heat it to the point of failure anyway just to find out... I can say that the NBHS on your SB should, after a while, get pretty uncomfortably hot if you leave your finger on it...

- I am currently running blend stress test on prime 95 with the following settings:

8 multi
200 mhz fsb
memory at 83% to give 166 mhz. Stock timings, it is rated for 200mhz.

Is this a worthwhile way to test the fsb limits? Because I know there is very little benefit from raising ram past fsb.. so does it apply the other way? Slow ram impedes fsb in this sense? I want to be able to test each aspect (Ram, fsb, cpu) separately..

A golden rule... always leave your memory at 100%.

If you want to test the fsb limits of the mobo, up to 200, start your ram out at 166 (100%) - the ram won't mind. Then, incrementally knock it up say 5~10 fsb at a time until you see an issue. You may find running the RAM slower than it was intended to run (i.e. 166) may actually cause some instability.

Another golden rule... unless the primary role of your computer is to calculate huge prime numbers, prime95 is not the best stability tester. The way I see it is this - no computer is 100% stable, over a long long period of time. The question is, how much money/time/stress will you spend getting as close to 100% as possible, and how much of your overclocking potential (speed) will you sacrifice to have more stability? My personal recommendation (italicized because I know there are people who are on the opposite camp in these forums who will get stressed if I state this as fact), is this:

if the most intense thing your computer does is play games... bust out the most system-intensive game you play (say, i dunno, Quake 4), and play the game in a way that taxes your system as much as is feasible (run a multiplayer game with max bots on a huge level). If your system can take that level of abuse, then realistically you WON'T see your system crash due to an overclocking issue. Keeping in mind that things like the season (ambient room temps) will affect your OC'ing potential, I'd reccommend doing something like this to test OC stability.

The real detriment to using something like prime95 to test for OC stability is

1) only your CPU is really being stress-tested... passing p95 for hours on end may mean nothing if it doesn't show your memory is on the brink of causing lockups.. remember that the CPU is only one part of the system, and each part of the system must be put under realistic levels of stress... which brings me to:
2) like i mentioned above, unless your computer really is just a number-cruncher day in and day out, your CPU won't undergo that level of stress doing something like counterstrike. Some may say "Ah! but what if during an intense match, the evil terrorists plant a bomb that uses a mersenne prime for the defusal code? then my hours of p95ing will really pay off! (j/k )

Any tips appreciated. FYI my best SPI 1M is an impressive 48 secs or so...woot! Up from 55 or so on my old board, which was reluctant to even run all the components at stock speeds.


PS! The old board had ramsinks on the mosfets, and an old pentium cooler on the northbridge.. should I watch out for the heat of these components on this relatively unmodified board? I dont plan to go past 200 fsb..

hmm... this is the second major eyebrow raiser for me... you say you have the SB heatsink from your previous board on your current SB, and the way you've structured this sentence, it would seem you are using the stock NB heatsink on your current NB... is that correct? If that's the case, and the NB heatsink you are using is anything like the stock passive NB HS from my previoius 8rda+, you may be in serious trouble trying to OC at all... there are many cheap solutions availiable for things like a NB that will give it active cooling, and your NB should be high on the list of things you need to worry about as far as cooling!

regarding the mosfet heatsinkds... I wouldn't worry too much... if you can get around to it, it probably wouldn't hurt to take the mosfet HS's off the old board and pimp out your new ride... those really matter when you up the vcore a lot, but if you aren't doing that it shouldn't be a huge issue...

Thanks!!

hope this helps

~chixo

 

[RichardKemp]

Wow, thanks a lot! I think thats the longest reply I've ever recieved!

Firstly.. I think I ran 200x11 when I forst got my old board.. though that was with different ram and a different PSU. However, both sets of RAM are PC3200 and both PSUs are equally crap The diference is that i once managed (dont ask..) to put a stick of my old ram in the wrong way around, which destroyed both the ram, and the vdimm regulator chip.. meaning the memory voltage was really unstable. I ran most of the time after that 133 fsb, ram at 100 with the slackest timings the bios allowed, and chip at stock speed.


I have the stock northbridge cooler on this board, but i have a 40mm fan above it. With such crappy thermal material underneath it you cant expect wonders, but its the best I could be bothered with. I hadnt heard of using toothpaste! What I might do is pick up a few bits now which I can use now and 'carry through' to a new rig.. such as a decent PSU and some thermal paste. I do actually have some AS epoxy, and I'm currently using the non-epoxy part of that on my processor - it was that or no computer! I really dont like using it though.. the fact that it conducts electricity makes me nervous! Whats the best TIM out these days? I'd prefer something safe like ceramique..


My CPU-Z query is really just because with voltage set to 'default' (1.6v?) CPU-Z shows 1.584.... when I increase it to 1.8v in the bios it shows the same!! Right now, EPOX USDM utility reads it as 1.616 volts, but CPU-Z as 1.584 still. I think I'm trusting epox on this one..

My question about VDD, is because I thought VDD was some kind of VCore regulator? I'm seeing it stay constant with increasing Vcore, I would have expected them to rise in sync... or maybe I just dont know what I'm talking about here.

