**OFFICIAL** Abit BD7-II (i845E) Thread

[TuffGuy]

UPDATE: I can boot at 152MHz fsb at the 1:1 ratio and the system is rock solid. BUT... I can't reboot at that setting. I have to let the system sit for a few minutes and cool down before I can restart again. Once I'm in, it's stable again. What does that point to, CPU, RAM, or motherboard?

 

[THUGSROOK]

cpu voltage

 

[TuffGuy]

The undervolting, changing voltage issue?

 

[THUGSROOK]

could be - you should do the 1.7v wire mod.
theres info in the OC forum.

is your vcore at max right now?

 

[TuffGuy]

Yeah, I'm at max right now. At +15%, it fluctuates between 1.61V and 1.64V.

 

[NanoMem]

[*]Ext. Clock (CPU/AGP/PCI)

• Select FSB

[*]PCI Bus Frequency:

• Ext. Clock / ?

• Ext. Clock / ?

• ?MHz (fixed); ?MHz AGP

• ?MHz (fixed); ?MHz AGP

• ?MHz (fixed); ?MHz AGP

[*]DRAM Ratio H/W Strap:

• By CPU

• Low (400MHz)

• High (533MHz)

[*]DRAM Ratio (CPU:RAM):

• 1:1

• 3:4

• By SPD

[*]CPU Voltage:

• +5% (1.?V)

• +10% (1.?V)

[*]DRAM Voltage

• 2.5V - 2.7V

[/quote]
[*]DRAM Timing Schedule

• By SPD

• Manual

If manual:

[*]CAS Latency - ?, ?, ?
[*]Act to Precharge Delay - ?, ?, ?
[*]DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay - ?, ?
[*]DRAM RAS# Precharge - ?, ?[/quote]

TuffGuy, actually my question about hi/lo/step cas settings had to do with the last 4 line options above. I clipped this form from your thread of BG7 and replaced fields with "?". If you feel up to it please replace them accordingly. I also have a question about DRAM Ratio H/W Strap. What is exactly this option, its purpose and what do you have it set at right now? Also are you using SPD or Manual and if manual what were they at when you ran at 152fsb? Any luck past FSB 150 at 3:4?

I know it's overwhelming to tweak all these fields separately in search for the optimum tune-up especially when some of them will either prevent POST or fool you with "slow death" and bust on you later on. Believe it or not there is a method. Think of FSB as your biggest knob towards high oc'ability. DDR or RAM frequency is linear to FSB using 1:1, 3:4 or even 4:5 for that matter of fact. I know people call them dividers sometimes but I'd much rather think of them as multipliers or better 1.0, 1.33 and 1.25. So as long as FSB keeps climbing, DDR will follow linearly with your selected multiplier as its slope. Remember DDR=2*RAM frequency=2*(FSB*mulitplier) i.e. 2*multiplier*FSB.
Once you zero in on your highest FSB then you can go back and squeeze your memory thru CAS and ratios. Your CAS settings as your mini-knobs to further fine tune your signal based on FSB. Notice that maximum DDR will be achieved only with 1.33 i.e. 3:4. Only reason why 4:5, or 1.25 in my own terms, is present in 845G is to accommodate lower DDR's as Intel assumes that some of that badnwidth is consumed by the on-board video compared to 845E. Start with FSB and don't worry about ratios or cas settings. You might also need to tweak other BIOS features, especially those that consume system resources. You also might start with SPD for the memory and let DIMM and BIOS figure things out for you. Start with ratio 1:1 also. Once you get that hard to find FSB along with its Vcore, try to tweak up your cas settings from there and see if you can get a better FSB, once you find it start tweaking your cas settings back down towards stability.

I think the only reason why Intel is not worried about mobo vendors supporting higher DDR's than 266 without its approval with 845G is because all of them are gambling that some of it will be locked away by the AGP, so a little more of it will only bring things down to around 845E spec's. At this point I think 845E and 845G are equivalent with a little edge for the 845G when on-baord video is not used and higher DDR 333,400 and above chips are used. Intel is most likely focusing on dual channel DDR. Just imagine when it's ready and it's used with maturing 400DDR chips requiring in FSB's around 300MHZ and DDR's of 800 MHZ assuming 3:4 ratio. I wonder how they plan on handling 300 MHZ FSB! Well maybe they'll start by only doubling there presently certified 266DDR to 533DDR and with a 3:4 ratio they would only need to push FSB as high as 200. Isn't 200 like a ceiling for testers and the majority of BIOS vendors right now?

Good luck TuffGuy!

