Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2

[brokencase]

Bables - Thanks for posting your bios settings.

I'm not up for any physical mods. I'll take it to what the board can do out of the box and be happy. I'll save those hard mods for when the system is near end of life and is starting to feel sluggish.

From what I have read its about 290fsb on this board out of the box. 2.6ghz out of a quad core Q6600 would be plenty for me. Especially considering that I have upgraded from a old Dual Taulutin...I am truely in new territory.

I ran Prime95/Coretemp last night for two hours at 275 fsb and all is well. It leveled off at 55C. So there is a little more headroom in the stock intel fan/heatsink.

Definitely share your opinion on this mb, I bought it knowing it was a pebble...turns out it's a diamond in the rough! It's not cutting edge overclocker but if you have an AGP card your happy with, then this is the ticket. The audio chip isn't half bad either.

 

[Mr Vain]

Proper Vcore Volt Mods Guide for L6714 Motherboards.
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=192571

Does anybody know if the voltage regulating chip on the 4CoreDual-SATA2 is the same as on the one on the 775dual-VSTA and the 4coreDual-VSTA (L6714)?

 

[bables]

Originally posted by: brokencase

Definitely share your opinion on this mb, I bought it knowing it was a pebble...turns out it's a diamond in the rough! It's not cutting edge overclocker but if you have an AGP card your happy with, then this is the ticket. The audio chip isn't half bad either.

You're totally right, a diamond in the rough. It actually starts out of the box as a bit of a lump of coal, but after some polishing--tadaa.

My mobo's starting to feel like a lump of coal again though. I put in some pc-6400 ddr2 ocz sticks and it won't post even after clearing the cmos. Is there at trick to this, or is this ram not compatible with the board?

Mr. Vain: the chip on the board reads: L6714D 990V1 V1 MYS 99 728

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: bables

Originally posted by: brokencase

Definitely share your opinion on this mb, I bought it knowing it was a pebble...turns out it's a diamond in the rough! It's not cutting edge overclocker but if you have an AGP card your happy with, then this is the ticket. The audio chip isn't half bad either.

You're totally right, a diamond in the rough. It actually starts out of the box as a bit of a lump of coal, but after some polishing--tadaa.

My mobo's starting to feel like a lump of coal again though. I put in some pc-6400 ddr2 ocz sticks and it won't post even after clearing the cmos. Is there at trick to this, or is this ram not compatible with the board?

Mr. Vain: the chip on the board reads: L6714D 990V1 V1 MYS 99 728

Thanks for the chip info.

This board does not support PC6400 natively.
If you set your PC6400 Ram in the bios to (333 MHz DDR 667 PC533) then it should work and you will usually obtain tighter timings that if it were original PC533 Ram.

 

[kekewons]

My own board arrived just a couple of hours ago, so I found a magnifying glass to see what my chip said.

The chip reads:

L6714D
991MD V1
MYS 99 728


k

 

[brokencase]

I got setfsb to work on my 4coredual SATA2 board.

I opened the hood and discovered that I had the following PLL located near the south bridge: ICS 953002DFLF

There is another ICS PLL over by the RAM slots, I can't read it very well but it looks very similiar to the other one.

I selected the ICS 953002DFLF in setfsp and it came up with what appears to be correct numbers for how I have my system currently set:

Current FSB/DDR/PCI-E/PCI Frequency: 274.7/549.4/99.7/33.3Mhz

I also have the "Ultra" checkbox selected.

This reminds me of the good old days with Oda's fsb utility. Although I'm always a little frightful of changing the fsb while the OS is running.

I'm curious to know what PLL enDings has got on his board. Has he got an SATA2 version of this board for sure?

It would not surprize me if they changed midstream because the RTM part went obsolete.


My freebie tip for the day...

 

[bables]

Originally posted by: Mr Vain


Thanks for the chip info.

This board does not support PC6400 natively.
If you set your PC6400 Ram in the bios to (333 MHz DDR 667 PC533) then it should work and you will usually obtain tighter timings that if it were original PC533 Ram.

Hey cool, thanks for the info on that.

