ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - Socket 939 with PCI-E and real AGP and Socket AM2 upgrade path

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: DuoDreamer
At 274HTT (x4), its perfectly stable, and runs hours on Prime95. At 275HTT, it refuses to POST. I'm using BIOS 1.60. Seems like a pretty solid ceiling for this dang bios. I'm not too sure about trying a modified bios... I really feel like I can squeeze much more out of this CPU, even with a 9x multiplier. Hell, now all we need is a multiplier mod hack for Opterons.

Could I ask what your bios settings are? (Or where to get that 1.60 bios(and the list of fixes in it))

I am running 1.50 bios w/ an A64 3200+ w/ DDR400 ram, everything at stock speeds and voltages, and prime95 craps out after a few hours. I ran memtest86 on my ram for 5 hours, 12 full ram passes, and it passed, so I'm sure my ram is ok. ;P

I just installed the amd cool'n'quiet driver(but disabled cool'n'quiet in the bios since I don't want to fark with that yet) to see if that helps. My last system could run prime95 for a week straight(Before I gave up and closed it) w/ an AthlonXP 1.8 overclocked to 2.4, so I would hope a new system running stock could at least match that. :/

 

[DuoDreamer]

Originally posted by: Araemo

Originally posted by: DuoDreamer
At 274HTT (x4), its perfectly stable, and runs hours on Prime95. At 275HTT, it refuses to POST. I'm using BIOS 1.60. Seems like a pretty solid ceiling for this dang bios. I'm not too sure about trying a modified bios... I really feel like I can squeeze much more out of this CPU, even with a 9x multiplier. Hell, now all we need is a multiplier mod hack for Opterons.

Could I ask what your bios settings are? (Or where to get that 1.60 bios(and the list of fixes in it))

I am running 1.50 bios w/ an A64 3200+ w/ DDR400 ram, everything at stock speeds and voltages, and prime95 craps out after a few hours. I ran memtest86 on my ram for 5 hours, 12 full ram passes, and it passed, so I'm sure my ram is ok. ;P

I just installed the amd cool'n'quiet driver(but disabled cool'n'quiet in the bios since I don't want to fark with that yet) to see if that helps. My last system could run prime95 for a week straight(Before I gave up and closed it) w/ an AthlonXP 1.8 overclocked to 2.4, so I would hope a new system running stock could at least match that. :/

The 1.60 BIOS is linked in the first post of this thread. It doesn't really have any fixes in it, just one additional setting for some kind of FIFO. My board came with 1.50 from Newegg.

I don't know why your CPU craps out at default speeds, perhaps your cooling solution is not sufficient? What temperature is your core at when prime95 crashes? My CPU got around 60°C with prime smoking it, which is pretty close to the 65°C max rating. But then again, my room is rather warm, my case has crappy airflow, and my HSF is the stock Opteron Heatpipe unit, not the crappy A64 block.

You could probably check your power supply's amperage ratings. Many "350W" power supplies have hella ****** 12V output, and if you have multiple hard drives and optical drives and a power hungry video card... well, you get the idea.

I have since changed my overclocking settings to get a better memory speed. Currently, my HTT is at 266x9 (2.4GHz), with the memory Flexibility OFF, and memory speed set to 333MHz, and my core voltage at stock 1.35V. At these settings, I get 217MHz (2.5,4,4,8) out of my ram, as opposed to the ~174-ish I was getting with my other settings. My CPU is a tad bit slower than the 285x9 I managed to get it up to, but my memory speed is up nicely. And at stock voltage, its running nicely at about 54°C under load.

