Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P Rev 2.0 Problem

[Tired of the Bull]

Just built a new system and everything went great. OS is installed and working perfectly. My problem began when I tried to overclock the E2160 I installed. I can easily change all the necessary setting in the BIOS but when I reboot and check with CPU-Z it reports a 6x multiplier and 200 FSB eventhough I set 9x and 333 FSB in the BIOS.

I have cleared the CMOS which was recommended in a post I found on google but the problem remains.

Any ideas?

 

[Vandraad2]

I too have started experiencing the exact same problem with my P35-DS3P, but it's not happening regularly. After setting up the OC in the BIOS I can go through a series of shutdown/startup cycles over the course of a few hours and the settings stick. Overnight, however, the settings revert back to the default.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

OK,

I did a lot of changes in the BIOS but I think one of the following settings was the culprit:

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
CPU EIST Function


I'm very early into determining the final settings but it's running fine now 333 x 9 at 1.38v. This was my first attempt after setting the two settings above to DISABLED. I also set several other setting to manual but I had done this before with no luck. I'm currently running the 8Gig of Super Talent RAM at stock voltage and the multiplier manually set to keep it DDR2800 speed.

I believe I can bump the speed up while also lowering the voltage. I think temp will be my biggest problem. While I type this I have ORTHOS running in Blend Mode and my CPU is ranging from 56c - 62c.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Lowered the voltage to 1.32 and so far so good.

 

[Vandraad2]

Of those 2 settings you listed, I had CPU EIST Function disabled and still any BIOS changes wont hold.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Disable both...

What have you done in your attempt to overclock? Many of the setting that have an auto option need to be set manually. Also what is your CPU and RAM?

PCI-E needs to be set manually to "100"
System Memory Multiplier should be Manual and set to allow your memory to run at its rated speed for the best hope of successful OC. In my case that was a multiplier that set the RAM to DDR2 800. Many here overclock the RAM as well but I found it easier to buy RAM that matched what I was hoping to attain in the OC of the CPU.

For me I left all voltages except the CPU at default levels and I'm slowly lowering the CPU voltage to find my lowest stable setting.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

I forgot to ask which BIOS version are you using.

 

[Vandraad2]

For my overclock it was increasing the FSB from 333 to 400 so my E6750 would run at 3.2Ghz. Memory was at DDR2 800. All voltages were stock. BIOS is F6. I set the PCI-E manually to 100. What is odd that for 3 days the BIOS accepted and kept my settings then suddenly one night when I turned on my computer it went through a series of rapid cycle on/cycle off and now any settings involved with OC will NOT stick.

 

[tenax]

it likely at the same time goes back to default settings..or "some of the same" overclock settings that you might have saved into your profile. by that, i mean for example:

i have a bios profile saved called 1volt. that's an underclocked cpu voltage profile i run. it has many custom settings..memory to run at 800, cpu eist disabled, system ram .3+ on voltage, system voltage + .1 , custom ram timings, etc. so, if i push my system too hard when playing and cause it to do the try to restart but can't..and i know it's going to the default setting eventually..or i have to reset the cmos, it does that. then i go into the bios upon a successful default startup and F11 to load one of my saved profiles i know that worked. good concept right? having a number of safe profiles to assure successful reboot after it defaults. great concept, but flawed..as when you reload one of the saved profiles, only some of the settings from that saved profile stick. my board always will go back to 667 on ram, even though 400 in my saved profile, ram and other over voltages sometimes sometimes are still there, sometimes not, my custom ram timings vs spd, sometimes there, sometimes not.

short story..you have to write down your successful basic settings to remember them all from an overclock and duplicate exactly after a failed boot.

case in point..i was having a reboot issue yesterday..i thought i remembered to change all my settings to those from the successful profile i wanted to load. turns out on the default reboot, it engaged turbo mode, rather than standard mode (on the hidden mst settings page) and would not reboot until i fixed that. and no, normally i don't run it using turbo mode. small thing, but easy to overlook when checking about 30 different bios settings.

in regards to the profile thing..in a perfect world, those saved profiles would automatically be called up from the backup bios after a cmos reset or would be saved in such a way so they are unaffected. on a sort of a soft reset, the bios profile seems to work as intended and reload the profile you saved exactly as saved. on a hard reset (pull the plug, reset the cmos, remove battery) is where the concept breaks down.

 

[Vandraad2]

I've noticed an odd "habit" when making BIOS changes with this board and then using the "Save and Exit" selection on the main screen. All other boards simply do a restart, screen goes black and then you see the BIOS POST screen showing processor, memory, blah blah blah. This board, however, actually totally shuts down the computer for about 5 seconds then powers back up (at which point it does it's annoying cycle on/off bull and ignores my just saved BIOS changes.

 

[Billbo]

Some of us are experiencing similar problems with the P35-DS3L. In my case it ran perfect for several days before the booting problem occurred, after which it continued for over a week. Trying a different bios, clearing cmos and all that made no difference. It eventually stopped doing it and my E2160 has been mildly OC'ed to 2.70GHz for the past week without issues. I want to go higher but am worried playing with the settings will cause the problem again. Gigabyte don't seem to have a solution either.

 

[Mondoman]

Regarding the OP's "problem", it's not a problem, rather just normal functioning of the CPU. While idling or under low load (as with CPU-Z without any big load running), the CPU automatically reduces its multiplier and voltage to save energy. As soon as the CPU load goes up, the CPU automatically restores the multiplier (to 9x in this case) and voltage. This is the Enhanced Intel Speed Step technology, and there's no reason to turn it off, as it doesn't hurt anything. If you, for example, start up Orthos at the same time, you'll see the multiplier and voltage readings pop back up.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Mondoman, I agree with you to a point. The changing of the multiplier from 6 to 9 when the system is under load is a normal function. What is not normal is that it would ignore the FSB setting I made in the BIOS. When I would run Orthos the multiplier would go up to 9 and then fall back to 6 when I stopped Orthos but the FSB stayed at 200 regardless of the load and independent of what I set in the BIOS.

 

[Billbo]

Did it ignore it or reset the FSB back to 200?