Gigabyte Titan 8IRXP mini review and overclock tips

[gunf1ghter]

A few people have been asking for information on this board. I finally got all the parts and pieces today to set up my Gigabyte board with a 1.6a Northwood and thought that I would provide some helpful information. I should also point out that I'm no Intel Zealot having built many AMD rigs.

I won't bore everyone to death with every detail of this board (for that see the excellent reviews at anandtech or tomshardware). There are a few things though that I would like to point out (I found them helpful).

* This board comes with the best documentation I have yet seen. Not only does it come with a thorough manual, it is the first board I have purchased that comes with a huge color poster to assist with the setup of the board. This is a real time saver as it immediately references every single connector on the motherboard with large color photos and illustrations.

* This board is built like a tank. When I was a sophomore in college I had a job soldering PCB's for electronic lighting systems. I know good PCB construction when I see it and the Gigabyte is the best looking board I have yet seen from one of the major motherboard manufacturers. The blue PCB is attractive too!

In a seperate topic, I would like to point out that while I'm not Intel's biggest fan when it comes to cpu packaging (I don't like them constantly obseleting motherboards, this new socket 478 setup is incredible. The stock heat sink is a monster and the new mounting bracket and heat spreader design insures that you can not possibly install the fan and heat sink incorrectly).

* You want USB 2? Holy moly! I don't know if this is typical, but the board comes with 4 USB 2.0 ports as well as 4 USB 1.1 ports... who the heck needs a hub now?

So anyway, I got the board installed with my new GF4 4400 pretty easily. The very first thing I did was boot it up on a floppy and flash the new F6 BIOS. This turned out to be a real life saver as you need this bios version to use the RAID ports as regular IDE channels. I really like having an extra two ATA133 channels, it lets me have my CD, DVD and WD800BB hard drive each on their own channel for maximum speed.

I then proceeded to fire up Windows XP, stopping the install long enough to point it to the Promise ATA133 controller drivers... after that XP had no trouble seeing my hard drive and install went well enough.

Got Windows loaded and proceeded to check everything out at the default settings. Turned off the on-board sound, memory stick and smart card reader, as I won't be using them any time soon. I had no problems using the on-board Intel 10/100 NIC... and it's great to have such a high quality NIC right on the motherboard.

Now that I had everything up and running I really wanted to see what all this overclocking mayhem with the Northwood 1.6a was about. I went into the BIOS and bumped up the FSB to 133mhz, left the cpu core at stock and booted it up.

BOOM! Blue Screen!

I tried adding more vcore voltage and it just made things worse... it went from blue screening after a few minutes in windows to blue screening almost immediately.. I backed off the FSB and got it semi stable at about 120 FSB.

I started cursing ever buying this board, and was really frustrated thinking that it must actually be my CPU that was giving up... then I got to thinking about it and realized that memory dumps and blue screen errors are usually much more indicative of memory problems. I booted the system up and went back into the options and found something amazing... the F6 BIOS version sets the memory speed to 2.6 times the FSB speed by default... that's right kiddies... I was trying to run my Kingmax PC2700 DDR at close to 400mhz and it just couldn't handle it. I backed off the multiplier (which interestingly enough caused me to have to totally unplug the machine for the bios to reset itself), booted up into windows and BAM! Running like a champ at 266mhz memory speed.

I think that a lot of people miss this and curse the board, returning it. I know that I was scratching my head for a while.

I will let the system run some overnight tests and add my benchies tomorrow morning.

I want to point out that my system is running at 2.1 gig right now with default vcore!! I have zero probs with shutting it down or rebooting it. I really think that this board has gotten a bad rap. After I make 100% sure that the system is rock solid at 133mhz FSB I might shoot for 140 or even 150. For this CPU to put at a 33% overclock on this motherboard with default vcore says a lot (for me anyway).

Anyway, post any comments or let me know if there is anything else you want to know about my setup. I will have my rig specs updated tomorrow after everything burns in successfully.





***************************************

OK, ran Prime95 for 9 hours with no probs whatsoever.

BENCHIES (CPU running at 133X16, RAM running at 266 Mhz)

3DMARK2001 (with Visiontek TI4400) 9717
Sandra CPU Arithmetic Drhystone 4104 Wheststone 1110/2649
Sandra Multimedia Integer 8449 Floating Point 10290
Memory Bandwidth 2028/2027

 

[CoDerEd]

Congrats, you have a nice pair in there and I believe
that you will have fun playing with it.
Call me crazy but I like mobo that need to be tweak
first, I have the pleasure of "scratching my head"
as you said.

Anyway, I haven't received mine, seems like
Newegg is getting slower after springbreak.
I'll post my setup and result as soon as I got it.
btw/ how's the Kingmax PC2700 perform, I want to swap my
512Mb PC2100 into PC2700, but still waiting for reasonable price.

peace

 

[gunf1ghter]

Overclocked as I am the Kingmax shows comparable performance to a 2 gig Pentium 4 running with 800 mhz RDRAM. Seeing as the RAM functioned above 300 mhz (which is where it should top out as PC2700 RAM) even for a brief time, I think it's pretty good. I will run some benchies tomorrow and post them. Too busy right now looking at all the cool demo stuff that came with my new TI4400!

 

[CoDerEd]

Have you seen this

 

[gunf1ghter]

^ Benchies added to original post.