Thanks again for your helpful reply!!

 

[RichardKemp]

(picture)

 

[RichardKemp]

OK I'm pretty happy with how its doing at the moment.. I'm at 12x181. Memory is at 2.5-3-3-7 from 2.5-3-3-8, sync with fsb. Everything seems to be in a sensible temperature range.


My best SPI 1M was 47.601, this setup gets around 48.5 I think, but is actually fully stable in general use rather than just partially, and doesnt need scary vcore.

Currently my vcore is 1.875. idle/load board sensor: 43/47 my probe: 46/50.


Has anyone got anything good to say about nVidia's 'nTune' utility's automatic tuning function? I thought I'd let it play with my system overnight, see if it could come up with anything productive, thugh I doubt it will tbh. For now I'm priming - I would use something like a game to test for stability but I dont have time to burn right now unfortunately.

 

[ThePCGuy]

Nice work on your 8rda+. I've got one myself, it's my absolute favorite (simply because it's the first board that I bought brand new, and it's purty). Good luck .

- Jim

 

[RichardKemp]

Cheers mate. Right now I have a desk fan blowing in from the side... without it its stuck at more or less stock speeds due to heat buildup.. but with it its rock solid at the settings i put in my last post. I'm going to have to invest in a load of quiet 40mm fans and decent chipset coolers...

I'm going to take a few hours nap and leave nvidias ntune on, see if it does anything worthwhile while I'm gone!!

 

[ThePCGuy]

Blah, you don't want to use 40mm fans. Just find a nice fanless chipset cooler and let it dissipate the heat. The 40mm fans are loud/annoying/etc. In fact, the stock northbridge heatsink is very nice on the 8rda+. If I recall (it's been quite awhile), I ran my 1800+ with a 200mhz fsb at stock voltage. I could be wrong though. I know it ran at 2.0Ghz, and it may have been 166x12.5 or something. Eitherway, how are the capacitors doing on yours? I have replaced every capacitor on the board (except the 6 teapo 3300uF 6.3V caps next to the cpu socket) because the original GSCs failed. Pictures can be viewed at:

http://thepcguy.myvnc.com/jim/8rda+.jpg

By the way, welcome to the forums. Glad to see some new blood around here. Good luck with your overclock.

- Jim

 

[RichardKemp]

Ive actually been here ages but inactive (ony reached 2 stars.. i was 'fridge'...) but I forgot my password!!


I know 40 mm fans are bloody annoying, I have a 40mm delta at the moment.. but I wanna get a few quiet ones to put in strategic locations to stop hot air buildup.

I'm pretty sure there are 2 different heatsinks on the 8rda+... mine is a revision 1.1, which looks like this:

http://www.epox.com.tw/assets/2004/08/12/product8212492393.jpg

Rev 1.3 (and onwards, if there were more..) looked like this and was guaranteed for 200fsb... mine isnt!
http://www.epox.com.tw/assets/2004/08/11/product3252325085.jpg

The rev 1.3 also bought with them the ability to control the voltage going to the northbridge, and I imagine a few other useful things. I was rather hopingto get one when I ordered this, but alas not.


Having said that all the older revision boards did about 210 with proper cooling.
My capacitors are fine thanks, this board is practically brand new. The 8rda+ it replaces had a few iffy capcitors, but all still in one piece.
What causes capacitor death?


BTW I take it your linked is the modded board, I see nothing wrong with the capacitors? Anyway, the stock northbridge does its job, but on its own its not sufficient for high fsb, or Epox wouldnt replace it...

 

[ThePCGuy]

Yep, that is my board that I linked to (for sale in the classifieds). There is nothing wrong with the capacitors now, I've already replaced them all (leaking GSC capcitors). The only think that I can honestly say that my 8rda+ could've used is a small heatsink on the southbridge to take care of the sound stuttering problem that it had when overclocked.

- Jim

 

[RichardKemp]

I'm having some fun with my video card atm, I've managed to increase my CDMark '01 score from 5500 to a world-record 6200!! Yee-hah! lol....


By the way everyone, I let nTune 'automatic mode' do its stuff, and as far as I could tell all it did was incresase my memory latency, then attempt to overclock my non-existent PCI-E bus, then crash

 

[Chixofnix]

I had the same sound stuttering till i thought to simply snap the stock NB hs onto the SB (the holes are there for it!)...

takes a bit of drilling to get the heatsink to sit flat over one of the smaller components on the mobo (forgot what it was), but that took care of it in a jiffy!

richard, sounds like you're off and running, and i'm glad to hear it. I'd also recommend getting a nicer 3rd party NB cooling solution. the one i've transferred to my current system (iceburq) in the sig worked perfectly with the highest OC's I could manage on my 8rda+, and when I bought it I don't think i spent more than $7 on it... dunno if it's around anymore though?

 

[RichardKemp]

I had spotted the Iceburq at a few retailers, and I remember it being the chip cooler to have, back in the day

I expect I shall pick one up, along with some much-needed AS5 soon. I do have a southbridge cooler as it is, but due to lack of TIM im snot sure its that affective. Thanks for the reply!