krose
Senior member
- Aug 1, 2004
- 513
- 15
- 81
I have enabled some hidden features in the K8AN211 BIOS dated 09/08/04.
1. Load fail-safe defaults enabled.
2. Smart Doc anti-burn shield CPU warning temp enabled.
3. Smart Doc anti-burn shield Shut down temp enabled.
Don't know if Smart Doc actually works, but gives me a little extra peace of mind.
You can get it here.
Now if I can figure out how to increase the HTT over 250...
Use at your own risk, I will not be responsible for damaged or malfunctioning components as a result of using this BIOS
1. Load fail-safe defaults enabled.
2. Smart Doc anti-burn shield CPU warning temp enabled.
3. Smart Doc anti-burn shield Shut down temp enabled.
Don't know if Smart Doc actually works, but gives me a little extra peace of mind.
You can get it here.
Now if I can figure out how to increase the HTT over 250...
Use at your own risk, I will not be responsible for damaged or malfunctioning components as a result of using this BIOS
I bought this board with 4 sata drives 2 to go in a raid set on the nVidia raid controller and 2 for the promise, however when I try to enable both controlers, the promise controller doesnt seem to work; I never get the screen to configure the array, also I start to get errors from the nvidia controller upon windows shutdown. I'm assuming the controllers are conflicting with each other? Has anyone successfully used both of these raid controllers concurrently?
krose - I tried using clockgen but couldn't seem to match the OC that I get through bios. I don't know if I had something set incorrectly, but I suspected that it was my PCI bus going so far over 33MHz when I adjust the CPU slider (it caused my PCI bus to go up to up around 40MHz) and I don't think my Audigy 2 ZS liked that very much since the system locked up and then rebooted. I did have my AGP/PCI locked at 66/33 in bios, but it looks like clockgen is overriding it. Any recommendations?
Blammo - what FSB are you running your CPU at? When your mem is set to "auto" in bios (instead of 166), it will run at the same speed as your FSB. So, if you want your mem to run DDR500 you'll have to run your CPU at 250 (10x250, 9x250, etc). It will take some playing around in bios, but you should be able to get there with one stick of Ballistix and your 3000+. I'd try these settings for your RAM - Auto, 1T, 2.5-3-10-3, and 2.8V, and these settings for your CPU - 10X250, 4X HT, and 1.55V. Those worked for me with the Ballistix PC4000 (with one stick, two sticks required 2T) and 3000+.
doobie
Blammo - what FSB are you running your CPU at? When your mem is set to "auto" in bios (instead of 166), it will run at the same speed as your FSB. So, if you want your mem to run DDR500 you'll have to run your CPU at 250 (10x250, 9x250, etc). It will take some playing around in bios, but you should be able to get there with one stick of Ballistix and your 3000+. I'd try these settings for your RAM - Auto, 1T, 2.5-3-10-3, and 2.8V, and these settings for your CPU - 10X250, 4X HT, and 1.55V. Those worked for me with the Ballistix PC4000 (with one stick, two sticks required 2T) and 3000+.
doobie
krose
Senior member
- Aug 1, 2004
- 513
- 15
- 81
I get the same overclock thru BIOS or clockgen, about 2.4 GHz with a 3000+ and 512 MB Adata PC4000. I can run 240x10 thru BIOS or 267x9 with clockgen. I also noticed that clockgen indicated that PCI bus was high but Santa Cruz TB and Hauppauge PVR250 ran fine. I then set the AGP to 67 in BIOS and the PCI never moves now in clockgen. Obviously I get more mem bandwidth at 267x9 than 240x10 but SuperPi still gives same result 1M=37 seconds.
Thank you so much. I was trying soltek.com.tw and it was always down. I was starting this thing this company went out of business. I hope it will fix my problems.
Hey Ken, thanks for the tip! I set the AGP lock to 67 in bios and now the PCI clock doesn't budge when using clockgen. Now I have some more tweaking to do. 
doobie
doobie
Ok, I tried both the BIOSes from above and neither seemed to fix my problems. Here they are.
I can't turn the computer on by pressing CTRL+F1 on my PS2 keyboard. Option is set and it should work. It is really handy because I have a door on my case that I have to open to access the power button.
The board seems to really have problems posting.
If the computer is off and you hit the power switch, it posts 60% of the time.
If you hit the reset button or set Windows to reset, it will go down but will not post ever.
So needless to say, I have to press the power button a lot to turn it on and off. If I install a driver, I set Windows to shut it down because I know it will not post if I reset. This is particularly where CTRL+F1 would be very useful.
