Help! Asus A8V deluxe rev2 + Crucial Ballistix problem...

[lauy]

Hi

I've had my rig for a while now and i've not been able to get my memory to run at 250mhz. It is 2 x 512mb Crucial Ballistix pc4000 rated to run at 250mhz @ 2.5-3-3-8 1T and i can't seem to get it to run at even 3-4-4-10 without getting errors in memtest!

I've tried all different timings like 2.5 3 3 8, 2.5 4 4 10, 3 3 3 6, 3 3 3 10 nothin works I've got my vdimm at 2.8v (max) but i've also tried all voltages to no avail. My memory seems to run fine at 235mhz @ 2.5-2-2-5 which is what i'm running at atm, but higher fsb's it just won't do without errors. please help as i've been trying to get them working for a while now and nothing has worked!

I've tried all different bios's and running 1009.004 beta atm but i've had this problem since day 1. I've also tried changing the slots of the ram from the blue to the black but nothing changed.

Are there any known issues with this board and my memory? Or are there anymore ideas that I may not have tried ? Or have I just gotten unlucky with my memory and gotten some crap sticks...

btw I'm a new member but been browsing a bit and what a great forum!!

Thanks in advance for help

Allen

 

[djskankho]

Well, cruical thinks that ram will work with your board so call them and see what they can do for you.

But uhh, even though the ram is rated for 250, if you ran the fsb that fast you'd be running your cpu at 2750mhz. Correct me if im really wrong (kinda new to overclocking) but i think that's y your comptuer won't boot? 11x multiplier * 200fsb = 2200mhz stock cpu speed, 2585 is a decent overclock at 235 fsb

 

[lauy]

Hi

thanks for reply

When I have tried using 250fsb I have solely done so to test my memory so I've lowered my multiplier down to 10* so i have 2500mhz cpu speed. I have tried this with memory running at a lower ratio ie ram not running at 250 but cpu = 250 x 10 and it is perfectly stable but once I run ram at 250 I am gettin these errors.

Also, after a bit of testing on this overclock 235 x 11 = 2585 I have realised that it is perfectly stable for 14+ hours prime and memtest has no errors but it still locks up in games for some reason.... it is really bugging me

Any ideas on what problem is? I've noticed some other posts on this forum about lockup/freezing problems with this board but seems like it was due to the person's ram getting errors.

I don't understand why mine is locking up tho even though I get no errors. I have turned AGP to 4x and fast write disabled due to incompatibility between board and radeon 9700 pro and it works fine when not o/c....but when o/c it locks up even though it is prime/memtest stable. are the tests lying? The lockups occur pretty much in first 10 mins of startin game


thanks again

 

[Skoop]

All the parts have to play together, video included.

Really, though, in the grand scheme of things, how significant is the performance difference anyway? Have you even tried benchmarking at the various settings?

What exactly are you hoping to accomplish?

 

[lauy]

hi

All i would like is to be able to run my memory at the 250 fsb that it should be able to run at....since I paid the extra for it. In terms of difference in performance, there really isn't that much, even when it is only slightly overclocked, say 235 x 10 = 2350mhz it is still very fast and fully stable even in games, but i'd like to be able to run it at 250 x 10 ideally.

Overall, I'm just trying to see how far my cpu can o/c and i'm just trying to figure out why my memory won't run at the speeds that it should.

Thanks for reply, was just hoping someone on here would have some insight on crucial ballistix and asus a8v issues or something.

 

[Slug]

I have the same mobo and ram. RAM will NOT run at 250 mhz. I even RMA'd a set and got some new ram. Also tried 2 different CPUs. Fails memtest86+ at 250Mhz at SPD timings. Will also often lock up Windows. 240 has been my max stable at 1:1 ratio. If I use a lower ratio, HTT will be OK at 250 with ram at 200. I've even lowered the multiplier to 8 for cpu default of 2000 MHz. I tried several BIOSes up to 1009.005.
Oh yeah, PS is Antec TruePower 480.

 

[Skoop]

I think you've seen how far it will go unless you're willing to relax the timings even more, but you're already well extended.