I've been kicking some ass in my Folding score lately. In the past week I've done more than I did in a couple of months on a previous P4 1.6. ( I'm folding for HardOCP btw )

 

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: DuoDreamer

Originally posted by: Araemo
Could I ask what your bios settings are? (Or where to get that 1.60 bios(and the list of fixes in it))

I am running 1.50 bios w/ an A64 3200+ w/ DDR400 ram, everything at stock speeds and voltages, and prime95 craps out after a few hours. I ran memtest86 on my ram for 5 hours, 12 full ram passes, and it passed, so I'm sure my ram is ok. ;P

I just installed the amd cool'n'quiet driver(but disabled cool'n'quiet in the bios since I don't want to fark with that yet) to see if that helps. My last system could run prime95 for a week straight(Before I gave up and closed it) w/ an AthlonXP 1.8 overclocked to 2.4, so I would hope a new system running stock could at least match that. :/

The 1.60 BIOS is linked in the first post of this thread. It doesn't really have any fixes in it, just one additional setting for some kind of FIFO. My board came with 1.50 from Newegg.

I don't know why your CPU craps out at default speeds, perhaps your cooling solution is not sufficient? What temperature is your core at when prime95 crashes? My CPU got around 60°C with prime smoking it, which is pretty close to the 65°C max rating. But then again, my room is rather warm, my case has crappy airflow, and my HSF is the stock Opteron Heatpipe unit, not the crappy A64 block.

I have the 'crappy a64 stock', but it maxes at 42 C, according to everest.

You could probably check your power supply's amperage ratings. Many "350W" power supplies have hella ****** 12V output, and if you have multiple hard drives and optical drives and a power hungry video card... well, you get the idea.

My PSU is fairly decent, I think.. two 7200 rpm sata drives, 1 optical, and a Radeon 9700 pro... I'll double check that though. But this PSU could handle an Athlon tbred 1.8 at 2.4 Ghz w/ 3 HDs and 2 CD drives, so I think it should be ok. ;P

I have since changed my overclocking settings to get a better memory speed. Currently, my HTT is at 266x9 (2.4GHz), with the memory Flexibility OFF, and memory speed set to 333MHz, and my core voltage at stock 1.35V. At these settings, I get 217MHz (2.5,4,4,8) out of my ram, as opposed to the ~174-ish I was getting with my other settings. My CPU is a tad bit slower than the 285x9 I managed to get it up to, but my memory speed is up nicely. And at stock voltage, its running nicely at about 54°C under load.

At the moment, I have a couple hours on my current prime95 run, but I've been gaming at the same time. I installed the cool'n'quiet, and enabled 'gated clock' in the bios.. just on a whim.

Edit: Found my PSU's ratings: 12V rail #1: 14A 12V rail #2: 13A
plus 30A on 3.3V and 32A on 5V.

Edit again: Why does 12V even matter that much? Aren't sata drives 3.3V instead? Or is that only for the circuitry, and the motor is still 12V? In any case, both of my hard drives are sata

 

[imported_Seer]

I would just like to say that I'm running Kingston value ram, 2x1gb, rated 3-3-3-8, at 2.5-3-3-7 1T, perfectly stable in memtest. So it is possible, you just have to get lucky.

Whats funny is that my board starts having stability issues somwhere in the 230s. It's a shame, I can't see how far I can push my 4400 T_T

 

[LED]

All my slots are full cept the one for the AM2

PCI-e Radeon X800
PCI-e Theater 550 pro
AGP Radeon 9800
PCI Modem...soon to be replace with something else ;0
PCI Audigy
PCI Firewire800

4 banks of RAM...2 Ballistix and 1 BH5 with another Ballistix...running DC

3 optical Drives, 1 ATA HD in Tray, 2 Hitachis in RAID and a WD 74 gig Raptor and the extra USB ports work...had to RMA my 1st mobo though...running nice now with NP's on an Opty 170 up to 2.5GHz if i want...sweet Mobo 0for the price 0and let go 0of 0the ASRock Z that I had before

 

[xenocyd3]

have 2 problems here

heres my setup

opteron 165 @ stock speeds
samsung sata2 spinpoint 3.0 gbps 160gb
sapphire x800 gto2 (i got it refurbished and it says it has 16 pipes in atitool... did the person who returned it flash it?)
g.skill extreme ddr400 1gb



i installed windows before updating the bios and it doesnt detect the 2nd core of my cpu.... i installed all the patches and everything but it still wont get the 2nd core... does this mean i have to reformat?


also, the mobo has a hard time detecting the hard drive(using SATAII... yes i connected into the red one)... most of the time it doesnt detect the hard drive so i have to turn it off and on a bunch of times before it works...

