Foxconn A74MX-K

[jedihobbit]

Anyone here do any work with one of these? If so how is the overclocking capabilities???

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813186151

 

[Zap]

I have the next step up Foxconn board, using the 780V chipset. It has quite a few overclocking settings in BIOS including the IGP core. However, I have not had much of a chance to play with it yet. For the next board up with 780G chipset, I've heard of people getting another couple hundred MHz out of the graphics core.

 

[jedihobbit]

Looking for an inexpensive home for some parts I have so went ahead and ordered it. UPS should have it at my door Friday. Zap I may be screaming for some suggestions or help along the way as this will be my first foxconn. My current four systems are 2 x NF-M2 nViews and 2 x Biostar 6100-939s.

The initial setup looks to be as follows:

Case: Tech Station
CPU: Brisbane 4000+ (stepping to come)
HSF: Zalman CNPS8000
GPU: On Board
Memory: OCZ PC2-6400 OCZ2P800R22GK

Managed to download the bios part of the manual and it doesn?t look too shabby. It seems like the main things can be accessed ?for playing?. So if the fates smile on me, may be able to add something this weekend.

 

[hans007]

i have the a7gmx-k which is basically the 780G version of this board (theres 3 foxconn 780g, but the one i have has the exact same PCB and 2 dimms slots, same sound etc).

The bios has tweaks for north and south bridge voltage, ram voltage, HT speeds, everything basically. I haven't really tried o/cing too much but it seems plenty capable.

 

[jedihobbit]

Thanks, I hope the 740 chipset will get some room to play as I was able to get the Brisbane to 3GHz on a NF-M2 nView. Looking to possibly replace a San Diago/Biostar 6100-939 with it..........at least that's what I'll tell the wife! :Q

 

[razor2025]

740G is rebranded 690G if anyone cares.

 

[jedihobbit]

Originally posted by: razor2025
740G is rebranded 690G if anyone cares.

And for the uniformed that means??

With projects quickly going down the tubes with YsSMN's GPU issue and BHrDx?s virus issue I turned to looking at the mobo and trying to get it together for testing. First off we have the box, the mobo itself, and the major parts.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...Computer/MoboBoxSM.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...Computer/ThemoboSM.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ter/ThemainpartsSM.jpg

After looking more closely at the board layout and big red flag went up. There isn?t much room around the proc area for a ?big? hsf. Time to do a dry run on the hsf cooler to see what might happen. I?ll let the pics talk for themselves.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ter/8000Problem1SM.jpg rotate 180 and http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ter/8000Problem2SM.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...er/8000Problem2aSM.jpg

Now isn?t this a crock of snit!! Another bloody problem for the day. It looks like I?m stuck unless I can do something cooler wise and this isn?t even supposed to be here much less more money for another hsf. Oh wait???check the for sale box and??.. CNPS8700 to the rescue!

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...er/8700Solution1SM.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ter/8000Problem2SM.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...er/8000Problem2aSM.jpg

Okay dodged the bullet there! However the next concern will be for the NB and Mosfets cooling. Not sure if the NB block will be enough to cool with OC?ing even with the 8700. With the mosfets ?necked? need to figure out something there.

So that?s where I am until I can get the memory out of DreamCatcher!

 

[jedihobbit]

CPU and HSF installed and everything is set up on the tech station. Fired up without issue and loaded XP-Home. Then.........the foxconn driver disk has an issue and I can't get it to start because "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix the problem." How does one reinstall when it didn't install in the first place! :disgust:

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: razor2025
740G is rebranded 690G if anyone cares.

actually thats not entirely true.


the 690g is a chipset with a 4 pipe version of the radeon x700 series core (the real card had 8 pipes). it has partial hd decode. its 80nm. the 740g is exactly the same except 55nm

780g, is basically an integrated radeon 3450 with full hd decode and is 55nm.

they are all pin compatible, the 740g uses the least power by far.

780g and 690g use about the same amount of power.

740g also comes with sb700 usually, where 690g usually comes with sb600. main difference is sb700 can have 6 sata instead of 4, and 12 usb instead of 10. though these foxconn boards still only have 4 sata portss.

