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

[imported_UncivilizedAMD]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

 

[dreddfunk]

hokie - thanks...I'll have to figure something out (no floppy). I need to find the time to diagnose the problem, as I need enough time to get the rebates for the HP ram. If I have to RMA one because it's defective, that would be a downer.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

Most likely, you're RAM is overclocked too far to POST. Make sure you are lowering your CPU : DRAM ratio to keep your RAM as close to spec as possible. When just trying to find your CPU's limit, lower the ratio to 1:1 to completely remove RAM overclocking from the equation.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Originally posted by: dreddfunk
hokie - thanks...I'll have to figure something out (no floppy). I need to find the time to diagnose the problem, as I need enough time to get the rebates for the HP ram. If I have to RMA one because it's defective, that would be a downer.

You can flash with a USB flash drive as well. Same process to make the disk, you just have to set it as first boot device instead of the floppy.

To test ram, download and run Memtest, test #5 for 50 loops. If no errors, your RAM is probably not a problem. Since you don't have a floppy, you can actually burn Memtest to a CD and boot from the CD.

 

[mrgrey1970]

It seems I was wrong...having upgraded to bios 13 I thought the double boot still had not been fixed on my system. Now if I reset the pc it doesn`t double boot, only when I power the system up cold

 

[hokiealumnus]

Originally posted by: mrgrey1970
It seems I was wrong...having upgraded to bios 13 I thought the double boot still had not been fixed on my system. Now if I reset the pc it doesn`t double boot, only when I power the system up cold

Make sure you're flashing with the "/wb" switch and clearing CMOS after flashing. Should fix that problem. Neither v.13beta nor v.13 double-booted for me. v.13 just presented entirely new issues, which is why I'm back to v.13beta.

 

[UnIrit]

Thanks for the great advice as usual.

My GPU is too large to allow effective flow over NB so I'll mount a fan at the corner of the BT covering some RAM an NB.

 

[imported_UncivilizedAMD]

Originally posted by: hokiealumnus

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

Most likely, you're RAM is overclocked too far to POST. Make sure you are lowering your CPU : DRAM ratio to keep your RAM as close to spec as possible. When just trying to find your CPU's limit, lower the ratio to 1:1 to completely remove RAM overclocking from the equation.

My ram is at a 1:1 ratio. This ram has be reviewed by many to reach at least ddr2-800speeds and I'm only at ~720.

 

[KIAman]

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: hokiealumnus

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

Most likely, you're RAM is overclocked too far to POST. Make sure you are lowering your CPU : DRAM ratio to keep your RAM as close to spec as possible. When just trying to find your CPU's limit, lower the ratio to 1:1 to completely remove RAM overclocking from the equation.

My ram is at a 1:1 ratio. This ram has be reviewed by many to reach at least ddr2-800speeds and I'm only at ~720.

If your failing smal FFT then it is your CPU. Your CPU default speed is 1.6Ghz. Getting to 2800 is an amazing OC nomatter the voltage.

Also CPU HSF being cool to the touch could mean 2 things. Either the cpu is not generating much heat OR that your heatsink is not seated properly and not doing its job removing the heat from the CPU. At 40c idle, I'd guess that your HSF is not seated properly. To give some perspective, my E6420 idles at 29c and loads 62c at 3400mhz and the bottom part of may heatsink is HOT to the touch during load.

 

[imported_UncivilizedAMD]

Originally posted by: KIAman

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: hokiealumnus

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

Most likely, you're RAM is overclocked too far to POST. Make sure you are lowering your CPU : DRAM ratio to keep your RAM as close to spec as possible. When just trying to find your CPU's limit, lower the ratio to 1:1 to completely remove RAM overclocking from the equation.

My ram is at a 1:1 ratio. This ram has be reviewed by many to reach at least ddr2-800speeds and I'm only at ~720.

If your failing smal FFT then it is your CPU. Your CPU default speed is 1.6Ghz. Getting to 2800 is an amazing OC nomatter the voltage.

Also CPU HSF being cool to the touch could mean 2 things. Either the cpu is not generating much heat OR that your heatsink is not seated properly and not doing its job removing the heat from the CPU. At 40c idle, I'd guess that your HSF is not seated properly. To give some perspective, my E6420 idles at 29c and loads 62c at 3400mhz and the bottom part of may heatsink is HOT to the touch during load.