 

[imported_Seer]

make sure its set to IDE operation mode. And about the cpu issue....I just don't know. Make sure that dual core support is enabled in the bios, I guess.

 

[DuoDreamer]

Originally posted by: Araemo
I have the 'crappy a64 stock', but it maxes at 42 C, according to everest.

My PSU is fairly decent, I think.. two 7200 rpm sata drives, 1 optical, and a Radeon 9700 pro... I'll double check that though. But this PSU could handle an Athlon tbred 1.8 at 2.4 Ghz w/ 3 HDs and 2 CD drives, so I think it should be ok. ;P

At the moment, I have a couple hours on my current prime95 run, but I've been gaming at the same time. I installed the cool'n'quiet, and enabled 'gated clock' in the bios.. just on a whim.

Edit: Found my PSU's ratings: 12V rail #1: 14A 12V rail #2: 13A
plus 30A on 3.3V and 32A on 5V.

Edit again: Why does 12V even matter that much? Aren't sata drives 3.3V instead? Or is that only for the circuitry, and the motor is still 12V? In any case, both of my hard drives are sata

Well, 12V matters because it powers the motors in the drives, and many things on the motherboard. Plus, those Amperage ratings aren't static, they're maximum in a single draw scenario... so if you're drawing all 32 amps from the 5V line, the other lines wont be able to provide 100% of their rated amperage. Still, your power supply is more than sufficient for your setup. I don't even have a dual 12V rail, just one, at 13A. I'll have to upgrade my PSU before I even think about a PCIe video card.

It is really hard to know what is wrong with your system not being able to handle prime95 under stock settings.

 

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: DuoDreamer
Well, 12V matters because it powers the motors in the drives, and many things on the motherboard. Plus, those Amperage ratings aren't static, they're maximum in a single draw scenario... so if you're drawing all 32 amps from the 5V line, the other lines wont be able to provide 100% of their rated amperage. Still, your power supply is more than sufficient for your setup. I don't even have a dual 12V rail, just one, at 13A. I'll have to upgrade my PSU before I even think about a PCIe video card.

It is really hard to know what is wrong with your system not being able to handle prime95 under stock settings.

Thats about what I'm thinking. I'm going to call newegg and see if they'll let me RMA both the mobo and CPU.

Edit: BTW, what version of prime95 are you people running? I wonder if theres a bug in the newest version, which I dowloaded fresh for this install.

Edit again:
I just had an odd problem.. I had noticed that my HTT speed was being reported to everest as 800 mhz, so I went to reboot and change it, but the system hung on reboot. It shut off my monitor and just sat there. I pressed the reset button, and.... nothing happened.

I had to force a poweroff and turn it back on.

 

[imported_DarkPenguin]

I keep losing a sata drive with this silly board. I have a scratch disk on the sata controller. When I disconnect a compact flash card reader it has a tendency to drop that sata drive. The sata ii controller is rock solid. As is the Pata controller.

Anyone else see this?

 

[imported_Imp]

@DarkPenguin: I don't have the exact problem, but my SATA drive use to disappear all the time until I shelled out $70 to get a new IDE drive. Checkout the other long ASsRock thread about this issue.

 

[Araemo]

Slight update.. I'm returning the mobo and CPU, newegg took care of me. Even waived the restocking fee(I was willing to pay it, but they offered to waive it. awesome.)

Lets hope I get a better set next time.

 

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: xenocyd3
i installed windows before updating the bios and it doesnt detect the 2nd core of my cpu.... i installed all the patches and everything but it still wont get the 2nd core... does this mean i have to reformat?