I am able to change the BIOS setting even though you never see it say it is saving them (just give it a minute before your turn the computer off). If there is one good thing I can say about this board is that the performance is not affected at all. Seems to work pretty well. I had a crash once but I am going to give the board the benifit of the doubt since Tribes MP beta is so buggy.
Wonder what an shipping for an RMA costs, I will check it out and see if I want to go that route.
I can't turn the computer on by pressing CTRL+F1 on my PS2 keyboard. Option is set and it should work. It is really handy because I have a door on my case that I have to open to access the power button.
The board seems to really have problems posting.
If the computer is off and you hit the power switch, it posts 60% of the time.
If you hit the reset button or set Windows to reset, it will go down but will not post ever.
So needless to say, I have to press the power button a lot to turn it on and off. If I install a driver, I set Windows to shut it down because I know it will not post if I reset. This is particularly where CTRL+F1 would be very useful.
I am able to change the BIOS setting even though you never see it say it is saving them (just give it a minute before your turn the computer off). If there is one good thing I can say about this board is that the performance is not affected at all. Seems to work pretty well. I had a crash once but I am going to give the board the benifit of the doubt since Tribes MP beta is so buggy.
Wonder what an shipping for an RMA costs, I will check it out and see if I want to go that route.
krose
Senior member
- Aug 1, 2004
- 513
- 15
- 81
Originally posted by: DoobieOnline
Hey Ken, thanks for the tip! I set the AGP lock to 67 in bios and now the PCI clock doesn't budge when using clockgen. Now I have some more tweaking to do.
Yer welcome!
Staples: I don't know what the problem might be that you can't boot, but I had problems with the PC hanging on shutdown. I uninstalled the Nvidia IDE driver, installed the default Win2K IDE driver and it fixed the problem. Maybe somehow related?
Played around with clockgen and was able to get 9.5x263.54 (2503.63MHz) stable with 3X HT. SuperPi scores were the same and Doom 3 benchmark actually went down just a bit, so I put it back to 10x250 and 4X HT. The good news is that during all this tweaking I was finally able to get a gig of RAM stable at 250MHz using 1T. I had played around with the chipset voltage when I tried to get the Geil and Crucial PC4000 stable at 250MHz but it didn't help. Today I tried it again for grins with the OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev2 and 1.7V chipset worked pretty well but it wasn't Prime stable, errors after 12 minutes, with the RAM at 1T-2.5-3-10-3. I bumped the chipset up to 1.8V and now it's Prime stable. As of this morning, I am using the latest bios so maybe that helped, too. The chipset heatsink was getting a little hot at 1.8V, so I installed a Vantec dual-fan card cooler that I had lying around and I'm running it at its lowest setting. The airflow from it makes my 6800 Ultra run a couple of degrees cooler, but the biggest benefit is that lots of air flows over the chipset heatsink and temps dropped pretty significantly - about 10C under load! Measured with the P160's temp probe, I was hitting 55C load using 1.6V chipset before, and now it maxes out at 45C load using 1.8V. Pretty incredible that the Vantec made such a difference.
doobie
As of this morning, I am using the latest bios so maybe that helped, too. The chipset heatsink was getting a little hot at 1.8V, so I installed a Vantec dual-fan card cooler that I had lying around and I'm running it at its lowest setting. The airflow from it makes my 6800 Ultra run a couple of degrees cooler, but the biggest benefit is that lots of air flows over the chipset heatsink and temps dropped pretty significantly - about 10C under load! Measured with the P160's temp probe, I was hitting 55C load using 1.6V chipset before, and now it maxes out at 45C load using 1.8V. Pretty incredible that the Vantec made such a difference.doobie
Fortunately, it shuts down just fine however reset in any shape or form does not. Windows shuts down and the computer acts normally but the video shuts off as if it is trying to post but can't. No error beeps are given. The hard drive doesn't run so it is not loading Windows and I just can't see it. Also, when you shut it down, you have to wait like 30 seconds to turn the power back on because it won't post if you power it on immediately. I have come to the conclusion that the board is just defective. Works perfectly once it is up though. The board I had before this one (nforce2) was fine to the untrained eye but it refused to run some programs. I am just glad this one doesn't have any performance defects.
Well the motherboard is working. I don't know how or why. The RMA is on the way from Newegg.
I even have it working with 2 sticks of double sided Buffalo PC3200 winbond ch-5 chips. Of course I underclocked it to 166. Hopefully this keeps working.
I even have it working with 2 sticks of double sided Buffalo PC3200 winbond ch-5 chips. Of course I underclocked it to 166. Hopefully this keeps working.
This is a problem in progress, so I'll come back here and update when I get my replacement parts back. I'm hoping this was a one-time bug, not an indication of conflicts with my hardware.
