Turning Back the Clock

[imported_inspire]

I had a fun time overclocking, and I learned a lot. But, until Asus figures a way for me to give my memory more than 1.95v and fixes some other quirks, I'm stuck with some incoveniences.

The first is that I can't do a soft reboot with anything higher than a 10% Overclock. The second is that I have to run my RAM on a 1:2 divider with any 'decent' Overclock (defined as > 2.5 GHz). I've also been getting BSODs every once and again at the end of my shutdown sequence (something like vsdatant.sys - I haven't really bothered with it, but it looks like it may be chipset driver issues...)

So, I'm thinking of dropping down to stock vcore and trying for about a 10% overclock. If my memory still gives me issues, I'll go back to stock speeds and try to raise the voltage (from 1.90v to 1.95v - the board's max :disgust: ) and tighten some timings.

Of course the other option is to solder a 20k Ohm VR onto my board and raise the memory voltage myself, but I'm not feeling that daring right now.

So, my question (current rig is in the sig) - Will I really notice a performance decrease in apps (like ZA Pro, Adaware, AVG, Spybot scans - or SAS, Word, Firefox, WMP, Derive, etc.?) and games (HL2 is the most graphically intensive game I run right now)?

 

[BoboKatt]

So you want to go from 2600mhz go to what... 2200?? Bleh I honestly play with my OC on my X2 3800+ all the time and settled on 2400 (4800+ speed). Mem is running at 240 so 1-1. Anyhow I mean benchmarks are slower if I go to 2200 of course but in RL I never ever noted it. In games it's what I do with my video cad that matters... settings, drivers.. OC'ing it.

 

[CCityInstaller]

I can completely feel your pain when it comes to Asus and their lying about product specs and lack of support. I am running their last gen Crossfire MB, and the bios will not allow me to do a soft reboot and retain any settings. If I restart, I boot into windows with a core clock of 1.5Ghz on my 3800X2. How is your Vcore? Does it dance all over the place? My board is limited to a max of 1.45V, which limits my o/c to 2.6Ghz. I have a feeling that I could easily do 2.8Ghz with 1.5V. Now that I am finished ranting, lets talk about your question. Did you try setting every possible option in the bios from Auto to manual, especially concerning your memory? I did this on the advice of another forum member, and it at least helped me a little. If you haven't, I would give it a try. How old is the MB? Most e-tailers offer a 30 return period, so you could return the board and get another brand. I know this is a pain in the butt, but if I had the option I would do it in a heart beat. As far as the 400mhz loss in question, I don't think it would be a huge impact on day to day use. You might notice a loss of a few FPS in some games, but if HL2 is what you mainly play, I don't think it will be enough to really matter.

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: CCityInstaller
I can completely feel your pain when it comes to Asus and their lying about product specs and lack of support. I am running their last gen Crossfire MB, and the bios will not allow me to do a soft reboot and retain any settings. If I restart, I boot into windows with a core clock of 1.5Ghz on my 3800X2. How is your Vcore? Does it dance all over the place? My board is limited to a max of 1.45V, which limits my o/c to 2.6Ghz. I have a feeling that I could easily do 2.8Ghz with 1.5V. Now that I am finished ranting, lets talk about your question. Did you try setting every possible option in the bios from Auto to manual, especially concerning your memory? I did this on the advice of another forum member, and it at least helped me a little. If you haven't, I would give it a try. How old is the MB? Most e-tailers offer a 30 return period, so you could return the board and get another brand. I know this is a pain in the butt, but if I had the option I would do it in a heart beat. As far as the 400mhz loss in question, I don't think it would be a huge impact on day to day use. You might notice a loss of a few FPS in some games, but if HL2 is what you mainly play, I don't think it will be enough to really matter.

Yeah, I've tried manually locking in every setting. That really sucks that you vcore is limited to 1.45v and you reboot @ 1.5 GHz. I had submitted an RMA request to ZZF, and I was on the fence about it, but I never actually went through with it. I've been hoping that someday Asus will make good on this.

Anyway, that's a totally different story - and I've already laid it all out in the M2N-E sticky in the mobos forum. But, thanks for the help guys, I'll try playing with it today or tomorrow and see if I can get it more stable.

 

[imported_inspire]

Well, I have an update. I've clocked back to stock speeds, but I managed to drop the vcore to 1.25v and I'm getting 24c Idle temps and 33c Load temps (Dual-Core SP2004 heat test) in 22c ambient. I figured that if I was going to clock back all the way to stock, I should at least have something to show for it. The biggest performance hit I've noticed so far is about 6 seconds in SuperPi 32M. I haven't tried any games, but I usually run HL2 with FRAPS, soI'll find out pretty quick.

Memory is at DDR2 800 5-5-5-15 1T - 800 5-5-5-12 1T failed SuperPi 32M. Soft reboot problems are gone and time will tell about the BSODs. Spent the rest of the night fighting with my firmware on my optical drives :disgust: after a friend told me that the DVD I burned for him wouldn't read on his computer. Hopefully that fixes it.

