Abit IP35-Pro Review

[Surfrider77]

on air 1.5v-1.55v on water about 1.6v, actual voltage not what you set in the bios...

Well, that does make me feel better I guess. I need 1.54 (Bios) for 3.9GHz. The board does seem to have a hefty vDroop up to 0.05v. I guess I will push it up some more. As I said, temps have been great its just the sheer amount of volts I seem to be running through the thing that has me concerned.

At the end of the day, its only a $260 CPU. If it were an EE $1k chip, perhaps I should worry so much about it.

Off for some more testing...

 

[Evilsizer]

Those Pi times are really weird. I have a P5B-D and i run it at 3.52 and get 14.742 pi times. I am looking for a new board now as i need to build a rig for my wife to use and was going to give her my current rig. This board was one of my options, but seems to have many quirks. I am even considering an EVGA sli board for its clocking options. I have noticed through my own testing that FSB isn't the end all to good performance. The 680i may not hit high fsb, but they clock well. I am considering the DS3R as well. So many boards, so little time. Evil - if you had to would you get this board agian out of all the others regardless of price or would you have made a different choice?

what was the ratio to the ram you were running? cause if you notice my ram is running ddr2-1124.6 at 450fsb. Dont forget though that the internal timings for the chipset/fsb ratios are tigheter with P965 then P35. Im not complaining much since this board oced so much easer then P965/AB9-Pro. Would i buy a different board, no i dont think i would. If i was though i would be looking at DFI's P35 but they are always late to the game with Boards. I have no complaints about the IP35-Pro, the only complaint i really have is i wish abit was fast like they use to be with bios updates.

 

[Nandro]

my ram was 1:1 at 400x9 at 3.6ghz from my records (I keep a notebook) It was at 1.5V core and the Nb was maxed at 1.6 i believe. I cant get anything higer and stable. The ram I use isn't even made anymore that I can see. Its the OCZ 8800, and now it's OCZ 8500. It says 5-6-6-15 8800 on the sticks, but I cant find them for sale anywhere.

 

[chawks2]

I have been trying to oc on the 4:5 and have been having the hardest time, UNTIL TODAY! Havent really had much time either, BUT I did manage to get this:



Strangely, it refuses to boot if I relax the timings on the RAM with above settings.

I have also played around with 500 x 7 and have been orthose stable with vcore @ 1.45. Does this not mean I should be able to use other multipliers seeing as I can hit 500 no problem with x7???? Once I change the multi to 8-10 it refuses to post even with vcore @ 1.70!!

Anyways, I'm going to go the 4:5 route and see if I can get to the elusive 4ghz. My old PD setup was so much easier. lol.

Real performance gain? 1.2s SuperPI 1m.

 

[Nandro]

Wow, killer super Pi time ya got there.

 

[kimochii72]

Wow, killer super Pi time ya got there.

Is mine "killer"?

Why can't I get past 499 FSB? Can anyone give the complete bios setting at 500+ (Will barely post at 500+)

 

[Nandro]

Ya, I'd say so.... I'm sold I' getting this MB, although I may get either the E6850 or Q6600 or Xeon exuivilant (cant remember the number, but its the same price as q6600 and thermals should be better) My issue is I design sites and usually have photoshop, illustrator, flash and go live all open at once, so quad core would really help me there although it would deffinitly not give me the great speeds you guys are getting. Do you think the speed of the E6850 would make up for it or because I usually have 3 or more intensive apps going at once I should go quad?

