Abit IP35-E Review (500MHz FSB board)...$90 @ NewEgg + $6.61 ship

[KeaBorg]

My 6550 posts at 550 but half way into booting reboots itself, after running a divider on my ram its the ram thats limtiing me. My board runs 500mhz 24/7 no other issues im using 14b8 and have been since it became available. The only downside to my rig atm seems to be the Crucial Ballistix ram topping out at 525 fsb, and the only reason I don't run 525 is the ram voltage has to be set at 2.4 for it to even boot.

 

[aiya24]

Originally posted by: KeaBorg
My 6550 posts at 550 but half way into booting reboots itself, after running a divider on my ram its the ram thats limtiing me. My board runs 500mhz 24/7 no other issues im using 14b8 and have been since it became available. The only downside to my rig atm seems to be the Crucial Ballistix ram topping out at 525 fsb, and the only reason I don't run 525 is the ram voltage has to be set at 2.4 for it to even boot.

hmm.. it seems your ballistix are the few that can't hit 600mhz @ 2.4v. over on XS, i've seen them do it numerous times. do you have a fan blowing over them? that might help some. nonetheless, you have an awesome e6550 that can hit 500+ fsb. good job so far :thumbsup:

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: KeaBorg
My 6550 posts at 550 but half way into booting reboots itself, after running a divider on my ram its the ram thats limtiing me. My board runs 500mhz 24/7 no other issues im using 14b8 and have been since it became available. The only downside to my rig atm seems to be the Crucial Ballistix ram topping out at 525 fsb, and the only reason I don't run 525 is the ram voltage has to be set at 2.4 for it to even boot.

Have you upped NB and SB by one or two notches? I would expect this board to keep pace with its bigger brother IP35 Pro. Your post just comfirmed this (525MHz with a good chip). Were you able to run Othos at 525?

Were you able to re-create the 200MHz FSB boot after turning off the PSU?


I could replicate a condition with 14 BIOS where the FSB would default to 200MHz after boot.

1. Make sure the PC is stable with your favorite overclock settings.

2. Shut down PC and re-boot into windows.

3. Shut down PC again and immediately turn-off the power to the PSU. Wait 45 to 60 seconds and re-apply power to the PSU. The actual wait time may vary by about 15 seconds depending on the residual charge in the PSU.

4. Immediately turn on PC. Notice that there is no DOUBLE POST. Once you're in windows, use CPUz or equivalent to confirm that system is running at 200MHz FSB. C1E and EIST should still function.

5. Shut down PC and re-boot into windows. Note the double post. Now PC will run at the preset FSB speed in BIOS.

If you wait more than 90 seconds before re-applying power to the PSU, then the FSB will set correctly when you reboot the PC. It appears that the patch for the double post still need some minor tweaking.

 

[KeaBorg]

The only OC issue I've ever had with this mobo is after turning it up so high I get a ram beep. Then I just turn it off and it cranks the fsb back to 333. Thats the only issue I've ever had even with these other beta bios's that I've flashed, and I've tried each one totry and get 550fsb. I realized it was the ram with I turned if back to stock and started cranking up the divider. Yes it will run 525mhz but I'm just not comfortable with the 2.5v it needs to run it. I have a fan over the ram and my cooler is a 120Xtreme. My NB voltage has been bumped by one aswell as my VTT voltage. Current settings are 500x7 1.425v core 2.2v @ 5-5-5-16 with the nb at 1.2375.

 

[GundamF91]

I think I'll have to see if I can get another IP35E and maybe return this one. It's just not working right as much as I've tried.

Honestly, as good as Abit IP35E is, I am just surprised there's still much BIOS teething problem. The board has been out for half a year now, and you'd think it's all good by now. When I had AMD systems, from Athlon, to AthlonXP, to Sempron64, and to Athlon64, everyone of them had stable BIOS and I've never had issue with booting or cold start, or double start, or non-starts.

 

[milan03]

I think I'm done priming and testing. This is max I can get for 24/7
Thanks a LOT Serpent!
http://www.filanthropy.com/ser...ScreenShots/stable.jpg

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: GundamF91
When I had AMD systems, from Athlon, to AthlonXP, to Sempron64, and to Athlon64, everyone of them had stable BIOS and I've never had issue with booting or cold start, or double start, or non-starts.

that's because they handle memory totally differently.
Even if you look at the nVidia chipsets for Intel they don't handle memory the same way as the Intel chipsets so they don't double boot either (although they have their own problems).