 

[tcsenter]

740G is a die shrink of 690G if anyone cares.

Corrected.

 

[jedihobbit]

It seems for dram control I can get to everything (after flashing P05 bios) but the command rate. Is it hidden or am I stuck as the only way to get 2T is auto and thing that may be what is stalling my OC attempts.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: jedihobbit
My current four systems are 2 x NF-M2 nViews and 2 x Biostar 6100-939s.

Heh, I've had two Abit NF-M2 nView boards. First one died but was able to hit 360MHz HTT stable and around 380MHz unstable with a Sempron 2800+ (only 8x multiplier) running huge voltages. Second one is powering my HTPC nice and stable... and never overclocked a whit.

I've also had several Biostar Tforce6100-939 and one GeForce6100-M9. Good stuffs. My last Tforce6100-939 ran a couple years with various overclocked procs from Opteron 144 to Athlon FX-55 to finally an Athlon 64 4000+ which was my highest clocking 1MB cache single core socket 939 chip. Got 3.2GHz stable on that Biostar board, but that required lowering RAM too much. 3.12GHz stable with a higher RAM multiplier for the last year I had it. Gave it away to a needy friend a few months ago.

 

[jedihobbit]

Been right busy with trying to do three other 'puter projects last weekend as well as work with the Foxconn, so this is sort of an update.......:roll:

What I have now will be a review of the bios screens and for me after playing with the Biostars and the nViews this will take some getting used to! Also there seems, to me anyway, things I can?t get to?..more on that as we go along. So in the beginning and in theoretical order

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ns/BiosStartScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb.../BiosSysInfoScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...BiosFeaturesScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ns/FoxCCUnitScreen.jpg

then under Fox Control Center???

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ns/SmartBiosScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ntelSteppingScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ltOptionsScreenCPU.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ltOptionsScreenMem.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ns/CPUConfigScreen.jpg

Now for Advanced Chipset Features??..

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...pSetFeaturesScreen.jpg

Which has??..

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ns/MemConfigScreen.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...TimingConfigScreen.jpg

Skipped over a few ?minor? areas and finished with???.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...HealthStatusScreen.jpg

Did some playing with OC?ing initially and was able to get an 8M run of SPi @ 275 FSB, 1.45V Vcore, 2.1V vdmm, timing divider at 667 with everything else mem wise at ?default?. However could not get past 10 minutes of OCCT. Currently my perceived limit is the mem set at a 1T command rate which I can seem to be able to change to 2T. Any foxconn gurus out there that might know? Also had an issue of where I had finished doing the Windows Update download and rebooted the system. I took the opportunity to reset the mem divider to 533, and it wouldn?t boot! CMOS time??..

I will be setting up an overclocking thread so anymore of that will be there. As soon as that is done I give a link.

Update, just flashed the P05 bios and it gave me a wee bit more dram thingies??but still no command rate control!

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...NewBiosMemSettings.jpg

After working with the board for a day or so, just some simple observations. The area around the cpu is a bit tight for my liking. It eliminated the original hsf and that will be a problem for me later on if it goes where I think it is going. This might end up replacing the Biostar / Sandy combo in BHrDx so that also gives me concern about the location of the mobo 4-oin +12 connector. The PSU in BH is on the bottom and the connector is on the top. However this is not the board fault. Something that is nice as I have more than one monitor is the analog and digital video outputs. All in all it comes across as a well constructed board with options for the average person. Well worth the $50 I have in it and even better if the $10 MIR works!