Well, reinstalling windows would be the sure fire way to make it work, but I've heard of this working:

Open device manager. Open the "Comptuer" category. Double-click on "Advanced configuration and power interface (ACPI) PC"
Click the Driver tab, click Update Driver,

Choose "install from a list or a specific location(Advanced)"
Select the bottom choice: "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install."
And choose "ACPI Multiprocessor PC" from the list. Reboot when prompted. I've heard of someone doing this to turn a single core system into a 3-core system(I believe they installed on an opteron or xeon mobo that had two cpu slots with only one occupied w/ a single core CPU.. and then added a dual core CPU to the second slot, or something like that... it worked). If this blows up your Windows install.. you were planning to reinstall anyways, right?

If your 'computer' is already an ACPI multiprocessor PC, I think you should have both cores available. When you go into task manager, click on 'view', and 'cpu history', and 'One Graph Per CPU'. If that splits the CPU usage history into two graphs, it sees both cores.

 

[Araemo]

Well, my new opty and new ASRock939 are here.. no real update so far, but I am curious:

Is this the opteron heatpipe heatsink? Or is this some cheaper unit since I got the bottom of the mill opteron?

Heatsink?

 

[imported_Seer]

The new opty heatink only comes on DC opterons and, I think, 4400+ and higher x2s. It might come on the 4200+ X2, I'm not sure.

So, no, that is not the heatpipe heatsink. Notice the distinct lack of heatpipes?

 

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: Seer
The new opty heatink only comes on DC opterons and, I think, 4400+ and higher x2s. It might come on the 4200+ X2, I'm not sure.

So, no, that is not the heatpipe heatsink. Notice the distinct lack of heatpipes?

Well, it is entirely possible it had heatpipes in the thick base... ;P

But yeah, thanks. ;P

 

[Budarow]

Would you guys say running intense 3D games (HL2, etc.) with RAM set to 2T would be SIGNIFICANTLY slower than using 1T? Are we talking 2-3% less FPS or what?

Thanks,

Bud

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Budarow
Would you guys say running intense 3D games (HL2, etc.) with RAM set to 2T would be SIGNIFICANTLY slower than using 1T? Are we talking 2-3% less FPS or what?

Thanks,

Bud

No, 2T isn't at all "significantly" slower than 1T. You've got about the right idea of the hit, it's something like 2-3% in real-world usage. It (2T) is definitely not the performance killer that some will have you believe it is. I'm running 4x512MB right now in my board, so I have to use 2T - I have no regrets with my setup, it's still very fast.

 

[Araemo]

Well..

On my new motherboard and cpu, I now have 17 hours of prime95 stability under my belt(It's still going)..

But... Winamp has crashed twice, explorer crashed once... the drwatson debugger launched when explorer crashed.. also crashed.. (causing another drwatson to be launched for drwatson, and locking the whole shell until I end tasked the right drwatson and restarted explorer).. so, I'm confused. Why are my apps spontaneously crashing, when prime95 and Memtest86 see no problems?

If I go from an athlon 3200+ to an opteron 144, on the same motherboard model..

should I have to reinstall windows? I would think it would be a painless plug-and-go. It seemed to be... no devices detected on boot up, nothing acting weird besides what is mentioned above. I did some gaming w/ prime95 running in the background... temps are even lower than they were with the 3200+(40C vs 42C)

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Araemo
Well..

On my new motherboard and cpu, I now have 17 hours of prime95 stability under my belt(It's still going)..

But... Winamp has crashed twice, explorer crashed once... the drwatson debugger launched when explorer crashed.. also crashed.. (causing another drwatson to be launched for drwatson, and locking the whole shell until I end tasked the right drwatson and restarted explorer).. so, I'm confused. Why are my apps spontaneously crashing, when prime95 and Memtest86 see no problems?

If I go from an athlon 3200+ to an opteron 144, on the same motherboard model..

should I have to reinstall windows? I would think it would be a painless plug-and-go. It seemed to be... no devices detected on boot up, nothing acting weird besides what is mentioned above. I did some gaming w/ prime95 running in the background... temps are even lower than they were with the 3200+(40C vs 42C)

Are you running your RAM at 1T? That's the only thing I can think of...I have heard of a few people who just couldn't run at 1T no matter what on this board...even with prime stability, certain actions (opening Word, going to certain Flash websites, etc.) would cause an instant crash. Do you happen to notice any pattern or particular action that seems to be causing these crashes? If you're still running the same install of Windows from an earlier hardware configuration, then it's possible that this might be helped by a reinstall, but I wouldn't really expect tons of crashes just from an old install...

