EPoX "EP-9NPA+Ultra" NVIDIA nForce4 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard

[Davegod]

Any recommendations on 2gb RAM for one of these and a 3700+? I'm not one for high overclocks but for what I've spent on the rest of this comp I'm not keen on extra-value type stuff.

For comparison, I'm ebaying 2x 512mb ballistix, which sat at 2-2-2-8 2T, mainly for the quantity upgrade though I was never happy with that 2T rate considering what I paid for them at the time. Also these are the second out of three purchases from crucial/micron that have been faulty so I'm not getting crucial again, though I assume I've been unlucky and their warranty has been excellent (obviously I'll be selling the replacement sticks, not these faulty ones)

A couple around my price range, just for example cos i'm a ram noob:
Mushkin 2GB DDR XP4000 Extreme Performance
Mushkin 2GB DDR HP3200 High Performance
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200PT TwinX
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL TwinX

 

[sgtdic]

viremia, i'm assuming the mouse and keyboard work individually with the mobo, and your bios is set for usb v1.1 and 2.0? did you install mouse and/or kvm drivers?

davegod, if it was me today, i would get a step above pc3200 ram atleast. that way you know there will be no bottleneck there. although if the price is right and the timings are awesome, get some high performance pc3200. it's all personal preference.

 

[Davegod]

yeah i was thinking pc3500 or 4000 for preference but dunno what sort really. last time i was looking was when i bought the motherboard and back then there seemed to be a lot of opinions about some ram being a bit skitty with some NF4 boards? also some sticks seem to need really high voltage and I'm not sure what this one can offer.

 

[Viremia]

Originally posted by: sgtdic
viremia, i'm assuming the mouse and keyboard work individually with the mobo, and your bios is set for usb v1.1 and 2.0? did you install mouse and/or kvm drivers?

Yes, the mouse and keyboard work fine when directly connected (via USB) to either computer individually. They just don't work for the PC when plugged into the KVM. However, if I am able to switch over to the Mac when the M&K are attached to the KVM, both work fine with it. It's just with the Epox PC.

I have USB v1.1 and 2.0 selected in the BIOS and there are no drivers for the KVM.

I've uninstalled the MX1000 and keyboard drivers and tried it with Windows drivers, but it didn't work. I reinstalled the Logitech M&K drivers and still nothing. I've tried every USB port on the computer and even a USB hub inbetween the KVM and the computer.

I'm stumped personally. It worked fine with my previous computer (P4 with an Asus p845 chipset motherboard).

I was hoping it would work when the latest BIOS revision was released, but it's still the same.

 

[sgtdic]

wow, i would be stumped too. i was actually thinking about getting a usb kvm switch before. eek lol IF i were you, I would email epox tech support and ask them what's up. have you searched around forums for problems with kvms?

 

[unbot]

i've been having problems with my usb mouse logitech mx518 freezing up during gaming and now i suspect it's board related since everybody has talked about usb issues with this board.

it would start off ok and then as movements start to increase, the speed of the mouse changes drastically and then it eventually hard freezes. unplugging it and plugging it back in hot will get it to work again but it just freezes up later on and needless to say, is quite annoying while online gaming. i have it plugged directly to the mobo as well.

using the ps2 adapter doesn't go very well as it just chokes and moves extremely slowly in the game to the point where it's unplayable.

mouse drivers were just updated as well. i'm considering flashing to latest bios but not sure if i already have that or not. on bootup, it says AwardBIOS v.600PG 01/03/2006 for nforce4 chipset. is that the newest one and if not, would the newest one likely resolve this issue?

i'm about to throw up from all this mouse changing speed as it's giving me serious motion sickness! any help would be appreciated.

 

[sgtdic]

no, you dont have the latest bios. and it should fix it if it is a usb issue. maybe your mouse could be bad if the new bios doesnt work? youre the first usb mouse problem ive heard on this thread.

 

[unbot]

thanks for the reply. i flashed the bios in dos to the april release but that didn't fix it. the mouse shoud be ok since it works fine on an older computer and i never had it do this before. confused as to what the problem actually is but it does seem to be computer specific.

 

[earthsfatez]

is the northbridge cooler audible?

 

[unbot]

northbridge fan is going fine. i tried plugging it into a hub and it freezes up much quicker than if plugged directly in the back. also, when it freezes, the optical on the mouse still stays on but nothing works.....no movement, no left right buttons, nothing. any ideas/suggestions?

 

[sgtdic]

check your usb bios options. if you have winxp, then disable usb mouse support.

 

[unbot]

i'm on winxp pro. bios defaults as usb mouse support disabled but i've tried both already to no avail. tried shadow and base memory settings as well.

i plugged the logitech mouse through the PS2 port and it seems to work without freezing but it doesn't seem to respond well to quick mouse motions like with USB. not sure if that is supposed to happen...

i used an old intellimouse on the USB port and it doesn't seem to freeze. somehow it makes me think it's a combination of this high dpi mouse or the mouse drivers along with this board/processor but that's just a guess.

would getting a PCI USB adapter be worthwhile to try?

