Intel 975XBX2 Questions/Comments

[mdg]

Hi All,

 

I just got this board yesterday and have been playing around today. E6600 running @ 3.29Ghz and stable as anything.

 

Using SuperTalent 4-4-3-8 PC6400 DDR2 @ 2.28V

 

Not that I'm looking to thrash my CPU, but has anyone been able to safely and in a stable manner get this board much higher? If so, care to share you MoBo settings, hardware, etc?

 

I just ran this Xbench and was blown away! I sense this thing still has LOTS of upside room to go. Thoughts?

 

Ethernet works out of the box, which is nice I am also running a Buffal Wireless PCI card on this box (recongized as Airport). The hard disk is a 150 Gb Raptor. Video card is PNY 7900GS.

 

I just now need to get sound working. Anyone have any luck with sound?

 

 

 

/mdg

 

My Xbench results:

 

Results 196.40

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.4.8 (8L2127)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model ACPI

Drive Type WDC WD1500ADFD-00NLR1

CPU Test 170.81

GCD Loop 386.69 20.38 Mops/sec

Floating Point Basic 186.45 4.43 Gflop/sec

vecLib FFT 137.57 4.54 Gflop/sec

Floating Point Library 121.97 21.24 Mops/sec

Thread Test 326.51

Computation 295.96 6.00 Mops/sec, 4 threads

Lock Contention 364.07 15.66 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 227.83

System 220.23

Allocate 183.51 673.91 Kalloc/sec

Fill 230.31 11198.39 MB/sec

Copy 261.04 5391.66 MB/sec

Stream 235.96

Copy 231.76 4786.82 MB/sec

Scale 239.51 4948.12 MB/sec

Add 236.59 5039.84 MB/sec

Triad 236.14 5051.60 MB/sec

Quartz Graphics Test 251.97

Line 203.89 13.57 Klines/sec [50% alpha]

Rectangle 264.13 78.86 Krects/sec [50% alpha]

Circle 251.41 20.49 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]

Bezier 227.26 5.73 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]

Text 360.37 22.54 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 244.33

Spinning Squares 244.33 309.95 frames/sec

User Interface Test 591.66

Elements 591.66 2.72 Krefresh/sec

Disk Test 79.47

Sequential 170.84

Uncached Write 175.74 107.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 169.72 96.03 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 172.76 50.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 165.46 83.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 51.78

Uncached Write 17.05 1.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 190.73 61.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 121.79 0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 193.74 35.95 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[mdg]

OK. Reporting more now. If you are an OC'er....

 

BEWARE, THE BIOS ON THIS BOARD IS A P.O.S!! I cannot begin to even quantify how terrible it is.

 

My perfectly running machine got scr#@d up because I unplugged it. Apparently, when you physically unplug the cord (which is what you have to do if you overclock wrong...what a supid, stupid, waste of time to get back normal BIOS settings), the BIOS resets itself to normal mode.

 

And oh, BTW, the memory settings go back to default, 667 and 5, 5, 5, 15. If you edit the BIOS settings, and change everything back to OC settings, it will tell you it saved the settings and you need to unplug/turn off your maching. That's a all good, but when you unplug the PC to change the jumper back to normal operation, the BIOS retains all the OC settings but sets the memory back to default. This renders you PC un-bootable (no post) because the OC settings don't work with default memory settings.

 

So, you need to go in to maintenance mode by unplugging your computer, changing a jumper, waiting 1 minute for the lllooonnngggg post process, change everything to default, power down, unplug the computer, change the jumper, plug the computer back in, boot the PC go back in to BIOS settings, set the memor settings to the right ones, and boot. You need to successfully boot, because if you don't, it will reboot and tell you that you've tried a number of times without a post...more on this later.

 

You need to boot, get to a baseline working system, and then reboot again, and then go in to the BIOS. No sweat, right? You've thought ahead and saved your PERFECTLY working, burned in with heavy duty testing perfect OC settings to custom defaults. You load custom defaults, check them to make sure they were the working ones indeed, and they are. You reboot and whoa!!! no post. You must now repeat the whole process abov---urrrggghhh!!!!

 

Finally, you give in and start all over again and spend the next 4 hours going 2-3 Mhz at a time to get back to your perfect OC settings, and once again you save the custom settings. You purposefully change them to standard, reboot a few times, re-load the custom settings and all is well. You chalk this up as a fluke and are really happy once again.

 

Time to close your case, fix all the screws, etc., so you power off your case being careful not to unplug the PC this time. 15 minutes later after you very cool looking PC is back in one piece, you decide to fire up your PC and whoa!!!!! no post!!!!! You must now unplug the PC, open the case again, follow the steps above to get back to just a working post!!!

 

And you know why, because this BIOS has a cold boot problem!!!

 

I am completely bi-polar on this board. The speed and OC stability of this board are unrivaled!! If you never unplug the computer and never power it down, it's great! However, the BIOS is so terrible that I'm going to set this build aside for a while until Intel updates the BIOS again, because on the last revision (a whopping 4 days ago) they left out some very obvious fixes.

 

Net-net, I have about 18 hours vested into this board, and today I am no further than had I bought it today and put it into a case.

 

I am thinking about putting back my November 17 BIOS because it at least appeared not to have the cold-boot, unplug issues that the 12/20 BIOS has.

 

And oh, with AHCI enable Windows crashes and doesn't boot but OSX runs great! With IDE enabled both work well, unless you disable the Marvell RAID, which cause the HD light to stay on constanly and windows not to boot (again, OSX works fine).

 

However, I will say this -- at only 3.4 Ghz, I got an Xbench of 209.45, and at 3.6 Ghz, I got 238 (if I recall). The real-world OC speed increase of this board is stunning! My problem is that at 3.6 Ghz, my PCI wireless card stops working. Card is detected, finds and connects to access point, but is unable to get an IP address. 3.4 Ghz is a no-brainer speed setting, and the system still runs fairly smooth.

 

I did a quick 60 minute digitization of a DV video and all went well.

 

Sorry for the run on of thoughts, but on the one hand I am ready to take a chainsaw to this motherboard, yet on the other hand it OC's so well I am simply amazed.

 

@ 3.6 Ghz I ran my memory (Super Talent PC6400 4-4-3-8 2.2v) at 1:1 (533 FSB setting in BIOS) for a full 800 Mhz at 400 FSB. 1.5625 V to the CPU, 1.4v to the FSB and 1.6v tot he MCH/ICH. I ran Bofor's fractal test all night and torture tested this PC -- never hung once

 

However, cold boot this baby and you are starting from scratch all over again