So after all that work getting up passed 3ghz, when I switched the ram the board didn't post and I smelled something burning... sigh...

Now the board beeps continuously 3 long beeps. Switch the old ram back but nothing fixes it. Fans and everything power on, cleared cmos, took everything apart back together, still 3 long beeps. Has this fate befallen any of you out there? Is my board done?

 

[brokencase]

Uh-oh. Bables let the magic smoke out. That's never good.

FWIW I am able to overclock my Q6600 to 290fsb (~2.6ghz) using the setfsb utility.
Runs Prime95 stable.

Right now I have all the ram settings set to auto.
I think I can get more if I tweak. My gut feeling is I can go higher without a vcore tweak, and its the BIOS DRAM settings that are holding me back.


One thing I have discovered is that when I set the "flexibility option" it shifts to 4:3 fsb/mem ratio
and the memory clk drops to somewhere around 220 mhz. I don't think I want that with DDR2-667.

The problem is that there are so many DRAM setting in this BIOS that there are now too many degrees of freedom
in trying to figure out the best settings.

Whats DQRTL pipeline? Sounds good, but do I want it on if I'm overclking?
If I set V-Link to "fast" is that 1066MB/s? Is "normal" it 533MB/s? I suspect V-link is tied to fsb so maybe I need at a low speed when oc'ing
otherwise communication to the northbridge dies?

Too many unanswered questions and without a data sheet on this chipset it's going to be hard.

I think I am going to try to raise the DRAM voltage and manually set the DRAM times down a notch and see what happens.

 

[brokencase]

OK, were moving now...

Upping the voltage on the ram has been a help. I am now running 2.7 ghz @302 fsb
Prime95 still running smooth.

I do notice vcore drops to 1.2V with prime 95 running 4 threads.

I'll post a screen capture & BIOS settings in a little bit.

 

[bables]

*cough-cough* The magic smoke! *kaff*

 

[inklimited]

brokencase

V-Link "Fast" is a 2x multiplier for the V-Link speed. I'd tell you the speeds, but I'm not at home right now. But you can look for yourself with SiSandra. It's under "Motherboard Overview".

What I've found is that in my setup it sends the system unstable, and won't even post if I overclock. But I wouldn't take that as scripture. I'm runnin my rig on 350W of generic power. xD
The V-Link isn't exactly linked with the FSB, it's the link between North and Southbridge.

 

[brokencase]

inklimited..

I set it both ways in the bios and it still shows the same way in Sandra:

Chipset 1 Hub Interface
Type : V-Link
Version : 5.00
Multiplier : 2/1x
Speed : 1x 66MHz (66MHz data rate)
I/O Queue Depth : 9 request(s)

In any case I would think that you would want it to be set "Fast" so as to get the best performance from everything connected to the southbridge.

Things would be better if VIA would cough up the data sheets.

While I'm here...

One minor thing I don't like about this board is there no extended sign-on/ramtest option on bootup. It just flys by. It's fine for when everything is working. But I still like to have a ramtest option.

Other than that I am quite happy with this board. I installed my ATI AIW agp card/drivers and it went easier than my previous mobo.

 

[martianmisfit]

hi, new guy here in need of some help badly.

to the point - how do i get my pc to boot up and fix the "CMOS CHECKSUM ERROR" upon every boot up?


my specs - all new from newegg

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2
Q6600
G.Skill 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 667 (pc2 5400) ram
Seagate Barracuda 250GB HDD
ATRIX PSCI-500BLK ATX12V 500W power supply


now the story...

everything new; i put it all together and proceeded to boot up. no video / no luck. so i turned it all off. triple checked all the connections and they're fine. booted up again and still nothing. i reseted the bios via taking the batterty out and rebooting, nothing. i even jumped/shorted the cmos and nothing; replaced the battery, nothing. i tested the power supply on my other pc and it worked fine. after hours of looking for answers online i found out about resetting the bios and pressing the "delete" key to enter the bios setup. horray! i got video! ok some i'm in there looking around and everything is at default. i just want it to run and then click on exit and the pc proceeds to turn off but the power is still on. fans spinning and light still lit but video off. i turn if off via switch and redo the clear cmos and delete key and this time tell it to boot from the cd-rom which has a new copy of windows xp. it install great and everything is working. it tells me to restart for updates and i click ok and the video turns off but the fans keeps spinning and lights still lit. i do a manual shut off.
i repeat the whole thing until my pc / windows os is up to date and running perfectly.

