Bad Axe 2 and Overclocking CRAZINESS!

[rgonyer]

Alright, here's the situation.

I am not an expert overclocker by any means, but I have done a ton of research on this board, and I am also an electrical engineer by trade, so I have a fair understanding of what is going on. Here's what has gone down thus far:

System:
Bad Axe 2 with latest Bios - 2431 released 1/11/07
E6400 CPU
Ninja CPU cooler
(2) 250gb SATA 300 drives in Raid 0 on the Matrix controller
2GB Ballistix DDR2-1000 memory :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146563

The first night I started playing around, I was on the previous BIOS (2395 I believe). This was a few nights ago. I set all the voltage settings at reasonable settings and watched the CPU temp to make sure it was fine. I set the memory to 533mhz, 5-5-5-18 to start off. I started bumping up the FSB little by little, and basically made it up to 3.1ghz with not much of a problem. Every time a made a 20 mhz jump or so in FSB, I would run a couple of the CPU cooking apps for 10 or 15 mintues to at least make sure it was semi stable.

After hitting 3.1ghz, I bumped it up another 5, and of course it locked up. No problem I thought, I'll reboot it, take 10mhz off the FSB, and run an all night burn test. No go. I basically brought the FSB back down to 266 and started over. Reset all the voltages and memory to where they were for the last run (using both IDCC and the Bios to verify), and I couldn't get past 270 FSB! If I set it to 275 or 280 in either the BIOS or IDCC, it would lock, or not post.

I left it for a couple of days as I got busy with some other stuff, and went back to it last night.

Basically, the same exact scenario played out with the new bios. This time, I got to 3ghz, and when I went to 3.1 it locked. Nothing I do gets me even close to this number again. I rebooted, checked the BIOS that all settings were correct, reset all the numbers, and even tried again this morning after leaving it off all night. Still can't get past 270. Seems really strange! CPU never went over 43C while running the burn tests at any time.

One other thing to watch out for on this board - when you lock it up in Windows (or bios it seems), when you reboot and go back into the BIOS to fix things, all the settings seem to stick EXCEPT FOR MEMORY SPEED. It always defaults back to 800 after a failed attempt. So if you ahve it set to 533, it will jump back to 800 and you won't be able to boot. You have to make sure to set it back to 533. Everything else, all the voltages, FSB speed, etc, seem to stick just fine.

Anyway, what I'm wondering is this: Is there some setting in the bios that is getting reset back to default, but the BIOS and IDCC are reporting that they are changed?

Any help appreciated!

 

[rgonyer]

No one has run into similar problems with the XBX2?

Would appreciate any help!
Thanks
Robb

 

[MrStumpy99]

I just completed my build of a similar system. I have not started the tweaking (yet) but as soon as I do I will post here. At this point the only hiccup I have experienced was my mouse would not work after installing the OS. Problem came form the fact that all USB devices were not reconized on OS install (XP Pro SP1). The mouse was a USB mouse with a PS2 converter attached but the system board did not see it as a true PS2 mouse. Once I plugged in a standard mouse everything worked. Up'ed to SP2 and everything else came online.

I will post as soon as I start the test
Steve

 

[chicagosoftplan]

Revert back to bios version 2333 - the last two bioses haven't overclocked very well. I have a similar system and can get it up to 3.6Ghz. with 2333 but have problems with the latest.

 

[rgonyer]

I wound up going back to 2395 before you posted this, and did have much better success. Not sure why I was able to go so far past where I was previousely with this bios though!

Here are my details, let me know if something looks dangerous, or "off":

Voltages:
FSB - 1.4
Memory - 2.2
MCH - 1.6
CPU - 1.45

Other settings:
FSB - 425mhz
CPU - 3.4ghz
Mem Speed - 533mhz (852mhz) (Wonder if I could bump the memory up to 667?)

Toast and Prime 95 have been running all night fully loaded, and no errors and the CPU is sitting at 50C.

Overall I'm very happy, especially being a novice oc-er. Not sure what caused me to be able to go from 380 which was my best on this BIOS a few days ago to 425, who knows. I would love to be able to hit 3.5 or 3.6! Seems like the CPU is cool enough that it could do that. Any advice for reaching these speeds? I did have it at 3.5 for a while, but Prime95 would report an error after running for an hour or so.....

Thanks everyone

 

[hox]

I have had similar results with this MB. I am running the Qx6700 cpu. Overclocking with the 2341 bios is quite frustrating. But as I posted in a separate thread the FSB seems to be very restricted for the quad core cpu and this MB. I also have a few general complaints about this board and the accompanying intel utilities. I am not using the Marvel controller but I have to leave it enabled in the bios if I do not want the hd activity light to stay on constantly. On my setup this was not fixed using the newest 2341 bios.

Itel's Desktop Control Center which is really nice when it works, crashes about 50% of the time even at stock speeds, I get the message IDCC.exe experienced a problem........ CPUZ works fine.


Having to pull the cmos jumper every time an overclock is too severe is also ridiculous.

Memory Crucial Ballastix ddr2 1000 is not recognized correctly as stated above, and each time the overclock fails the bios resets the memory to a more conservative level. Too bad it doesnt reset the multiplier or fsb.

When I was using the Marvel controller my raid 1 became degraded several times. I have four identical hard drives and I could swap in a new one and rebuild the raid only to have it degrade again a few days later. Shades of the EVGA 680i ?

I think original production evaluations of this board were using a bios that allowed overclocking for what ever reason each bios update has become more restrictive and less favorable to oveclock. This is contrary to what the release notes for several of bios reversions.

I am about ready to can this board for an Asus. I am glad I only spent $219 for the OEM version.

 

[rgonyer]

I do agree. Seems like every bios release fixes some things, but breaks others.

I have decided I don't really care about the HD LED (although I would like it fixed), so I keep the Marvell disabled for faster boot times.

2395 seems to overclock fine, although for some reason it takes several times after I have to default the BIOS to get it back up to speed. Not sure why. Sometimes I can't even get it to 280FSB! Usually I have to go in and set the BIOS all the way back to default, and then I'm in business again, even though all the setting were the same, go figure.

I'm hoping they come up with a BIOS that fixes everything

One thing about 2395, the chassis fans run off of the CPU fan threshold settings, so if you have the CPU fan set to speed up at 50, the chassis fans will speed up at 50, even if you have them set to 70 (just examples, no I don't have them set this high). This wasn't the case for 2431, but I can't overclock with that one, so I guess we'll stick to this one for now.

I wonder if now that I have it stable at 3.4, if I could load 2341 and it would still run. Might be an interested experiment.

Should I expect to go much higher than this with a E6400?