 

[Barrei]

I'm also have GA 8irxp running my 1.6 williamette at 1.675 volts{ williamette runs higher voltage than northwood, stock vcore on williamette is 1.75} 128 fsb = 2048 mhz, pll 16 { this keeps my pci at 31 }, +.3 volts agp and memory,2.66 cas on my 256kb of micron 2100 ddr at 340mhz and is stable as can be . Have run memory at cas 2 but better scores at 2.66. I have only one 60 gig Maxtor Diamondmax plus 7200 rpm ata133 liquid ball bearing hdd also but am hooked into ide 0 hookup which is only ata 100 capable . I also have f6d bios if I plug hdd into one of the raid ide's will it run at 133?

 

[gunf1ghter]

You have to go into the BIOS and tell it that you want the two RAID channels to function as ATA133.

Then you have to go get the correct drivers for the OS you are running from the gigabyte website.

Bet yes, if you pre-load the drivers I would expect it should work.

 

[Barrei]

Thanks gunfighter>

 

[Barrei]

Nice scores mine were Sandra CPU math Whetston 3917 Drystone1263/2607. CPU multimedia Integer8353/ floating point 10107, memorycas2.66 2519/2434, cas 2.0 1978/1898, this is running micron2100 ddr at 340mhz, and 266 mhz also running a p41.6 { williamette unfortuanately } at 132 fsb.

 

[Barrei]

Whoops got my whetston and drystone mixed up oh well you get the picture.

 

[InterTech]

<< I want to point out that my system is running at 2.1 gig right now with default vcore!! I have zero probs with shutting it down or rebooting it. I really think that this board has gotten a bad rap. After I make 100% sure that the system is rock solid at 133mhz FSB I might shoot for 140 or even 150. For this CPU to put at a 33% overclock on this motherboard with default vcore says a lot (for me anyway). >>



I dumped my Soyo Dragron Ultra for this board as well. I am running my 1.6a at 2.6ghz (16x163) at 1.85v (actual ~1.81v). Using the Arkua hs, the loaded temp never get over 45c. At idle, the temp is about 34c. My 1.6a would not go any higher dispite the high voltage. If I use anything below 1.85v, Quake3 would get kick back to the desktop. At 2.6ghz and 1.85v, I played Quake for about 2 hours and no problem. Also, Super Pi and Prime95 ran without problem either. I am still playing with the system to be sure that 16x163 is the sweet spot. So far so good!!

 

[hnic2k]

nice overclock..this board rocks despite what some people may say

 

[gunf1ghter]

You just gotta love this board!!! All these features and such stability in a Taiwan made board for under $149

OK, now I'm starting to sound like they pay me... :Q

 

[TheRaider]

I have this same board with a 1.8aNW@2.4 kinda strange have to set FSB at 134 to get 2.4...it took 1.725 Vcore to get it stable temps arent too bad...It idles around 38c. I should add that there is a way to reset the bios instead of unplugging if you look close at the board near the 2 bioses you will see where it says CLR CMOS you need to touch 2 solder spots...I use a flat bladed screwdriver to short the 2 solder spots and it resets its really simple...no need to remove small battery out of the board...I read that if you do the wire wrap for Vcore voltage you dont get the reboot problem since you dont change the Vcore in the bios cause I do have that problem with this board.

 

[Barrei]

Nice OC at 2.6

 

[CoDerEd]

Hi you all

gunf1ghter here is the benches i promissed you
btw I set my 1.8a to 140 fsb make it 2520Mhz
has to raise up the vcore to 1.6v
I haven't tried higher fsb yet, want to make sure that 140 is
stable, probably will keep it for a week.
The setting was easy, goes to 133 with 1.5 vcore when i installed win xp.
Actually performance when standard is not as good as my xp1900@1740mhz
when i hit 2.4 then it becomes par.
I believe i still can go for higher fsb with the stock hsf,
i'll try the wire trick to make the vcore 1.7v after
a while to make sure thet it stable at this point.


3DMARK2001 w/Asus GF3Ti500 8917
Sandra CPU Arithmetic Drhystone 4945 Wheststone 1307/3137
Sandra Multimedia Integer 9979 Floating Point 12137
Memory Bandwidth 2123 Float 2119

<<You just gotta love this board!!! All these features and such stability in a
Taiwan made board for under $149>>

MSI 845U-ARU $124 at Newegg

<<OK, now I'm starting to sound like they pay me...>>

same here... hahahahaha



peace

 

[CoDerEd]

One strange condition compare to my Athlon XP setup
The CPU temp on this setup is lower than the case temp
it's 17C when not OC and 20C on FSB 140 while case temp
remain the same at 36C [it was the same also when i run my XP
and usually the CPU temp of my XP is 10 to 15C higher than
the case temp]

well I'm new at Intel, I know that Intel run the CPU much cooler than AMD
but I didn't know it was that huge difference, even at stock HSF

I check it on the BIOS, sandra, MBM, and the MSI hardware monitor,
so it must be accurate.

 

[SilverThief]

Is there any way to enable AGP4x mode with these boards? Or should it automatically set itself to run at AGP4x?

 

[gunf1ghter]

It only runs with 3.3V 4X capable AGP cards so it should force AGP 4X with no intervention from the user.

 

[SilverThief]

Well that explains it. Guess the Radeons are out of the picture..... Radeon 7000/7500 2x@3.3v, 4x@1.5v.
What about the GF3 Ti200, or GF4 MX400? Couldnt find any specs showing agp voltage.

 

[gunf1ghter]

Any 4X card should be fine... which might actually include the newer Radeons.

 

[hnic2k]

after doing the voltage mod on the P4, does this board offer anymore voltage settings or 1.85v is the absolute max?

 

[gunf1ghter]

I think that 1.85 volts is the limit... and honestly I don't see why anyone would want or expect more out of a board. 1.85 volts is seriously stressing the actual architecture of the northwood core... that's over 20% out of spec.