Abit IX38 Quad GT - Living Review II

[karas]

lol, nice one vwgolfman

[glowball]

Pat that man on the back for a job well done... and saved some pennies too!
Hope they are pleased with your choices.

[supershanks]

Well done (with the repair i mean)
Has he overclocked yet

luck

[vwgolfman]

Has he overclocked yet? BWAHAHAHAHA!!

I don't think I'll recommend that to him incase the solder bridge melts

[Clunk]

Originally Posted by vwgolfman

Hey guys how about this for a get out of jail free........

My neighbour wanted me to spec and build a decent computer for him so I ordered the housewife's favourites:

Core 2 Quad 6600 G0
A couple of gigs of Corsair dual channel doobries
and yes you've guessed it...the IX38-Quad GT

Anyway I took the gear round to his place this evening and began building it right infront of his eyes.

When I lifted the Mobo into the case it was a bit tight. The Mobo became wedged between a bracket and one of the mounting pillars which had me panicking!

The only way to get the board in was to lift it out again and remove the bracket first.

This I did but before returning the Mobo to the chassis I thought I would take peek at the rear of the board to ensure there was no damage inflicted by the pillar.

To my horror the pillar had made a right mess and had cut clean through at least one of the hairline tracks on the rear of the board. I needed to use a magnifying eyepiece to confirm this.

OMG!!!

I took out my continuity meter to double check and it confirmed that I was shafted. One track mangled and broken.
What next?
I told my neighbour what had happened. No good being dishonest or trying to get out of it I thought. I told him that I would purchase him a new one if I could not fix it.

Ruddy hell.

So I fetched my trusty soldering iron and some Kynar wire.
With my eyepiece fitted (a-la Patrick Moore) and scalpel in hand I scraped away at the varnish either side of the break to reveal copper. Then with great precision I managed to solder a piece of stripped Kynar across to bridge the gap. I checked continuity with my multimeter and also tested for any bridging to adjacent tracks (which also had varnish removed and slightly damaged copper but no break). Good news. So far so good. The track was good.

A couple of hours later and after a fair bit of elbow grease everything was in place and ready to power up.

I don't think I've ever crossed my fingers so tightly

The very last thing I wanted was to have to remove everything again from the case.

YAYYYYY!!!

The beauty booted up no problems!

We installed the OS with no problems before I returned home for some well earned rest

There's a lesson to be learned somewhere there I think

I wonder if I'll have nightmares.........

[karas]

uhm.. that's sad.. 367fsb @ 1:1.00 = bsod after vista loaded (yeah, ok, i'm on vista xD)
365fsb @ 1:1.00 = ok, but with Prime95 an error occurred..



I didn't found any stress.txt file.. so.. wtf ? xD

Well.. here the template:

ABIT IX38 QuadGT

OC GURU:
 
CPU OPERATING SPEED................ - USER DEFINE
EXTERNAL CLOCK..................... -   365  MHz 
MULTIPLIER FACTOR.................. - x 9 
ESTIMATED NEW CPU CLOCK.......... -  3285  MHz 
DRAM SPEED (CPU/DRAM)........... - DDR2-730 (1:1.00) 
PCI EXPRESS CLOCK.................. - 105MHz 
 
VOLTAGE CONTROL:
 
CPU CORE VOLTAGE................... - 1.3125V 
CPU Core Voltage Offset............ - 0V
Target CPU Core Voltage............ - 1.3125V
DDR2 VOLTAGE....................... - 2.100V 
CPU VTT VOLTAGE.................... - 1.20V 
MCH 1.25V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.25V 
ICH 1.05V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.05V 
ICHIO 1.5V VOLTAGE................. - 1.50V 
DDR2 REFERENCE VOLTAGE............. Default
CPU GTLREF 0+2..................... - 67%
CPU GTLREF 1+4..................... - 67%
 
ADVANCED CHIPSET FEATURES:
 
DRAM TIMING SELECTABLE............. - MANUAL 
CAS LATENCY TIME (TCL)............... - 5
RAS TO CAS DELAY (TRCD)............. - 5 
RAS PRECHARGE (TRP)......... .......... - 5 
PRECHARGE DELAY (TRAS).............. - 15
REFRESH CYCLE TIME (TRFC)........... - AUTO 
WRITE RECOVERY TIME (TWR)......... - AUTO 
WRITE TO READ DELAY (TWTR)........ - AUTO 
ACT TO ACT TIME (TRRD)............... - AUTO 
READ TO PRECHARGE (TRTP)............ - AUTO 
COMMAND RATE....................... - 2T 
PCIE Root Port Function............ - V1.0A 
PEG FORCE X1....................... - DISABLED 
INIT DISPLAY FIRST................. - PCIEX 
 
ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES / CPU FEATURES:
THERMAL CONTROL.................. - DISABLEDl
 C1E FUNCTION....................... - DISABLED 
 EXECUTE DISABLE BIT................ - DISABLED 
 VIRTUALISATION TECHNOLOGY.......... - DISABLED
 EIST FUNCTION...................... - DISABLED

hope you can help thanks

[glowball]

Official BIOS v12 is out - should be on Abit site soon

[supershanks]

try these karas,
memory will be more than capable of running 1.20 which is stable in all bios. 8500 memory is ok to around 1000 on 4,4,4,12.

try tweaking the voltages around where i've shown , nudging up VTT & MCH 1.25V especially add to stability & let you run with a reasonably low vcore.

