Dual cores and 939 boards?

[jasong]

@Bok:

The term "sucking up" comes to mind, if you know what I mean.

Now might be a good time to figure out how much money you've thrown Newegg's and AMD's way in the past. They MIGHT give you a break.

[IronBits]

Originally posted by Bok
Yeah,

unless I can bend the pin back, I think it's going to be an expensive paperweight

I feel like switching everything off right about now and selling it all

Bok

I have fixed bent pins several times before.
You must have PUSHED it into the socket.
Granted, 939 pins is a tad more difficult to just slip in, but still...

Unless you crimped it a full 90 degrees and it cracked it, you should be able to warm it up some so it's more flexible and slowly straighten it...
You'll need a magnifyer to see it...
And it wouldn't hurt to call AMD and explain your situation as jasong mentioned, before you do it to see if there is something they can do for you...

You could send it to me and I'll give it a go... send me the mobo to, because if I get it in there, I'm not sure you would be able to remove it once it's seated.

[Shish]

I`ve corrected a few bent pins on Athlons before and I think my score is 3 successful, 2 abysmal failure.
As long as it`s not gone right angle you need one of those plastic tube spouts off a spray aerosol pack (narrow, hard plastic tube) and a lot of care and patience.
Doing a 939 is a real bummer.
I`d be doing some ranting and railing at NewEgg and a spot of blackmail but I already know from the couple of oem Opteron 940 pin jobs I`ve upgraded that they`re really delicate and need a very careful fitting as they seem to have a fair amount of friction on the socket and don`t drop in like the Athlons.
Was it a retail by any chance? More hope with them as AMD tend to be a bit kinder.

[Bok]

Ok,

I bent the pin back and it seems straight enough to me. Dropped it into the socket where it seems to fit just fine. Connected everything up and now I just get continuous beeps (which means at least it's trying to post I suppose, better than before)

Starts after about 10 seconds, beeps for a second, pause for 2 seconds, beeps for a second. Continuous loop.

I tried two different sets of memory, same thing.

These Asus boards are supposed to have the Speech reporter on board. How do you get that to work ????

Bok

[IronBits]

Does it have the latest BIOS?
There is a new BIOS for X2 procs...
Still looking...
Did you get an A8N-SLI Deluxe?
EZ selector card between both PCI-Express slots is set to Single Mode as a default?

[Fozzie]

but I'll say it anyway.

You are trying first with just the CPU?

Do the beeps stay the same irrespective of having CPU, then CPU + mem, and finally CPU, mem and GFX?

[PCZ]

Bok

Plug in a speaker.
The Bios will speak in a girls voice and tell you what it thinks the problem is.

[Bok]

I thought it just used the speaker on board a case ? Which is plugged in..

no matter...

IT LIVES!!

IT says in the manual that if you only have one piece of memory it should be in B1 (not the obvious one) so I tried that and it posted ok. Installing win xp now, dual booting with Gentoo later and I'll mess about with the other memory sticks later as well..

Woohoo!!!!

Bok

[PS2pcGAMER]

Awesome news!

[IronBits]

Originally posted by Bok
if you only have one piece of memory it should be in B1
Bok

You've crippled the Dual channel by only installing one stick

But, it's running!

[Shish]

That`s excellent news.
I remember my first dual Asus when I crippled it doing multiple swaps of CPU because it wouldn`t fire up and eventually a slip of the screwdriver (those god awful Volcanoe heatsinks) killed a sm cap. That was bad enough but when I eventually found out it wouldn`t fire up because of the bios dislike of my new 8500DV AIW I was really sick to the stomach.

Still, you live and learn.
Now get it into dual channel and give it some stick.

[Bok]

hehe,

well its kicking some ass right now in LHC

Tomorrow, maybe the day after I'll dual boot it with gentoo

Bok

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Smoking nice one Bok Sounded like it had gone a bit 'Pete Tong' / FUBAR! not good but you got it working, now if only i could find kind sponser to upgrade this machine to dual and put XP on it, I've never O/C'd before so I ain't gonna attempt it this thing runs hot as it is (I would get one of the few XP2600+'s that run hot)

I will Resist getting a new X2

[Shish]

Well, I`ve settled on, probably, an Nforce 3 board for the first one and likely a 3800x2.