the issue here is whenever i turn OFF my pc and then turn it back on it just hangs. i have to reset and hit the delete key and do a manual boot from hdd or proceed to boot from default bios settings. again telling me the cmos checksum error. now when i actually tell the pc to just turn off it does and after a few seconds i start to smell that well known electrical burn coming from the power supply. i take it out and use the one from my other pc and i get the same issues. however both of these power supplies work flawlessly on the other pc (same brands) but for some reason if i shut the pc manually by the switch i get no electrical burn smell.

again i went to the interwebs and searched and searched. the only different solution i found was somebody mentioning that an incompatible power supply can corrupt bios and therefore giving problems. that's the only thing i can think off. anyone else aware of this?

btw i originally had this problem with the VSTA version of this board. i returned it to newegg via RMA but in the meantime decided to just upgrade to the current SATA2 board which is giving me the exact same issues.

i know it's a long story but that's what i've been dealing with for the past week and i don't know what to do other than try a different brand power supply. can somebody help. i'm thinking of going with one of the power supplies mentioned in the thread which will give me the same components except the ram. i eventually ended up here at anandtech and to my surprise and thread dedicated to the motherboard i have.

so in the end my pc won't remember the bios and boot up, but does run windows when i do a jump cmos / delete key / boot from hdd boot up.

hopefully my story is easy to follow. thanks in advance for any help.

- martianmisfit

 

[complain]

Hello Martianmisfit. As it seems, you should try different Power Supply, because your problem persist even after changing mobo. You can find on this forum that its possible run quad core CPU on 4CoreDual Sata2, so im pretending that there is something wrong with your power supply. Its aslo widely known, that problems with system startup is very often related to wrong or weak Power Supply. YOu should know that Quad Core CPUs are more power hungry a you didnt mention you VGA, but if you have VGA which needs external power conector, you really need very good power supply. I can recommend brands like Enermax and Fortron, 450W and more. Another problem should be overclocking - if your CPU is overclocked, try default speed. Also not only me made experience with 4CoreDual boards that setting Memory clock synchronized with FSB /thus 533/ is much better and FASTER! Hope it will help little, i would start with good quality PSU ASAP, especially if you smell electric burn
PS: I almost forget! Of course it is possible that problem is BIOS related, so you should maybe try to flash latest bios. Sometimes it helps a lot.
www.asrock.com

 

[martianmisfit]

^ thanks, i think leaning towards a different brand & stronger power supply will fix my problem. i saw 2 mentioned somewhere in this thread and will probably go with the 600W psu since the one i have now is a 500W and is not cutting it.

btw, when i do get windows to run i am running BIOS 1.50. as for video i'm using a RADEON X1650 PRO AGP 512MB with the latest drivers.

thanks for your help. i'll post how things turn out.

 

[imported_weblurker]

Originally posted by: brokencase
I got setfsb to work on my 4coredual SATA2 board.

I opened the hood and discovered that I had the following PLL located near the south bridge: ICS 953002DFLF

There is another ICS PLL over by the RAM slots, I can't read it very well but it looks very similiar to the other one.

I selected the ICS 953002DFLF in setfsp and it came up with what appears to be correct numbers for how I have my system currently set:

Hi brokencase. Very good observation.

I checked my SATA2 mobo and found the same PLL. I was able to read the part number of the PLL near the ram sockets and it showed ICS SP933 DFLF.

SetFSB did bring up the current settings. But I'm using DDR1-400 and setfsb seemed to assume that the ram was DDR2-566. I used setfsb to set the system to 278Mhz and Orthos ran correctly for 19 hours but OCCT crashed after 5 hours.

But I found a quicker test. I have an ATI HDTV Wonder and after setfsb set the host frequency to any fsb, WatchHDTV would start to lose audio and eventually XP crashed.