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: KeaBorg
The only OC issue I've ever had with this mobo is after turning it up so high I get a ram beep. Then I just turn it off and it cranks the fsb back to 333. Thats the only issue I've ever had even with these other beta bios's that I've flashed, and I've tried each one totry and get 550fsb. I realized it was the ram with I turned if back to stock and started cranking up the divider. Yes it will run 525mhz but I'm just not comfortable with the 2.5v it needs to run it. I have a fan over the ram and my cooler is a 120Xtreme. My NB voltage has been bumped by one aswell as my VTT voltage. Current settings are 500x7 1.425v core 2.2v @ 5-5-5-16 with the nb at 1.2375.

Which BIOS are you running? 12 is very fast and overclock well for me. No issue at all with the reset to 200MHz FSB during cold boot.

14 is a tad slower (2 seconds deficit with 32M SP). It can cause the FSB to reset to 200MHz on the 1st cold boot.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: GundamF91
I think I'll have to see if I can get another IP35E and maybe return this one. It's just not working right as much as I've tried.

Honestly, as good as Abit IP35E is, I am just surprised there's still much BIOS teething problem. The board has been out for half a year now, and you'd think it's all good by now. When I had AMD systems, from Athlon, to AthlonXP, to Sempron64, and to Athlon64, everyone of them had stable BIOS and I've never had issue with booting or cold start, or double start, or non-starts.

12 BIOS is very stable and fast (allow the P35 chipset do its thing). The only issue is the double POST. Vendors have been trying to circumvent this P35 protocol with BIOS tweak, but perfect solution is still elusive. Even the P35 Pro with the Guru chip is susceptible to BIOS corruption.

Gigabyte's boards (DS3L in particular) have been loosing BIOS settings since P965 days. The JMicron chip is another common issue plaguing these P35 boards. I think the root cause is Intel when they drop support for PATA and their refusal to address the double post problem with P965 and P35.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131249&enterthread=y

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131226&enterthread=y

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: milan03
I think I'm done priming and testing. This is max I can get for 24/7
Thanks a LOT Serpent!
http://www.filanthropy.com/ser...ScreenShots/stable.jpg

You should enable C1E and EIST to reduce Vcore when CPU is not under heavy load. 1.5Vcore under load is a little too much for my comfort zone. You'll never notice the slowdown even if you reduce core speed to 3.7GHz.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

More info on IP35-E that will not POST below 60F.

This is probably the defective transistor. A bad chip has t04 72 for the part number. I see t04 71 on all five of my good IP35-E boards (no cold boot issue). Check your problem board to see if your transistor has t04 72.


http://forum.abit-usa.com/atta...tid=20696&d=1197740738

http://forum.abit-usa.com/show....php?p=901555&posted=1

 

[BuckNaked]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
More info on IP35-E that will not POST below 60F.

This is probably the defective transistor. A bad chip has t04 72 for the part number. I see t04 71 on all five of my good IP35-E boards (no cold boot issue). Check your problem board to see if your transistor has t04 72.


http://forum.abit-usa.com/atta...tid=20696&d=1197740738

http://forum.abit-usa.com/show....php?p=901555&posted=1

Thanks, I will look at my MB when I get home and see what the part number is...

 

[SerpentRoyal]

I would be temped to buy a good replacement transistor and swap it with the bad one on the MB. Should be a snap if you have a magnifying glass and good soldering technique. Be sure to use lead-free solder and some flux. DO NOT overheat the iron. These are surface mount transistors. Clean up afterward with isopropyl alcohol.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
I would be temped to buy a good replacement transistor and swap it with the bad one on the MB.

Thanks for the links, but forget about replacing the transistor. If there really is a cold-boot problem, then it should be covered under warranty... unless Abit will allow us to keep the warranty even if we've soldered on the motherboard?

This might be the problem I'm experiencing where it will hang right after POST. It seems to happen mostly in the mornings before the heater becomes effective. It's pretty cold around here.

The motherboard was a killer deal (both of them, heh), but now I'm having second thoughts about it.

 

[GundamF91]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: GundamF91
Honestly, as good as Abit IP35E is, I am just surprised there's still much BIOS teething problem. The board has been out for half a year now, and you'd think it's all good by now. When I had AMD systems, from Athlon, to AthlonXP, to Sempron64, and to Athlon64, everyone of them had stable BIOS and I've never had issue with booting or cold start, or double start, or non-starts.

12 BIOS is very stable and fast (allow the P35 chipset do its thing). The only issue is the double POST. Vendors have been trying to circumvent this P35 protocol with BIOS tweak, but perfect solution is still elusive. Even the P35 Pro with the Guru chip is susceptible to BIOS corruption.