Thanks, I'm thinking that might be the case. I'll try reseating it one day but it's a pain in the a$$ since I'll have to remove everything just to reinstall it. This cpu only costed me 66 bux so I'm not that disappointed.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: UncivilizedAMD
OK finally got the hard drive to work and suddenly it just detects my ide cd rom drive to install windows. I navigated back to the bios just to see the settings, but i didn't even select an ide optical drive to be one of the boot devices. I have to say this board is very troublesome so far. So my machine is up and running good, then I tried to add on another hard drive. I tried it both as master and slave but when I start up my computer, the computer would just be stuck at the windows xp loading screen, the one with the blue bars running. The hard drive that I added works fine in my other comp however so it's not a drive issue.

You need to clear CMOS and load Optimized Default to properly detect all devices.

Adding a second HDD with a primary partition from another PC can cause boot problem. You cannot drop a HDD with existing data from another PC and expect instant compatibility. For best performance, the 2nd HDD should be partitioned with an extended logical partition. It should not contain a boot partition for the OS.

Funny thing is those rules never apply to previous computers i've had where I just drop in any hard drive whether they have an OS on it or not. Well I tried switching out my IDe cable for the one Abit supplied, and now both drives are running fine. Wonder if it is just an IDE cable issue but then again a single drive worked fine on that IDE cable, and both drives worked fone on the same IDE cable in the old comp.

So on to overclocking, I am stable at 350 x 8 at 2800mhz at default voltages. Moving the FSB up to 355 x 8 for another 40 mhz results in failed orthos small FFTs or system freeze after 1 - 2 min. I played with the volts including
CPU voltage from stock to 1.4850,
DDR2 voltage to 2.0, CPU VTT (dunno what that is) but upped it to 1.35,
ich stock at 1.5,
mch to 1.45,
gtlref at 63.

Disabled C1e and EIST. Any ideas what the problem is that I can't even gain 40mhz with a lot of volts increased?? The CPU heatsink and mobo northbridge is very cool to the touch.
Temps are
CPU: 40c idle 65c load
System: 30c
PWM: 40c

System is
Abit IP-35E
E2140
Hp 976AT 1gb
CoolerMaster Gemini II
Silverstone Zeus 650watt PSU
7900GT
XP SP2

Flash to 12 BIOS. Reset CMOS. Use 1:1 memory divider. Manually set RAM voltage 2.0V and timing to 5-5-5-15-2T. DO NOT modify any other voltage setting.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: hokiealumnus

Originally posted by: mrgrey1970
It seems I was wrong...having upgraded to bios 13 I thought the double boot still had not been fixed on my system. Now if I reset the pc it doesn`t double boot, only when I power the system up cold

Make sure you're flashing with the "/wb" switch and clearing CMOS after flashing. Should fix that problem. Neither v.13beta nor v.13 double-booted for me. v.13 just presented entirely new issues, which is why I'm back to v.13beta.

No problems with me on the 13 BIOS at all.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: hokiealumnus

Originally posted by: mrgrey1970
It seems I was wrong...having upgraded to bios 13 I thought the double boot still had not been fixed on my system. Now if I reset the pc it doesn`t double boot, only when I power the system up cold

Make sure you're flashing with the "/wb" switch and clearing CMOS after flashing. Should fix that problem. Neither v.13beta nor v.13 double-booted for me. v.13 just presented entirely new issues, which is why I'm back to v.13beta.

No problems with me on the 13 BIOS at all.

That's good to hear. Some are lucky. My RAM might just be very sensitive, but I promise it's not all in my head. Here's the post I made on abit quoting several others as well as outlining my issues. Could just be my setup. In which case, 12 & 13beta are fine by me. Just wanted to draw folks' attention to possible issues.

 

[kawpow]

Thanks to Serpent Royal for the excellent tips and suggestions. I went with IP35-E over IP35 Pro and am completely satisfied (so far)

With BIOS 11 my SuperPi numbers are

20.86s for 1M
18m 30.83s for 32M

Max temp. reached during the 32M calculation was 49C
System has been stable @60C for Orthos large FFTs for 2 hours.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Glad you didn't have any major issue with the build. You could probably push the CPU to 3.0GHz with the stock cooler and a litle more Vcore. Leave all other voltage settings to default.

