New AX7333R

[Player0]

Came today, was shipped FedEx 2-day...

and it was soaked in this fruity smelling perfume. The whole shipping box was wet from whatever bath oils it was...strawberry watermelon. The inner Abit box was dry, but everything smells like some girly scented oil store. Grr.

Better get some manly smells on there fast, silicone, solder vapor, dielectric grease. Should help hehe :)

[Player0]

This AX7 has the metal lever arm woot!

I hope that means newer Northbridge too.

[MrP]

Originally posted by Player0
This AX7 has the metal lever arm woot!
.

simple things please simple minds.

enjoy tinkering mate :)

toodles :xsofa:

[mdzcpa]

Updates Please!!

Keep the updates coming:)

BTW...you did mean KX7 right?

[Player0]

Yeah KX7. The Northbridge is dated 0216...about 3 weeks better than the old one. I hope that means good :)

Im soaking the old heatsinks in googone, to get the old glue off of them. once I get them cleaned up, ill attatch them and the waterblock, do the volt mod and waterproofing, and try to boot it up again (scary).

I dont know if ill be done tonight tho, rather worn out.

[WesM63]

hehe have fun tom... now i've seen what begin a computer guru can do to you...and i've only just started :D

[Player0]

Well spent about 3 hours last night trying to scrub the old arctic silver epoxy off the heatsinks I wanted to reuse, but gave up cause nothing would dissolve the stuff, so I just lapped all the heatsinks, including the copper chipset block for the northbridge. Phew. What a pain.

Whipped up some fresh epoxy, glued everything down. Decided NOT to glue down the NB waterblock this time, in lieu for some AS3 and some really tight nylon bolts.

One everything dried, tested the system. Motherboard still boots. p0 - 1 -- Motherboard - 0.

Next step tonight...voltage mod. Then test. Then waterproofing the motherboard. Then more test. And then finally mounting this btard in the cube :)

Man...pleeeese dont die now!

[Player0]

All the motherboard mods are done, and the puppy is sitting in the case now, all the water cooling hooked up and working great! A prelim delta T of 14c!!!! 1c better than the maze2. Plus, it still WORKS! wooo!

Only had it in to bios so far...lots of work to do to get the PSU and hard drives in, etc. But, yay! Im psyched!

Its SOOOO quiet.

[OPPAINTER]

Good luck Player

You want to know the difference between the Plastic lever socket model and the Metel lever socket Mobos?? The metel lever one is weaker :D
Yep got this mobo from Abit for review last night and snapped the dam tabs right off, fried my CPU to boot. Not good.

[kms]

bad news about the chip there opp :(

/wonders what kind of industrial refridgerator you were leavering under there at the time :D

no but really i've not seen the AX7's 1st hand is the lever metal and the zif still the same type of plastic plastic ? looks it in the pic, wonder if its a case of stronger handle (less give / flex) so more load transmitted to zif ??

[OPPAINTER]

kms,

I can accually tell you that the Step on the plastic lever model is bigger. I'll send up a photo comparison.

OPP

[mdzcpa]

Player0:

Sound like it's coming along great:)! You work fast.


OPP:

Yikes:eek: , that's a bummer...mobo and cpu.

Looking forward to those socket pics. I never reallynoticed there was a difference before. Then again, I never looked.

[Player0]

First post from the cube, and OMG its smooooth :)

Wow...bummer opp. I like the metal lever cause it fits better under my waterproofing. I dont even use the tabs so Im not worried about the downside to the smaller tabs.

Wow...I got lots of tweaking to do...yeesh!

[OPPAINTER]

Glad you got it runing Player :)

[OPPAINTER]

part2

[Player0]

My Corsair PC3000 sais version 1.1. I wonder if thats better or worse?

IM having awful times getting the FSB/Ram timings up on this board. It just gets unstable fast. Any recommendations for BIOS settings? Its laid out quite differently than im used too.