Gigabyte's boards (DS3L in particular) have been loosing BIOS settings since P965 days. The JMicron chip is another common issue plaguing these P35 boards. I think the root cause is Intel when they drop support for PATA and their refusal to address the double post problem with P965 and P35.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131249&enterthread=y
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131226&enterthread=y

Does the X38 chipset still have the same double booting? What about the future Intel chipsets currently in development? I'm just surprised that the entire industry just lives with it as if it's OK. When Anandtech or Tomshardware run reviews of the mainboards, they've never mentioned doubleboot or BIOS issues. When I had DDR with AMD systems, these type of issues never happened. Even back to my Pentium II/III days, this was not something you'd have to deal with day after day. I don't see why Intel with DDR2 systems haven't worked out the issue and everyone puts up with it.

 

[imported_smartadze]

Many thanks to the Serpent and everyone who contributes to this excellent thread. Caused me to go out and build my own system, based on an e4500. Terrific results (and bang for the buck) at 3375 MHz and Patriot DDR-800 running nicely at DDR-922.

But here's a noob question: the multipliers of these C2D cpu's seems locked, although I can boot into Dos-Memtest with a different multiplier, she will not boot Windows at anything except stock. Question is this: given semi-identical clock speeds (say 3300), do the higher-FSB/lower multiplier cpus perform substantially better? If I overclocked an e6750 to the same speed level, would the higher FSB provide more performance?

I know there is a cache isssue here too, but it is the FSB issue that is puzzling me. Or is 3300 MhZ just 3300 Mhz, regardless of how many FSB's it takes to get there?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
I would be temped to buy a good replacement transistor and swap it with the bad one on the MB.

Thanks for the links, but forget about replacing the transistor. If there really is a cold-boot problem, then it should be covered under warranty... unless Abit will allow us to keep the warranty even if we've soldered on the motherboard?

This might be the problem I'm experiencing where it will hang right after POST. It seems to happen mostly in the mornings before the heater becomes effective. It's pretty cold around here.

The motherboard was a killer deal (both of them, heh), but now I'm having second thoughts about it.

Abit will repair free of charge. The surface mount device is probably too small for the average person to replace. You could apply a warm water bag to this region prior to POST. This should rule out the cold boot problem. Can you check for the number on the transistor?

Do you have the same problem with both boards? Did you clean installed windows? Can you try a SATA HDD? Did the board locked-up immediately after VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: GundamF91

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: GundamF91
Honestly, as good as Abit IP35E is, I am just surprised there's still much BIOS teething problem. The board has been out for half a year now, and you'd think it's all good by now. When I had AMD systems, from Athlon, to AthlonXP, to Sempron64, and to Athlon64, everyone of them had stable BIOS and I've never had issue with booting or cold start, or double start, or non-starts.

12 BIOS is very stable and fast (allow the P35 chipset do its thing). The only issue is the double POST. Vendors have been trying to circumvent this P35 protocol with BIOS tweak, but perfect solution is still elusive. Even the P35 Pro with the Guru chip is susceptible to BIOS corruption.

Gigabyte's boards (DS3L in particular) have been loosing BIOS settings since P965 days. The JMicron chip is another common issue plaguing these P35 boards. I think the root cause is Intel when they drop support for PATA and their refusal to address the double post problem with P965 and P35.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131249&enterthread=y
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131226&enterthread=y

Does the X38 chipset still have the same double booting? What about the future Intel chipsets currently in development? I'm just surprised that the entire industry just lives with it as if it's OK. When Anandtech or Tomshardware run reviews of the mainboards, they've never mentioned doubleboot or BIOS issues. When I had DDR with AMD systems, these type of issues never happened. Even back to my Pentium II/III days, this was not something you'd have to deal with day after day. I don't see why Intel with DDR2 systems haven't worked out the issue and everyone puts up with it.

X38 is still new and pricey. I would guess that the double post is still there if used with a non-modded BIOS.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: smartadze
Many thanks to the Serpent and everyone who contributes to this excellent thread. Caused me to go out and build my own system, based on an e4500. Terrific results (and bang for the buck) at 3375 MHz and Patriot DDR-800 running nicely at DDR-922.

But here's a noob question: the multipliers of these C2D cpu's seems locked, although I can boot into Dos-Memtest with a different multiplier, she will not boot Windows at anything except stock. Question is this: given semi-identical clock speeds (say 3300), do the higher-FSB/lower multiplier cpus perform substantially better? If I overclocked an e6750 to the same speed level, would the higher FSB provide more performance?

I know there is a cache isssue here too, but it is the FSB issue that is puzzling me. Or is 3300 MhZ just 3300 Mhz, regardless of how many FSB's it takes to get there?