Finally got around to attempting the oc?ing with hopes of coming close to what I had the Brisbane at in the nView. First and foremost the killer here is THERE IS NO WAY TO ADJUST THE MEM COMMAND RATE. Now that?s over lets get on with it, learn where stuff is and isn?t! Something else I had to get used to is that ClockGen doesn?t work with ATI. So that was ye old boot up run SPi, reboot ? adjust FSB - run SPi, reboot ? adjust FSB, reboot?.you get the picture. Now here?s were reading the back of the manual would have been nice if I had done it in the beginning. Foxconn has two utilities (would have been nice if the system cd had worked might have looked sooner!) one of which is called Fox + One. This is what works like ClkGen and would have made life a lot easier. It even more useful as you can also adjust vcore and vdmm on the fly.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...bane/OCing/FoxOne1.jpg http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...OneInsteadofClkGen.jpg

Because of the command rate being locked at 1T if you use manual mem settings I ultimately had to go all the way down to 400MHz @ 5-5-5-18-1T for clock speed to get anywhere near a decent OC. Started out at 1.425V vcore, 2.1V vdmm and left all other values at auto. Then starting at 250 FSB I would bump it up about 10 ? 15 each time and so a 4m run of SPi and when that would cap, back down about 15 and try for an 8M run. When that survived I?d drop 5 and try OCCT.

When it was all said and done I ended up with a 6hr run of OCCT @ 285FSB / 2.99GHz. Unfortunately I forgot to do a screen shot of that, but here are the core temp reports from OCCT?.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...9-01-17-22h00-CPU1.png http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...9-01-17-22h00-CPU2.png

Just for S&Gs but not going too high with the vcore, went to 1.475V and this is the furthest I reach doing 1M runs of SPi?? 305FSB for 3.20GHz.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...05FSBSPi1M1475VCut.jpg

So now I need to figure out what I?m going to do with the board and how to explain it being here to the wife! Again not bad for a cheap mobo and can only hope the next bios will give me command rate control.

Well after finding out about MemSet40 that allowed me to change the command rate, all else was forgotten and I was off to the races. The only biggie is it seems I can not boot at 553 mem divider, so ran this part of the testing @667.

Know one thing for sure Fox + One is one hell of a utility!! Made the testing a whole lot easier. Again I?ll skip the details as I spent over 2 hours bumping up the FSB and ultimately vcore to get a lot further at 667 @ 2T than I thought possible. Again the test was SPi with 1M runs until I arrived at a ?desired? setting at which time I would do an 8M run. If that worked I would then boot into that value. Ultimately I was able to boot into 290 / 3.045 and run an 8M run so then it was back to Fox + One and this is about it as 305 would reboot.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...3-3186672T1MSPiCut.jpg

Oh most of the early stuff was done at 1.45V vcore but had to bump it to 1.475V later one. The one exception is when using F + 1 I went down to 1.44V to try an 8M run at 295FSB, which??.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...76672T8MSPi144VCut.jpg

How ever when I tried to boot in at 295 or 290 it would continually reboot regardless of the vcore. I have managed to boot in to 285 @ 1.44V and now trying a 6hr run of OCCT. Something of interest here is I watching the core temps using SpdFan, CoreTemp, Fox + One, and of course OCCT. OCCT & CT agree on the low to mid 20sC while F+1 and SF agree at the low to mid 40sC.

While this may not seem like much, remember I?m now matching the 400 @ 1T with 667 @ 2T. It also just occurred to me that a limiting factor on the OC is the 740 (690) ATI 2100 on board video as it may be fighting for memory. Thoughts??

Well going to call it a night (morning!) while the system runs the OCCT for 6 (5.5 now) hours. If it lasts it will match the OCCT of the 400 @ 1T.

This mobo has kinda become a mystery for me. 400 @ 1T seems fine up to its limit, while the 553 @ 2T setting will let me boot up at 250FSB but nothing higher. Also when the 553 setting ?locks up on reboot? I have a note something like ?ATI 2100 ???.seahorse? on the screen. Now there is the 667 @ 2T which has a boot cap of 285 (with one exclusion at 290) but will not last OCCT or Prime. Also instead of the tests just stopping as normal with a bad setting I end up with a blank screen that requires a reboot. Another interesting quirk is sometimes after I exit the bios I have to hit the reset button to get it to boot as it seems to hang.

Will need to give this a rest for a while as other things demand my time, so have time for some input!