Ratings are not guarantees. Those are lab benchmarks. The motherboard is the real world.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

It's worth noting that the motherboard/processor only support up to DDR400 officially. Crucial (and everyone else for that matter) is just being optimistic when they rate their products to anything beyond that.

 

[lauy]

thanks for reply

Sorry to hear you have same problem slug! but kind of glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. Is it the motherboard that is holding us back then? I've not been able to test any other good overclockable memory in this board so I can't say.

Skoop - thanks for input. I am just quite disappointed that I can't achieve 250mhz as I have seen a lot of people online with the same memory get those speeds and even more with other boards. I wasn't sure whether it is my actual memory or my board that is giving the problem though.

ChineseDemocracyGNR - yes. It is true that the board only supports up to DDR400, but this is true for all motherboards yet there is a lot of overclockers achieving even fsb's of 300.


My question is is it the board and memory combo that is giving me the problem or one or the other ?

I'm satisfied as it is now as it is much faster than my old XP 2000+ but I am considering buying some new memory to be able to push fsb further but wanted to try every last thing I could to get this memory to run faster... Thanks for advice anyway, I don't think I'll be buying Crucial ram again though

 

[npapanik]

Have the same problem here.
I am currently running 9x255=2295 at default VCore voltage,
Memory set to 191MHZ (3:2 ratio). Memtest reports no errors at this speed.
At 250MHz with 2.5,4,4,10 (as stated in SPD) loads of errors....
Hope this a Bios issue.

 

[bo3bber]

Well... I have the same trouble as you all. A8V deluxe, with PC4000 RAM (250 MHz). But I cannot seem to overclock the RAM much past 210 Mhz before it falls over in Prime95.

Here's what I think is going on:
The A8V is only specified to use DDR400 (200 Mhz) Ram. That is the max the board is expected to take. So, anything beyond that is overclocking the motherboard chipset itself. It appears to me that the RAM bus on the motherboard cannot be overclocked by much, as it's already running at an extremely high rate. And, regardless of your RAM.

So, I believe the RAM bus cannot be overclocked much past 200 Mhz, and that it doesn't have anything to do with the RAM itself.


On my board, I can overclock the CPU radically, as long as I keep the memory bus happy.

I recommend trying to keep the memory bus at 200 Mhz, and playing with the FSB and CPU to get the performance you can.

Another alternative would be to try more cooling on the chipset, maybe active cooling on the Northbridge heatsink is in order...

Good luck,
bo3bber

 

[bo3bber]

Hey, I have some much better results. 20% overclock for now, not killer yet, but much better than before. Started with a 3200+ Winchester, at 2Ghz.

I have succeeded in overclocking to 2400Mhz, which is the 3800+ rating. 100% solid, 6 hours on Prime95, 3 hours on Jedi Academy without any errors.

As I noted last time, the Memory bus cannot be overclocked on the A8V. I have DDR500 RAM, but that was a waste, because the board doesn't support anything above 200Mhz/DDR400.

That was the big difference for my overclocking success, to keep the Memory bus at the Auto setting.

Hardware:
3200+, Socket 939 Winchester
ASUS A8V Deluxe 2.0
1Gig (512x2) DDR500 RAM
74Gig Raptor


Here's the setup that works for me:

HTT/FSB = 240
CPU Multiplier = 10
Pushes core speed to 2400Mhz
Memory is on Auto setting, winds up at 200 Mhz, with a 12 divisor. (2400/12=200)
3 3 3 8 11 16 settings, from Auto. Latencies aren't particularly important.
CPU voltage 1.7v
RAM voltage 2.8v

The things that made the biggest difference for me were upping the CPU voltage (max temp is still only 50c), and keeping the Memory speed right at 200Mhz. Leaving everything else Auto, including leaving the HTT bus at 1000Mhz.

To get to this state, I started with the Adaptive Overclocking at 10% level (which fails because it overclocks the memory bus to 220 too). Rebooted, and went back in to change to Manual for the CPU, leaving everything else as specified by the Adaptive Overclocker (mostly memory voltage, cpu voltage, auto for Memory, as far as I can tell; but there may have been other things that helped).