E21x0 and E4xx0 chips prefer to run at default multi. The gain in FSB is very small. Core speed is KING.

 

[GundamF91]

Originally posted by: smartadze

But here's a noob question: the multipliers of these C2D cpu's seems locked, although I can boot into Dos-Memtest with a different multiplier, she will not boot Windows at anything except stock. Question is this: given semi-identical clock speeds (say 3300), do the higher-FSB/lower multiplier cpus perform substantially better? If I overclocked an e6750 to the same speed level, would the higher FSB provide more performance?

The multiplier are NOT locked, the reason they boot into Windows at default multiplier is because of EIST speedstep. You have to go into BIOS, disable both C1E and EIST. Then set a default multiplier in BIOS. I am doing 333x9 for example. You can do the same with 300x10, or 273x11, but higher FSB gives more overall system performance, so go with the best FSB you can reach.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Latest on 200MHz FSB reset with official 14 BIOS!

System will always maintain FSB set in BIOS if:

-user always maintain standby power to the MB after PC shutdown. As long as the red LED on the MB is ON, then standby power is active. Leave the PSU connected to a live AC outlet 24/7, even after you've shut down the PC.

-user always turn-off standby power to the MB after each PC shutdown. Interrupt power to the PSU long enough for the red LED light on the MB to go out. If you do this after each shutdown, then the MB will remember the FSB set in BIOS.

To resolve the 200MHz FSB lock, shut down then restart PC.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Do you have the same problem with both boards? Did you clean installed windows? Can you try a SATA HDD? Did the board locked-up immediately after VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA?

Second board was POST tested and then shelved in the garage pending future need.

Yes, clean install of Windows on this board (previous system was on a 2 year old install that was already ported over two boards, four video cards, two HDDs).

I am using a SATA HDD.

VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA is right before it boots off HDD. It never gets that far. It goes past video card BIOS, then locks before detecting HDDs off Southbridge controller. Next time it does that I'll see if I can note down exactly where.

Maybe I should switch boards with the other IP35-E? Won't have time until after I get back from visiting relatives (2nd week January).

 

[bigblockchevy]

over-clocking update-- currently running abit ip35e #2 with e2140 8x400fsb 24-7 for the last three days . cpu @ 1.395v.

ram pro-mos corsair xms800 2.1v @ 800mhz . 1:1 ratio

the thing is rock-stable . played around with benchmarks-games and what not--burned a few cd's-dvd's .

core temps hit a high of 37c with TR-120mm and panflow set to 1850rpm . seems very fast . runs very cool --mb sometimes reports as low as 17c .

only little bug is the cold start thing-- may end up with a fix for that .

 

[TungFree]

I cannot find on Abit IP35e any of the following settings to tweak as suggested in the tutorial for over clocking a q6600:
Vanterpool
CPU TM Function
Execute Disable bit
Where to set the timing like 5-5-5-15 and later to lower them to 4-4-4-12
PCI Clock Synchronization
Speed Spectrum

CPU voltage is at 1.3000 v
what should I change it to to start? or leave it at that?
what do I start The CPU VCore at the default is 1.3000
any other initial settings to set other than the default ones?

What voltage TO STE for the Kingston 800 on DDR2 it is set to auto now?
CPU VTT Volts set to 1.2000v ?
ICH 1.5V Voltage ?
MCH 1.25V Voltage?
CPU CTLREF 63%?



I have multiplier at 9 and 333 and 1:1.2 ratio on for 800mhz ram



update:
put on 3 programs
prime 95
speed fan
Core temp

I ran it that way for 15 minutes speedfan read the following 2 temps that worry me:
CPU 62C
AUX 73C
and a red fire icon was next to both
the 4 cores all ran cool near 40C

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Do you have the same problem with both boards? Did you clean installed windows? Can you try a SATA HDD? Did the board locked-up immediately after VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA?

Second board was POST tested and then shelved in the garage pending future need.

Yes, clean install of Windows on this board (previous system was on a 2 year old install that was already ported over two boards, four video cards, two HDDs).

I am using a SATA HDD.

VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA is right before it boots off HDD. It never gets that far. It goes past video card BIOS, then locks before detecting HDDs off Southbridge controller. Next time it does that I'll see if I can note down exactly where.

Maybe I should switch boards with the other IP35-E? Won't have time until after I get back from visiting relatives (2nd week January).

I could only get the system to hang once, right after VERIFYING DMI POOL DATA. Fans are running but no life @ monitor.

Could it be RAMs if you see lock-up past GPU's BIOS?