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

[Slug]

I am not at all confident in the settings in my last few posts. I get random lockups at one time or another. I can't pin it down to one thing. I'm back to 240 HTT with auto divider, mem at 200 cas 2-3-3-10-1T. CPU at 2400. Only thing I've kept is READ PREAMBLE at 9ns. All mem settings on AUTO except tRAS at 10. I thought I'd try that for grins.

I agree. It is most likely a combo of the board and the ram. I'd love to have an MSI Neo2 platinum to test with to see what this ram is capable of. I know my cpu hits a wall at about 2410. If I up voltage to 1.7, I can get 2500, but I don't like the temps at that voltage.

 

[Walbodiddy]

Hi, All.

Chiming in as another A8V Deluxe/Ballistix user - I've experienced the same difficulty when attempting to push the RAM at all past 200 MHz. I did have it running at 220 for a short while (1:1) but rather quickly tired of the very consistent lock-ups in benchmark apps or 3d games.

Mostly, I thought it might interest you guys that I have been able to push the CPU to 2.67 (at 10x) with no stability issues. I was running it at 2.8 for a short time but backed it off after Sandra's RAM benchmark crashed consistently (hadn't had any lockups in games or apps but stability is very important to me and I felt uncomfortable pushing it so hard).

I also hope, though don't really expect, that Asus can address this in a BIOS update. I'm far from dissatisfied, though, running the 3200+ at 4000+ speeds and the RAM still hits 5937 in Sandra, which isn't bad.

Edit: Wait, I have OC'd the RAM successfully - at 267, the 4:3 divider has my RAM running at 400.50! See? It can be done!


-Seth

 

[Slug]

Try disabling the onboard Promise controller. I'm not sure the locks function properly at all frequencies.

 

[Walbodiddy]

Hey, Slug -

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, I've had the Promise controller disabled since I built the system. I did have trouble with the VIA controller throwing garbage until I manually set the 66/33 lock - no issues following that.

-Seth

 

[lapierrem]

I didn't see it addressed elsewhere in the thread, but the games crashing is likely the fault of Sp2 and the DEP feature. It's been known to crash AMD systems even with good memory

 

[Slug]

Forgive my ignorance, but how do I disable the DEP feature?

Nevermind, found it here.

 

[Skipholiday]

hmmm ?

 

[MordecuS]

I also am working with the A8V Deluxe Rev.2 and PC4000 Ballistix (512x2). I have been able to OC my 3500+ up to 2.73GHz and it was stable enough to play games and a few other benchmarks. The highest I can get my RAM is 231, anything above that and it wont boot. I have narrowed it down to either my mobo or the mem controller on my CPU. I want to think that my RAM is capable of surpassing that but I dont know because I cant get it past that. Others I have talked to have had very similar problems.

 

[KheeWhee]

Originally posted by: bo3bber
:disgust:

The question has been, is it the Board or the RAM? I think I have a pretty solid answer: neither. Allow me to explain.


I wanted to see if anyone was having luck with the A8V, so I did some highly targeted google searches to see if anyone has much success. The answer is yes:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthrea...370&page=7&pp=15&highlight=a8v+corsair

That's a mighty big thread, but there are multiple people there who have success getting their RAM up to 245Mhz or so. It's also worth noting that KheeWhee has a solid configuration at 247Mhz.

So, that's an existence proof that the board can overclock the RAM, and run solidly. So, it's not the board.


Secondly, I wanted to see if my RAM in particular wasn't good enough to reach these numbers.

My Corsair XMS4000 contains Hynix BT-43 RAM chips, which successfully overclock to 530Mhz on other boards. These are the same chips used in some very successful Geil and OCZ RAM sticks, so this is not sleazy RAM.
See Anand's review at:
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=1849&p=8

For Lauy's question about Ballistix RAM specifically, Ballistix is also high quality RAM, there is no question it will run at the rated speed on other boards. Ballistix PC4000 contain Micron 46V32M8 -5B G chips.
See Anand's review at:
http://anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2145&p=18

That review compares quite a number of RAM, including Ballistix 3200, which reportedly use the same Micron chips as the 4000. Also of note on that graph is that my Corsair XMS went to 530Mhz at the max. Crucial 3200 went to 514Mhz.

The RAM we are all using is unimpeachable. So, it's not the RAM.


Hence, my conclusion of neither. With a lean toward the board being at 'fault' because most of us are overclocking the board, its spec is only DDR400.

When reading that first thread, it's clear that there are specific RAM/Board combinations that are more successful than ours. For example, the OCZ PC3200 that KheeWhee uses is successful more often than not. The Ballistix 4000 version is not successful very often. Same with my Corsair XMS.

Here is a thread talking specifically about which RAM chips work best for A8V:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=332591

Thus, the limiting factor is really that some RAM just have minor incompatabilities with the board, and thus cannot overclock well. They will run fine at the rated speed of the board, but have no headroom. This is the fundamental premise of overclocking of course, no guarantees, just lots of guesses.


So, to get those higher numbers, you either have to change RAM, or change your board.

One last possiblity is that we aren't doing it right. It's clear that the Auto settings aren't particularly smart when it comes to the RAM. Slug has demonstrated that he can get to 240 with Ballistix, by tweaking the Read Preamble and AsyncLat settings. This didn't work for XMS RAM though. Slug, how confident are you in your current settings?


I cannot get more than 10% out of the board, with my RAM (220 Mhz maxes out). But, my CPU goes to 2400 from 2000, which is my main concern. Still, KheeWhee and others can get about 25% more out of the board, by using the OCZ RAM. From this board's perspective, that RAM is superior.

From my perspective, the added headroom isn't enough to justify the conversion just yet. I'm probably going to move to a PCI express SLI board anyway, and will try to use my XMS Ram there. But, I may just get a new AGP video card when the prices drop instead.

The ASUS is a good choice from the perspective of being reliable and well supported. But, I'd say it's clearly not the preferred overclockers board, regardless of the reviews. If you have exactly the right RAM, it's fine, but that wasn't at all clear when I bought the board... To be blunt, we chose poorly.


There is a chance that a BIOS update will fix the problems, because it's possible that the OCZ work well simply because they match the BIOS settings better. I'm not holding my breath.

If you want to swap RAM, the ones that seemed to work best were the OCZ 3700EB, and OCZ Platinum 3200 Rev 2. There was a lot of propaganda regarding other RAM, these were two that stood out as working for people who clearly cared about 100% stability.

I will play with the RAM settings a bit more, but can't really justify much more time for a 10% improvement. Now that my RAM/overclocking education is almost complete....


Please let me know if you think my conclusions are wrong. And hey, hope this helps.

Thanks,
bo3bber

Just an update, i bought a second a8v board a few weeks ago for testing. Well, this new board will do easely 300*8 and even 310*8 using clockgen, memory at 5/6. Memory (ocz plat. rev 2.0) will easely do 250mhz at 2.5-3-3-7 1:1 at 2.7 volts. In fact, i am only limited by the max of my cpu which is about 2520mhz at 1.45 volts. The bios used on this new board is 1010.003. This new board seems to have fixed all of prior problems. I am now using 250*10 mem at 1:1 1T and absolutely no problems at all since 3 weeks.