 

[chainbolt]

Obvioysly some ppl are running their BD7-II in the high 160s MHz or even at 170 Mhz. As shown here BD7-II at 167 Mhz (x4) FSB and here BD7-II at 170 (x4) Mhz FSB

In both cases the 3:4 ratio was used. This forces the used DDR 333 RAM to run at 222Mhz (x 2)= 444Mhz in case 1 and 225Mhz x 2=452 Mhz, as shown in the Sandra screenshots. And look at the bandwidht! To me it looks it's indeed the RAM but not the board which holds some here back at 150Mhz. What me concerns more is the low voltage. Why is Abit doing this?

Off the topic: I think the Enermax 550 Watter far less a good PSU for overclocking than you would expect. I used it for a while and never understood why I never got good results. Then somebody explained to me that the amper load in particular on the 5 volt rail is not really as high as what you expect from such a high rated PSU. [ampere x volt] = power consumption, but that has to be calculated for each RAIL independently, so the 550 Watt total wattage are irrelevant, when the ampere load is high on the "wrong" rail. The Enermax 555 has 45x5=225 Watt on the 5 volt RAIL. The 520 Watter from Torica, I am now using, has 54x5=270 Watt on the 5 volt rail. I am very suspicious about Enermax PSU I think they are overpriced and hyped.

 

[THUGSROOK]

i have no problems with an Enermax 550W.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

Well, I saw the thread and had to jump in. I'm ordering this mobo in about 10 hours along with a 1.6A, and I'm gonna use it with some PC2100 I already have. I've read thru and seen a bunch of info on the motherboard, but what I wanna know is how the people who own one like it! I'm not expecting huge overclocks with my RAM, but hitting 2.2ghz or so would be good enough for me.. I'm suspecting these boards can do that fairly easily? My RAM maxes out at like.. 140FSB using the fastest settings (My RAM is suck!), so I should be able to hit it.. just not much more. If I use 1:1 as opposed to 3:4, will I be missing out on a TON of performance or just sort of an extra edge?

I know for a fact I'll see a performace increase over what I'm using now, and I'm going 845E for the 533mhz support for the future, but without PC2700 will I be crippling the system to the point where the upgrade will be kinda pointless?

I would also like to add another reason I'm doing this is USB 2.0 and the fact that I've NEVER built an Intel system before (newbie), and I wanna try something quiet as opposed to the tornado sitting next to me now.

 

[NanoMem]

Originally posted by: MistaTastyCakes
Well, I saw the thread and had to jump in. I'm ordering this mobo in about 10 hours along with a 1.6A, and I'm gonna use it with some PC2100 I already have. I've read thru and seen a bunch of info on the motherboard, but what I wanna know is how the people who own one like it! I'm not expecting huge overclocks with my RAM, but hitting 2.2ghz or so would be good enough for me.. I'm suspecting these boards can do that fairly easily? My RAM maxes out at like.. 140FSB using the fastest settings (My RAM is suck!), so I should be able to hit it.. just not much more. If I use 1:1 as opposed to 3:4, will I be missing out on a TON of performance or just sort of an extra edge?

I know for a fact I'll see a performace increase over what I'm using now, and I'm going 845E for the 533mhz support for the future, but without PC2700 will I be crippling the system to the point where the upgrade will be kinda pointless?

I would also like to add another reason I'm doing this is USB 2.0 and the fact that I've NEVER built an Intel system before (newbie), and I wanna try something quiet as opposed to the tornado sitting next to me now.

Well, with this setup working backwards, PC2100 oc'ed to 140 or DDR=280 and 1:1 your CPU would need to be at FSB=140. If you change 1:1 to 3:4 leaving FSB at 140 your RAM would be driven to ~187 or DDR=374 which would not work. If you insist on making 3:4 work with the same hardware then you'd need to lower your FSB all the way down to ~105 (140/1.33) which obviously would make things worse in terms of performance.

This is how I'd select my next DIMM. Start with presently approved 133FSB and work forward with 3:4. You should come up with DDR~354 and even higher would not hurt as you could always downclock it thru 1:1 to match higher than 133 FSB's.

 

[NanoMem]

Originally posted by: chainbolt
Obvioysly some ppl are running their BD7-II in the high 160s MHz or even at 170 Mhz. As shown here BD7-II at 167 Mhz (x4) FSB and here BD7-II at 170 (x4) Mhz FSB

Wow, indeed! Very impressive memory scores especially the efficiency of ~ 93% at 170 FSB. I wonder whose RAM chips as I doubt heat spreaders would be needed to hide such high quality. I also wonder how much beyond 170, FSB can be pushed if RAM is underclocked down to 1:1. Good piece of info. Thanks.

