cold boot problem

[streetster]

hey hexus people,

basically i used to own an epox 8k5a3+ (kt333 chipset) motherboard which used to be able to keep my 1700+ t-bred at a nice 2.4Ghz at around 1.8v, quite a few months back i picked up one of the ebuyer bargain asus deluxe rev2 nforce2 boards.

now this board wont let me overclock as well as the epox one (well i bought the epox one before the whole 'nforce' thing arrived, and epox were an enthusiast manufacturer - well and still are). with the volts maxed out on this mobo (no volt mods done) i can do 1.9ghz completely stable (as you would expect) @ 9.5x200.... 10/11 multipliers dont work which is frankly crap, but thats an nforce2 issue... i'm currently sitting at 2.3Ghz (11.5x200) which is stable, but whenever i turn on my comp after its been off it doesnt post, so i have to turn it off (hold the button for 4s) and then turn it back on where it reverts to defautls (11x100) - but all i have to do is go into the bios and choose 'save and exit'.

that was a long paragraph so i'll start another. why do i have to put up with a supposedly superior motherboard being inferior to the one it replaced? why cant i overclock the same (or more - it dies at about 203fsb).. arg stupid motherboard hopefully when i upgrade to some kinda athlon64-type comp i wont have so much stress

anyhow, after all that ranting.. is there any solution to my lack of overclocking and/or the cold booting problems? ive got the 'uber' bios which didnt really achieve anything, i guess i could maybe increase the chipset voltage, but i dont want to do that without some kinda decent cooling on the northbridge - seeing as its only passively cooled.

anyhow this post has rambled on too far so its gonna end right now.

[blockers]

Have you www.memtest86.com the RAM at 200fsb? and 201, and 202? you have Twinmoss dont you, bit sketchy with asus for some reason....henz the "Uber" bios i suppose.

to get 2.4ghz you were running 12x200 yeah?

You shouldnt have to increase the chipset voltage, as they are made to run at 400mhz by default iirc. Could it be the southbridge getting hot? Actaully that wouldnt really be much of an issue from cold boot i suppose.

Have to say in general i dont think nforce2's are as good as they are hyped up to be.

Hope that is of some reasonable help....

[BUFF]

basically i used to own an epox 8k5a3+ (kt333 chipset) motherboard which used to be able to keep my 1700+ t-bred at a nice 2.4Ghz at around 1.8v

What multi & fsb though - were you doing over 200fsb with your old board?

quite a few months back i picked up one of the ebuyer bargain asus deluxe rev2 nforce2 boards.
You mean a return?

10/11 multipliers dont work which is frankly crap, but thats an nforce2 issue
Not true, 10 & 11 work for most nForce2 - afaik it is only the ABIT NF7 V2.0 series with later BIOS than D10 that really have a problem with 9.5-10.5 (11 shouldn't be a problem) & there is a fixed 3rd party BIOS for those.

why cant i overclock the same (or more - it dies at about 203fsb)..
I see that you are running a gig of memory & I'm assuming that is 2x512Mb so it could be that you are running into CPC issues (which does seem to be an nForce2 thing).
You also might want to try running single channel - you will only lose a couple % of performance & if you can increase your fsb it may well more than compensate.

is there any solution to my lack of overclocking and/or the cold booting problems?
I would try another BIOS as the boards affected most by cold boot problems are the DFI's & they appear to believe that it is a BIOS fixable thing at least for them.
It may just be that you have found out why that board was returned in the first place (assuming it was a return)

[streetster]

mmm after considering my alcohol intake, and my sig.. i'm guessing that i was previously stable at 2.2ghz on this nf2 board... and seeing as i've just had a lovely bsod (irql_less_or_equal or something similar) error at 2.3Ghz i'm now back to 9.5 multi.. and yeh Buff, you're right, its the 10 and 10.5 multi that are fubared iirc...

maybe tomorrow i'll try with only 1 stick of the twinmos ram and see if i can get the fsb higher (i realise that running dual channel doesnt help the fsb speeds).. and as for the clocks on the 8k5a3+ that was 11.5x200 (with the agp/pci running happlily at 80/40, which isnt to clever but worked for about a year until i upgraded.. heh,

and yeh it was a return, it was one of the 'blowout deals' ones... any recomendation on 'another bios' which perhaps does not contain the same cold boot problem as the 'uber' one im using at present, or shall i just accept that 1.9ghz is all i'm going to achieve with this mobo, which i guess is ok seeing as i only have a gf4 paired with it.. hmmm just a bit disappointing really

[BUFF]

maybe tomorrow i'll try with only 1 stick of the twinmos ram and see if i can get the fsb higher (i realise that running dual channel doesnt help the fsb speeds)..
If it's CPC rather than DC issues that won't help - don't suppose that you have any 256Mb sticks handy?

any recomendation on 'another bios' which perhaps does not contain the same cold boot problem as the 'uber' one im using at present, or shall i just accept that 1.9ghz is all i'm going to achieve with this mobo, which i guess is ok seeing as i only have a gf4 paired with it.. hmmm just a bit disappointing really

Sorry but I've never run an A7N8X (only NF7-S's , Soltek FRN2 & DFI Infinity) so am not in a position to be able to recommend.

[streetster]

If it's CPC rather than DC issues that won't help - don't suppose that you have any 256Mb sticks handy?

unsure of what CPC/DC means (too lazy to check on google tonight ) but no i traded my 256meg sticks of pc2700 samsung ram (which did 400mhz @ 2.7v) for the twinmos stuff...

hmm i thought the 'uber' bios' were meant to be the best (hence the name), but if anyone else could point me at something better it would be much appreciated.

cheers for the help/advice BUFF

[blockers]

http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread...threadid=44985 <- from Abit forums....might be of some relevance.

Also i read somewhere that some guys RAM was sketchy with AGP at 66, at 80 this was not a problem. But this was at a much higher clock speed. 250fsb iirc.

[BUFF]

unsure of what CPC/DC means (too lazy to check on google tonight ) but no i traded my 256meg sticks of pc2700 samsung ram (which did 400mhz @ 2.7v) for the twinmos stuff...

CPC is Command Per Clock & DC is Dual Channel

Basically some combinations of RAM timings & doublesided RAM sticks don't seem to get on very well together at higher fsb with nForce2 although there are also plenty of people running 512Mb sticks & getting 230+.
For whatever reason (I suspect the hand of nVidia) there is no mobo manufacturer that I am aware of that has CPC options in an official BIOS although DFI does in some Alpha & Beta BIOS.

[blockers]

Sorry to go off topic -> Buff, why wont they let you play with the CPC options?