** Official EPoX 9NDA3+ Thread ** S939

[UKnowWhat]

Flipcody,

I just did a quick check on your RAM chips' datasheet. Your first module is built upon the Winbond chips and is only compliant to 166 Mhz, CL2.5 (translated to PC2700). The 2nd module is Infineon compliant to 200Mhz CL3. Organization of both modules should be the same: 16 chips total, 8 on each side.

--> HYB250256807BT-5 should be HYB25D256807BT-5

 

[flipcody]

Thank you for the information, I very much appreciate you looking up that info.

I don't know where that leaves me. It seems that Corsair was liberal in there rating. I imagine that they tested it at cas 2.5 at 200 with AMD CPUs and that is why they classified it as such. This probably does explain why they will not run dual channel. They did run dual channel on my last board.

I really do not know what to do. At this point I would be thrilled to run 2 dimms in single channel mode but I'm unable to even do that. Newegg has given me an RMA number so I could return it but if this is an issue with board that will not get me anywhere. I'm not overly excited about spending another $250 - 300 on 2 sticks of good ram.

Is there anyone with this board that is running 2 different dimms succesfully? Anyone willing to try?

Thanks!

 

[UKnowWhat]

Flipcody,

Can you do this just to test it out?

1) Reset your BIOS to fail safe option. This will take you to 166Mhz DRAM speed. If not, then set your DRAM speed to 166 MHZ.
2) Change your DRAM setting Cas Latency, RAS to Cas delay, PreCharge Time to 3-3-3. Leave the RAS active time in auto and Memory Timing 1T.

This will make your PC3200 modules running as slow as the slowest of the pair, standard speed of the Winbond' spec. Try that to see if it works, on either dual channel or single channel.

 

[arswihart]

Yeah i mean i assume you have tried that kind of thing to help get the system stable. If you haven't already read up on some basic articles on setting up and OC'ing on the Athlon64 (I know you are just trying to get your system to work, let alone OC). It is definitely a little different than with Athlon XP's since you're dealing with memory dividors and htt and stuff.

BTW, here's some RAM thats guarenteed to work great. Its $225.

2x512 patriot tccd

And some that should be fine as well for under $100...
2x512 corsair value select

 

[flipcody]

I spent about 1 1/2 hours troubleshooting on phone with a tech support guy from Corsair last night. There is something wrong with memory controller on CPU or motherboard. I'm returning both today and getting new ones. Corsair is also replacing my dimms. Corsair's support is amazing...great company.

Uknowwhat, I also tried what you said, no go.

Thank you for those of you that tried to help!

Something we did discover was that my board was undervolting the CPU. At auto settings the CPU was only getting 1.36v. Is a 3200+ winchester 1.4v or 1.5v?

 

[UKnowWhat]

Originally posted by: flipcody
...
Something we did discover was that my board was undervolting the CPU. At auto settings the CPU was only getting 1.36v. Is a 3200+ winchester 1.4v or 1.5v?

Spec at AMD website said 1.5V and normally it is plus/minus 10%. The one you should be concerned with is the absolute maximum rating. That's how people blowing up their chip like egg on frying pan, when they exceed their CPU's maximum rating.

 

[arswihart]

flipcody - If you had read this thread (its really not that long), you would have seen this issue of undervolting several times. I hope you tried at least bumping the voltage before you RMA's the mobo and CPU. Well, if you can get away with it and sort everything out, I'll be happy for you. Some other good forums for learning about issues with Epox boards are at PCPerspective.com, nforcershq.com, and AOAforums.com.

UKnowWhat - I believe the spec'ed voltage is supposed to be 1.4, not 1.5 (for a winchester), which is why most people whose 9nda3+'s are undervolting to like 1.34 have to do at least +0.05 (although some are getting by with the default undervolting).

 

[hectorsm]

That is right. My 9NDA3J with a A64 3200 undervolt to 1.34v. Worked fine at that voltage but when I overclocked my processor to 2.4 GHz I had to raise it to 1.36v because Folding@home would crash.

Another thing I notice is that the temperature reading are not very consistant. Sometimes I get 37C under load but if I reboot I get 47C or vice versa. The temperature monitor is very wacky.

 

[UKnowWhat]

Check it for yourself chapter 7 page 51

AMD functional data sheet

 

[flipcody]

arswihart, I was aware that there was some undervolting but I figured it had been resolved in bios update. I did up voltage to 1.4 and then 1.5 before returning motherboard and cpu.

I'm still unclear what voltage a 3200+ winchester is rated at. Newegg has it listed as 1.5 volts.

Thanks.