I got the SL-K8AN2E-GR mobo, along with an A64-3200, 1 gig of matched 512MB Corsair Value Select, a Rosewill Radeon 9600, and two Highpoint SATA-IDE converters. I hooked all of this up with two existing ATA-133 Maxtors I had lying around. (All of this came from NewEgg.) I'm not overclocking this rig at all.
Once assembled, everything POSTed correctly. But things went downhill from there. The first problem was with the video: after I loaded the drivers, the card would intermittently flash to a black screen, similar to a resolution change. It did this regardless of the version of the Catalyst drivers I got hold of (older, newer, etc.). The only way to make it stop was to either not load the drivers (default to the Windows VGA driver), or turn off all hardware acceleration in the driver.
As I was messing with that, I started having problems with my hard drives on the primary SATA ports (not RAID, just two drives) using the Highpoint converters. The system would no longer boot from the drives. I eventually tried installing XP on a different drive connected to the standard ATA connector, and it worked OK. But if I then moved that drive to the SATA port on the SATA converter, it would partially boot but then spontaneously re-boot.
I've RMA'd the Radeon, the motherboard and both SATA converters. Rather than try to diagnose precisely what was going on, I'd prefer to get new hardware and try again. My greatest fear is that there's some fundamental incompatability with the CPU/memory/motherboard that's triggering all of this behavior. I'd rather not eat the 15% restocking fee to get refunds on all of this.
If anyone has any experience/insights on these problems, I'd appreciate hearing them. Thanks.
I got the SL-K8AN2E-GR mobo, along with an A64-3200, 1 gig of matched 512MB Corsair Value Select, a Rosewill Radeon 9600, and two Highpoint SATA-IDE converters. I hooked all of this up with two existing ATA-133 Maxtors I had lying around. (All of this came from NewEgg.) I'm not overclocking this rig at all.
Once assembled, everything POSTed correctly. But things went downhill from there. The first problem was with the video: after I loaded the drivers, the card would intermittently flash to a black screen, similar to a resolution change. It did this regardless of the version of the Catalyst drivers I got hold of (older, newer, etc.). The only way to make it stop was to either not load the drivers (default to the Windows VGA driver), or turn off all hardware acceleration in the driver.
As I was messing with that, I started having problems with my hard drives on the primary SATA ports (not RAID, just two drives) using the Highpoint converters. The system would no longer boot from the drives. I eventually tried installing XP on a different drive connected to the standard ATA connector, and it worked OK. But if I then moved that drive to the SATA port on the SATA converter, it would partially boot but then spontaneously re-boot.
I've RMA'd the Radeon, the motherboard and both SATA converters. Rather than try to diagnose precisely what was going on, I'd prefer to get new hardware and try again. My greatest fear is that there's some fundamental incompatability with the CPU/memory/motherboard that's triggering all of this behavior. I'd rather not eat the 15% restocking fee to get refunds on all of this.
If anyone has any experience/insights on these problems, I'd appreciate hearing them. Thanks.
As far as video problems, I have not experienced anything like you. I have dual monitors and once one went out. I had not idea why. Then I switch the primary to the other and it turned back on. This was only once. The weirdest thing perhaps is that sometime when I turn it on, it gives three or four real fast beeps. I guess this means there is no video signal (I have tried different power connectors to the card so I am sure it works) but strangely enough, the system boots fine however the video does not turn on till I get to the Windows Wecome screen. Strange. Reading over this thread seems to indicate that the manufacturing process is very crazy. More people than normal seem to be having trouble with this board and of all these problems, no one has the same ones. I am still considering if I should RMA mine because of the problems I mentioned above. My fears are.
That I will get a replacement that is worse than this one (happened before with another board I had, RMA was worse than what I sent back)
I am a cheap skate and I will have to spend another $10 on thermal grease if I take the heatsink off the CPU. That is in addition to whatever I spend sending it back.
That I will get a replacement that is worse than this one (happened before with another board I had, RMA was worse than what I sent back)
I am a cheap skate and I will have to spend another $10 on thermal grease if I take the heatsink off the CPU. That is in addition to whatever I spend sending it back.
I think that the nForce 3 chipset has issues with ATI video cards. Try another one, preferably nVidia.
Try only one stick of RAM for right now and underclock it to 166 until you are sure things are running perfectly.
Drop the IDE->SATA converters. They?ll give you nothing because the limit is your IDE HD. If you want to go true SATA get a Seagate SATA drive, a Raptor, or the new Maxtor line (can?t remember the name). SATA is fast in a RAID 0. I setup two Seagate 200GB drives and they rock. I partitioned them out to 1 partition for Windows, 1 for Programs (you have to relocate the Program Files Directory but Windows doesn?t like you to relocate the Common Files directory very much), 1 for video capture, and 1 more for video render. The SATA is definitely a hassle and the format is still in its infancy.
