- Jun 30, 2004
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FLASH!! BIOS UPDATES MAY ADD uCODE ENHANCEMENTS THAT EITHER REDUCE TEMPERATURES, RAISE POTENTIAL OVER-CLOCK SETTINGS, OR BOTH
by BonzaiDuck, your AQ news service ["Aff - Quack!!"]
This is a heads-up -- and its accuracy is tentative, but promising nevertheless. I cannot see why it would not have general applicability to motherboards of various manufacture -- compatible with both C2D and C2Q processors.
In recent days or weeks, those of us cavemen who choose to push forward on air-cooling have noticed that the C2Q is a real pop-tart-toaster. Our water-cooling guru agrees, noting the thermal output and how certain radiators are not adequate to keep the load temperatures in the low-50s or below.
I've proven that you can reduce these temperatures by 5 to 7C degrees with motherboard and CPU-cooler ducting. We've also had quite a spate of discussions about the TR Ultra 120 Extreme, synthetic diamond thermal paste and other things which promise marginal improvements in core temperature values.
Basically, I do not believe it can be refuted -- given the relationship between temperature and electrical resistance, and the relationship between voltage and temperature, that it is possible to keep the cores, chipset and other components cool enough so that stable settings can be maintained for the same clock speed at lower voltage. This, in turn, means even more moderation in temperatures.
I decided to risk Cadillac money with uncertain hopes that I'd get a Cadillac motherboard. So I broke with my tradition of choosing modestly priced boards of good manufacture, made my own interpretations of early customer reviews that had an ambivalent mix of ratings, and shelled out my clams for a Striker Extreme. I may already have said-- given some benchmarks that show that the STriker falls a tad short of some other boards on extreme sustainable external frequencies (sometimes called "FSB" which in turn is often expressed as a quad-pumped value of 4x the external frequency) -- that the STriker is a Cadillac, but it is not a Ferrari or a Corvette.
Those who purchased the SE late last year found themselves with BIOS revisions 501 through 901(?), and the 1004 BIOS upgrade did not appear until March '07. [Again, keep in mind my argument that this has general applicability -- beyond ASUS boards or particular models.] I got the 1004 BIOS, which had cleared up some anomalies in "set" voltages versus "monitored" voltages versus "actual" voltages, and the inability of the board to implement "set" voltages beyond a certain level. The board also had provision for some eight fans and corresponding temperature sensors, but users on the ASUS forums noted that they couldn't get the fan-control features to work well.
Along came three more BIOS revisions -- 1102, 1301 and 1303. The last two appeared on the ASUS download pages during this last month of July. All of these revisions listed as fixes the implementation of microcode to improve the performance of "certain" processors, and other enhancements that "assist in the over-clocking of certain processors." [I love ASUS' penchant for vagueness, like I enjoy certain kinds of weeds in my kitchen garden.]
Just for the improvement in fan-control, I had a near-disaster with a BIOS upgrade when I thoughtlessly forgot to change the settings back to the stock or "Auto" values -- or for that matter, clear the CMOS before making the flash. Knowledge will cost you money, time is money and impatience or urgency in continuing with a project may pressure you to trade off some wallet-filler against those other variables. But I'm extremely pleased that I can now e-mail ASUS and ask them to cancel my RMA request of two weeks ago.
Now -- I've finally flashed BIOS revision 1303 -- successfully.
Guess what? And I had a suspicion that such might be the case -- the thermal wattage for the C2Q / Q6600 currently in use -- a B3 stepping -- has been tamed -- or so it seems -- slightly. Peak stock temperatures at 73F I have shown in other posts to be around 52C for the hottest core -- and my temps will be more than 5C lower than those of other users for the motherboard ducting. But now, at a 3 Ghz clock rate and FSB of 1,480 Mhz /DDR2 740 Mhz, the temperatures are about 2C lower than at previous over-clocks and the same room ambients at 2xORTHOS load. Further, I had been unable to get beyond an FSB bus speed of 1,440 -- even at the lower multiplier of 8. It now appears that I can do this at a voltage about 0.03V below the Intel "Maximum" spec, and I may be able to drop it a notch or two, or otherwise push the clock speed a tad higher without raising the voltage.
Since the Kentsfield processor appeared late last year, I suggest to everyone who has acquired the B3 stepping -- make a visit to the motherboard web-site and see if BIOS revisions offer some hope of improving performance on that and other Core 2 processors.
A word of caution -- Clear your CMOS and "Flash carefully." And you might want to file this link away for insurance, just in case:
BIOSMan