Asus M3A32 MVP - AMD Overdrive wierdness, Asus AI blues

[nanohead]

Argh... Bought the possibly brain damaged Asus M3A32 MVP with the newfangled 790FX.

I might be heavily regretting my decision on this mainboard. Heres the rap

AMD Overdrive gives massively inaccurate readings, and you can't really adjust anything that well cept our usual friends of HTT, Multi (using a BE 5000). CPU VID is completely inaccurate, and whats worse, the AMD OD's more esoteric settings do NOT match up with the even more poorly explained settings in the garbage Asus BIOS.

The Asus BIOS is SO POORLY designed and documented I cannot believe it (I've had LOTS of Asus mobos, and this one just sucks big time)

The CPU Voltage has NO baseline. You have to guess at how it has the voltage set, AMD OD, Asus AI and Everest show ALL different values...

AMD OD has something called CPU VDDC (core logic voltage) and the Asus BIOS has something called CPU VDDA

AMD OD has something called Mem VDDQ, the BIOS makes no mention

AMD OD has something called CPU HT Voltage, the BIOS has something called CPU-NB voltage but it has NO BASELINE value I have no idea if this is remotely the same. Whats worse, is that the BIOS ALSO has something called HyperTransport Voltage that is separate

I am going crazy. I can get the thing to run 3.3Ghz stable on air (Zalman 9700) @ 1.45 volts in BIOS (1.40 in everest, 1.3 in AMD OD, 1.42 in Asus AI).

I want the lowest voltage possible, but these tools are all lousy, and the Asus BIOS is totally insane

Has anyone gone down this path yet???

 

[Mandown]

After reading that i would say junk that mobo and get another one. Thats what i would do at that point.

 

[wiak]

use the bios to overclock on athlon 64 x2
amd overdrive was made for phenom in mind
and what version of overdrive?

 

[nanohead]

Thanks guys. Newest version of AMD OD from here, just dled it today. I've always done tweaking in BIOS, but used the tools to tell me whats going on once I'm in windows. This is insane though. There are a zillion tweaks, none of which seem to do anything, none of which are explained.

I wanted to try a 790FX mobo, figure it would be a goof. I should have gotten the MSI, but no one had it in stock, so I got the Asus (they are usually at least reliable, especially for $275 OUCH!) But Newegg has a no return policy on it and I'm bummed that the thing sucks so bad.

I may try and sell it on ebay.

Problem is I wanted to build a 3 or 4 way Xfire machine, and only the Asus or MSI can hold that many cards with enough space between PCIE slots. The DFI/Sapphire has the 3rd slot at the end, and it will never fit in a case. The DFI looks pretty good actually, but the slot placement prevents it from doing multi Xfire. The Gigabyte is stupid expensive too, and can only hold 2 cards due to slot placement.

Argh, whats a hacker to do

 

[wiak]

Gigabytes 790FX board will do quadfire
but you are limited to one slot or watercooling on all the cards

 

[AphexDreamer]

OMG I READ THIS THREAD NOW AFTER BUYTING THE ASUA M3A32-MVP







It better behave for me or I am going to be really mad

 

[Urbklr]

Yea....i was goina get one for x-mas....it seemed like the board of my dreams...

 

[AphexDreamer]

Yea....i was goina get one for x-mas....it seemed like the board of my dreams...

And you didn't because???

 

[nanohead]

It better behave for me or I am going to be really mad

Its weird for sure. It runs pretty stable in general, but there are so many ridiculous settings that no one can figure out. I've basically given up on EVERYTHING in BIOS except vcore, htt, multiplier and vdimm. Everything else is completely useless as far as I can tell.

The main problem is that you have NO reference for lots of voltage settings, as you have no idea what the default baseline is, the settings in BIOS don't tell you. I imagine that the engineers put these things there for a reason other than to entertain themselves. But there is always the possibility that these things do nothing except make it look fancy.

I guess the good news is that I can get the Athlon 64X2 5000 Black Edition to run stable at 3.3Ghz, and with the overclocked Radeon 3270s in Xfire I can blast to 18,000 in 3Dmark05, and 12,000 in 3DMark06. I'm just bought a 3rd 3870 and will do Tri Fire. We'll see how that chemistry experiment goes when the driver comes out

 

[AphexDreamer]

Well I have read all the reviews out there and its nothing but positve.

Take a look if you want.

Shorter and better(in my opinon) http://www.legitreviews.com/article/611/3/

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/502/2


So your main complaint about the board is that you don't know what some of the BIOS options do, right??

 

[Urbklr]

And you didn't because???

P5K-E and a E6550......Im done with AMD till they dont suck:shadedshu

 

[Airbus Pilot]

The best results I have EVER had is with an M3A32-MVP Deluxe (Bios 1102 which is fairly recent)