The A64 platform is not the best. Every motherboard has issues. Most have some memory issue (due to the memory controller on the A64 chip), the MSI has a P/S 2 keyboard issue, and on and on and on. Just read the reviews on Newegg and questions here on this board. But once you get it stable life is great.
Try only one stick of RAM for right now and underclock it to 166 until you are sure things are running perfectly.
Drop the IDE->SATA converters. They?ll give you nothing because the limit is your IDE HD. If you want to go true SATA get a Seagate SATA drive, a Raptor, or the new Maxtor line (can?t remember the name). SATA is fast in a RAID 0. I setup two Seagate 200GB drives and they rock. I partitioned them out to 1 partition for Windows, 1 for Programs (you have to relocate the Program Files Directory but Windows doesn?t like you to relocate the Common Files directory very much), 1 for video capture, and 1 more for video render. The SATA is definitely a hassle and the format is still in its infancy.
The A64 platform is not the best. Every motherboard has issues. Most have some memory issue (due to the memory controller on the A64 chip), the MSI has a P/S 2 keyboard issue, and on and on and on. Just read the reviews on Newegg and questions here on this board. But once you get it stable life is great.
krose
Senior member
- Aug 1, 2004
- 513
- 15
- 81
I had nothing but trouble with a 9600 Pro. During Windows install when the system needed to reboot or go to another screen the video would go out. After I finally got it installed with the latest Cats it did the same thing. Put in a GF4 4200 and no problems at all.
- Aug 22, 2001
- 31,726
- 31,652
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When I hit snags using ATi cards with nV chipsets I disable 8x agp and fastwrites, and enable vid ram caching in the bios. This resolves most conflicts and the one it didn't with nF2+ original radeon 32DDR AIW required also installing the cats in safe mode to avoid drawing errors upon reaching desktop.
BTW, the new skt754 round-up on the front page shows the Soltek is one hellafast stock board :beer:
FYI - the DTR 3200+ 1MB chips will work in the Soltek. I ordered one from Newegg to see if I could get better OC results than I got from the regular 3200+ 1MB, but they OC about the same - anywhere from 10x230 to 10x235 with 1.55V (Prime stable). I can get into Windows and run benchmarks at 10x250, but Prime95 and SuperPi error out within seconds. I'm gonna slap the 3000+ back in since it hits 2.5GHz no problem, and pick up a DFI board when they are available to see if some extra voltage will help the DTR 3200+ hit 10x250 stable. I've been really impressed with the A64's and one of these chips is going to replace the P4 in my backup rig. Even at 10x200, the 3200+ stomps my 2.8C running at 3.5GHz (14x250) in games.
doobie
doobie
Hello. I am having what seems to be a pretty unique problem with this motherboard. I've never encountered this problem. I didn't wanna post it here since I didn't wanna hijack this thread. Here is a link to the post I made. Can you guys with the same SL-K8AN2E-GR board as me check it out please? Thanks a lot.
I had a cold boot issue with the DTR 3200+ and the latest bios so I flashed back to the original bios and everything has been fine since doing that. I've had better luck with using the original bios and OC'ing the DTR. I'm now at 10x240 stable using Prime95 and SuperPi.
doobie
doobie
I was wondering for some specific settings to try for overclocking. I have a newcastle 3200 512 cache, this motherboard of course and this for ram. Currently I have the fsb @ 225mhz. I set the ram voltage to 2.8 1T 2-3-3-6 but I had to set it to 166mhz because It's too unstable at DDR 400. I would like to get the FSB to 230mhz and the Ram @ ddr 400 not 333. Any other suggestions as to what to try? I have messed w/ the vcore voltage on the chipset but I don't dare go over 1.7.
- Aug 22, 2001
- 31,726
- 31,652
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Yah, tried that on 10 and 11. It will post in both and only load windows on 11 but then I get a blue screen memory error after about 2 mins in. So far I can't find anything stable w/ the ram over an FSB of 220.
i was wondering if anyone could take a look at a thread i made over in tech support and offer any additional insight or help. http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1245&enterthread=y
Well, I wanted to check back in and follow-up on the problems I outlined in my earlier message. However, I can't actually do that, since the replacement motherboard from NewEgg won't take the main power connector from the power supply (one of the pins is apparently flared out, and you'd end up snapping the board before you got the connector fully seated).
So I'm giving up on this board and will buy something else (I'll return this to NewEgg and get something locally). I'm torn on trying another nForce 250 board -- I like the feature set, but I'm afraid it would have the same incompatability with my new Radeon 9600. Any suggestions?
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