 

[Evilsizer]

Ya, I'd say so.... I'm sold I' getting this MB, although I may get either the E6850 or Q6600 or Xeon exuivilant (cant remember the number, but its the same price as q6600 and thermals should be better) My issue is I design sites and usually have photoshop, illustrator, flash and go live all open at once, so quad core would really help me there although it would deffinitly not give me the great speeds you guys are getting. Do you think the speed of the E6850 would make up for it or because I usually have 3 or more intensive apps going at once I should go quad?

i would say go quad if you have a lot of stuff running, though at the same time more ram will help. If you really are running that many apps at once look at going into a 4x 1gig setup with a quad.

with the bioshock demo out and the game out tomorrow looks like i need to pop my 4gigs in even though only 32bit xp. the extra bandwidth provided by using all 4 banks makes up for the small hit in fsb ocing. I dought imma lose any since im at 466mhz x 7 multi.

time to put my 8800gts 640 in i just got WOOTS!

 

[David_N]

Does anyone have any vdroop mods for this yet? I'm losing up to .3v under load -.-

 

[Evilsizer]

I havent seen any but there doesnt mean there isnt one. I would check out xs forums and see if someone has done one. I was really hoping though abit would have included a V-dampener like asus. maybe on the X38 boards they will, *crosses fingers*

 

[Surfrider77]

Does anyone have any vdroop mods for this yet? I'm losing up to .3v under load -.-

Worst I have seen is 0.05v, but I would still love to see something to compensate for this.

 

[chawks2]

Wow, killer super Pi time ya got there.

Thanks Nandro. Using 1:1 I have not been able to get above 3.6, so 4:5 was a big breakthrough for me. Especially with these weirdo BIOS settings with RAM speed.

Has anyone had better success with any of the new BIOS updates? I'm still using 6/6/2007, lost track of what version it is..lol.

 

[Evilsizer]

i have heard mixed things about the new bios. alot say that ocing has taken a big hit. i havent tried it my self, i see no need to as everything for me is working great. im gonna wait another bios release or 2 before updating mine.

 

[chawks2]

The strangest thing I have noticed about this mobo, and I am unsure if it's my HK's, the timings on the RAM make a difference on overall oc'ability.

It was always my understanding the looser the timings the more successful oc, but I am not finding this in my experience with this board. Again, total time spent oc'ing is prolly about 10+ hours, I still havent found the uber sweetspot of performance and stability.

Being that my multi is unrestricted I have had the most success on 7 & 11, which seems odd to me.

 

[Surfrider77]

The strangest thing I have noticed about this mobo, and I am unsure if it's my HK's, the timings on the RAM make a difference on overall oc'ability.

It was always my understanding the looser the timings the more successful oc, but I am not finding this in my experience with this board. Again, total time spent oc'ing is prolly about 10+ hours, I still havent found the uber sweetspot of performance and stability.

Being that my multi is unrestricted I have had the most success on 7 & 11, which seems odd to me.

I've been using BIOS 11 and been doing ok.

I will say that I had some strange resuts when I pushed my latencies to 6-6-6-15. I was trying to get max CPU speeds and leave the ram as loose as possible, but it wouldnt even post one time. I set everything to 5-5-5-12 and it came up just fine... was quite odd.

Make sure youre giving some healthy cpuVTT volts though. I was extremely limited in my FSB until I found (through this thread) what its for and it helped me break 500FSB easily where I was struggling before.

 

[chawks2]

Vdroop mod.

 

[David_N]

Thanks chawks2! That's exactly what I was looking for, I'll have to go resistor shopping tomorrow!

 

[Nandro]

Man I need to buy a new board, like yesterday... I am so tempted to pull the triger on this Abit, but I feel like I havent researched all the other boards, and I am also tempted by the EVGA 680i, not because of the sli per se, but as i just fried my new 8800 GTS 640 SC in less than a week, the EAR program where they overnight you a cross shipment and a prepaid box to send your broken part back is awsome. I spoke to a guy on the phone at 1am last night when the card fried and had it all worked out in 15 minutes, and my new card should be here tomorrow. he said the same applies to theirt MB's. So much to ponder...my brain is going to explode. You guys seem to be getting great results with this board, and with this many owners on the forum that makes for good unofficial support.

 

[Heidfirst]

better pic of the Vdroop mod

 

[Albaholic]

I'm tempted to try the vdroop mod but I'll probably mess up my board