 

[Araemo]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Are you running your RAM at 1T? That's the only thing I can think of...I have heard of a few people who just couldn't run at 1T no matter what on this board...even with prime stability, certain actions (opening Word, going to certain Flash websites, etc.) would cause an instant crash. Do you happen to notice any pattern or particular action that seems to be causing these crashes? If you're still running the same install of Windows from an earlier hardware configuration, then it's possible that this might be helped by a reinstall, but I wouldn't really expect tons of crashes just from an old install...

My ram probably couldn't handle 1T if I wanted it to. It's two sticks of Value 3200, 2.5-4-4-8, I run it at the default 2.5T(I think? CPU-Z lists the CAS# Latency as 2.5)

For the record, flash is fine, and MS Word worked well enough for me to write a 2 page letter before I read any of that 1T ram stuff. ;P

The crashes were random, very random... and not at all common, but I am used to windows XP being stable.

After swapping the motherboard/cpu I noticed a couple things had changed- My image drive was working right(I could right click it and get the 'mount image' menu, which I couldn't before I swapped the mobo and cpu!?! Also, Samurize could no longer report an accurate value for my uptime(I had 17 hours of uptime, and it was reporting 5 hours... minutes, seconds were correct...), and my run box hadn't been saving history(I told tweakui not to save my document history), but after swapping the motherboard it WAS saving history... These things all combined to make me just go ahead and reinstall windows this evening, after the CPU couldn't handle an overclock from 1.8 to 2.0.

I clocked it back down, reinstalled, checked prime95+ATI PipeDream for stability, and started overclocking. I'm currently up to 2.250Ghz seemingly stable... so I think my previous windows install was just farked up by the old (Defective) CPU/mobo.

Oddly enough however, My opteron has a 9x multi, and will accept an 8x multi, but NOTHING lower than that will work- the mobo comes back up set to 9x if I try anything under 8x. This happened with both the 1.50 and 1.60 bios.

Edit: I poked in everest, it reports my Command rate as 2T.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Yeah, 2T is the default...as I mentioned above, I wouldn't worry about not being able to run 1T. I have also heard stories about lower multipliers (around 5-7 or thereabouts) not working on this board. I'm not sure why - but I have a 10x multiplier CPU anyway, so I wouldn't really ever have reason to use lower than 8x anyway (or really lower than 9x...). I assume it's just another quirk of the board, something you just have to live with.

In any case I'm glad to hear that your problem was fixed with a new Windows install.

 

[Arkham]

"New SATA2 info from Asrock???"

I just picked up my Asrock DualSATA2 last night, along with 2GB OCZ Dual Platinums, and a Samsung 250GB Spinpoint drive. Unfortunately I can only look at these until my Lian-Li case arrives next week and I purchase my Opteron 146.

That doesn't mean I can't play with the boxes.

I have been concerned about potential SATA2 problems, so I've been flipping through these threads a lot. I haven't seen anyone mention this addendum note I found in my manual though. The Asrock notice says:

"Note For Windows 98 SE/ME Users:

Due to the driver issue, this motherboard does nto support SATAII function if your system is Windows 98 SE / ME. Besides, i fyou plan to downgrade the SATAII hard disk to SATA hard disk (from SATA II 3 Gb/s [sic] to SATA 1.5Gb/s [sic]), it is recommended to connect this downgraded SATAII hard disk to SATA connector. For any latest updates, please visit out website."

I also got a "SATAII Hard Disk Setup Guide", which shows how to properly jumper WD and Samsung drives to SATA2 mode.

I just thought I'd share this in case this information is only being included in newer boxes.

 

[Araemo]

Honestly, given all the issues people have had with the sata2 controller, if I get any more sata drives, I'm likely to also get one of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...+1193515356&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=410

 

[imported_DarkPenguin]

The sata 2 controller has been just fine for me. It is the ULI one that's been giving me grief.