So I think setfsb works for DDR2 ram on the SATA2 motherboard but not DDR.

But you made a good discovery nonetheless.

 

[imported_weblurker]

To:
Farfle
NeonGerbil

I think there is a bug in the SATA2 BIOS that affects the E21xx cpu series.

If you're having problems setting the proper cpu speed with an E21xx cpu and a 4CoreDual-SATA2 motherboard, I would strongly suggest that you email AsRock technical support about it.

Edit: There is definitely a BIOS bug. I've replicated all the strange cpu frequencies that NeonGerbil found when changing the fsb host frequency in the BIOS. Hopefully Asrock will fix this problem.

 

[brokencase]

Yes Weblurker, I am using DDR2 - 677.

I was able to overclock to 300fsb using the utility. Prime95 ran fine (i ran it only until the temps leveled off). However I discovered that XP will not shut down gracefully above 285 or so.

 

[brokencase]

Here's a way around the shut down issue using setfsb:

Make a batch file with the two lines:

C:\Program Files\setfsb20b16a\setfsb.exe -w0 -s266
shutdown -s -t 0

Save it as "C:\Program Files\setfsb20b16a\cleanshutdown.bat"

Make a shortcut on your desktop that points to it. Give it the "Red Power button" stock icon.

Now you click on it to turn off the machine, it first slows the fsb to a safe value.

YMMV..

 

[imported_weblurker]

Originally posted by: brokencase
I was able to overclock to 300fsb using the utility. Prime95 ran fine (i ran it only until the temps leveled off). However I discovered that XP will not shut down gracefully above 285 or so.

I noticed something very similar. Using setfsb to change the fsb from the BIOS set value to any fsb, either higher or lower than the BIOS set value, caused WatchHDTV to have audio problems within a few seconds. But using setfsb to restore the fsb back to the BIOS set value allowed WatchHDTV to work normally.

I used setfsb to run the E2180 at 290Mhz. XP seemed to run (but not WatchHDTV) but when I tried OCCT, it crashed within seconds. The first time it crashed in 14 seconds, the second time 9 seconds.

I changed the fsb to 278Mhz and OCCT ran for 5 hours before XP crashed. However, I forgot to change the memory settings from DDR400 to DDR333. Cpuid.exe showed that I also had to change the CAS from 2.5 to 3.0 and tRAS from 7 to 8 (those are the SPD values for the ram when it's been set to DDR400).

I'm running OCCT now and I'll edit this message with the results later today.

Edit: OCCT and XP crashed after 2 1/2 hours.

BTW brokencase, I'm curious about why you're using setfsb rather than changing the fsb manually in the BIOS?.

I have to use setfsb because the BIOS screws up the cpu frequency, as NeonGerbil found out. I think the BIOS thinks the E2180 I'm using is a 266Mhz part instead of a 200Mhz cpu, so all the settings are multiplied by 0.75. So when I set the fsb in the BIOS to 340Mhz, the BIOS then sets the cpu to 2550Mhz (340*.75*10). Since the BIOS limits the host frequency to a maximum of 340Mhz, 2550Mhz is the most I can set the cpu to run at. So I have to use setfsb to get a higher speed.

What does cpuid report about the cpu speed of your system?

 

[martianmisfit]

i'm in need of a power supply that will be compatible with my new pc.
can you guys/gals that are running the following specs list your power supplies?
mine keeps going out and "corrupting" my bios. i have to clear my cmos every time i turn on the pc.

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2
Q6600

thanks

 

[imported_weblurker]

Originally posted by: Farfle
Well, guys...I have to say Success!
***Update***

To all those who are getting frustrated with this board and pissed off at people like me who actually get it to work (like I was before I modded the CPU ) all I can say is KEEP fiddling with it. It seems like everyone who's messed with it long enough has gotten it to work, whether by just changing BIOS settings (which didn't do anything for me) or actually hard modding one of the components. For me it was the FSB 266Mhz mod that did it. Others (especially those with older boards like VSTA and 775Dual) seemed to have no problems overclocking a 200Mhz FSB chip to ~300. Who knows why mine behaved the way it did. This board is SO weird.