 

[alexandreBR]

Originally posted by: flipcody
arswihart, I was aware that there was some undervolting but I figured it had been resolved in bios update. I did up voltage to 1.4 and then 1.5 before returning motherboard and cpu.

I'm still unclear what voltage a 3200+ winchester is rated at. Newegg has it listed as 1.5 volts.

Thanks.

Athlon 64 3200+

=> ADA3200AEP5AP = 2000 MHz(10x200MHz), ClawHammer, 1 MB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão C0 130 nm
=> ADA3200AEP5AR = 2000 MHz(10x200MHz), ClawHammer, 1 MB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão CG 130 nm
=> ADA3200AEP4AX = 2200 MHz(11x200MHz), NewCastle, 512 KB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão CG 130 nm

 

[pantner]

but, if you read carefully...those are Newcastle and Clawhammer cores...not Winnies...

i think the winnies are 1.4v, but i don't know for sure...

 

[SrGuapo]

Originally posted by: pantner
but, if you read carefully...those are Newcastle and Clawhammer cores...not Winnies...

i think the winnies are 1.4v, but i don't know for sure...

I thought they were 1.35, but don't quote me. That s what CPU-z reports my stock voltage as, but that could be due to some slight undervolting...

 

[flipcody]

Newegg has all Winchesters except the 3500+ listed as 1.5v. They have 3500+ listed as 1.4v.

I went out on AMD's site and could not find an answer. I will post on their forums to try to resolve.

SrGuapo, yes your winchester is undervolted. I imagine most the people here have 1.34 - 1.36 volts when bios set to Auto.

 

[alexandreBR]

Originally posted by: alexandreBR

Originally posted by: flipcody
arswihart, I was aware that there was some undervolting but I figured it had been resolved in bios update. I did up voltage to 1.4 and then 1.5 before returning motherboard and cpu.

I'm still unclear what voltage a 3200+ winchester is rated at. Newegg has it listed as 1.5 volts.

Thanks.

Athlon 64 3200+

=> ADA3200AEP5AP = 2000 MHz(10x200MHz), ClawHammer, 1 MB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão C0 130 nm
=> ADA3200AEP5AR = 2000 MHz(10x200MHz), ClawHammer, 1 MB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão CG 130 nm
=> ADA3200AEP4AX = 2200 MHz(11x200MHz), NewCastle, 512 KB Cache L2, 1.5V, 70º C, Revisão CG 130 nm

Sorry, I've given S754 information... s939 is this:
Athlon 64 3200+

=> ADA3200DIK4BI = 2000 MHz(10x200MHz), Winchester, 512 KB Cache L2, 1.4V, 65º C, Revisão D0 90 nm

 

[arswihart]

its 1.4v for a winchester. Thanks for getting the proof, alexandreBR.

Anyone having other problems with their 9nda3+ besides the undervolting and reports of weird temperature reporting?

Seems to me its the best nforce3 mobo ever made based on overclocking, price, bundle, stabilty, BIOS options, onboard features, and layout

...except for the SATA location below the AGP slot making it a pain to use SATA with a 2-slot video card. Although I've heard from 2-3 people on AOAforums who have successfully trimmed away their SATA cables so that the ports can be used just fine with a 2-slot video card. Anyone doing this? Cause I'm debating whether I should get some new quieter hard drives in SATA or IDE in a future upgrade.

Thanks for all your contributions to this wonderful thread on the great 9nda3+.

 

[flipcody]

Thank you for clarifying voltage.

I like the motherboard a lot. Very well thought out. I have never had a board that was so overclock friendly. I'm pretty impressed with the winchester core as well. The only issue I have with board is floppy at bottom but a lot of people do that these days.

arswihart, I have also seen SATA cables with right angles like this http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=560665 I don't know if this would fit under video card but it would be worth a shot. I'm blown away with the performance gain with SATA. I now boot in under 30 seconds. Very quiet as well (I have the Hitachi 7K250).

 

[pantner]

i too have the problem with the 2 SATA ports.., if you look carefully, the right angle connectors will only work on one SATA port...as they are above/below each other and not side by side...

 

[arswihart]

yeah, you have to end up bending the cables in opposite directions from the connectors so they aren't overlapping. I guess you could get one right angle cable and then trim away at a regular cable and bend it the other way.

flipcody - I don't think SATA itself allows for the quick boot times; an IDE drive with the same specs should boot up at the same speed. I'm not speaking from experience, but thats just what I have heard, since even ATA100 is not a limiting interface for todays hard drives - and they don't even get close to using all the bandwidth of the SATA interface.

 

[alexandreBR]

in fact, i think that Epox should construct an adapter, right-angled, so that the 2 SATA ports could be used... unfortunately, as far as I know, the ports 3 and 4, even with BIOS updates, can't be locked... what a pity!!!

