AI7 questions

[raven]

Are there any good revision on the AI7 or is the vs 1.0 good?

Raven

 

[Arch]

The board is brand new so I don't think there's any other revisions other than rev1.0. I got a rev1.0 last wednesday and it works great. I haven't had any problems with it at all.

 

[batboy]

Yes, only one version that I know of too. If anyone has any horror stories about the Ai7, please tells us. I'm about to buy one myself.

 

[Freezermug]

Ahh Batboy has finally cracked under pressure

I was thinking of getting one of these boards. must resist temptation!

 

[pkrew]

Its a very tempting board. esp if it has working vdimm/vtt. trying to get that 5/4 out of your 2.4 M0 I see

 

[weetoots]

Yes, someone hurry up and get one, throw a 2.4C on it, maybe a big SP94. Then tell us how great it is. I need a new board and I have a new SL6Z3 M0 to play with. So.... has anyone done a review on the AI7?
Al

 

[batboy]

I've seen some nice AI7 overclocks by a couple other forum members. They had nothing but praise for the mobo. The two main reasons why I'm getting the AI7: I want more vdimm to run 5:4 ratio, and the Ai7 supports the Prescotts (I guess the IC7 don't).



http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTQx

 

[Rocinante]

My cousin just bought one from Newegg, and it arrived DOA....wouldn't even get to the post screen, just kept giving him a bios check sum error or something like that, but he RMA'ed it back to Newegg, and probably won't get it back untill after Xmas.

Not really much of a horror story, I hope it's the board, and not the ram....I'm in Texas, and he's in Pennsylvania, so I could only help over the phone....

 

[Arch]

I got one last Wednesday and I love it. I'm running an SL6Z3 on it using stock cooling. So far I've got it stable up to 3.2gig (I think) using the stock vcore. My memory (Kingston HyperX PC3500) is holding me back from getting a really killer FSB. Right now I'm at 267 with the 5:4 divider making the RAM run at 213 or so.

What do you specifically want to know about the board? If your question is whether the vdimm selection works properly, the answer is yes. It has settings all the way up to 3.2v.

The uGuru features are pretty sweet. First thing I did when I got the board was load up the Flash program and flash the bios from WindowsXP. The overclocking tools are a little basic only allowing for FSB, cpu vcore, vdimm, and vagp adjustments. You can however save profiles in both Windows AND in the BIOS for specific settings. Say you want to have a safe setting and an overclocked setting, you can save both profiles and call them up whenever.

When I got the board the first thing I did was remove the stock northbridge heatsink and reapply it using some arctic silver. The HardOCP review mentioned that their sample had poor contact between the northbridge and the heatsink so I went ahead and reapplied mine just to be safe.

I'm using the onboard sound and NIC and I'm not having any troubles to speak of. No pops or clicks on my Klipsch 4.1s.

What else do you want to know?

 

[brandon]

will this board work with 3500 ram or better to stay with 3200?

 

[Arch]

I suppose it depends on what kind of PC3200 or PC3500 it is. My HyperX PC3500 doesn't seem to do very well, but I think thats a problem with the RAM, not the board.

I know many people have PC3200 as well as PC3500 clocked very high.

 

[brandon]

im going to order this in the morning with 1g of mushkin, just dont know if i should use 3200 lvl II or 3500 lvl II.

 

[Bertus02]

im going to order this in the morning with 1g of mushkin, just dont know if i should use 3200 lvl II or 3500 lvl II.

What are you plans for the FSB and will you be running 4/5?

 

[Xymurgy]

I've got my AI7 coming to me Thursday (along with some Black lvl2 3500). I'm pretty sure my OC is CPU-limited, but I'm anxious to see how far I can push the lvl2's with 3.2v.

CAS 2.5 is for the birds.

 

[brandon]

bertus i have never oc'd with ddr im currently oc'n a th7-II with samsung rimms, so there is no divider option. i have watercooling and want the best oc i can get, i can afford the small price diff between the two, whichever is better. im gettin mushkin lvl II if that should help any. thanks

 

[Bertus02]

ya deffinitally go with the 3500. youll have a nice high fsb and you will want plenty of headroom so you can take advantage of the 4/5 divider. should give you some nice memory bandwith.

 

[brandon]

thanks.

 

[sp00L]

I've had one. It's a good board. However, remember that the 865 chipset is usually slower than the 875. I noticed a 500 drop in cpu points on PCMark2002 vs. my max3. Also, this board boots slightly slower than the max3. It is rock solid stable with working vdimm to 3.2 and working vtt to 1.6. Slots 2 & 4 seem to reach higher oc's than slots 1 & 3 for the memory. I also noticed that changing vcore in uGuru had no affect and did not actually change the bios setting. Vdimm, Fsb, agp freq. all worked perfectly from within windows and changed the respective bios setting. There are no parameters in uGuru to change memory timings or divider settings. Although the floppy connect is in an odd place, it's nothing a 12'' cable can't fix.

 

[Mystic95Z]

I love my AI7. The voltage regulation on this board is outstanding, way better than the overpriced IC7-Max3 that I had.

-Tony

 

[turbodeuce]

where did all you guys get your AI7s from? the only place I can find it is newegg.com, just wondering why no one else is carrying it...