**Official** Epox 8RDA+ Nforce2 Thread

[Technonut]

The nForce IDE controllers are built into the southbridge. They're on the Hypertransport bus, not the PCI bus. Where I'd expect problems is when you were overclocking the PCI bus and using the PCI-based SerialATA controller, or another PCI-based disk controller, either SCSI or IDE.

Does anyone know for certain if the Nf2 Hypertransport bus is running the IDE controllers in spec @ 200+ MHz FSB? In any case, there still could be issues involved running ANY PCI card sensitive to high bus speeds if there is a maximum 1/5 PCI divider available.

 

[memo]

hey, thanks for the help guys, it was the ram..... has anyone ever worked with googlegear.com before on RMAs? do they send you out a new one first, or do you have to send back? thanks

 

[mechBgon]

The Hypertransport bus connects the northbridge to the southbridge. My understanding is that it runs at the same speed all the time. Anyone else hear differently?

edit: I guess you could look at the general lack of problems as evidence of this. No one's complained that their USB has conked out, nor anything else that resides in the southbridge, as they go up to 200MHz+ FSB. If anyone has a really old worthless 4.5Gb SCSI drive and an old PCI SCSI controller, they should throw that in an OC'ed EPoX 8RDA+ as a guinea pig, since SCSI has no sense of humor when it comes to OC'ing the PCI bus.

 

[Mustanggt]

So what speed is the Hypertransport bus running at all the time?? I have has board for 3 days with no trouble untill today after running prime95 all night and day I go ahead and reboot and get C1 error, got it back up and running reboots fine now I droped FSB down to 200, I am thinking of sending it back for fears of prob after its to late to get RMA.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Mustanggt
So what speed is the Hypertransport bus running at all the time?? I have has board for 3 days with no trouble untill today after running prime95 all night and day I go ahead and reboot and get C1 error, got it back up and running reboots fine now I droped FSB down to 200, I am thinking of sending it back for fears of prob after its to late to get RMA.

According to nVidia's
nForce2 Features And Benefits page:

• HyperTransport Technology
  A state of the art I/O bus interface, delivering the highest continuous throughput?800MB/s?between the nForce platform processors. Ensures data and information are relayed through the system as quickly as possible.

 

[mechBgon]

I guess this would be a more precise answer, actually:

The two ports on the bus link are used for incoming and outgoing traffic; they can each be between 2 and 32-bits wide. The implementation used in the nForce has a link width of 8-bits and an operating frequency of 200MHz. The bus is double pumped meaning that the effective transfer rate is equal to that of a 400MHz bus. This gives the nForce 400MB/s of bandwidth in any one direction or 800MB/s total bandwidth between the IGP and the MCP

from Anand's original nForce article.

Since the 800Mb/sec (400Mb/sec in each direction) is what nVidia claims for nForce2 as well, it seems reasonable to guess that 200MHz is the Hypertransport bus's native operating frequency.

 

[Technonut]

Good info, but still does not specify for certain what speed the IDE controller is running. Is it locked at 33MHz?

 

[mechBgon]

The 33MHz thing is the frequency at which a conventional PCI IDE controller would talk to a PCI bus, with a 32-bit data width. The native IDE controller in an nForce southbridge is probably not playing by those rules, since it's not a PCI device. I'm not a chipset engineer, but it seems to me that the IDE controller on an nForce board would probably run at the same speed as the whole rest of the southbridge, which appears to be 200MHz DDR. What speed it talks to the hard drive at should be the same as any other hard-drive controller.

With all that bandwidth to the northbridge, it's no wonder my nForce 1 board outperforms my KT333 board in PCI performance...

 

[datamage]

As promised, here's some results from my 8rda+ ...

[ 3DMark 2001 SE - Default Bench ]

*13,667 ** 14,738 *** 14,800

[ PCMark 2002 ]

CPU: * 5818 ** 5936 *** 6226
MEM: * 4356 ** 4964 *** 5086
HDD: * 1135 ** 1186 *** 1159

[ Sandra 2003 ]

CPU Arithmetic: * 7252/2925 ** 7276/2970 *** 7489/3090
Multimeda: * 10781/11547 ** 10934/11578
Memory: * 2053/1938 ** 2569/2370 ***2595/2421

[ Unreal 2k3 - Flyby ]

Antalus * 155.50 ** 164.30 *** 167.03
Asbestos * 181.99 ** 201.09 *** 204.22
Inferno * 134.19 ** 134.33 *** 134.31
Face3 * 148.46 ** 164.21 *** 168.13

[ Unreal 2k3 - Botmatch ]

Antalus * 44.18 ** 49.47
Anubis * 49.80 ** 56.33
Inferno * 48.94 ** 55.60


* = (2.0 GHZ / 133 FSB) XP 2400+
** = (2.04 GHZ / 167 FSB)
*** = (2.1 GHZ / 168 FSB) - XP2600+


AMD XP2400+ (CPU set to Agressive for all tests)
Corsair XMS3000 (1x512) (2-2-2-5 for all tests)
Radeon 9700 Pro (default speeds)
WD 120GB 8MB Cache
(Everything ran @ default voltages)

I think that's all the hardware that make up these benches. Anyhow, Amazing how much of a leap you can get by just upping the FSB. Loving the board so far, just wish my blue (power) LED would be as bright as it should be.

The only thing I found odd were my first botmatch scores for ut2k3. With my XP2100 I scored roughly the same and seeing how the botmatch is CPU limited, I expected some sort of change with the 2400.

