ASUS M5A78L-M LX

[Chirkk]

Is this board worth anything for gaming? It's a micro ATX AM3+ board and I popped 8 gigs of ram in it along with a 955 I ordered. Can I play some games?

 

[trents]

Sure, you can play some games. The limiting factor will not be the motherboard but your 8800 GTS video card. You will have to be selective with the games and not be able to run a lot of games on high res/high detail.

 

[Chirkk]

Sure, you can play some games. The limiting factor will not be the motherboard but your 8800 GTS video card. You will have to be selective with the games and not be able to run a lot of games on high res/high detail.

Thanks for the reply, I will be upgrading to a GTX550TI in november.

 

[trents]

The limiting factor as far as board performance goes will be with regard to overclocking that big watt CPU. The board will give you a modest overclock, more than likely but it's chipset and power phase/power phase component cooling is not good. It will do fine a stock speeds and voltages, however and will probably overclock a little.

 

[BeepBeep2]

You could probably easily do 4 GHz with a new 955 (if you bought it new) and that motherboard. IMO you'll be fine.

I've had three chips now (2x 955 / 1x 965) that were manufactured in March/April 2012 and all of them have done at least 3 GHz CPU-NB on air and 4.2 GHz CPU on a good board, on a crappy M3N78-AM I did 4/2.8 with one of the 955s and just 1.44v and no LLC

 

[trents]

Well, Chirkk there you have two contrasting opinions. I have never owned that particular board. My opinion was based on the fact that MATX boards in general aren't great overclockers. They have chipset, cooling and power phase limitations. However, Asus MATX boards seem to be more durable than a lot of other brands.

 

[Chirkk]

this 955 isn't the B.E. one, but I managed to get her to 3.9GHz before BBOD. This mobo automatically adjusts voltages and HT speed accordingly. I ran it at 4.0GHz but crashed after an hour of prime95

 

[Mandrake4565]

this 955 isn't the B.E. one, but I managed to get her to 3.9GHz before BBOD. This mobo automatically adjusts voltages and HT speed accordingly. I ran it at 4.0GHz but crashed after an hour of prime95

Chirkk you should do the following, bring the cpu back to stock values.
Download the following programs to better monitor what is going on with your system.

Cpu-z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
Hardware monitor http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
Prime 95 http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/
Run Prime 95 for an hour or two at stock speeds and make sure your temperatures are ok before you start overclocking. You want the cores to stay below 60c preferably 55c.

The post pics individually of the CPU tab, Memory Tab, SPD tab on the CPU-Z and also a pic of the HWmonitor under load. That way we can see where you stand and how much room you have to OC.

 

[Chirkk]

Chirkk you should do the following, bring the cpu back to stock values.
Download the following programs to better monitor what is going on with your system.

Cpu-z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
Hardware monitor http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
Prime 95 http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/
Run Prime 95 for an hour or two at stock speeds and make sure your temperatures are ok before you start overclocking. You want the cores to stay below 60c preferably 55c.

The post pics individually of the CPU tab, Memory Tab, SPD tab on the CPU-Z and also a pic of the HWmonitor under load. That way we can see where you stand and how much room you have to OC.

Already got that covered. At stock speeds of 3.2GHz the cpu is 1c above room temp (25c) and load wont budge over 40c. At 3.6GHz (my preferred speed) it idles at 28c and under load will go no more than 44c. I am using cpu-z, asus AI Suite for temps, and prime 95 for stressing. I'll post some cpu-z validations in a bit

 

[Mandrake4565]

Ok good so your temps are good, post those cpu, spd, and memory pics when you get a chance.

 

[Chirkk]

Here are the stock speed temps



Here are the temps at 3.55 GHz.



It is REALLY hot today which is why the temps are a bit higher than I said. The mobo temp is pretty much the ambient temp, and my temp probes for my sentry 2 are reading temps a little high (26-27c ambient room temp)

Tonight i'll post full OC speeds and respost those speeds to give you guys a better idea of the temps I have when it's not 100f outside.

I don't have temps for the ram, but here's the reading for it in cpu-z.





Heres a link to my build
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7263250#post7263250

 

[trents]

You might want to reduce your HT Link frequency. That one just plain doesn't like to be overclocked past it's stock 2000 mhz in that CPU family. Thuban core CPUs will but Denebs don't like it. Also, your ram is exceeding its rated 1600 mhz capacity. Right now you have it overclocked to 1760 (880x2) mhz. You might want to change the divider to lower that or at least give it some more voltage. According to the CPU-z SPD tab it will do 1676 (838x2) but look at the timings in JEDEC #3. You also need to relax some of those timings.

 

[Chirkk]

You might want to reduce your HT Link frequency. That one just plain doesn't like to be overclocked past it's stock 2000 mhz in that CPU family. Thuban core CPUs will but Denebs don't like it. Also, your ram is exceeding its rated 1600 mhz capacity. Right now you have it overclocked to 1760 (880x2) mhz. You might want to change the divider to lower that or at least give it some more voltage. According to the CPU-z SPD tab it will do 1676 (838x2) but look at the timings in JEDEC #3. You also need to relax some of those timings.

I'll take your word on the ht link, but on a phenom ii overclocking thread I saw somewhere that everyone recommended to me said to up it to prevent bottle-necking. My motherboard is upping it when I overclock the cpu anyways so i'm kind of screwed in that department.

I know nothing of ram (what is the ram divider? is it like a pcu multiplier for ram?) and have no idea why it randomly OCs itself. I think when I change the FSB it overclocks the ram.

This motherboard is unlike anything i've ever seen when overclocking because it changes the HT link, voltage, and apparently overclocks the ram (plus god knows what else) and I will have to look into it.

At stock cpu clocks my ram runs at 803.6MHz exact, which i'm assuming is normal. This is my first time having a cpu that overclocks with the FSB and not the multiplier so am unsure if this is normal behavior or what.

 

[Chirkk]

I will name the strange features of this board "ANTI-BOTTLENECK" by Asus

I wonder if there's a way I can turn it off or something.

Here is proof that something is preventing bottlenecking. *Note the only thing I changed in bios was the FSB of the cpu.

 

[trents]

Yes, the HT Link frequency will rise with the increasing fsb (that's normal because the HT Link is tuned to the fsb frequency) but you may have you have an adjustment in bios for HT Link speed. It can be expressed as a frequency or as a multiplier. You say the only thing you can change in bios is the FSB? I would be surprised if that is the case. But a lot of adjustments may be hidden if you have settings on Auto. There may be a master overclocking mode adjustment that needs to be taken off of Auto and set to Manual in order to do more and then there will be subsections in bios that need to be taken off Auto and put on Manual to customize the values. For example, the memory or DRAM timing section.

 

[Chirkk]

Yes, the HT Link frequency will rise with the increasing fsb (that's normal because the HT Link is tuned to the fsb frequency) but you may have you have an adjustment in bios for HT Link speed. It can be expressed as a frequency or as a multiplier. You say the only thing you can change in bios is the FSB? I would be surprised if that is the case. But a lot of adjustments may be hidden if you have settings on Auto. There may be a master overclocking mode adjustment that needs to be taken off of Auto and set to Manual in order to do more and then there will be subsections in bios that need to be taken off Auto and put on Manual to customize the values. For example, the memory or DRAM timing section.

whoops, sorry if I didn't sound clear. I meant the only thing I changed was the FSB. I can change everything else but it's a little more complicated than with other mobos i've seen.