I plan on enabling CnQ now that I'm at stock. I'd also like to fiddle with other power management features, but I'm a little hesitant. I haven't fiddled with stuff like that in a long time, but what I remember was that telling Windows 98 to turn off your HD after an hour was basically asking for it to crash. Anybody have experience with this sort of thing?

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: CCityInstaller
I can completely feel your pain when it comes to Asus and their lying about product specs and lack of support. I am running their last gen Crossfire MB, and the bios will not allow me to do a soft reboot and retain any settings. If I restart, I boot into windows with a core clock of 1.5Ghz on my 3800X2. How is your Vcore? Does it dance all over the place? My board is limited to a max of 1.45V, which limits my o/c to 2.6Ghz. I have a feeling that I could easily do 2.8Ghz with 1.5V.

You don't have the latest gen crossfire MB, the A8R32-MVP is the latest one (I have it) and it overclocks fine. The A8R-MVP is known to be buggy in the OC area. My 3700+ is at 2.86GHz (A 30% overclock) and it has been running perfectly since april when I first got it. I am no pro at overclocking either. They advertised on the box a 60% HTT overclock guaranteed and the highest HTT I could get stable was 62% or so. Pity the CPU can't do that. Really, mine is everything Asus advertised.

Originally posted by: inspire
I plan on enabling CnQ now that I'm at stock. I'd also like to fiddle with other power management features, but I'm a little hesitant. I haven't fiddled with stuff like that in a long time, but what I remember was that telling Windows 98 to turn off your HD after an hour was basically asking for it to crash. Anybody have experience with this sort of thing?

XP doesn't crash like win98 did, they fixed that.

 

[CP5670]

The first is that I can't do a soft reboot with anything higher than a 10% Overclock.

This seems to be a recurring problem on Asus boards in general. I had the same issue with the last two I used (older ones, A7N8X and A8V dlx), even at stock speeds. I thought Asus would have gotten around to fixing it given how long it's been since then.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: CP5670

The first is that I can't do a soft reboot with anything higher than a 10% Overclock.

This seems to be a recurring problem on Asus boards in general. I had the same issue with the last two I used (older ones, A7N8X and A8V dlx), even at stock speeds. I thought Asus would have gotten around to fixing it given how long it's been since then.

If it ain't broke (i.e.-- people are still buying your boards), then they don't fix it. Asus has been like that since day one, which is why I've only ever owned two of their boards, and I've been building systems for well over 10 years now.

 

[mastertech01]

Ive owned some mighty great Asus boards... true marvels. Ive also owned some complete duds. P4C533 and NCCH-DL were the worst two that come to mind.

Thing is, now aday they change platform almost monthly. No way will they RMA every board they release trying to keep up with the daily new releases of so many different parts of the board. The best you can do is hope they get lucky with a complete set of quality parts they can build a bios and drivers for in one shot. For many situations they replace the board with a new version before they can isolate the problems with the former. And they arent going to go bankrupt to make the tweakers happy. That goes for almost every motherboard maker period.

 

[CCityInstaller]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: CCityInstaller
I can completely feel your pain when it comes to Asus and their lying about product specs and lack of support. I am running their last gen Crossfire MB, and the bios will not allow me to do a soft reboot and retain any settings. If I restart, I boot into windows with a core clock of 1.5Ghz on my 3800X2. How is your Vcore? Does it dance all over the place? My board is limited to a max of 1.45V, which limits my o/c to 2.6Ghz. I have a feeling that I could easily do 2.8Ghz with 1.5V.

You don't have the latest gen crossfire MB, the A8R32-MVP is the latest one (I have it) and it overclocks fine. The A8R-MVP is known to be buggy in the OC area. My 3700+ is at 2.86GHz (A 30% overclock) and it has been running perfectly since april when I first got it. I am no pro at overclocking either. They advertised on the box a 60% HTT overclock guaranteed and the highest HTT I could get stable was 62% or so. Pity the CPU can't do that. Really, mine is everything Asus advertised.

Originally posted by: inspire
I plan on enabling CnQ now that I'm at stock. I'd also like to fiddle with other power management features, but I'm a little hesitant. I haven't fiddled with stuff like that in a long time, but what I remember was that telling Windows 98 to turn off your HD after an hour was basically asking for it to crash. Anybody have experience with this sort of thing?

XP doesn't crash like win98 did, they fixed that.

If you were to reread my post, you would see that I said that I have their last gen Crossfire MB, not the latest. I am well aware that the A8R-32MVP is their latest. Asus is well aware of the shortcommings concering the A8R-MVP, they simply refuse to fix them. I shouldn't have to solder a resistor on my MB to get a stable Vcore, whether I'm o/cing or not.