Anyhow, sorry for the lazy layout, but it's late and I just wanted to post these scores before I went off to bed. Any comments, questions, or suggestions?

(Copied my post from the AOA Forums)

- D.

 

[datamage]

dp. =/

 

[PoonDaddy007]

When you guys overclock, do you unlock the chip first by doing all of the L1 bridges and all that jazz or are you just using the stock chip and just changing the fsb?

Thanks.

 

[SpideyCU]

I'm just upping the FSB, personally.

Anyone here using Magic BIOS? It keeps insisting that I've got the latest version of the BIOS, but there's that 12/10 one out there obviously! Since the mobo doesn't have support to boot off of USB devices (making my USB pen drive useless) and I'd really rather not temporarily install a floppy drive each time I want to flash my BIOS - has anyone had luck with Magic BIOS? Or is it just me?

 

[justshawnf]

Originally posted by: PoonDaddy007
When you guys overclock, do you unlock the chip first by doing all of the L1 bridges and all that jazz or are you just using the stock chip and just changing the fsb?

Thanks.

The latest bios on epox.com unlocks the lower multipliers on the Thoroughbred processors without the need to make a modification to the CPU. I started my overclock by lowering the multi to 10 and the FSB to 200 on my AXP 2400+ (default 15*133=2000Mhz, give or take). I have since upped the multi to 11. Mind you, I had to up the voltage on my RAM and CPU to get it stable. I have not made any changes to the bridges on the CPU.

SpideyCU - I have not used Magic BIOS, but if I didn't have a floopy drive, I think I'd just make a bootable CD-RW. But I guess that assumes you have a burner.

 

[SpideyCU]

Shawn - that's what I ended up doing. Of course, it wasn't happy when it found out that it couldn't write a backup file of the old BIOS to the media, but, so be it. Magic BIOS would be easier...if it actually worked.

 

[justshawnf]

Well, if you ever need to go back to the original, I have a copy of it here, somewhere.

Oh, and you might look for a program called WinFlash. I seem to remember reading about that somewhere, but I've forgotten where. That might actually work for you for future BIOS upgrades. Again, I haven't used it. I prefer to make a floppy boot disk, but I still HAVE a floppy drive.

 

[PoonDaddy007]

Originally posted by: justshawnf

Originally posted by: PoonDaddy007
When you guys overclock, do you unlock the chip first by doing all of the L1 bridges and all that jazz or are you just using the stock chip and just changing the fsb?

Thanks.

The latest bios on epox.com unlocks the lower multipliers on the Thoroughbred processors without the need to make a modification to the CPU.

Quick question, you said that you had a Thoroughbred processor but I have a AGOIA Palomino core. Does that make a difference? I hear that the Thoroughbreds are better OC'ers than the Palominos.

Thanks.

 

[justshawnf]

Originally posted by: PoonDaddy007

Quick question, you said that you had a Thoroughbred processor but I have a AGOIA Palomino core. Does that make a difference? I hear that the Thoroughbreds are better OC'ers than the Palominos.
Thanks.

My understanding is that the Palominos unlock differently than the Thoroughbreds do, and that to unlock your Palomino, you will have to with bridge work on the processor.
I could be wrong, but that is my understanding.

 

[Mem]

There`s a new 8RDA+ review over@[url="http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/epox-8rda+/"]Digital-Daily[/url] .

 

[RideFree]

Mem,
Another good find like the review on the MSI nForce2 - except this guy is referring to the EPoX 8RDA+ and his graphs show the Asus A7V8X.
I guess I'm too picky.

 

[escapek]

Ok, just built my 8rda+, 2400XP and (1) 512 MB stick of Corsair PC2700 (For now I'm just sticking with 1 stick of memory). Everything is up and running fine, chose aggressive settings in the BIOS. FSB is running @ 133 still. What settings to you recommend I try to get everything overclocked as far as I can go while keeping things very stable (I'd rather run a bit slower and more stable). I guess I'm looking for BIOS settings, memory settings and voltage settings. Anything else that would be useful is welcome as well.

I must say though, built the system with no problems and it's running very fast at the stock speeds.

EK

 

[lsitter]

I have finally decided on the Epox 8RDA+ board. I will be using the 2100+ XP and adding 512K of PC2700 RAM. My question is, does it make a HUGE differance if I just use generic memory. I have no interest in overclocking. If I shouldn't use generic, what do you all recommend? I really don't want to spend a forturne on RAM. Another question is, does anyone know of anyplace that acually has this board in stock? And finally, I saw link in one of the forums here about a place that has reviews of internet resellers. I couldn't find it again, does anyone know the link?

Thanks everyone for your help. And just so I can contribute as well, never try to reposition your fan/heatsink on the CPU while it is running!

 

[SpideyCU]

Originally posted by: lsitter
Another question is, does anyone know of anyplace that acually has this board in stock?

My good man I refer you here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=913668

Stock is questionable in many places, but, it's good to have a pool to draw from.

 

[Kente]

THANKYOU for that link.... I've been searching everywhere for the last week or so with no luck....

 

[hasu]

Can we run CPU below the specified voltage in this board?
I have a relatively quiet system and my XP1600+ runs at 1.525v (nominal is 1.75v) to have its temperature low.

 

[SpideyCU]

Lowest you can set the voltage on the CPU in the BIOS is actually 1.4 V IIRC. So, yes, undervolting shouldn't be a problem.