going with the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard...

[RichPLS]

I am going with the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard...

and will be essentially upgrading from my current A8R-MVP board.

My Opteron 175 would only oc to 2.68GHz, yet was only really stable at 2.5GHz...
So I crank it down a bit more and run it 24/7 at 2.44GHz and does fine.
I am hoping for some more top end with this newer revision of a well made board.
Maybe I can hit 2.7GHz semi stable, so I could run 2.6GHz 24/7!!!

That is the goal.

 

[macer1]

gl

 

[RichPLS]

THey updated the article and also have a new BIOS out 4/14 that fixes most stuff.
Board is pretty feature rich, and I will use the two firewire ports. besides it was $184 at newegg verses $230 and minus one firewire.

I just hope I can get 7 or 8 percent of additional overclock on it... and go from 2440 to 2640 using 240x11!!!!
That would be sweet with having a stable FX-60 that benches slightly better than others due to membandwidth and 40MHz over...

 

[RichPLS]

Also getting this router...

 

[hiddendog]

Initially I also wanna go for this ASUS mobo, but after I was read a lot of review from the user, this board no longer in my list. the user give VERY bad rating of this board. "Not stable & OC perform like shit."

 

[RichPLS]

Strange DFI does not indicate 2 firewire ports in thier specs...
I wonder if only one works or something?

 

[xSunnYx]

From what i read about de DFI board, it isn't "that great"..

Alot of people are having trouble with their DFI boards and most of them even switched back to NF4.

It's more like a 50-50 for me. I considered switching to the DFI board, but that ain't worth the extra 60 euro to get a few extra mhz. I had no big problems what so ever with my A8R32-MVP. Just got it on 2,6Ghz on 1.4vCore 24/7. (Trying higher once my watercooling setup and Lian Li V2100 case gets in )

Which got surpased by DFI LANParty UT CFX32000-DR $230.

Some older A8R32-MVP PCBs are still having issue. Read the Anandtech article. DFI has none of that.

So kinda bs if ya asking me, since the DFI board gets shipped with a sh!tty BIOS that buyers had problems with unless they used Tony's tweaked BIOS from xs. (or what ever updated BIOS, which still has problems)

 

[RichPLS]

I currently have the Asus A8R-MVP and it works fine, and I actually use it.
Boots to two 74gig Raptors in RAID1, and two 250gig WD SE16 drives for storage.
also a HiS X1800XT, and a Opty 175 with 4x512MB Corsair RAM.

And yes, from what I have read, most problems have been resolved via BIOS updates, and board is very stable and fast.

Also, great onboard sound too.

The A8R-MVP costs less than $100, and I just bought the A8R32-MVP (should be here by Monday) for $184... The DFI board costs $45 more and imo has inferior sound and inferior Sil Image controller chip compared to the cheaper Asus board.

 

[RichPLS]

Whew! I feel much better now about it! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[RichPLS]

Got it installed today! Seems more stable, no probs yet, love it.

Will investigate into overclocking in the next several days.

 

[RichPLS]

My PC I bought in Dec 2005


Lian Li PC-60plus Black Aluminum Case (w/TR-3B Black Thermometer/Fan Controller 3.5” bay)
Opteron 175 (2x 2.42 GHz, 2MB cache, Socket 939, .09 micron, E6 stepping, OSA175DAA6CD)
ThermalTake BigWaterSE 12cm liquid cooling system complete kit
Asus A8R-MVP Motherboard (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire, socket 939, SATA2)
HiS X1800XT Graphics Card (625 MHz/700 MHz OC core/1500 Mhz/1600 MHz OC mem, Dual DL-DVI VIVO 512 MB PCIe)
ATI TV Theater 550 PRO Tuner (PCI TV and FM Tuner)
4x 512MB Corsair Micro Xpert DDR RAM (2-3-3-8-2T (spd 2-2-2-5-1T) TwinXP 1024-3200XL)
2x 74gig Western Digital Raptor Hard Drives RAID-0 (WD740GD RAID0 150gig Boot Drive)
2x 250gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 Hard Drives (WD2500KS storage and data)
Plextor 716AL Black 16x DVD/CD Burner (IDE slot loading type)
Antec TP-II 550 Power Supply (550 Watt ATX12V v2.0 PSU)
Dell 2405FPW 24-inch LCD Monitor (UltraSharp Wide Aspect Flat Panel Display)
Logitech G-15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan
Case Fans (SilenX 120mm intake, Adda 120mm exhaust blower, SilenX 92mm exhaust and SilenX 80mm Fan)

Benchmarking with this setup (mobo A8R-MVP) hits pretty high according to FutureMark’s results ~ 4,935 3DMarks06 and 9,881 marks in 3DMark05.

Only change to system was replacing the A8R-MVP mobo to a A8R32-MVP a few days ago, and am pleased with the results so far.
Benchmarking with this newer current setup (mobo A8R32-MVP) hits even higher according to FutureMark’s results ~ 5,035 3DMarks06 and 10,096 marks in 3DMark05.

Regarding overclocking potential...
I got a preliminary (quickie, since I did not fiddle much with timings and used auto settings for all other settings other than 2.5-3-3-3-2T) stable overclock using timings of 2.5-3-3-3 @2T of 246MHz (2x 2711MHz) using SysTool. And that is with 4 sticks of DDR RAM!!!
I just might be able to run this rig stable at 2.8GHz or even 2.9GHz if I tweak the memory settings a bit more...

Anyway, I am tickled pink that I can now run stable at 2.64GHz which is considerably faster than a stock FX-60, (due to more memory bandwidth plus the additional 40MHz) of which the FX CPU alone costs $1,100 and I got my OEM Opteron 175 for only $460 from NewEgg in December! WooHoo!

Does anyone know how to set the DRAM bank timings "skew" which is a new setting on this board? That might be the ticket to squeezing the most out of my RAM setup.

 

[RichPLS]

Thanks... I am running stable now at 237x11=2607GHz at 2.5-3-3-7-2T and a HTL speed of 1190MHz using 1.5 volts, which is pretty decent for a 2.2GHz dual core chip and 4 sticks of RAM.

I ran about 2 hours of continuous super pi using both cores at 100%, and then ran 3Dmark 03, 05, 06 with no errors. CPU does not get over 42C.

BTW, 1T to 2T makes little noticeable difference, this board runs 2T efficiently according to Anandtech.

 

[hergieburbur]

I've had the board for a few weeks, and I have not been able to figure out how or if you can adjust the clock skew for the RAM?

BTW, have you run into the annoying "Overclock Failed" general boot issue yet?