I'm sure we all have the goal of getting to 2600 Mhz, as Anand demonstrated. Notably, Anand used an nVidia chipset, not ours, so we may not make it. Still, this is a good step. Hope you can at least achieve the 2400 Mhz here, with your A8V.

I'm liking that I have a $585 chip for $197, and I hope you can too.


Please report back here if this helps you out.

Good luck,
bo3bber

 

[Slug]

Are you at 1T or 2T with those settings?

 

[bo3bber]

Confusing, that's how it's set...

I would expect it to be at 1T, because the RAM is set on Auto, it's running at a much slower speed than it's spec-ed, at 200Mhz, instead of 250, and the memory is running loose at 3-3-3.

But, I can't tell in a way that I have confidence. CPU-Z doesn't report that setting. I downloaded and tried Sandra, which seems to report it as 2T. But, it also reports the memory as 3.0-3-3-3CL 2CMD, instead of the 3.0-3-3-3-8 reported by CPU-Z. It also reports the 12v line as 15.5v, which cannot possibly be right. I don't have any experience with Sandra, maybe it's right.


I will try setting the RAM manually, and specify 1T specifically.

Good suggestion. Which software do you trust to report correctly?

Thanks,
bo3bber

 

[Slug]

I think the auto setting defaults to 2T. The only way to know for sure is the Sandra memory benchmark. I would expect 1T to be over 5000 at 200MHz, even at cas 3. I don't know of any software that correctly reads the value.

 

[bo3bber]

Thanks for the tip.

I ran Sandra benchmark in both cases, once with 2T command set to disabled, and once on Auto.

Both results were the same, at 5983 MB/s. Implying that it must default to 1T as we expected.


So far so good. I'm going to keep pushing up the HTT/FSB using logical multiples to see if I can still run stable even faster.

-bo3bber

 

[Slug]

Well, I'm now up to an even 2400MHz with your tips at 1.5v with your suggestions. Thanks. Keep us posted.

 

[rolandbl]

I have a different problem with the A8V DeLuxe. It seems like the CPU fan connector is not delkivering enough power to the fan. I have tried turning of cool and quiet and Q-fan in the Bios.... still no luck.

To get the fan going I have to use the power connector....

And Its not my power supply... I have a BeQuiet PSU which provides 550 wats. Um thinking motherboard flaw...? Any ideas?

Roland

 

[Skoop]

Roland, this thread is about memory timings.

Start your own thread if you have a fan problem.

 

[KheeWhee]

I have the same mobo and OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 memory. I can easely overclocked my 3500+ to either 244*10.5 (2562mhz) mem at 2.5 3 3 10 1T 1:1 over 6500 in sandra or 256*10 mem at 2 2 2 10 1T divider at 5/6 mem working at 213 mhz. i could go higher but the temp starts to go up very fast after this frequency.
The way to set the memory on that board to 1T is first set 2T to disable, then set the memory to limit 2:1 (actually 1:1). The memory will then work at 1T.
The board will do over 260 easely as long as the memory is set at a divider 5/6. Just set the memclock at auto instead of limit.

 

[bo3bber]

Interesting results KheeWhee.

I wanted to try to replicate your results too. I have been able to overclock the CPU to 2400, from 2000, with no errors. But, have not been able to overclock the RAM at all.

To try to reproduce your results, I set it up as:
1T = disabled 2T in BIOS.
FSB/HTT = 220 x10
CPU = 2200
HTTb = 800 (4x multiplier) (not sure what exactly this is called, I'm labeling it bus to differentiate it from the HTT FSB.)

RAM is on Limit, set to 1:1, so that it would be overclocked the same amount to 220 (440 at DDR, my RAM is rated at 250, so it would theoretically be fine.) Leaving all refresh and access rates at Auto.

The modest 10% overclock of the CPU should be completely fine, because it ran flawlessly at twice that.

The RAM is overclocked at 20%, perhaps a bit high, but it should work.