But still not sure which board as I want enough features and overclockability to run server class stuff on including Gig-E (maybe 2 out if possible) as well as mostly pci slots.
Not heard when the new M1695/M1567 ULI chipsets will be out on the big boys but I may wait for that as the option of either AGP or SLI looks to be perfect and the test boards have done really well.

Just hope Asus/Abit/DFI etc take up this chipset as early results are as good as NF4.

Then of course, I`ve got to see if I can afford a dual Opteron for some real server work.
What I need is to go back to work or take my other three pensions which is , unfortunately not a good option for the next 3 years or maybe 8, at least.

Then of course I may win one of the Euro jacpot rollovers this week which will solve all the problems except how to spend it and where I can buy a whole body transplant.

[Jkusuda]

4800 x2 on the way. Should be brought online later this week.

[willebenn]

WHOA BABY, that is the big one

[Bok]

Nice one jkusuda,

Looking forward to seeing the output on that.. What mobo ?

Oh and I just got an email from Mwave

3800+ for $375, so they are coming down..

Bok

[Jkusuda]

Asus A8N

[Shish]

Well, I just picked up an MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum for one third of list as a returned unwanted, ordered by mistake

Now I want the Asrock with the Uli chipset and a few other bits.......
Anybody got any spare 3200 memory (about 2 Gig) and a couple 3800x2s they don`t want

[Jkusuda]

Will be bringing the 4800 x2 online soon. Any suggestions for a first project to benchmark it with?

[Bok]

jkusuda,

did you get it online ok?

I've found the BOINC stuff and SoB are running very well on mine..

as an aside, #2 is ordered

Bok

[Shish]

I think I`m going to need some more memory to get my MSI 939 board running properly (when I can afford the x2 of course) but in the meantime, I need some more decent memory anyway to get some more virtual machines online on my second dual Asus as it`s down to 768M after one of my 512M Corsair sticks pooped out with memory errors.
Don`t really want to start selling the 3 dual Asus boards off till I get at least the MSI 939 going but funds are very short just now and I may wait till I do a full clearout of the older PII andPIII Xeon boards and procs and do them all together.
So it`s slow going getting my upgrades off the ground.
Guess the first priority is a gig of decent 3200 or better. Seems there`s lots of different companies doing it now and may desert my Geil for Crucial Ballistix as Corsair is now very expensive and their limited warranty ain`t always very good.

[Jkusuda]

4800 x2 didn't survive the burn in test. The video card burnt out. It ran through the 3dmark test and posted a top 20 score though. Should be fully online next week for full testing.

[the-mk]

A question: does a X2 CPU start with a motherboard (i.e. Asus A8N SLI), which has not the necessary BIOS version flashed?

So if I buy a AMD Athlon 64 3800+ X2 CPU and I'll put it into the motherboard (bought in February 2005)with "old" BIOS version, will it start up, so that I have the possibilty to flash the newest BIOS to "implement" the support for the X2 features?

I don't want to disassemble my barebone to get the 3000+ winchester out to be able to flush the Asus A8N

What do the experts say?

[Shish]

Some will, some won`t. Was reading about it somewhere, maybe at TechReport or similar.
I think the Asus will boot up if it`s the older bios on an X2 to allow reflashing but some boards require a single core to do it.
Might have been Anandtech I saw it cos I`ve been looking at a lot of 939 reviews recently.
Give me an X2 and I`ll try it

[Thor]

@ Sish
As long as you are not overclocking too hard, see if MDT RAM is available and try it. I run a twin kit (2x512MB DDR 400 ) @ 220Mhz FSB at stock voltage for some months now.
They are supposed to be very reliable and cheap. a twin kit of 2x 512MB DDR 400 Cl2,5 costs about 87 Euros for doublesided and 106 Euros singlesided.

But if you need ECC ram you have to look somewhere else ...

Greets Thor

[willebenn]

From what I gather the cpu support saga is

-If the MB won't boot a Venice/E3 class cpu it won't boot an X2.
You would need an older cpu.
-If it boots a Venice/E3 it should boot an X2 but may not see the second cpu.
This should allow you to at least update the bios.

At least you have the older winchester to use if needed.