Peace--

 

[NanoMem]

Off the topic: I think the Enermax 550 Watter far less a good PSU for overclocking than you would expect. I used it for a while and never understood why I never got good results. Then somebody explained to me that the amper load in particular on the 5 volt rail is not really as high as what you expect from such a high rated PSU. [ampere x volt] = power consumption,

Yes, he gave you the right recipe there.

but that has to be calculated for each RAIL independently, so the 550 Watt total wattage are irrelevant, when the ampere load is high on the "wrong" rail.

Well now the problem becomes convoluted if you only care about the total of 550 watts without worrying about how it's broken down on each rail. You can come up with infinite number sets that add up to 550. So to simplify this problem let's assume that wattage per rail is fixed and constant in theory. I still need to worry about what numbers (amps*volts) to multiply to get my watt number on each rail. Obviously if watts per rail are fixed and volts (for whatever reason) drop than amps need to compensate fooling you that constant power is maintained on each rail.

The Enermax 555 has 45x5=225 Watt on the 5 volt RAIL. The 520 Watter from Torica, I am now using, has 54x5=270 Watt on the 5 volt rail. I am very suspicious about Enermax PSU I think they are overpriced and hyped.

In practice watts will tend to fluctuate around some kind of statistical distribution so I'd make sure they're hi enough to keep me above my volt thresholds. Sorry can't help you with those models as my own PSU goes only to 350 and I haven't investigated anything above 450 yet. But your concerns are legitimately technical ones as far as that 5V rail is concerned.

Oh, before I forget about your question on Abit voltages. Just when you thought you resolved the PSU undervolt, Intel throws a wrench into your oc'ing plans with the same problem from a different angle. What I mean is that it's an Intel CPU issue more than Abit as the same limits are starting to show across other mobo vendors. People have worked around it by messing with certain pins of the northwood P4 and magically the BIOS opens itself to higher vcores. Gigabyte uses a nifty proprietary windows based software tool to open higher Vcore voltages EasyTune 4. In a way you're not wrong about Abit, heck they all in the same big bed!

btw, here is a BG7 at 170 and 1:1 and here are the results. I think he could slightly improve those scores and have a better shot at 3:4 with same 170 FSB using a better selection of memory chips than kingmax.

Peace!

 

[NanoMem]

ChainBolt,
That BD7-II can hit 175 FSB at 1:1 with obviously the right chips.

You might find this link interesting if anything at all about undervolting PSU problems. I am starting to believe that there is a PSU/mobo correlation if instead of using power consumption=currents x volts you equivalently use power consumption = (volts x volts) / Resistance load. From this angle, variable resistance loads are presented to the PSU rails from different circuitries on of course different motherboards causing fluctuations all over the place.

Thanks for pointing the problem out, I would not have thought of potential PSU undervolting issues.

 

[mike9390]

I just read something very interesting it seems that you get no benefit at high memory speeds by running your memory at 2/5/2/2 compared to 2.5/6/3/3. In fact running at 2/5/2/2 could hurt both your memory scores and your fps. This was tested on both a 4BDA2+ and a 8IRXP. At 266 you see a difference but at 354 and above you don't. Here are the links here and here. His conclusion was to set the timing to lowest and just raise the FSB.

Can some one with a BD7-II or BG7 test their boards with a memory at 354 and above at both timings and report your results. Jwaytt on hardforums has a MSI 845 Ultra and at 175Mhz FSB and 1:1 ram ratio got an increase of 173 3DMarks by setting 2/5/2/2 but that's with 350Mhz mem.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

Dang, this thread's been slow.. well, anyways.. felt like hopping in with my BD7-II success story Partially thanks to a few of ya out there who explain all this crazy Intel jargon and whatnot

I got the board, hooked everything up, worked on first boot.. sort of. Apparantly the board didn't like one of my older sticks of PC2100, so I was left with one stick of PC2400 in there, adding up to 256mb. After finding that problem and eliminating it, the thing has been a great board for me, meeting an exceeding hopes for my first Intel PC As of now I'm running my 1.6A at 150mhz FSB, bringing it to 2.4ghz. I'm not seeing any stability problems, but until I get some PC2700, I doubt I'm going to push it much more. The only problem I have with the board is the fact that, yes, the MCH heatsink has some poor thermal interface on there.. (TIM *and* silicone), but it's an easy fix.. take it off, add AS3, and you're off and ready. I thought of that, but popped a Crystal Orb on the mobo in it's place and my MCH temps dropped plenty, didn't rise as much when loaded, and my mobo looks dang sharp

The BIOS is friendly and simple to figure out, and I love the overclocking options. Never, did my 8KHA+ have this much freedom and headroom in BIOS settings.. and it was touted an awesome o/cing board. Bah

Oh well. I figured it was time to bump up a dying thread for a great mobo.. with a couple quirks (mainly the temps...), but otherwise, a solid, well built board that works as it should. Just 2 cents from an excited newb I guess

 

[GreenParrot]

I have a dilemma: BD7II-RAID or BG7?
Pardone me if it is a stupid question, but anyone knows if I will be able to boot from RAID0?
Can I install Windows2000 directly into RAID0, or I have to use a regular IDE controller for
boot and only then will be able to use RAID?

