My DP965LT worked fine

[jimmyj68]

I picked up my board at NE the end of August. Waited until mid September to finally get my C2D 6600 shipped to me. When I ordered the board I also picked up 2 gig of Patriot DDR2 800 ram.

When this thread started I soon learned that memeory was a problem with the board and my 2.1V Patriot memory was not going to work. I followed the thread and listened to the problems folks were having. Finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase the Kingston ram. NE carrys only two sets of 1.8V DDR2 800 ram with 5-5-5 timings - Kingston and Geil. Geil has had some bad reports so I opted for Kingston.

Last night I set up on my worktable a power supply (Seasonic S12 500W), spare 80gig Hitachi SATA HD, spare ASUS DVD ROM, keyboard, mouse, DP965LT with C2D 6600 under the stock Intel heatsink/fan. Plugged in the kingston ram and the vid card from my active machine - shorted the power on pins on the MB and voila! post with no problem.

Loaded WinXP with no problem. Put in the Intel supplied driver CD. Opted to load evrything offered except the Audio Studio as I don't use on-board sound. Everything loaded without a hitch except for the LAN driver. This presented a problem until I discovered that the program was popping up those "this driver is not WHQL - do you want to proceed anyway" in the background (behind the program load monitor box). because I wasn't OKing the WHQL squawk the down load kept failing. Once I clicked through on about three of these boxes the lan drivers loaded AOK and I was cooking with gas.

Went online to Intel, flashed to the latest bios, and downloaded the latest drivers for LAN, INF etc that I wanted. Skipped the onboard sound drivers.

System worked like a champ. Continued to operate fast and correctly through a number of power on/off cycles. Attacked the internet lustily (read fast) and refused to act up in any way.

Now!!!! I have to decide how I'm going to get this new board into the system I'm using now Intel D945PSN board with a Pentium D 940. I'm torn between using SYSPREP, running a repair load of WINXP, or just starting from scratch. All of the nice changes I made on the DP965LT except for the BIOS upgrade are on the HD I used to initially set the system up so when the hd in the 945 system and winXP Pro see the new board and CPU - I don't know what is liable to happen. I'm stalling because things have gone so smoothly up until now,

Recommendations???

OOPS! Meant to post this under the DP965LT thread. Can the MOD person send it where it belongs please? Thanks -

 

[hans007]

I made a very similar switch.

I also used intel branded boards , except i had the btx versions of both boards.

I had a d945paw ... and upgraded to the dg965ms (well mine is g965 thats all they have). you do not even have to do a sysprep or whtaever. just pop the board in swap the drives (i had sata drives) and i was done.

the only thing i had to do was uninstall intel desktop utilities (fan / temp thing) since it doesnt really support the 965 boards yet.

 

[jimmyj68]

Well, since I'm still outside the 965 thread I'll respond.

You're right-on hans007. I popped out my 945 board ( say popped - actually it was a bit of a pain with the ninja on it and the somewhat crowded confines of the Antec Solo), Dropped in the 965 with the Scythe Mine replacing the Ninja, and I took away the revolution 7.1 sound card I'd been using and replaced it with the Xmystique 7.1 Gold card cause I like to switch sound cards every now and then.

Tidied (sp) up everything , buttoned up the case (after a visual run check with a power on for fans etc.), hooked up everything and hit the power switch. First call was no boot disk which was probably because it couldn't sync with the old HD from 945.

No problem mused me, drop in the CD for winXP Pro and do a repair. No dice said the machine it just kept posting and reposting. Went to setup to see if there was anything amiss in the bios - and lo-and-behold the CD-ROM was missing from the disk list. Opening and closing the CD-Rom disk tray, and green lights apparently just come with 12 volts. When removing the 945 I tucked everything I disconnected as far out of the way as possible so I could get the board out. I even had to slide the HD's partially out of the hard drive cage because their ends overhang the MB.

Well I tucked the IDE cable for the CD-Rom so far out of the way that it wasn't even
visible. When I was cleaning up the cables and connections before closing the case on the new 965 I looked at the connector behind the 24 pin power plug and said OK I don't need that no floppy installed. I completely over looked the IDE connector at the bottom of the board. It took a few minutes to take the side off the case, dig out the "hidden" ide connector for the CD-ROM and plug it in to the motherboard IDE connector.

Closed up the case. Turned power back on, ran a repair reload of WINXP Pro and it has been running like a (very fast) champ ever since.

I'm glad I missed all those horrible problems detailed on the 965 thread, but I think the key to my very smooth C2D upgrade on the Intel DP965LT board is the tested and recommended memory I got from Kingston value ram. Power 1.5 volts, timings 5-5-5 XX (my machine is running at 5-5-5-18 at the moment, at 800 with 1066 plus FSB).

I also noted on Intel's website that the 965 chipset is very particular about the settings and tunings of the tiny chip on the dimm that keys the memory operation. If it isn't up to Intel specs - expect problems getting the board up and running. The memory cost all most three times the price of the board but considring my upgrade experience compared to some others it is worth it.

 

[hans007]

well... i didnt even have to do the repair install. it jus t "worked"


the key is you just need ram that is 1.8v and jedec compliant. 1.8 V is the actual standard, all the other voltages are overclocked voltages.

intel desktop boards arent really for oc/ing and memory companys now, especially the little no name ones just do not follow the epprom and voltage standards now . my computer is running on 2 x 512 mb ddr2-667 Micron OEM (like dell or hp would use). cost me $50. just gotta know what to look for i guess.

 

[jimmyj68]

You (hans007) just hit upon something I suspected had happened to the do it yourself computer component industry. The mania for overclocking has overtaken the industry to the point that the ordinary motherboard is treated like a step child, and all the attention goes to the overclockable board. That explains why there is/was only two brands of 1.8V DDR2 800 dimms available on the Egg.

As I suspected, there is more money to be made producing products for those who "save" money by overclocking their CPU. Sice it seems that Intel is the only producer of "straight" motherboards (not counting bad axe) they would be more forthcoming in their recommendations of dimms for the boards (and read the 965 chipset). It would save a lot of folks a lot of grief, including Intel.

 

[trainmaster5]

jimmyj68, you hit the nail on the head. As a long time DIY person I figured the same. You can't complain when Intel told us about the 965 chipset before the boards were released.

 

[hans007]

well the other thing is ddr2-800 yields are not super fantastic. so they take all the chips that should be able to do 1.8 v ddr2-800 and make them into say chips marked ddr2-1066 2.1 v.


a company like corsair who has already said the yield at that rate is low, would make a TON more money selling a bunch of chips as 2.1 V ddr2-1066, vs 1.8 v ddr2-800. so that is why all the ram out there that is actually marked ddr2-800 runs at say 1.9 v. all the good chips they are holding back to sell for even more.


i mean if you could actually get jedec standard ddr2-800 @ 1.8 volts for a reasonable price, you could probably always o/c it to ddr2-1066 and no one woudl ever buy $400 ram.


blame it on the overclocking community's stupidity because they are willing to pay the huge markups for this "high speed" ram, that in any other time would have just been sold as normal ddr2-800 and is now marked ddr2-1066. that and the fact that a company like say corsair is trying to make more money (i dont really blame them, its business) by speed binning ram so agressively that they have to make substandard chips ddr2-800 @ 1.9 or 2.0 volts.


btw almost all good quality micron OEM ddr2-667 1.8v chips can do ddr2-800 at 2.0 anyway at 5-5-5 timings. so... yeah, the ram business + stupid overclockers with too much money = the predicament we are in today.