Originally posted by: Mr Vain
Originally posted by: JonW
Originally posted by: Mr Vain
Originally posted by: doubleOseven
Is a bios flash do-able with a USB drive too?!
may be safer, considering that floppies aren't the most reliable things on earth.
Yes a USB Bios Flash is possible and less complicated compared to the older floppies method that required two 1.44Mb floppy disks in order to fit all the necessary files using the official ASRflash tool.
One of the reasons why I used the floppy Bios Flash method was that I could not get my Motherboard to boot from a USB device no matter what I tried and burning a CD for a CD Bios Flash was wasteful IMO.
Great guide with flashing bios and mac address. The key is F11 The mb has trouble booting dos if I choose usb/floppy to boot first. That took me forever to figure it out lol. Btw, Mr Vain here's the utility you need to create a usb flash drive.
HP USB Utility Just unzip the mac tools/bios to your usb flash drive and your set .
What I notice last night when tweaking the ram timings etc.. When Pipeline DRQ set to enabled there's no way in hell to pass memtest #5. The results are pretty random by nature, So the first run will pass, exit memtest and re-test the same settings. 99.9% probability it would fail within 5 passes of memtest #5. So what I did was, set it to auto and re-tweak the skew settings under advance mem config and now i'm cruising with 1t timings. With 1t timings, the gain can be seen in eversest, winrar, aquamark, 3dmark01. So that's more concrete than setting pipeline drq to enable imo. I never seen any boost from that setting anyway, But it was fairly raved about using sandra that I enabled it in the beginning. Also the skew tweaks under adv mem config works as they should after pipeline drq is set to auto.
Regards,
Jon
Thanks for the USB flash utility excellent.
Hey JonW you are doing an great job with this motherboard keep it up.
Below are my bios settings, can you paste the Bios settings that you are using to my template so we all can learn from your efforts.
Modded BIOS L2.01
Thanks
Bios P1.90
CPU Configuration
CPU Host Frequency [Manual]
Actual Frequency (MHz) [301] (My mb boots all the way to 312 but refuses to shutdown properly)
PCIE Clock [Sync with Cpu] (After checking setfsb with this setting, it's always stuck at 99)
AGP/PCI Clock [33]
Spread Spectrum [Disabled]
Boot Failure Guard [Enabled] (I normally disable this but each time I reset my cmos, I always lose my mac address)
Ratio Actual Value 9 (locked)
Ratio CMOS Setting [9]
Max CPUID Value Limit [Disabled]
No-Execute Memory Protection [Disabled]
Chipset Configuration
DRAM Frequency [200MHz (DDR400) ] (2GB OCZ PE PC3200 thinking of upgrading my ram to ddr2)
Flexibility Option [Disabled]
DRAM CAS# Latency [2.5]
DRAM Bank Interleave [4-Way Interleave]
Precharge to Active (Trp) [2]
Active to Precharge (Tras) [7] (You need to run memtest test 5 and watch your mem bandwidth. You set this too tight without any gains and causes instabilities, set it too loose and lose 40mb/s+)
Active to CMD (Trcd) [3]
REF to ACT/REF to REF (Trfc) [14T] (With DDR2 this setting is higher)
ACT (0) to ACT (1) (Trrd) [2]
Read to Precharge (Trtp) [2]
Write to Read CMD (Twtr) [2]
Write Recovery Time (Twr) [2] (This one can boost ram perfomance by 50mb/s+ but causes instability. The skew setting will play a major role later on)
DRAM Bus Selection [Dual Channel]
DRAM Command Rate [1T Command]
? Advanced Memory Configuration [Untouched]
DRAM Drv DQS [Enabled] (44,44) (Default Settings)
DRAM Drv CS [Enabled] (43,43)
DRAM Drv DCLKA,B [Enabled] (99,99)
DCLK Output Duty Ctrl [Enabled] (11)
CLKBUF BUFIN_A Skew [300ps] (These settings are important when you try to make the ram run stable) (Start at 0ps and run memtest Test5, if it errors. Increase it to150ps etc. until errors disaapears)
CLKBUF FAOUT Skew [300ps]
CLKBUF BUFIN_B Skew [300ps]
CLKBUF FBOUT Skew [300ps]
? Advanced Host Configuration
Pipeline DRQCTL [Auto] (Set this to Auto when you want to tweak your ram timing as tight as it will go. It improves stability)
GTL Control [Auto] (22h,33h,22h,99h,5,38,54) *Default settings*
DRAM Voltage [High]
AGP Voltage [High]
Primary Graphics Adaptor [AGP]
AGP Mode [8x]
AGP Fast Write [Enabled]
AGP Aperture Size [128MB]
AGP Staggered Delay [Auto]
AGP GADSTB Output Delay [Auto]
AGP 3.0 Calibration [Auto]
AGP 3.0 DBI Function [Auto]
DBI Output for AGP Trans. [Auto]
DBI Output for FRAME Trans. [Auto]
V-Link Speed [Fast] (This setting is important, It won't boot to windows if this is set to Normal) 290fsb and below and set them to Normal
V-Link Auto-Disconnect [Enabled] (Sometimes I set this to disabled)
PCI Delay Transaction [Enabled]
IDE Drive Strength [Ultra High] (This is also important. No boot to windows if set to Normal) 290fsb and below set it to Normal
PCIE Downstream Pipeline [Disabled]
OnBoard LAN [Enabled]
OnBoard HD Audio [Disabled]
Front Panel [Disabled]
CD-In [Disabled]
Bus No. [Disabled]
Echo TPR Disable [Auto] (Tried Enable but it doesn't help stability nor my shutdown issues above 301fsb)
Mr. Vain, can you post some everest mem bandwidth with your DDR2 ram. I'm thinking of upgrading my DDR400 to help my quad work more efficently. Which bios supports 4gb of ram?
Regards,
Jon