 

[jedihobbit]

Something else I might add is question(s) about the onboard ATI gpu. One of course is what appears to be a lack an ability to "enhance" its performance. ATI CCC nor RivaTuner can touch it, as I guess if possible that would be done through the Bios? Anyway here is what gpu-z tells me......

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...ane/gpuzforati2100.jpg

So what is with the GPU at 57 / 401 when factory default is supposed to be 400 / 200?????

 

[jedihobbit]

01/22/09

The system ran a 12+ hours run of OCCT that I manually terminated and therefore will call the following stable??.

CPU Freq = 290
Vcore = 1.45V**
Vdmm = 2.144V**

CPU-NB HT Link speed = X4
NCHT Incoming = 16X
NCHT Outgoing = 16X

DRAM Freq = 667
CL = 5
TRCD = 5
TRP = 5
tRCD = 2 ? 4 (shows up as 4)
TRAS = 18
TRC = 24
tWR = 6
TRRD = 5
tRWTTO, tWRRD, tWTR, tWRWR, tRDRD = Auto
tRFC0= 127.5ns
tRFC1= 127.5ns
tRFC2 = 127.5ns
tRFC3 = 127.5ns

** vcore has been dropped to 1.425V and vdmm to 2.1V and running standard F@H client until I get home tonight.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=490248

On a secondary front for those of you familiar with on board video???..UMA frame buffer size, should I leave it at AUTO or change to a ?fixed value? or 64, 128, or 256??

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...pSetFeaturesScreen.jpg

 

[agathodaimon]

Hey, was thinking of ordering this board for a HTPC (with a different video card), along with an X2 4850e.

How do you like it's performance so far?

 

[jedihobbit]

Originally posted by: agathodaimon
Hey, was thinking of ordering this board for a HTPC (with a different video card), along with an X2 4850e. How do you like it's performance so far?

Think it would work well for an HTPC! For the most part been very happy with it as i can't seem to leave things stock and it has oc'ed for me nicely.

 

[agathodaimon]

Great to hear! overclocking is probably my last consideration right now... hehe... I've never used a Foxconn before, but it looks solid.

 

[jedihobbit]

If anyone knows as it seems foxconn isn't quite that well used yet..........do I have to disable the Internal Graphics Mode before installing a stand alone gpu??? Because if I install the card without doing anything = no vid and a consistanct beep every second or so! :frown:

All the manual tells me is the Internal Graphics Mode is to Enable/Diable the intigrated UMA graphics controller.

My Biostars and nViews had no issue as it seemed to "select" automaticly.

 

[jedihobbit]

Bummer of a weekend!!! Transferred the mobo assembly into it's case and ...... nothing. Well something, the board would power up (fan headers, etc.) but no hdd or vid activity. Moved it back to the tech station "just in case" but still no joy.

So the "inexpensive" part ($49.99, free shipping, and $10 MIR) that was the sell to the wife has gone poof as the MIR ends the 5th, and it cost me $10 to ship it back to the egg for replacement.

 

[Zap]

That sucks. Clear BIOS?

 

[jedihobbit]

Cleared bios, removed and swapped componenets, yada-yada! :brokenheart:

 

[hans007]

sometimes there could b ea short on the new case. try powering it up outside the case again.

 

[jedihobbit]

Originally posted by: hans007
sometimes there could b ea short on the new case. try powering it up outside the case again.

Originally posted by: jedihobbit
.............Moved it back to the tech station "just in case" but still no joy.

Yep even gave that a try!!

 

[jedihobbit]

Well it is interesting how life gets into the way of things! Received RMA info from the egg and it was shipped out Monday 02/02 for scheduled delivery the following Monday. With the two day turn around I figured I wouldn?t have it back until sometime around the latter part of the week of 02/16.

Then I happened to be hitting newegg's open box area when I found one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813131330R , so as it turns out the egg will change from replacement to refund on the foxconn and have ordered the Asus. Fickle aren?t I?!?!?!

So this is the end of my adventures with the foxconn A74MX-K?? which is not a bad inexpensive mobo by any means! If you?re thinking about one I?d say give it a try as I would have kept mine if I hadn?t gotten so impatient.