EPoX "EP-9NPA+Ultra" NVIDIA nForce4 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard

[drsafety]

what kind of HTT frequencies are y'all getting with this board?

 

[sgtdic]

SPQQKY, i have noticed some corruption in some of my burnt CDs. the IDE driver makes sense for causing this. i noticed when i went to uninstall that driver it wasn't listed for removal but it had the nvidia driver for ide under device manager. hmm

techfuzz, now that you mention it, i remember the pauses. you also fixed one of my other problems. i was getting antivirus out of date even when i just updated it and it was saying that i was missing my virus definition files. i always kept the nvidia firewall on antihacking only with my router even before i uninstalled it. it definately shouldn't have been doing that.

thanks you two for the help and explaining.

does anyone know the differences between the newcastle, winchester, and venice cores? the venice isn't listed on tom's hardware. any links would be helpful. thanks.

 

[jotosuds]

venice and winchester are 90nm, and newcastle is 130nm. venice is supposed to be the best cuz it has... something i forget lol.

hey sgtdic, what's your v-core at to get 2.3ghz?

i'm trying to figure out how much v-core is safe for this board + 3000+ venice. at -0.1v, my cpu-z reports 1.412 as the average.

 

[SPQQKY]

Newcastle = 130nm
Winchester = 90nm
Venice = 90nm and SSE3

 

[sgtdic]

jotosuds, keep vcore at auto. you can watch it in USDM. it will go up automatically and i didn't see mine go above 1.6v. the only thing i changed was the HTT multiplier and the memory divider. bring those down 1 (4x and 133mhz respectively) and up your fsb to 256 mhz.

 

[Thehubb]

I posted this in the technical support forum but i thought you guys might be able to help also:

Ok so i just started building my comp. Everything went together fine. The comp boots up, and i start to install xp. After a few hiccups it makes it to the loading screen(Where it gives you the 39 min countdown). Then out of nowhere it gives me a blue screen error saying DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and it restarts itself. Once it restarts, it boots from the disk and says it's restarting the installation. The the gui screen comes up, and the 39min blue background comes up for a second, then it reboots and does it all over again...

This is where im at now. The only thing concerning me is that it isn't picking up my video card. Like in the post screen it shows my hd, ram, cpu, mobo, all that. Is it supposed to pick up my vc too? It's installed correctly and can feed my monitor signal through it. So now im stuck and im pissed. Someone please help.


:Now it's 1am, so im going to bed before i throw it all out my second story window....

 

[SPQQKY]

Sounds like a HDD issue. I have helped a couple of people on the very same type of error. I suspected the HDD and after they tried everything, they finally broke down and got a new HDD and it solved the problem. Only other thing is to double check memory settings and change everything from auto to a manual setting and boost the voltage a bit to see if you get stability.

 

[Novercalis]

hello guys, I was wondering, I just recieved my epox and was readng the manual and read something about supports SATA and SATA II.
But only supports up to 1.5gpb whatever the acroynm is.

meaning if I purchase a HD that is 3.0gpbs or whatever, it wont be utlized?

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Novercalis
hello guys, I was wondering, I just recieved my epox and was readng the manual and read something about supports SATA and SATA II.
But only supports up to 1.5gpb whatever the acroynm is.

meaning if I purchase a HD that is 3.0gpbs or whatever, it wont be utlized?

You better read this: http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

techfuzz

 

[techfuzz]

New BIOS available -

Released: 2005-09-29
Dated: 05.09.23
Filename: 9npa5923.zip
Changes: ** Added EPoX M/B information to DMI.

techfuzz

 

[Thehubb]

Originally posted by: SPQQKY
Sounds like a HDD issue. I have helped a couple of people on the very same type of error. I suspected the HDD and after they tried everything, they finally broke down and got a new HDD and it solved the problem. Only other thing is to double check memory settings and change everything from auto to a manual setting and boost the voltage a bit to see if you get stability.

I set the memory to 2.8v, and just booted up. It actually went through the post screen and the gui way faster, just had the same results... The first time i booted at this voltage, i got an blue screen error. Every other time it did what i said in the first post, only noticeably faster.

 

[bonhimself]

thehubb, i noticed u have a 7800 gt with the epox board, did u have to do anything to get it to fit in? i know plenty have answered but i want to make sure cuz at some website it said it wouldnt fit.