ABIT IX38 QuadGT

OC GURU:
 
CPU OPERATING SPEED................ - USER DEFINE
EXTERNAL CLOCK..................... -   365  MHz 
MULTIPLIER FACTOR.................. - x 9 
ESTIMATED NEW CPU CLOCK.......... -  3285  MHz 
DRAM SPEED (CPU/DRAM)........... - DDR2-730 (1:1.00)--->  DDR2 - 876 (1:1.20*) 
PCI EXPRESS CLOCK.................. - 105MHz 
 
VOLTAGE CONTROL:
 
CPU CORE VOLTAGE................... - 1.3125V  ---> ??
CPU Core Voltage Offset............ - 0V
Target CPU Core Voltage............ - 1.3125V ---> 
DDR2 VOLTAGE....................... - 2.100V  --> Same or 2.075
CPU VTT VOLTAGE.................... - 1.20V ---> 1.30 he;ps stability & reduces vcore
MCH 1.25V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.25V ---> 1.30~1.40
ICH 1.05V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.05V ---> 1.12~1.20v
ICHIO 1.5V VOLTAGE................. - 1.50V 
DDR2 REFERENCE VOLTAGE............. Default
CPU GTLREF 0+2..................... - 67% ----> try 68%
CPU GTLREF 1+4..................... - 67%
 
ADVANCED CHIPSET FEATURES:
 
DRAM TIMING SELECTABLE............. - MANUAL 
CAS LATENCY TIME (TCL)............... - 5 ---> 4
RAS TO CAS DELAY (TRCD)............. - 5 ---> 4
RAS PRECHARGE (TRP)......... .......... - 5 ---> 4
PRECHARGE DELAY (TRAS).............. - 15---> 12
REFRESH CYCLE TIME (TRFC)........... - Auto  --> 30
WRITE RECOVERY TIME (TWR)......... - AUTO --> 3
WRITE TO READ DELAY (TWTR)........ - AUTO -->3
ACT TO ACT TIME (TRRD)............... - AUTO ---> 3
READ TO PRECHARGE (TRTP)............ - AUTO -->12
COMMAND RATE....................... - 2T 
PCIE Root Port Function............ - V1.0A 
PEG FORCE X1....................... - DISABLED 
INIT DISPLAY FIRST................. - PCIEX 
 
ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES / CPU FEATURES:
THERMAL CONTROL.................. - DISABLEDl
 C1E FUNCTION....................... - DISABLED 
 EXECUTE DISABLE BIT................ - DISABLED 
 VIRTUALISATION TECHNOLOGY.......... - DISABLED
 EIST FUNCTION...................... - DISABLED

Let us know how you get on with that.

luck

[supershanks]

Official BIOS v12 is out - should be on Abit site soon

yep running it just got it from johnny on xtreme Thankls for the tip, was it you or Ethel on her way from casinio

I'd gone back to 12.08 yesterday pm, was having some stability problems even running 470x8 which has been my 24/7 for last month more or less. Was going to test bta 9 further today, but will settle for 12 instead.

[karas]

Originally Posted by supershanks

try these karas,
memory will be more than capable of running 1.20 which is stable in all bios. 8500 memory is ok to around 1000 on 4,4,4,12.

try tweaking the voltages around where i've shown , nudging up VTT & MCH 1.25V especially add to stability & let you run with a reasonably low vcore.

*cut*

Let us know how you get on with that.

luck

BSOD lol

seems stable at 350 @ 1:1.20

ABIT IX38 QuadGT

OC GURU:
 
CPU OPERATING SPEED................ - USER DEFINE
EXTERNAL CLOCK..................... -   360  MHz 
MULTIPLIER FACTOR.................. - x 9 
ESTIMATED NEW CPU CLOCK.......... -  3150  MHz 
DRAM SPEED (CPU/DRAM)........... - DDR2 - 876 (1:1.20) 
PCI EXPRESS CLOCK.................. - 105MHz 
 
VOLTAGE CONTROL:
 
CPU CORE VOLTAGE................... - 1.3125V
CPU Core Voltage Offset............ - 0V
Target CPU Core Voltage............ - 1.3125V 
DDR2 VOLTAGE....................... - 2.075
CPU VTT VOLTAGE.................... - 1.30V
MCH 1.25V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.30V
ICH 1.05V VOLTAGE.................. - 1.12V
ICHIO 1.5V VOLTAGE................. - 1.50V 
DDR2 REFERENCE VOLTAGE............. Default
CPU GTLREF 0+2..................... - 68%
CPU GTLREF 1+4..................... - 67%
 
ADVANCED CHIPSET FEATURES:
 
DRAM TIMING SELECTABLE............. - MANUAL 
CAS LATENCY TIME (TCL)............... - 4
RAS TO CAS DELAY (TRCD)............. - 4
RAS PRECHARGE (TRP)......... .......... - 4
PRECHARGE DELAY (TRAS).............. - 12
REFRESH CYCLE TIME (TRFC)........... - 30
WRITE RECOVERY TIME (TWR)......... - 3
WRITE TO READ DELAY (TWTR)........ - 3
ACT TO ACT TIME (TRRD)............... - 3
READ TO PRECHARGE (TRTP)............ - 12
COMMAND RATE....................... - 2T 
PCIE Root Port Function............ - V1.0A 
PEG FORCE X1....................... - DISABLED 
INIT DISPLAY FIRST................. - PCIEX 
 
ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES / CPU FEATURES:
THERMAL CONTROL.................. - DISABLED
 C1E FUNCTION....................... - DISABLED 
 EXECUTE DISABLE BIT................ - DISABLED 
 VIRTUALISATION TECHNOLOGY.......... - DISABLED
 EIST FUNCTION...................... - DISABLED

im running the prime95 blend test..