ASUS A8N-SLI :: Work Arounds:Expensive Bugs:Tweaking:Info

[Kosh42|EFG]

Just thought I'd post a thanks to all the contributors here for the info that's helped me get to my current OC.

I got the A8N SLI Deluxe to replace my A8V when I upgraded to an nVidia 7800 GT. Specs are now:

AMD64 3000+ S939 (Winchester Core)
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe (Rev A3)
XFX 7800 GT (Pre-overclocked)
4 x 512MB Corsair PC4000-C2 RAM
80 GB Seagate IDE (Baracuda I think)
120 GB Maxtor (sp?) SATA
NEC DVD-RW

So far I seem pretty stable at 280MHzx9, giving me a clock of about 2.5GHz. I've had to put V-core at 1.525V, but CPU-Z reads 1.600V or there abouts. Idles about 40C, loads about 60C.

To do this I've had to drop my memory to 266MHz (2/3) as it fails to boot any higher. Its at T2 due to the four sticks...

Any comments welcomed...

 

[KillrBuckeye]

So far I seem pretty stable at 280MHzx9, giving me a clock of about 2.5GHz. I've had to put V-core at 1.525V, but CPU-Z reads 1.600V or there abouts. Idles about 40C, loads about 60C.

To do this I've had to drop my memory to 266MHz (2/3) as it fails to boot any higher. Its at T2 due to the four sticks...

Any comments welcomed...

If I were you, I'd be uncomfortable with those CPU temps/voltage. Asus Probe gives me idle/load temps of 25C / 33C with Vcore at ~1.52V. Unless having the absolute highest CPU clock is very important to you, why not step it back a bit and reduce the Vcore? Many people feel that A64 CPU's shouldn't run much higher than 1.55V.

 

[Kosh42|EFG]

May be able drop the voltage a bit as I was just playing about to get this. Stuck as it stayed stable... My RAM voltage was the main problem, but seems OK at 2.8V now...

I'm also tempted to drop the speed a bit so I can up my divider to stop it underclocking my memory... Thinking of 250 x 4 HTT...

Will play tonight to see if I can either stay with or up my 280 with a max of Vcore of 1.55V (would have to set in BIOS about 1.45V I'd guess)...

Until then, a CPU-Z dump is here.

 

[Kosh42|EFG]

Dropped the voltage to about 1.52V and upped it to 285MHz last night... Seemed stable, but my RAM is still undercloced by 20MHz and the HTT by 145MHz...

Forgot to check my temps as I was only on for 45 minutes...

Really should start benchmarking at OCs and stock speeds to see the effects it has had...

 

[yo4444]

The bios's and drivers don't indicate wether they work on all A8N-SLI models or individual ones such as deluxe, or premium. I'm wonderin because I'm getting blue screens and freezes with the newest ones I found listed for the premium at the asus site. 6.65 for drivers and 1011-001 for bios.
The rest of the system is:
a8n-ali premium
4000+
evga 7800 gt
ocz 520
2x1gig pqi turbo
2x 74gig raptors raid 0
tt kandalf

Also, the SW drivers are installed.. could that be the problem?. I have them installed on my pc with 2 sata drives and it's fine, but perhaps creating conflicts on this build?

 

[jimi_one]

See im not getting this...if this is the post for the A8N SLI SE then why when i tried to flash with the 1016 BIOS did it say it didnt match....i have had to flash with the one from the asus website which is 0301

Can someone explain this please?

 

[hotrod469]

It's a post for A8N-SLI Deluxe, they use BIOS #1001~1016.

 

[Oper8or]

I've read this a number of times. Trying to figure out why mine wont take the newer version of bios. It finally hit me. I dont have the a8n-sli deluxe. I have the A8N32-SLI DELUXE. There is a difference. I contacted ASUS about it and the latest bios version for this board is 1009. So if your using this board do not try to update to 1016 bios that the other boards are using. Am I wrong about this? If I am please someone correct me before I do something and get someone else mixed up.

 

[LoneWolf121188]

The A8N32-SLI deluxe is VERY different than the A8N-SLI Deluxe. 32 PCIe lanes vs 16. IIRC, it uses both an AMD nForce4 chip and an Intel nForce4 chip to provide the 32 lanes.

 

[Oper8or]

"Some Breaking News
For those of you who have suffered stability issues with your board with bios 1010 or newer, ASUS has finally spoken up today on whats up..
""A8N-SLI Bios version 1010
Please do read the description before updating BIOS
To avoid damaging system, please do update the chipset driver to below version prior to this Bios.
For WinXP 32bit system, please download and update chipset drivers V6.65 or later
For WinXP 64bit system, please download and update chipset drivers V6.65 or later
For Win2k/2003 32bit system, please download and update chipset drivers V6.66 or later
For Win2003 64bit system, please download and update chipset drivers V6.66 or later ""

So there you have it. If you have the 1010~1013 series, give the newer chipset drivers a shot before doing any overclocking or even any system use for that matter.
For those of you who are curious, I found this bit of news on ASUS's download page.."

Ok, I was wondering if it makes a difference if I am using the Realtek drivers? Should I update to the nvidia ones as well? I dont seem to be having any problems at all.

 

[LoneWolf121188]

You could have put it in quote tags instead of in an impossible-to-read-without-highlighting color.

Are you talking about the Realtek audio drivers? If so, I'd switch to the nVidia drivers, seeing as they are comprehensive (HDD, Audio, NIC, etc, plus the chipset itself).

 

[Omega Destroyer]

Just wanted to let everyone know about some issues I've been having with the 1015 bios.

This is a long post and you don't have to read the whole thing. All the important information has been coloured RED.