 

[MadScientist]

Originally posted by: Novercalis
hello guys, I was wondering, I just recieved my epox and was readng the manual and read something about supports SATA and SATA II.
But only supports up to 1.5gpb whatever the acroynm is.

meaning if I purchase a HD that is 3.0gpbs or whatever, it wont be utlized?

I am using a Hitachi Sata II drive. To enable SATA II, 3.0 Gb/s (gigabytes/second), you have to use their Feature Tool.
Hitachi Feature Tool

 

[Thehubb]

Originally posted by: bonhimself
thehubb, i noticed u have a 7800 gt with the epox board, did u have to do anything to get it to fit in? i know plenty have answered but i want to make sure cuz at some website it said it wouldnt fit.

No it fit like a charm. Physically, everything came together flawlessly. Getting the comp up and running is the current problem...

 

[Kraptor]

Originally posted by: Thehubb
I posted this in the technical support forum but i thought you guys might be able to help also:

Ok so i just started building my comp. Everything went together fine. The comp boots up, and i start to install xp. After a few hiccups it makes it to the loading screen(Where it gives you the 39 min countdown). Then out of nowhere it gives me a blue screen error saying DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and it restarts itself. Once it restarts, it boots from the disk and says it's restarting the installation. The the gui screen comes up, and the 39min blue background comes up for a second, then it reboots and does it all over again...

This is where im at now. The only thing concerning me is that it isn't picking up my video card. Like in the post screen it shows my hd, ram, cpu, mobo, all that. Is it supposed to pick up my vc too? It's installed correctly and can feed my monitor signal through it. So now im stuck and im pissed. Someone please help.


:Now it's 1am, so im going to bed before i throw it all out my second story window....

Hi there!

I have/had the same issue. I dunno if u are still having those random blue screen crashes or not but for me only BIOS downgrade solved it. I havent tried the latest bios, the one just came out on 2005-09-29, but the other 2 before that caused random blue deaths. The only thing that solved my problem is to go back to the release BIOS. I know it will be more trickier for you, since you have a X2. It seems to work ok now, but I am still not very satisfied with the board, especially with SATA RAID 0 performance. Also as someone mentioned above you coudl try giving up a bit more juice to ur memories, maybe that will solve ur problem. Try 2.9v if your mem can handle that. With tight setting mym memories need 2.9V otherwise I will get blue deaths again. Though when I first encountered these blue deaths i ran everything stock, no OC at all so th eproblem wasnt not enough voltage to ram, but you could try to raise a bit more and see what will happen, hopefully your rams can take a bit more voltage. BTW, Ive sent email about my problem(blue deaths) to Epox but so far havent received any answers from them.


Ill just copy and paste my problem from a diff thread.


I have the SLI version of the board. I was thinking about DFI or this board, since they are both priced almost the same in Europe but I opped for Epox cuase it has a 3 year warranty while DFI had only 1. Sadly I made a bad decision, cause so far I am not very pleased with the board. I had some serious problems with it. First when I upgraded my motherboard BIOS I always encoutnered some serious crashes, even when I ran everything on stock settings. This just happend with the new BIOSes, had no probs with the release BIOS.

Also had problems with the SATA chips both with nvidia and SI. For some reason I couldnt install XP when I had my RAId 0 setup on the nvidia SATA controllers. With SI had no such a problem, but one time the SI chip couldnt find one of my disk at boot up. First I thought that one of my disk diead but when I plugged the SATA cable out then back in then everything was fine again. Also I am not very satisfied with the SI SATA performance. I used to have an Abit IC7 with Intel onboard SATA, also had a RAID 0 with the same disks and managed to get some much better performance with that board then Epox. Here some Hdtach pictures of the 2 setup.

Abit IC 7 Intel SATA Raid 0
Epox 9npa+ SLI SI SATA Raid 0

Sofar I am not very pleased with the overall peformance.

Here is my setup

Venice 3500+
Epox 9Npa+ SLI
1Gig Geil ONE TCCD
MSI 7800GTX
600W Enermax PSU

 

[SPQQKY]

Appreciate your input, kraptor, but possibly not appropriate for this thread as your board is a totally different design and chipset. The 9NPA+SLI uses the nForce4 SLI chipset, has different RAID controller and BIOS and has a different design as far as power regualation.

 

[Kraptor]

Well, there isnt that much of a diff between SLI and Ultra chipset. They are almost teh same. You are right about the SATA controller, cause I was using the SI which cant be found on the Ultra board. BIOS is very similar for both if not the same.