[Player0]

Couldnt help but put the blacklight in and see what it does to the dyelite in the tubes :) The picture just doesnt do this justice, my digicam sucks in the dark and makes UV look blue instead of UV....but you get the picture :)

[OPPAINTER]

In your Soft Menu, basiclly Ultra will take you to about mid 170s, Fast for anything above. If you use 166 or above you need to set your dividers to 5-2-1.
The memory timings you can use:

spd
cas2
4way
2-5-2
auto
auto
auto
auto
auto
enabled
2
1T
850ops

Use this for about 190 plus, your mem should take you there with these settings useing about 2.95-3.00 volts

Try it:D

OPP

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by Player0
My Corsair PC3000 sais version 1.1. I wonder if thats better or worse?

IM having awful times getting the FSB/Ram timings up on this board. It just gets unstable fast. Any recommendations for BIOS settings? Its laid out quite differently than im used too.

I found the Corsair ran its best bandwidth CAS 2 4way 3,6,3 1T for me.

Most seem to like :

By SPD
2
4 bank
2
5
2
auto
auto
auto
auto
auto
enabled
2T
2 level
2T
auto

With taking the DRAM Command to 1T for max aggressive.

Here's another KX7 fun link too: ABit FAQ (http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/faqs.jsp)
Choose "How to tweak my ABIT MAX boards for good performance? (AT7 / KX7-333) "

BTW, my Corsair was v1.1 also.
:)

[Player0]

Thanks guys...extremely helpful. Mike, your link doesn't work. I have alot to play with.

What is the Enhance for Benchmark setting exactly and should I have it enabled (in the SoftMenu III bios area)..


Why do you guys use Dram Queue Depth of 2? Doesnt 4 give the best performance? Or does this setting make little difference?

Opp, why put the DCLK feedback up to 840? The manual sais 0 for best stability? Have you experiement with other values here?

Thanks for the help again, running 166 at cas2 2-5-2 command 2 right now, at 2.65v. i want to take this slowly.

[OPPAINTER]

Dram Queue Depth of 2 for higher mem bandwidth

Enhance for Benchmark will give you .5 more fsb, so you can acually adjust fsb in .5 incriments:D

850ops for stability in 3D at 190 T1 plus range

OPP

[Player0]

Thx Op :)

2 really does give you the best bandwidth...all the texts I see say 4 is better bandwidth for that. But ill take your word for it :)

I havent done the Vmem mod yet, so...I dont know how high I will beable to go with just 2.85vMem behind me.

[mdzcpa]

Player0:

Link above is fixed :) It will give you all of the aggressive settings per Abit.

I have also found that a Dram Queue Depth of 2 will yeild higher mem bandwidth, and that a setting of 850ops is more stable in 3D at 190mhz or above using T1 DRAM Command.

I think OPP had worked a lot of this out with his AT7 :)

With all of these settings it is a lot of fun. Trying to find the best combination of FSB and memory timings to yield the best performance takes some time for sure.

My old "rule of thumb" of adjusting everything to max aggressive, then pushing the FSB up to it's limit set aggressivley, really does not apply for the KX7. Sometimes relaxing a few settings and getting the FSB way up there yeilds better performance often on this mobo. That's why the CAS 2, 4 way, 3,6,3 1T settings work best for me as I can hit over 200+ fsb this way only using the the 2.85v max DDR voltage.

I am confident with the DDR Vmem mod, the mobo will go just as high using OPP's settings:)

[Player0]

Oh! I thought you did the Vmem mod Mike! You can get 200 with those settings eh? Well I know where ill be tonight!

I guess Ill just have to beat you and Rob at least hehe :) I really need to water cool my ram bah.

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by Player0
Oh! I thought you did the Vmem mod Mike! You can get 200 with those settings eh? Well I know where ill be tonight!

I guess Ill just have to beat you and Rob at least hehe :) I really need to water cool my ram bah.

:eek: Looks like I better get that mod done!

[Player0]

Ive already beat you Mike, and going higher :)

[Player0]

Some things I've discovered. The Corsair PC3000 i got doesnt like being above 3.00v. I cant seem to get any higher with it with the Vmem mod.

My GF4 flakes out about about 207mhz FSB. It might be 4x...i havent had mush testing at 2x yet. Im guessing it may not be worth dropping to 2x, since the primary use of this machine is for gaming.