I personally don't define a computer as stable unless it can run prime for a 48 hour period. My computer was fully stable with the 1014 bios but I flashed to 1015 anyway. I didn't really test anything out, I just assumed that it would be stable. Some months later, I noticed some irratic behaviour in some of my programs (and by this time I had forgotten about the bios upgrade and was thinking that all was well with that). I attributed the problems with the CPU overheating and causing errors. There was something growing in my water cooling system so I thought it was lowering flow rate. At any rate I cleaned everything out and it was still unstable. I started lowering clocks and over a couple of weeks I had gone down to default clocks and I was still erroring out!! Eventually I remembered about the bios so I downgraded back to 1014 and the computer was stable again...but now I had other problems. Everything was running slower than normal. All my benchmarks were condsiderably lower especially my RAM bandwidth. I'm not sure what changes there were to the 1015 bios but I'm 90% sure that they screwed around with some of the RAM settings and it was causing both the instability in the 1015 bios and the slowness when I reverted to the 1014 bios. Anyway I cleared the CMOS of the 1014 bios and all my scores went back to normal!I'm guessing that since the AWFLASH doesn't reset the settings everytime you flash, some setting was transferred over from the 1015 bios that was making everything slow. Now Prime runs happily for ever even when overclocked.

If anyone else is running 1015 right now, can you check to see if you're Prime stable for at least 48 hours? My errors were mostly happening at around the 30 hour mark.

If you find your system is unstable with the 1015 bios, go back to the 1014 bios and make sure you CLEAR YOUR CMOS. The differences I'm talking about are about 700meg/s in RAM bandwidth, and PC Mark scores closer to stock speeds than overclocked speeds.

Anyway if anyone else is having the same problem, please post.

 

[LoneWolf121188]

Dont worry so much about Prime. I used be believer in "if it worked at stock and now it doesn't, its not stable". While it makes sense, for some reason, its not 100% true. I really dont know why, but I can tell you that while I fail Prime in less than a second (literally), I can play FEAR all day long without a hitch. Your comp only needs to be as stable as you need it to be. Sure, if we're talking about servers and buisnesses, it should be 100% stable 100% of the time, absolutely no exceptions. However, the only time my comp crashes is if I run two instances of BONIC, so I don't run two instances of BONIC and I'm fine.

 

[Omega Destroyer]

The problem is that I need my computer to be stable like that. I compress many many gigs of data that I've collected and a 1bit error will ruin the whole archive. I don't have the time or resources to check each archive so I have to make sure there are no errors.
Even if I wasn't doing that though, I still demand more than that from my computer. Errors like that build up over time and cause all kinds of corruption. If I were only playing games I wouldn't worry that much but I do too many other things.

 

[RangerDave]

hmmm when did they make the a8n sli deluxe do 1:1 until u set a ram devider... before if i did 221 or over it would boot up with a memory devider and now its 1:1. .. its all well and good cept i cant do 1t @ 235~ and for some reason even @ 2t i cant do much memory ocing any more no matter what the timings =./ and as u can see i got the memory to oc fairly hi oh well

 

[saboya]

Hi, I came across this topic while Googling for a solution for the 1T/2T problem, and decided to share some thoughts about that...

From what I've figured from my own experiences and searches about the subject, the bug only affects RAMs with TCCD chips. I've used Crucial Ballistix myself, Micron chips, 2x512, and I was able to run them at 272mhz 3-3-3-8 1T 1:1 with no problems.

Then I sold them and got a Geil Ultra-X PC4400 (TCCD + Brainpower), no good, nothing above 240~245mhz was stable at 1T, but with 2T I was able to get 290mhz 2.5-3-3-5...

Sold them and tomorrow a new TCCD + BP kit should arrive. I don't expect good results, just got a good deal G. Skill Extreme Series DDR400, old DFI owner got up to 610mhz. Planning to re-sell them or selling my mobo hehe.

Btw I didn't read through the entire topic, so if this has already been brought up, I apologize... I'd like to hear if anyone tested this mobo with UCCC chips (like 2x1gb DDR500 kits). I hear BH-5 shows no incompatibility issues.

regards

 

[renegade44]

One of the key factors that is often overlooked in Prime95 testing is ambient temperature. Ambient temperature where I live can vary from 75f to 82F and when I put on a 100% load CPU temps can vary from 55C (75F) and stable to 62C+ (82F) and unstable

 

[KillrBuckeye]

One of the key factors that is often overlooked in Prime95 testing is ambient temperature. Ambient temperature where I live can vary from 75f to 82F and when I put on a 100% load CPU temps can vary from 55C (75F) and stable to 62C+ (82F) and unstable

Those load temps, reported in degrees C, seem way too high. My CPU full load temp never exceeds 35C, even at 1.55Vcore. On the 3 A64 systems that I've built, I've never seen full load temps over 38C, even with the stock cooler.

EDIT: Sorry, I realized a bit too late that you were talking about load temps corresponding to each ambient temperature condition.

 

[RangerDave]

is it true the later rev's of the board have all these memory problem fixed so i can do like 270 1:1 @ 1t insted of being limit to 240 something. id like to know cuz ill return my board and get a new one if this is the case... i bought mine very early in its production back in march so hopefully its resolved by now

 

[Polargoat]

Maybe a stupid question but do the a8n-sli deluxe bios's work on a regular a8n-sli board? Im currently running 1014 and think Im havin some issues with overclocking. I cant seem to get my xp4000 to run 3-4-3-8 1T at 250x10 with HT at 3 or 4. This ram is supposed to run 250 at those timings np so Im stuck.
FYI: Im a little new to overclocking AMD's, Ive converted from Intel which were so much easier to o/c IMO.