- Jan 20, 2004
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Well, after my review of the MSI K9A2 Platinum here which had over 5500 views, I thought I would share my thought on my new setup involving AMDs reletively new SB750 boards- specifically the DFI 790FXB M2RSH.
First up the board is an AM2+ SB750 board- this means your current Athlon X2 AM2 CPUs will work aswell as the Phenoms and the incoming Deneb 45nm (after a Bios update). This board is also a beast, my last DFI board (Lan Party NF4 SLI-D) is still going strong in my Linux desktop did not miss a beat and so far I am getting the same impression from this new board. Now, the MSI K9A2 Platinum was an excellent board, but the SB750 brings with it faster USB performance and most importantly (for me at least
) better overclocking, AMD have stated a guaranteed 100-300mhz increase in OC when properly configured over that of an SB600 board (such as the K9A2 Platinum)- very nice. I will be using Watercooling in my Overclocking so be aware of that- in general water leads to lower temps and thus a higher OC most of the time. Also note this board is not an expensive board reletive to other high end boards, it was considerably cheaper than the Foxconn A79-S which is a similar SB750/790FX board, and around the price of the 790GX boards.
Lets get down to it, Here it is unpacked and ready to go note that I have installed the CPU and waterblock at this time (D-Tek Fuzion V1 with Quad Nozzle). In my opinion it is a good layout, note the Mosfets have a solid heatsink that looks like it was probably made my Thermalright- this heatsink and the NB heatsink are fastened by screws not pushpins this is essential to maintaining good contact with the PCB, also makes it easy to remove the heatsinks if need be. Also I should note its not all roses, the manual you get with this board is pretty light at that, nowhere near as much documentation as my last MSI board, the DFI manual only explains the physical components, the K9A2 Plat details the Bios settings aswell. The best resources are on the net, you can find them in a quick google search of this board.
BIOS
After a days work it was up and running Vista 64. My first intentions were to checkout the BIOS, in typical DFI fashion there is everything and the Kitchen sink thrown in. This is great for us enthusiasts as it means we can get the most out of our components as there is seldom anything left to teak. What I was pleased to see what fully adjustable CPU and NB multipliers within the Bios (non black edition CPUs only have an adjustable NB multi). This is a great leap over what we saw with the SB600 boards as many did not feature NB overclocking and if they did it was sketchy at best. This time is there and it works well, you will however need to know what the NB FID, NB DID, CPU FID, CPU DID values are and the best place for that information can be found here at Xtremesystems, see Tony's 2nd post where it is explained. Apart from that everything is as you'd expect in the BIOS, Voltage adjustments (that are in small increments) for CPU, Memory, NB, HT, PCI Frequency, A myriad of Memory clock values (will investigate them later) and temp monitoring.
Overclocking - Currently 3.4ghz/2.4NB
This is still very much a work in progress, I have only had the board a little under a week at time of me writing this so I will update with any more relevant info. Memory is on Auto timings at 5-5-5-15 800mhz. The NB is also an essential part of overclocking a Pheom, a higher NB frequency reduces the latency of the L3 cache and can lead to large performance gains, stock is 2ghz on a 9950- it is 1.8 on cheaper models.
Presently at:
3.2ghz and 2.4ghz NB Really all I have done is raise the Voltage two notches over stock, increase memory frequency to its rated 2.0v and change the multiplier to 16. This is stable in AOD which I have found to be just as good as prime95 for stability testing as with my X2 it heated it to the same temp as Prime.
1hr AOD stable
Everest benchmark 3.2ghz auto mem timings
Update1 - 3.3Ghz/ 2.4ghz NB stable pic all that was required was a slight voltage bump and NB voltage bump to around 1.33v
Update2: Latest progress, 3.4ghz 2.4ghz NB
Still testing, I upped the ACC value to +6% all cores over the previous 4% all cores and I did gain some stability in early Prime testing. So far it has not crashed and all things are rosey....fingers crossed. Very glad I have gotten to 3.4ghz. I should also note I upped Vcore to 1.44v Real (under load) which is 1.45v in Bios.