Ive been able to make vast improvements with my mounting system, using the dual springs gives an outstanding result. Im considering more radiators, stacking the blackIce extremes, or using more powerful fans, as my cold water is now 4-5c higher than the previous system, as are my hot water temps. Not sure if this is just summer.

My GF4 GPU stays about 12c-16c when playing games. System Ram pegs in between 28c-30c. Wish i could water cool that.

I havent had much luck with CPU overclocking. I havent isolated the problem yet, at 200mhz, its not as easy to push it up as high. but it may be a trick bios setting.

Question...have you guys tried DIMM1&2 setting from Auto to High? Does it increase or decrease stability?

Mike, when I try to set command rate to 1T, the machine wont even video post. CAS2.5 works okay, but i seem to be stuck at 3-6-3. Again, its probably just bios tweaking. Theres alot of options in need to set up. Im wondering if I should not set that 840ops like Opp suggested, maybe the PC3000 doesnt like it.

[jaani]

Originally posted by Player0
My GF4 flakes out about about 207mhz FSB. It might be 4x...i havent had mush testing at 2x yet. Im guessing it may not be worth dropping to 2x, since the primary use of this machine is for gaming.

I doubt dropping to 2x will affect performance much, since the extra bandwidth of AGP4x is used primarily for swapping textures between VRAM and system RAM, which doesn't occur as much as it used to in the days of 4meg S3's. :)

See this article for more info: http://www.arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2000/ask-9.html

Also it might be worth diabling fast-writes for added stability. Hope this helps the FSB OC!

[mdzcpa]

P0:
As we had discussed last night, my following limits are such (without doing the voltage mod):

With memory set to SPD it will post at 209 but it is unstable (cannot complete 3DMark2001).
The highest is will complete 3DM is at 206 at SPD.
The highest it will complete 3DM with CAS 2, 4 way, 3,6,3 2T is 202.
1T only works with stability up to 192FSB, then I change to 2T.

My best bandwidth scores are achieved by running CAS 2, 4 way, 3,6,3 2T above 200mhz. My post below was a bit misleading. I run 1T on a daily 24/7 basis when not benching and get great bandwidth at my daily setting of 190mhz. But my best benches are run at 2T over 200mhz.

In summary I run:
CAS 2, 4way, 2,5,2, 1T up to 185mhz
CAS 2, 4way, 3,6,3, 1T up to 192mhz
CAS 2, 4way, 3,6,3, 2T up to 202mhz
Above that it's just at SPD

I haven't really haven't done much testing by dropping to CAS 2.5 or disabliing interleave as I beleive losing the performance is not worth the FSB increase there.

Changing CMD strength to High from Auto does not help anything for me, and that setting of 850ops "seems" to be more stable in 3D at 190mhz or above using T1 DRAM Command (but it's hard to tell when your at the very edge).

Setting the Dram Queue Depth of 2 does yeild higher mem bandwidth, but at the cost of FSB, so I leave it at 3.

Hope all this helps a little. All this is from what I've done so far, but I'm still testing and benching and I'm sure everyones mileage will vary.

[Player0]

Thx Guys. Good Point jaani...i may try that.

Mike, break 3k...i need a new benchmark to try and reach :)

Well...when i get my powersupply problems worked out.

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by Player0

Mike, break 3k...i need a new benchmark to try and reach :)


Like this?:)

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/mdzcpa/images/202memb.JPG

[MrP]

dont you just hate a smart arse :)

nice one mike :D

toodles :xsofa:

[Player0]

I got that beat i swear! Damm! give me a few days ill be there again :)

[mdzcpa]

LOL :D

Now go easy on me M8! I'm getting to the end of my rope here with the stock 2.85v memory limit...I don't think there is much more in the tank.

Are you sure the Vmem mod wouldn't be worth it?

[Player0]

No try it...ill learn from you ;)

[OPPAINTER]

V-mod is well worth it, from 2.85-3.0 should help a lot. It allways depends on the memory though, but in 99% of the cases it will help.

OPP