Hi Farfle.

I think the BIOS is messing up the cpu and board parameters because it's assuming the 200Mhz parts are 266Hmz. That's probably why the BSEL mode fixes those problems, you're essentially making the hardware match what the BIOS is assuming about the cpu.

The E2180 I'm running is an M0 step. I'm wondering if the BIOS problems started with the change from the L2 to the new M0 step cpus. I've seen an older VSTA board run an E2160 L2 step with no problems, but I don't know if that's because the BIOS changed from the VSTA to SATA2 or because the cpu steppings have changed.

I'm curious, when you run cpuz, what does it say about the stepping of your E2160?

 

[BAUBAU]

E2180 + 2x256MB DDR400 (kingmax pc3200u/ddr433) on 4core dual-SATA2.
BIOS 1.60A modded to have speedstep and thermal throttling enable/disable
Could this have helped with my clock speed beeing ok?

Always the DDR type in BIOS is set to DDR400
200-266FSB :
- CPU speed ok
- DDR speed 199 always, does not scale up like it should
266FSB+:
- CPU speed ok
- DDR speed slowly rising with 4:3 ratio
275FSB:
- CPU speed ok
- maybe DDR speed 205 (forgot what was it) with 4:3 ratio
290FSB:
- CPU speed ok
- DDR speed 217 with 4:3 ratio
If I could overclock to 320FSB, DDR speed I asume it will be 240 with 4:3 ratio. That's good.

So I like the behaivor, but I dont like that it does not allow a 1:1 ratio with my ddr400 when overclocking only a litle, It should allow 1:1 at least until FSB240 and beyond that to use the 4:3 when DDR400 type selected in BIOS.

With DDR2, it should allow 1:1 ratio up to the max of FSB300+ wich I heard it does not, when DDR2 666 type selected in BIOS.

I only run memtestx86+ to test stability at all speeds, with 2-3-3-8 and 1T, no issues with ram. Run a litle orthos also, so far so good, but I wait for ddr2 + decent cooler to do a serious overclock. Now happy with 2660Mhz, speedstep enabled.

 

[imported_weblurker]

Originally posted by: BAUBAU
E2180 + 2x256MB DDR400 (kingmax pc3200u/ddr433) on 4core dual-SATA2.
BIOS 1.60A modded to have speedstep and thermal throttling enable/disable
Could this have helped with my clock speed beeing ok?

Hi Baubau.

I'm also running an E2180 but I find that the BIOS doesn't generate the correct cpu speeds. When I set the FSB host frequency to 266Mhz, the BIOS sets the cpu to 1995Mhz instead of 2660Mhz.

Did you seeing proper cpu speed calculations from the original Asrock v1.60 BIOS?

Edit: I tried v1.60a. It did the same thing as the original Asrock v1.60. It doesn't set the cpu to 10*fsb, instead it sets the cpu to 10*0.75*fsb, or, as I suspect, 10*(200/266)*fsb.

Here is an easy test. I set the host frequency setting option to "Manual" and manually set the fsb host frequency to 200. That is the default setting for the E2xxx series of cpus and should be identical to the BIOS default setting for the E2180.

However, when the BIOS next starts, it has set the cpu to 1509Mhz instead of 10*200Mhz=2000Mhz (same as NeonGerbil found).

I used SuperPi to compare its execution times when the BIOS sets the cpu to 1500Mhz vs the default 2000Mhz and the difference in how long SuperPi needed to calculate 32M digits was virtually the same as the difference between 1500Mhz and 2000Mhz. So the bug isn't due to an error in how the BIOS displays the cpu speed.

 

[brokencase]

Weblurker,

I can up the bios fsb to the point where XP won't boot. However I find I can go higher if I set it with the fsb utility after the OS is up and running. I encounter no problems when I do this. I haven't seen any drive related issues and Prime 95 seems stable, even at 2.7ghz.

So, for the most part, I just leave it at 266 in the BIOS. If I need to go faster for a certain application I can use the fsb utility to do so.

I don't have CPUid but I am running a Q6600 ACLR. What did you want to know from CPUid?