 

[Mem]

i've been having problems with my usb mouse logitech mx518 freezing up during gaming and now i suspect it's board related since everybody has talked about usb issues with this board.

I doubt it is the motherboard,check you don't have any IRQ conflicts in System Tools then go to System Information.Try moving your PCI cards around,this can sometimes solve IRQ issues or freezing in gaming with some devices.

I did not read all the posts but did you try the mouse in a different PC to rule out a faulty mouse?....FYI my Razor Diamondback mouse works great in my Epox board with latest BIOS,no USB issues period.

 

[Davegod]

How do you get RAM working at 250mhz?

Just installed some new Mushkin PC4000 (2x1gb), slotted it in, turned on went into BIOS to set to 200mhz (for initial test), loaded xp ok & got an expected result in 3dmark.

Went into bios and set memory speed at DDR500 (250mhz) and PC just loads it at 200mhz, says so on POST and CPUZ. I go back into BIOS and it still says the setting is on DDR500.

Am i missing something? There's no need to set the cpu frequency to 250 also on the 64's is there? and the HTT thing is only tied into the cpu freq right?

 

[sgtdic]

i would set your HTT to 4x and see what happens. it may be that your ram will only be better for overclocking. that way it can run at stock speeds. you might be lucky it booted. at 250 x 4 would equal your hypertransport bus, but your memory wouldnt technically be overclocked. if you got the itch, you can up your cpu freq at the same time with the 4x htt. try that at 250 also this is my opinion, but it does sound weird though. good luck, let us know what happens.

 

[Davegod]

so the hypertransport ~= 1000 thing is memory freq times multiplier? I thought it was cpu "fsb" times htt multiplier

thanks, will try this out tomorrow

 

[warbean]

Hello all,

I just installed this board and have a question about BIOS revisions with this board. It appears that all the US site has are "beta" BIOS updates. Aren't there any non beta ones at all? Has anyone encountered problems or isntability with any of these beta releases, or should I just flash to the latest version (12/06/05 beta)?

The Taiwanese version of the site also has bios releases, though the updates are done in very poor English, but at least they don't appear to be beta drivers. Anyone had luck with these?

 

[sgtdic]

use the magic bios utility that came with the mobo to flash through windows. those aren't beta on the site, if you prefer, and there have been two more releases since 12/05. the latest is dated 4/06.

 

[Davegod]

I got my BIOS from epox europe and am currently using 18 Apr 2006 version with no problems. Right enough the epox usa site only have the 12/06/2005 ?

I updated by burning the ISO to CD and booting off that, however I believe it's the general consensus that the best method for flashing BIOS's generally is to flash off a boot floppy, with windows-based ones facing the additional hazard of something else in the windows environment interfering, while CDRom's I guess less reliable than floppys (drive power failure, read failure, scratched disk). That said, people flash via windows & CD's all the time and get through it fine

 

[Davegod]

back to my overclocking newbishness, strange results. I read a little of the guides into overclocking the ath64 and thought i understood what was up. maybe i'm just confused by the wording in the BIOS, I'm not sure.

Basically I set the HTT multipler to x4, Memory frequency to 250 and left the rest at stock. Boot, POST & CPUZ show CPU at 2200mhz and memory at 200mhz (i.e. all stock). Hmm.

So I tried overclocking cpu also - CPU frequency 250, cpu ratio x9, HTT frequency x4, memory frequency 250. CPUZ says...
CPU 2250mhz (yay, expected result! 250*9=2250); memory 281mhz. WTF?

how does it get 281mhz? Incidentally, POST showed the memory at 312mhz, while CPUZ showed the 281. Naturally I'm back to stock atm.

HMMM, If I take the "cpu frequency", divide by the HTT and then multiply by "CPU ratio":
(250/4)*9=562. 562/2=281. (my OC attempt)
(200/5)*11=440. 440/2=220. (stock settings, doesnt quite work out)

 

[unbot]

thanks mem for the suggestion. i looked at the IRQs from the BIOS and then within windows and found myself thoroughly perplexed but i just figured i'd move the soundcard to another PCI slot.....no USB mouse freezes as of yet (knock on wood!). so far so good!

 

[gfngfgf]

@Davegod: The "memory frequency" is actually a divider, mem frequency to CPU Frequency (roughly speaking), so "200MHz" is 1:1, "166MHz" is 5:6, etc. There's a little bit of a lookup table in the "Quicky and Dirty A64 clocking guide" thread (link). Basically, if you set your CPU frequency to 250MHz, your memory frequency should be at 200MHz in order to actually run your memory at 250MHz. If CPU Frequency is set to 250MHz and memory frequency is set to 250MHz, then your memory is actually running at 250MHz * 5/4 = 312.5Mhz. I'm not sure where the 281MHz is coming from, either (It could be that I'm forgetting some subtlety with memory dividers).

 

[MadScientist]

The question of whether all the SATA ports on this motherboard are locked or only 3 and 4 was posted on this thread, but never answered. I was also curious about this and emailed Epox. Their answer was that all the SATA ports are locked.

 

[Davegod]

gfngfgf :beer:

 

[MadScientist]

Here's another A64 overclocking guide that's a little bit more detailed.
Link