 

[Incursion]

I have a question about the system memory configuration for dual channel memory. I have patriot ddr400 pc3200 ram (2 red dimms).

the manual is confusing. it says that the channel pairs have the same color. my m/b has 2 reds near the cpu and 2 blacks away. but the example says mount on dimm 1 and 3 or dimm 2 and 4 for best performance. then it says to mount on sockets of the same color. according to the diagram an page 3-5 if i mounted on the same color, it would be dimm 1 and 2 which are red, or dimm 3 and 4 which are black.

so which is it, should i mount them next to each other according to color, or should i mount them at 1/3 or 2/4 which would put them on different colors?

thx in advance and sorry if this has already been answered.

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Incursion
I have a question about the system memory configuration for dual channel memory. I have patriot ddr400 pc3200 ram (2 red dimms).

the manual is confusing. it says that the channel pairs have the same color. my m/b has 2 reds near the cpu and 2 blacks away. but the example says mount on dimm 1 and 3 or dimm 2 and 4 for best performance. then it says to mount on sockets of the same color. according to the diagram an page 3-5 if i mounted on the same color, it would be dimm 1 and 2 which are red, or dimm 3 and 4 which are black.

so which is it, should i mount them next to each other according to color, or should i mount them at 1/3 or 2/4 which would put them on different colors?

thx in advance and sorry if this has already been answered.

Put them next to each other in the same color slots. 1/2 and 3/4 for dual channel mode. EPoX went out of their way to confuse people with this board with respect to memory IMO

techfuzz

 

[Thehubb]

heh ya that confused me too. I think it was a typo however. You could always check cause the post screen will say dual channel or not.

 

[SPQQKY]

Originally posted by: Kraptor
Well, there isnt that much of a diff between SLI and Ultra chipset. They are almost teh same. You are right about the SATA controller, cause I was using the SI which cant be found on the Ultra board. BIOS is very similar for both if not the same.

There is no SI SATA controller on the Ultra board, and too be honest, the boards are VERY different. Look at the layout and the power regulation.

 

[Dagon]

Hi guys, I've been reading this forum for a while and you guys seem pretty knowledgable about this stuff. Mabye you can help me out.

I recently built a system with this board and ran into a problem that I can't seem to figure out. When I power up it seems that everything starts up just fine, except my monitor will not recieve a signal. I have tried re-seating the XFX 6600GT in the PCI-ex16 slot, I've tried a different regular PCI video card in one of the PCIx1 slots, and I've even tried swapping out my OCZ Plat Rev 2 with some of my friends memory and I have recieved no results.

I know the monitor works because I am using it on my old system with the regular PCI video card, and I know my friends memory works because he pulled it out of his functional system. At first I suspected my PSU because it was a 20-pin but I put a 20-24 pin converter on it and I still can't get a signal. I also know that the video card is getting power because it's fan turns on.

All of my LED's for the chip, the dimms, and the CPU are on. I recieve a FF on the 80 port LED display. I read earlier in this forum that FF means that the system made it past the post so I'm not entirely sure what to make of it all. This is the first time I've ever done this, for gods sake, atleast give me a display so I can pretend to troubleshoot...

Any suggestions?

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wi...62&WishListTitle=final+product%2C+rate

That is my entire system if it helps any.

 

[Dagon]

I'm sorry, I don't think that last link works.
Try this one.
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wis...&WishListTitle=final%20product,%20rate

 

[SPQQKY]

The older Antecs have problems for sure. This isn't the first time I have heard of an older Antec giving problems with this board. However, before we totally put blame on it, have you assembled the system outside of the case to be sure it isn't shorting out to it? Take it out of the case and assemble only the motherboard, cpu and hsf, one stick of memory and the video card. Connect the power supply and try to fire up the system, if it posts and you get a video signal, you were shorted to the case and all it will take is to put a strip of electrical tape on the mounting studs of the case. No need to poke holes in the tape as the screws usually pop through when turned. If this isn't the solution, try a different power supply while the system is still out of the case. For $85, you can definately do better on a new PSU at any rate. Look for something in the new ATX2.0 standard. I highly recommend and Enermax PSU or Sparkle/Fortron.

 

[Dagon]

I took the motherboard out of the case and disconnected everything but what you said to leave on it. I still didn't get signal so I guess I will RMA my antec and replace it with a different one. Perhaps I will take the liberty of purchasing the one that you have listed in your system, obviously it works. Is there any chance that I may have gotten a bad motherboard or are you pretty confident that it is my PSU?