 

[flipcody]

arswihart, My experience since installing SATA drives at home and at work has been that boot times are considerably faster. Part of that might be that they are clean installs as well and faster system (was using Athlon XP at 2500 Mhz on nForce 2 chipset). The drives I used as boot drives before the SATA drives were IDE WD Cavier SE drives (7200 rpm, 8mb cache) which were very fast but not this fast. After clean install with those drives I believe by boots were 45 sec to 1 min. Installing Windows is faster as well with the SATA drives.

How long is your boot?

I don't have the conflict with graphics card because I have a 6800 GT with stock cooler and copper heat sink.

 

[tpicciani]

My comments on Epox are as follows:

The board has a flaw in the healthcheck feature of the bios. Other than that it's a little finnicky for memory. My PDP Patriot Dual Data Rate ddr 3200 ram runs fine at default settings pairs in slots 1-2 or 3-4.

The bios on the rev 1.x motherboard that I have will hang if healthchecks are enabled.
The bios screen for the health status will hang.

Epox doesn't have a clue to these issues and their support people are guessing at the problem. As a Help Desk supervisor I'd have serious issues with their customer service skills, the biggest issue being that of guessing at the solution and offering fixes that are expensive and make no sense.

Their solution was to buy new ram, specifically single sided ddr ram. The problem is that the issue or ram has no effect when you're still in the bios.

Windows is stable. If the ram was incompatable I would have issues just booting.

They sound like they're giving canned responses at best. They are not addressing the issue, not asking for nor paying attention to information such as board revision, and not offering replacement. In short they are not giving me a sense that I'll be "taken care of!"

While this board will do for a while, I'm probably not going to buy EPOX again. Their service dept. just isn't clicking.

Tom P.

 

[arswihart]

tpicciani - From the vagueness of some of your comments, its hard to tell what your problem is. I have no problems with the health status screen. As far as RAM, I'm using 3 year old 3200 ram in dual channel DDR400 1t 2-3-3-10 timings. I don't know if you had a corrupted BIOS, bad RAM, or a defective board. Maybe the fact that you have rev1.1 is the problem, but I've heard many people having no issues with those revisions except for the onboard LAN. Also, stores only sell rev2.1's at this point.

pantner - my boot time is 30-40 seconds with 3-4 year old WD800JB (IDE), my guess is your previously slow boot time was due to fragmentation or slower overall system specs (RAM?). Again I don't think their is any inherent difference in speed between SATA and IDE versions of the same drive, from what I've read.

 

[UKnowWhat]

I just have my Kingmax 1GB DDR PC3200 CL2.5 arrived today from newegg's one day sale. The first thing I do is to mix 1 512MB module of Kingmax PC3200 with 1 512MB module of Kingston Value Ram PC3200 CL3 that I had before in slot 1 & 2. It's 1GB dual channel as it should be, and there can't be any worse set up than this because Kingmax and Kingston don't use the same chip on their module. Not only that, they don't have the same CL. There goes the myth of expensive RAM kit.

That's all folks.

 

[pantner]

Originally posted by: tpicciani
My comments on Epox are as follows:

The board has a flaw in the healthcheck feature of the bios. Other than that it's a little finnicky for memory. My PDP Patriot Dual Data Rate ddr 3200 ram runs fine at default settings pairs in slots 1-2 or 3-4.

The bios on the rev 1.x motherboard that I have will hang if healthchecks are enabled.
The bios screen for the health status will hang.

Epox doesn't have a clue to these issues and their support people are guessing at the problem. As a Help Desk supervisor I'd have serious issues with their customer service skills, the biggest issue being that of guessing at the solution and offering fixes that are expensive and make no sense.

Their solution was to buy new ram, specifically single sided ddr ram. The problem is that the issue or ram has no effect when you're still in the bios.

Windows is stable. If the ram was incompatable I would have issues just booting.

They sound like they're giving canned responses at best. They are not addressing the issue, not asking for nor paying attention to information such as board revision, and not offering replacement. In short they are not giving me a sense that I'll be "taken care of!"

While this board will do for a while, I'm probably not going to buy EPOX again. Their service dept. just isn't clicking.

Tom P.

When you say "Health Checks" are you talking about it displaying the Temps/Voltages when it posts???

if so, then i too have had NO problems with that aspect of the board....just the locked SATA ports, the bottom 2 USB becoming inactive after a re-boot (my bluetooth dongle stopped working!) and the undervolting...this board is a DREAM compared to my Gigabyte (not because of the board, but because of the specific motherboard...)

however, i am unsure as to the revision of my board...