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Expect good gains? 4CoreDual-SATA2 -> GA-EP45-UD3P

F

francisA

Member
My current rig (in my sig) runs well currently but the E5200 with the PCI-E HD4850 can only do 3.33GHz (266fsb) and 625/993 respectively. Got the DDR400 RAM running at 3-4-4-8 @ 2.5v (200Mhz).

Any slight overclock renders the system unstable. I still don't know why as I can run my E5200 up to 280fsb (24hrs Prime95 stable) with the AGP x1950xt but for some reason or another, as soon as I replaced the GPU with the PCI-E HD4850, it has resisted overclocking.

Since I have DDR2 800 (4GB) coming and already have the components to migrate from a crossover setup to a proper setup, I am thinking of getting a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P and use all the components I have now.

Will moving to the UD3P provide a better platform for overclocking while maintaining stability? Somewhere down the line after I've sold my older P4C800-E setup (3.0C + 2GB OCZ RAM) - hehehe if it's worth anything, I'm also planning on getting a faster processor, maybe a E8400.

Will you consider this a good move? Or a waste of $$$ at this point and wait for a much bigger jump hardware-wise.

Am planning on keeping the 4CoreDual as a 2nd setup using my AGP x1950xt for my son so we both can play COD series alongside.

Oh yes, I do use the rig for web surfing, gaming (COD, Crysis, GTR, GTL, etc), as well as video-editing using Premiere and DVD-authoring.


Thanks.
 
You would be surprised at how little the ASRock's older chipset gives up in performance to newer chipsets running identical configuration. But overclocking the E5200 would give you a nice boost, which the ASRock is preventing when using the HD 4850. If both systems were able to support the same overclock with HD 4850, that might be different.

Getting the overclock you want + the HD 4850's full potential is considerable weight in favor of the new motherboard. Whether you should spend as much for the GA-EP45-UD3P or could get what you want from a less expensive P45 or P43 board, I don't have any recommendations there.
 
Thanks tcsenter.

The UD3P just stands out from my limited research as it has potential for Crossfire (not that I am planning to do it but it's there if I'll ever need it) as well as other features that I find good.

But been looking at other motherboards too currently. What bothers me is just the limitation that the 4CoreDual has imposed on my setup once PCI-E got in the picture. The PCI-E 4x really doesn't bother me much but the fact that I can't do any more with the setup and got me stuck to where I'm at that bugs me most.
 
I say go for it, I jumped from the 4CoreDual-SATA2 to the Asrock P45TS-R and don't regret it. You've probably already read my post about the switch I made in the 4CoreDual-SATA2 thread. Still a socket 775 board but i'm going to run it for quite a while.
 
Thanks lowrider69. Yeah, read your post and your reply to my question on that thread.

I think I'm gonna go for it. Will keep the 4CoreDual-SATA2 and have my son use it for learning how to build a PC as well as gaming. I don't think it's really a bad board, just lacking in some ways.
 
Going from PCIe 4x to 16x alone makes a difference. I think it might have been this site or Toms Hardware that stated with the newer generation video cards(Nvidia 88xx and up, ATI 4850 and up) that PCIe 4x drops performance by 30%. I had my 9600GT in the Sata2 and it ran well but I knew it was bottlenecked by the 4x slot. Also I wasn't wild about the Sata2's limited(shakey) quad support and that it couldn't support 1333 fsb or above. It's a great crossover board but I felt kind of trapped with it after 11 months. Right now I have my e6420 mildy overclocked to 8x333, 2.66GHz on lower than stock voltage. The difference in games with the PCIe 2.0 16x slot and the mild overclock is pretty substantial.

I might jump up to a different CPU down the road but for now i'm happy with the speed and I plan on sitting with this setup for a long while. The next major jump for me will be a i7 setup.

 
I think I should pay more attention to what I read!! LOL 🙂

Originally I thought the PCI-E with 4 lanes really doesn't affect my 4850 much but after finding and reading the Tom's HW article, does look like 4x vs 16x would matter much more than 5% for higher end cards.

And the comments from you and tcsenter confirms what I observe on my SATA2 now where my 4850 just doesn't want to clock any higher. I'll be picking up the stuff this weekend and hopefully build it next few days.

Moreso, I run my 4850 at my monitor's native resolution of 1920x1200 so the 16x lanes might squeeze more performance out of the vid card.
 
I'm gonna have to report back on this question of mine.

Finally got my UD3P, moved over all the other items on my sig except the Zalman (replaced it with a Xigmatek SD964). So far so good. Haven't done much messing around with settings but currently at 3.675GHz (350fsb x 10.5) with the DDR2 running at 420Mhz (840 effective) and my HD4850 overclocked to 690/1128.

IntelBurnTest (20 samples) says it Passed
Orthos ran for 4hrs and no Errors.
Memtest has shown no errors either

Am happy with it. Crysis running smooth.