Will update as i go, very pleased so far, easy to use board, beginners need not be put off by the complex Bios, the Default values are stable and work well and it is not too difficult if all you need to do is get it running.
First up the board is an AM2+ SB750 board- this means your current Athlon X2 AM2 CPUs will work aswell as the Phenoms and the incoming Deneb 45nm (after a Bios update). This board is also a beast, my last DFI board (Lan Party NF4 SLI-D) is still going strong in my Linux desktop did not miss a beat and so far I am getting the same impression from this new board. Now, the MSI K9A2 Platinum was an excellent board, but the SB750 brings with it faster USB performance and most importantly (for me at least
) better overclocking, AMD have stated a guaranteed 100-300mhz increase in OC when properly configured over that of an SB600 board (such as the K9A2 Platinum)- very nice. I will be using Watercooling in my Overclocking so be aware of that- in general water leads to lower temps and thus a higher OC most of the time. Also note this board is not an expensive board reletive to other high end boards, it was considerably cheaper than the Foxconn A79-S which is a similar SB750/790FX board, and around the price of the 790GX boards. Lets get down to it, Here it is unpacked and ready to go note that I have installed the CPU and waterblock at this time (D-Tek Fuzion V1 with Quad Nozzle). In my opinion it is a good layout, note the Mosfets have a solid heatsink that looks like it was probably made my Thermalright- this heatsink and the NB heatsink are fastened by screws not pushpins this is essential to maintaining good contact with the PCB, also makes it easy to remove the heatsinks if need be. Also I should note its not all roses, the manual you get with this board is pretty light at that, nowhere near as much documentation as my last MSI board, the DFI manual only explains the physical components, the K9A2 Plat details the Bios settings aswell. The best resources are on the net, you can find them in a quick google search of this board.
BIOS
After a days work it was up and running Vista 64. My first intentions were to checkout the BIOS, in typical DFI fashion there is everything and the Kitchen sink thrown in. This is great for us enthusiasts as it means we can get the most out of our components as there is seldom anything left to teak. What I was pleased to see what fully adjustable CPU and NB multipliers within the Bios (non black edition CPUs only have an adjustable NB multi). This is a great leap over what we saw with the SB600 boards as many did not feature NB overclocking and if they did it was sketchy at best. This time is there and it works well, you will however need to know what the NB FID, NB DID, CPU FID, CPU DID values are and the best place for that information can be found here at Xtremesystems, see Tony's 2nd post where it is explained. Apart from that everything is as you'd expect in the BIOS, Voltage adjustments (that are in small increments) for CPU, Memory, NB, HT, PCI Frequency, A myriad of Memory clock values (will investigate them later) and temp monitoring.
Overclocking - Currently 3.4ghz/2.4NB
This is still very much a work in progress, I have only had the board a little under a week at time of me writing this so I will update with any more relevant info. Memory is on Auto timings at 5-5-5-15 800mhz. The NB is also an essential part of overclocking a Pheom, a higher NB frequency reduces the latency of the L3 cache and can lead to large performance gains, stock is 2ghz on a 9950- it is 1.8 on cheaper models.
Presently at:
3.2ghz and 2.4ghz NB Really all I have done is raise the Voltage two notches over stock, increase memory frequency to its rated 2.0v and change the multiplier to 16. This is stable in AOD which I have found to be just as good as prime95 for stability testing as with my X2 it heated it to the same temp as Prime.
1hr AOD stable
Everest benchmark 3.2ghz auto mem timings
Update1 - 3.3Ghz/ 2.4ghz NB stable pic all that was required was a slight voltage bump and NB voltage bump to around 1.33v
Update2: Latest progress, 3.4ghz 2.4ghz NB
Still testing, I upped the ACC value to +6% all cores over the previous 4% all cores and I did gain some stability in early Prime testing. So far it has not crashed and all things are rosey....fingers crossed. Very glad I have gotten to 3.4ghz. I should also note I upped Vcore to 1.44v Real (under load) which is 1.45v in Bios.
Will update as i go, very pleased so far, easy to use board, beginners need not be put off by the complex Bios, the Default values are stable and work well and it is not too difficult if all you need to do is get it running.
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