Asus 975 badaxe or Asus p5b deluxe

[phillyman36]

Hey for some reason on my badaxe mobo the hd light and cpu activity light (for the front panel of my [pc case) doesnt work. The bios on the intel board is limited and the mod for the board is a little out my league. im thinking about getting the 965 deluxe asus board or even the 975 p5w dh (leaning towards the 965). What do you all think switch or wait a month or 2 and see if better mobo are out. the problem doesnt seem to effect the performance of my rig

 

[Talcite]

You just stated like 3 unrelated problems there I think... I'll try to answer it, but tell me if I interpreted it wrong.

1. your mobo hd light doesn't work. (there's no such thing as a cpu activity light!) That's because you either plugged it in backwards on the mobo. LEDs only work one way, not like a lightbulb. If you reverse the orientation, then it'll work. And make sure you have it in the right pins (ofcourse)

2. The bios isn't limited. It's actually quite verbose if you unlock it. And since you seem like you want to get a new board.. Why don't you try the hardware mods first? You'll save yourself $250 if it works. And if it doesn't, you've lost nothing. Get a friend to do it if you're not up for it.

3. The 965 boards aren't that great at the moment. Alot of people are complaining about them. Anyways, according to the AT guide on the main page, you should get the p5w dh. The price difference isn't that great. and it reaches higher overclocks. If you can wait a month or 2, then wait.

4. What problem? the light not working? of course it doesn't affect the performance of your rig. The led wires are backwards. that's it.

 

[phillyman36]

Sorry im lacking a little sleep right know and typed it out at work. Its the Hd activity light ill double check but i was sure i plugged it in right. I think a little part of me is kicking myself for not going for the P5w. The intel board is stable but im wishing i had a easier way to overclock

 

[Talcite]

oic... you have the intel XBX revision 304 right? why not just use conductive ink pen and do the basic mod for vcore unlocks?

 

[phillyman36]

i have the 305 revision

 

[Talcite]

305? what? it's out? ahh crap, my 304 just arrived this morning -_-' What's the changes?

 

[phillyman36]

Dont know what the changes are i went to a computer show and when i checked the sticker it had rev 305. newegg.com sells the 975 xbx and in the review section people have stated that they received rev 305. My bios was still 1304 so i had to update it to the newer 1334 but no problems posting at all with 1304

 

[Madellga]

Originally posted by: Talcite
You just stated like 3 unrelated problems there I think... I'll try to answer it, but tell me if I interpreted it wrong.


3. The 965 boards aren't that great at the moment. Alot of people are complaining about them. Anyways, according to the AT guide on the main page, you should get the p5w dh. The price difference isn't that great. and it reaches higher overclocks. If you can wait a month or 2, then wait.

Hum, have a look at Gary's thread about E6400 and Gigabyte boards. Great results.
I have no issues here either. Easiest 50% o/c ever!!
Done and 16 hour Prime95 stable.

Anandtech's guides are always a good reference but they are not the holy book.

The same guide you mentioned says the Gigabyte DQ6 highest FSB is around 376MHz.
Check this out:
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/282/dq6pluse640027ghzfsb450yg9.jpg
450MHz x 6 at 6-6-6 at low Vdim. It did boot and could run Prime95 for 40 minutes. I interrupted the test myself.

 

[Talcite]

That guide was actually written quite awhile ago. Gigabyte probably released a ton of bios updates by now.

Well it looks like some high end 965 boards are 1/2 decent. Unfortunately they're about the same price as a 975 board. I'd say go with the 975 since you can do crossfire and SLI (with hacked drivers).

It's really up to you... but the D975XBX got 5.5 ghz on LN2 cooling over at xtremesys.org. That was a 1M superPI in 9 seconds or something.

 

[Skott]

I thought it was Intel that makes the BadAxe???

 

[phillyman36]

Originally posted by: Skott
I thought it was Intel that makes the BadAxe???

Yes Intel does make the Badaxe which is what i have now. Im trying to decide on whether to dump the Badaxe and get the Asus P5W Dh

 

[Skott]

I dont have my P5W DH yet. Got everything else ordered though. From everything I read is that the BadAxe isnt very stable of a mobo. Granted they all got problems at this point but ASUS has been trotting out new BIOS updates faster than Intel apparently. Right now P5W DH > BadAxe.

 

[Talcite]

Finally got everything setup. Running on IDE and out of case for now.

My xbx is rev 304, with an IDT clock gen.

It's fine, sort of. I had alot of problems with bios revision 1304, but 1334 seems to fix that now. I should have gotten better memory though =p. I need 2.1v just to run 6400 5-5-5-12.

I seem to be getting random errors every now and then though. This could be anything. I'm running win 2k pro, gold. Took awhile to setup because the LAN drivers were compressed in a program... and the program wouldn't run on anything less than SP4. Fixed all that now. I was originally doing pc6400 5-5-5-12 at 1.9v, but it didn't seem stable. I ran memtest 386+ and got a few errors so that's why I upped it to 2.1v.

The ICH7R runs REALLLY hot. I'm currently using a desk fan because the silent 7600GT i've got and the SB chipset is just so damn hot. I'm hoping it'll cool down once I'm able to put the case door on.

I'll tell you guys more about the board after i'm done setting it up. AFAIK, the intel board OCs fine. If you hardware mod it, some people have gotten 5.5ghz. The world record for conroe is on a D975xbx.