Result: It runs Prime95 without any trouble, but when I run the 3d game Jedi Academy, I get a blue screen inside of 5 minutes.

Given the questions raised in this forum, I still question whether it is possible to reliably overclock the RAM bus itself.


KheeWhee, can you do me a favor and try a 3d game, and let us know if you are still stable at the 244 1:1 setting? If you can run with no errors at that rating, then my theory is flawed.

Thanks,
bo3bber

 

[KheeWhee]

You are right...
I rarely play games, but for your benifit, i tried. The motherboard rebooted by itself after 20 minutes of play. When it rebooted, i got a message stating overclocking failure.
I mainly use the computer for genealogy program and reports. Even though, the reports generated are very memory extensive and takes sometimes over 40 seconds to generate ( i have a very very large file (256 megs) with over 200 generations), i guess that playing games are more demanding and overheats the memory controller in the CPU.
I have been using this setup to work for more than 2 months with absolutely no failure prior to this.

 

[KheeWhee]

Another thing that makes me think that the memory controller overheats is that at 244*10.5 2562mhz mem at 1:1 the temp is 49 idle to 54 prime.
At 256*10 = 2560 mem at 5/6 the temp is only 39 idle and 43 prime.
The cpu is at 1.50 volts in both cases.
I quess i will be working at 256*10 from now on. The superpi is the same at 34 sec 1m and 80 seconds 2m and sandra only dropped 450 points.
Thanks bo3bber.

 

[bo3bber]

Wow! Thanks for doing the test KheeWhee! Very interesting. I'd thought Prime95 would be the best test, but it's clear that 3d games exercise the system in a different way that is equally valuable.


I also went back to try to overclock only the RAM, leaving the CPU stock at 2Ghz. Bumping the RAM rate to even 210Mhz would give me an error within about an hour on Jedi. So, even a modest 5% bump in RAM speed would fail, even at the 2.8v setting.

I definitely don't have any any room to overclock the RAM, and I'd say others on this thread have similar trouble. I'm not sure if Anand was overclocking the RAM for their tests, but I think not, given the tight 2-2-2-10 timings they used.

So, it's not necessarily the motherboard, it could also be the on-Athlon memory controller. In any case, it does not appear to be worth any time to try to get above DDR400.


I then went back to try to up my CPU rate, and the best I've been able to achieve is 2400 at the 240 HTTx10 rate. And I have to up the CPUv to 1.7v (temp 53c, not too bad), which Anand did not have to do.

Even 2450 falls over within about 5 hours on Prime, so it looks like I will not be lucky enough to get to 2610, but I'm pretty happy with a 100% solid 2400Ghz.

Good luck to everyone.

-bo3bber

 

[lauy]

hi again


sorry for not posting for a while...... been slightly busy and not really been o/c much.

However, I have noticed that the memory runs faster as you increase the CPU speed (multiplier). So I can reach higher fsb's at 1:1 ratio at 10x than I can at 11x. Atm, I am running 230 x 11 @ 2530mhz with memory timings at 2.5-2-2-5-1T and it is completely stable. However, if I increase fsb anymore with 11x then it becomes unstable pretty much immediately. However, If I run at 10x multiplier, I can run at 237mhz fsb so 10x237 @ same timings and 1:1 ratio. However, the memory is slower even though it is at a higher fsb!

Also, I was told that running cpu/memory synchronously rather than unsync is better so that is why I have stuck to using 1:1 ratio.

Bo3bber - about not overclocking ram at all and just overclocking cpu.... it is good idea if you have poor quality ram but overclocking ram as well as CPU together greatly increases the performance and with PC4000 ballistix modules, it shouldn't really be a problem.

Someone mentioned that it wasn't necessarily the Ballistix ram but the motherboard... but other people with OCZ pc3200 plat rev2 can achieve fsb's of over 250 in the same board at 1:1 . Maybe it is a Ballistix/A8V issue ?!

It seems like all of us who have purchased an A8V along with some Ballistix modules are all in the same boat though. Hope it can be fixed in a bios update or something.