Q6600 on Gig P35-DS4 Rev 2, couple of questions

[ltdrifter]

Hi y'all, long time lurker, first posting.

I have the setup in my sig, runs perfectly stable, relatively fast, 12484 3DMarks, Crysis at 3-50 FPS, pretty much everything I want. I'm almost happy.

I picked the P35 after beating my head against the wall with an Asus P5N32-Sli Plus for a month, I couldn't get that sucker to 3.0 and keep it stable, is the third example of an Nvidia chipped Asus board I've had that wouldn't OC, I'm done with them. I don't need Sli, and besides, eventually someone will figure out how to hack the 169 drivers to allow it on Crossfire boards anyway.

Here's the first thing I have an issue with, if I try to go 400+ with an 8x multi, it'll go, boot, run, and passes Prime 95. Thing is, it is slow, drops my 3DMark scores into the 5000 range. It won't crash or lockup, no errors in Prime or Superpi, just hideously slow. Crysis is unplayable. SecondLife runs, but same thing, horrid framerates, COD4 is sluggish, but runs. I tried CPU voltage up to 1.425, added to FSB and MCH, nothing seems to help. Temperatures look good when I do this. Is there something I'm missing? I'd kinda like to be able to run my RAM synch and bring the timings down, they'll run at Cas 3 *800 if I tweak it a bit.

Second, I'm not real sure on the benchies, is 12484 3DMarks and a 10 second 32M Superpi first pass what most of you would expect from this combination? 30-50 FPS in Crysis on high?

 

[VirtualLarry]

It sounds like with the 400x8 configuration, that the PCI-E link width is being set to 1x in the bios. Check that with CPU-Z.

This may be due to the video card not recieving enough power.

 

[Tempered81]

thats exactly whats happening, you're having to draw too many volts and power throught the mobo's PWM to push 4 cores x 400fsb, that it cuts the power to the Pci-e lanes. Make sure you have a 24pin connection, 12v atx aux power connection, and a 4-pin molex connection all powering the mobo when you do that... If you do, then its your motherboards PWM that cant handle 4 cores & 400mhz and 16x pci-e simultaneously.

 

[ltdrifter]

Ok, I'll check that out and get back with y'all, thanks for the tip.

 

[ltdrifter]

Ok, ran it up to 399x8, 2.0 Mem Multi (synch), 3dMark came up to 13200 and change, rock stable at 3.1v CPU Core, seems smoother than 356*9 and no difference at all in temperatures. 28* Idle, 58* full load. Games are playing a lot smoother, picked up a few FPS in COD4, Crysis and Second Life. Tested it by Priming for 12 hours then running the last mission in Crysis again on High.

Pretty much eliminates power unless I'm missing something.

So, who wants to bet on what will happen if I tip it back over 400 FSB? The situation I described in my original post was repeated several times before I went back to *9.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Going to try going back over the 400 mark and see if maybe it was just a glitch. Will get back. Still open to ideas.

 

[tenax]

so..you have the 2.1 version which i assume means you also have the des function which disables some of the available power phases as necessary to cut down on the mobos power drawer when enabled..which in turn could cause a lot of issues..(it's very new, it's not recommended to use when overclocking). do you have it installed/enabled? that's the first thing i'd check out. if so, shut it down and go from there.

 

[ltdrifter]

Des function? I didn't see that anywhere, maybe in a later BIOS? I think mine is F8. Mind telling me which page in the BIOS that is supposed to be on?

I tried 400*8 again this morning, it seems to be working now. Nothing has changed that I can see, which is really strange.

 

[tenax]

don't know where it is..i just know that gigabyte p35 board revision has the feature. if you look in your start>programs you 'll probably see it there like you would other gigabyte software like easy tune. it stands for dynamic energy saver and i don't think it will be in the bios at all. tweaked through the software..a nice bonus if you're not overclocking, lots of people commenting on how it is not designed for overclocking and are hoping a program update for the software or somehow a bios update, will allow it to work better for that. i don't think you can mix shutting down a boards power phases and overclocking in any case and expect great results so good luck on that. DES stands for "dynamic energy saver".

here's the info on it from AT:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3206

it was introduced in november/early december on a number of p35 revision 2.1 boards. it was definitely a hardware modification as well as i have a rev.2 of your board and it is not compatible with mine even with the latest bios (to my consternation as i'd like to try it)

initially, the boxes that the early 2.1's were shipped in didn't have anything on the box to indicate it had DES (november, dec 2.1 revisions) by january, they were shipping the same 2.1 boards, but in a retooled box with prominent DES info on them, hence why you may not have had any awareness of DES. who knows..likely didn't even show up in the early manuals either but trust me, you've got it..question is..did you install it without knowing it? quite possibly and enabled by default.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So if one plans to overclock on a Gigabyte board, would it be good to try to pick up a non-DES board now, before they're all gone?

I have my two rev 1.0 P35-DS3Rs, but I was going to help a friend build an oc'ed quad-core rig, using a DS4.

I hope you can disable it in BIOS, so I don't have to resort to installing Windows' tweaking tools for the mobo.

 

[tenax]

hi larry..if the desired board is a ds4, i wouldn't let that stop me. i'm sure that you can either:

a) disable the function when you don't want to use it (there are various degrees that you can set the software at in terms of it's implementation so i imagine you can select zero. from what i recall, you could create various profiles with it.

b) simply make sure you don't install that portion of the software from cds, much like easytune.

i don't have it myself so i can't be 100% certain, but assuming it's much like an easytune application..there will be options to disable, remove easily.

 

[tenax]

yep, you can simply turn it on and off..check out the graphic of it on this page:

http://www.tweaktown.com/popIm...E_des_6-phase_full.jpg