 

[JackMDS]

A follow up on my last week IP35-E story.

Since I am Not a believer of One unit statistics, and so many people enjoy their Abit IP35-E, I decided that the previous Mobo was a Bad Mobo that skipped by the QA and instead of looking for something else I sent it back to Newegg and asked for a replacement

Well the new Mobo came early today; it worked immediately with the exact same components that were used last week and without the Hooplas that were suggested to me to do last week.

I do not know yet about OC. Vista Ultimate is loading Fresh Now, when it works well I will try the OC (probably then I would need the Hooplas).

 

[hokiealumnus]

Great...glad you decided to give it another try! It won't disappoint. Sorry you got a bum board. It happens, but glad to know the next one is good to go. Let us know how you get on with the overclocking.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
A follow up on my last week IP35-E story.

Since I am Not a believer of One unit statistics, and so many people enjoy their Abit IP35-E, I decided that the previous Mobo was a Bad Mobo that skipped by the QA and instead of looking for something else I sent it back to Newegg and asked for a replacement

Well the new Mobo came early today; it worked immediately with the exact same components that were used last week and without the Hooplas that were suggested to me to do last week.

I do not know yet about OC. Vista Ultimate is loading Fresh Now, when it works well I will try the OC (probably then I would need the Hooplas).

You were able to narrow down the problem to PSU or MB. Did the replacement look and smell like a new board? If NewEgg is sending out used board, then I'm going to have to put them on my quarantine list.

No fancy tricks to overclock a capable E2180 to 3.2GHz. Flash to 12 BIOS. Load Optimized Default. Hit F10 to save BIOS. Boot back to BIOS for a 2nd time. The CM's TX2 CPU cooler is good up to about 3.2GHz. Dial-in 1.42 or 1.44Vcore. Use 1:1 memory divider with 1.9Vdimm and 5-5-5-15-2T timing. Set FSB to 320MHz and hit F10 to save BIOS.

Use the lowest Vcore and Vdimm to achieve stablity in Orthos Large mode and Memtest86.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I just picked up another IP35-E for my dad's surprise system... Purchased a 6750 from my friend that I tested and clocked at 3.6Ghz with little to no tweaking... But once I get the chip, I am going to test the limits, I'll let everyone know what this board is capable of with my particular chip! ! ! Pretty excited to give my dad a new system... He has a crappy AGP based system right now and it is really showing it's age.

 

[harbin]

Originally posted by: harbin
I found 32bit Server 2008 can use all 4x1G memory on IP35-E. Is this something special about this board? Or every P35 will do?

Something very interesting. On official 13 BIOS, win server 2008 can see all 4G ram. After I flashed back to 12 BIOS, now it can only see 3.12G.

 

[Replay]

Bios 13 seems to have been removed from the IP35-E page. I downloaded a copy on 11/3.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: harbin

Originally posted by: harbin
I found 32bit Server 2008 can use all 4x1G memory on IP35-E. Is this something special about this board? Or every P35 will do?

Something very interesting. On official 13 BIOS, win server 2008 can see all 4G ram. After I flashed back to 12 BIOS, now it can only see 3.12G.

Do they also show up in Task Manager?

 

[harbin]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal

Originally posted by: harbin

Originally posted by: harbin
I found 32bit Server 2008 can use all 4x1G memory on IP35-E. Is this something special about this board? Or every P35 will do?

Something very interesting. On official 13 BIOS, win server 2008 can see all 4G ram. After I flashed back to 12 BIOS, now it can only see 3.12G.

Do they also show up in Task Manager?

I didn't pay attention if 4g RAM shows up in Task Manager when the board was on BIOS 13.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

No difference between 3.2GB and 4.0GB with 97% of PC.

 

[harbin]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
No difference between 3.2GB and 4.0GB with 97% of PC.

Overall, I am very happy with the board. I don't think I can ask more out of it. It's better in terms of o/c than NEO2-FR P35.