Thanks in advance for any advice or supporting links.

 

[RamIt]

You can boot from raid 0 with the BD7II. I installed Win XP with no problems just give the drivers from the floppy when it asks for them.

 

[RamIt]

By the way this board rocks except for the reported temps. Right now running at 2480MHz-DDR 412 and sandra memory scores in at 3163 on my 1.6a.

 

[MIDIman]

slight problem here - i have an Antec Tru330, P4 1.6a, Abit BD7-II - i've strapped on an Alpha 8492 with a Silencer fan (looking for quiet operation here). temps are a little high at nearly 45-55 C, but if this is within safe limits, i prefer it over having noisy fans.

THE problem - 5Vsb is too low and static at 4.29v. motherboard defaults the limits as 4.51-5.50, so i get an error any time i open winbound.

i can just lower the setting to 4.29, but am i within safe limits?


i also noticed the undervolting, so i upped vcore +5%. it made everything nicer, but did not affec the 5Vsb at all.

 

[MIDIman]

lol - found out why my temps are higher than everyone else's (which are also too high anyway)...my Silencer fan on the Alpha was NOT ON! yikes!! Temps are now down to where most others' are - 40-45 - 42.5 right now, system temp = 37

any idea why Antec would have a "fan only" molex connector, and yet the fan was not on when connected? Its basically a normal looking molex with four slots, but with only two pins instead of four - the pins line up just fine with the only two pins on the Silencer fan. I plugged the fan in a normal molex, and its all fine and ON now.

its hard to believe this alpha can get temps like that, stable at 133fsb with NO FAN!

 

[oldfart]

Yikes! The fan only connectors are meant for case fans. The PS will vary the voltage depending on case temp to keep the RPM down to keep things quiet. It looks like your CPU fan will not run @ a low voltage level. BTW, whenever I fire up a new setup, I always look to see that the CPU fan is spinning.

 

[MIDIman]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Yikes! The fan only connectors are meant for case fans. The PS will vary the voltage depending on case temp to keep the RPM down to keep things quiet.

ahhh - cool, thanks! I'll mess with my panaflo rear fan connector and get it hooked up on that.


Still looking for an answer to this questions tho: THE problem - 5Vsb is too low and static at 4.29v. motherboard defaults the limits as 4.51-5.50, so i get an error any time i open winbound.

 

[MIDIman]

bump - anyone? its still showing this error

 

[MIDIman]

just realized that this is the voltage for standby mode - since i dont use standby and no on has replied, i guess i dont have to worry about?

 

[helveteshovedkort]

Having BIG trouble with this mainboard.

Symptoms: when turn on power, it beeeeeeeeeeeeeps, then a few seconds pause, and then beeeeeeeeeeep again, etc etc..... Have to turn off the PSU to stop it.
Had this problem when first pieced it all together, but after reapplying all parts of the computer to it, the beeping stopped, and post was achieved.
Have formatted and installed Windows after that.

Then I wanted to finish the rest, i.e. puttin in the other mem module (single? sided 256 DDR 333, both Samsung D series), connect the last casefan to the powerline, and change the floppy cable to 'round' version, and tieing up a bunch of unused power cords. Thats it.
After that, the beeping started again.

I've checked the motherboard's connection to the tray, should not be any shorts there (and its placed just like before, on spacers, with no unused ones).
Power supply is Enermax 431w. All fans are working when on. Connected both main power and 12v to the board, as before.
Only thing I can think of, is the placement of the memory modules, but I tried every combination, no go... Not even with only 1 module...
Also disconnected everything (including power to all but mainboard), except graphics card, 1 memory module, and case cords(power on, led etc), and it STILL beeps like mad....
Cleared CMOS a couple of times as well....

So, what happened here ?
Any clues....?

Maybe the CPU(P4-1600A) has suddenly gone dead(really dont think so, but...), or the fan spins too slow ????

PS: What is that 'AUX' power connector from the PSU for ?