The only issue I'm seeing are the benchmarking apps. 3dMark05 just hangs and seems to be in an endless loop. Doesn't want to continue after showing the initial logo. Gotta investigate on that.

Thanks again guys. The SATA2 was indeed holding back my oc and HD4850.

Edit:
Oddly enough, 3dMark06 works fine ............ hmmmm
 
Oh yeah, thanks for reminding {actually had a thread about that and hadn't posted on that one yet}

Unfortunately I got lazy {it was midnight} and didn't want to take the hsf out again just in case the mods didn't work so right off the bat, I took out the mods {BSEL and vid} and dropped the clean E5200 into the UD3P.

UD3P recognized it as 800Mhz with 1.225v so I proceeded with XP install and stuff at stock detected settings.

Once all's set, again, due to my laziness or maybe eagerness, I just used Easytune and it did 350x9 for 3.175GHz and it booted right up without issues. Passed the tests fine. THe only thing I didn't like about Easytune is that it overvolts a lot. It gave the E5200 1.42x volts so I hurriedly restarted and changed to 1.3625v in the BIOS.

After some tweaking, I tried 350x10 as UD3P thinks it can handle 350fsb and once again it worked. Upped the multiplier by 0.5 to where I'm at now and so far it's all working great.

I love how easy to tune {aka EasyTune 🙂 } this board.

I do think that I may have hit a wall though. Can't boot into Windows if I give it 11 multiplier. Don't know what yet as I have stopped fiddling with it for now.
 
Seems like you're doing alright with the new board. I just boosted the OC on my e6240 from 8x333 to 7x400, I tried 8x400 for giggles but she immediately rebooted once I saw the desktop. I probably have to boost the vcore above stock which i'm not doing with the stock heatsink, so I compromised with 7x400 with lower than stock voltage..1.26v. I kept a 1:1 ratio with the memory.

Good luck with your board.
 
Thanks mate.

More tweaking needed. I have my vcore at 1.3375v right now at 350fsb. Not sure if I'll keep 350fsb with 10.5 multi. Still reading up on what's better, lower fsb/higher multi or the other way.

But definitely, good gains switching over from SATA2 to UD3P
 
Usually a higher FSB is the way to go. I went from 2.66 8x333 to 2.8 7x400, not much of a increase in Ghz but the i'll take the 1600mhz fsb over the 1333mhz fsb.
 
FSB speeds are overhyped in my opinion, unless You can maintain a 1:1 ratio with Your Ram.
Performance in games doesn't increase a lot just from pure FSB increase, not with the core design
anyway.

So, FrancisA, what are Your benchmark scores now?
 
I always maintain a 1:1 ratio with the ram. There's is a performance increase, overhyped or not with a higher FSB. You also see more of a benefit from it depending on the application. If you can reach the same Ghz by lowering the multiplier and raising the FSB that's the way to go IMO. Example 10x266= 2.66 vs. 8X333=2.66, you would get better performance with 8x333. May not be monumental, but an increase is an increase.
 
Well, I did some testing just out of curiosity. So here are the results

FSB........................350.........300.........333........333..........341
Multiplier...............10.5........12.5........11.0.......11.0.........11.0
CPU Frequency.....3675.......3750......3663.......3663........3751
vCore.................1.3375...1.3625....1.3250....1.3375....1.3625

RAM Strap................2.4..........2.6.........2.4..........2.4..........2.4
RAM Freq.................420.........390.....399.6......399.6.......409.2

GPU Core Freq........690.........690.........690.........625.........690
GPU Mem Freq......1138.......1138.......1138.........993........1138

3dMark05............19205.....19429.....19808.....18926.....19658
3dMark06............12959.....13041.....13151.....12153.....12992

*** 4th sample is the default clock for the HD4850

Idle temps are between 35-37C and load temps upon stabilizing under Orthos 56-57C with a slight spike to 60C.

IntelBurnInTest, 20 samples, returned ok on all settings above.

What's interesting with the results is that the 333x11 gave the best benchmark results. I don't know much about all the different effects of the fsb vs multi so can't really say why it beat the 350 x 10.5.

Crysis and COD all works much much better, partly or rather, mostly because I was able to oc my 4850 up to 690/1138.

Compared to my previous setup, it's not dramatic but a good change nonetheless.
E5200 @ 3.48GHz (278fsb)
4GB G.Skill PI Black DDR2 800 @ 4-4-4-10 2T
Sapphire HD4850 (660/993)

3dMark05 - 18290
3dMark06 - 11859

Maybe if I'll have the time, I'll bench with exactly the same settings as above on the UD3P and find out if I can see any difference.

I think I must've hit a wall here, either fsb- or frequency-wise. Fed it all the way to 1.3625v, but did not go over (a little scared). Any combination to get me to 3.8GHz makes it not post or go to XP logon and just hang. Tried both higher FSB/lower multi or lower FSB/higher multi combo don't work past 3.75GHz. Oh well, I guess what I attained is pretty good for me, so far .................
 
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