[Shish]

Thanks Thor.
I`m shopping around at the moment and I may go with either some more Geil (good if you get the right sticks) or maybe invest in some Crucial Twister as I can get both at a reasonable price just now.
Just missed some Twinmoss with the BH5 chips which is very cheap but amazing for overclocking especially as the newer cpu`s and systems don`t suffer too much for relaxing the timings.
Just taking my time but I`ve already had some quite good times out of the present pair of Geil Golden Dragon Value 3200 sticks where upping the volts a bit and relaxing the latency to 3 can get them to 250`ish.

[Thor]

@Sish

What I hear about high overclocking and realtivly cheap RAM are mostly two names: Twinmos and the BH-5 (which need a lot of Voltage) or A-Data...

Chose your favourite, but I would never be willing to pay the prizes of Geil, Corsair or OCZ rams...


@ all I know it is a little

Greets Thor

[Jkusuda]

4800 x2 finally online. It's running DPAD at the moment. Does anyone know a way to monitor it's output?

[Bok]

This is the 3800+ x2 of mine that Jeff is playing with right now..

2.5 on the stock cooler, stock vcore , 45C under load

Sweet!!

Thanks Jeff!

Bok

[willebenn]

What is that monitor util called and where is it available? Is it for Linux (I hope). It looks real nice.
I'm typing this on my 3800 X2 by the way, just could not hold off any longer
Details are
Epox 9npa+Ultra
3800 X2
1gb Patriot memory
X800GT
Hitachi 160gb sataII hd
running Fedora core 4 with 2.6.12 smp kernel (i686, not amd64 yet)

[Bok]

sweet! Everyone should get one based on this..

have you overlclocked it? What is the mobo like? I'm looking for some basic mobo's. Nothing but crunching..

I just did a quick google search for webtemp and found this

Looks like windows only though...I've not used it myself

Bok

[willebenn]

Thanks for the info, sure will try it for my windows install.
Hah no I haven't tried OCing it yet as I just got it this afternoon and did a quick Fedora install to test it out, but they seem to OC so easy I can see it coming.
The Epox mb is very nice (about $105us), I didn't want SLI and also wanted something less expensive than Asus and DFI etc. But what is really nice with this board is the placement of the chipset and cooler/fan, it is NOT under the graphics card so it could be changed. It has nice bios settings and seems well made.

[Jeff]

Athlon 64 X2 3800+ & ECS NFORCE4-A939 Motherboard
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4559957
$379.99 plus shipping!

Don't know anything about that motherboard but I just paid $374 for a X2 3800+ by itself!!!

If they accepted PayPal I would have been all over one of these just to try. But you did say "basic" Bok so I don't know how much more basic you're going to get for a ~$15 motherboard.

BTW, you can get the 9NPA+ Ultra for $95 from NewEgg.com right now. They are having a "$10 instant off" special on it.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Bok


This is the 3800+ x2 of mine that Jeff is playing with right now..

2.5 on the stock cooler, stock vcore , 45C under load

Sweet!!

Thanks Jeff!

Bok

It will run to ~2540MHz before it craps out with the current Vcore.

[Bok]

Nice,

even if the mobo is crap (read no overclocking) it's worth it... oops I just ordered one should be here monday!

So, that's x2 #3

Bok

[Shish]

Originally posted by willebenn
Thanks for the info, sure will try it for my windows install.
Hah no I haven't tried OCing it yet as I just got it this afternoon and did a quick Fedora install to test it out, but they seem to OC so easy I can see it coming.
The Epox mb is very nice (about $105us), I didn't want SLI and also wanted something less expensive than Asus and DFI etc. But what is really nice with this board is the placement of the chipset and cooler/fan, it is NOT under the graphics card so it could be changed. It has nice bios settings and seems well made.

Willebenn.

You should look on www.overclockers.co.uk in their B goods section.
Very cheap MSI and Gigabyte boards there .
I just bought 2 Msi NF3 and a Gigabyte for £29.99 each. They may be listed as B stock but they`re brand new and complete in their boxes with all the leads and software etc.
Also got some cracking Corsair memory for under a £100 and some more Geil 4300.
Now all I gotta do is sell the wife (25% discount available....anybody????) who is a luxury item so I can buy the essential x2 3800s

[willebenn]

Whoa, that is a nice price for cpu & mb.
Got this puppy just in time, I see orbit@home has work so it should be the perfect burn in tool.

[Jeff]

Ahh... a little payback Mr. Bok. Now let your wife do the same to you that my wife did to me. :lol:

BTW, my 3800X2+ setup just arrived! Can't wait for some free time to put her together and see what she does.