X2 550 Unlock Help

[suraswami]

The Asus M4A78 pro started to keep giving BSOD almost all the time and finally gave up on that board, returned it and bought a Gigabyte MA790GP-UD4H DDR2 Memory board. Since I already had boat load of DDR2 memory this board made sense. Initially I orderd the MSI DKA790GX (regular) board to pick it up from my local Microcenter. Then I saw this board sitting all alone in one corner with no takers. Asked the sales person (who I know and trust) and he said 'stay away from MSI if possible' and he said if he had a choice he would go with this Gigabyte. Ok I will shut up on the story.

Went to Frys to pick up a 550 BE to try my luck in unlocking (tho the board was bought to build a stable system with my trusty PII 805/810). Installed the proc and board booted with F1 bios as unknown processor. Went into bios and turned on ACC, voila the bios post message said X4 B50, I thought woo hoo I too am lucky, but that crap didn't want to boot into Windows (tried both W7 64 ultimate and XP SP2 32). So increased the voltage upto 1.5v and NB up .2v, nothing, windows failed to load.

Updated to latest F6 bios, new feature Hybrid ACC, so turned that on, set the ACC to auto, still the same result, over volted etc, same result. Reduced the HT all the way to 1GHz, NB and CPU to 1Ghz still the same. So I guess I got a 'Bum' core.

But with just 2 cores I am at 3.8Ghz with default voltage on the cpu.

Should I try earlier bios or I should give up? Am I doing anything wrong here? I think the board is capable of unlocking and have seen on other forums people using this board.

Let me post a pic of the CPU.

 

[suraswami]

Here is the bios and cpu pics, sorry for the C & P technology used here

 

[suraswami]

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=814564

 

[suraswami]

LOL, I thought the board saw the 'light', was pushing the HTT high high high just to 270 and it stopped booting even after clearing the bios. Thought the board is dead. Pulled the battery, left it for 10 min, put it back it started asking to restore last known good setting ha ha.

 

[Xazax]

Usually if you cant get the CPU stable in windows when you unlock it, thats about it, it will never unlock.

 

[p_o_s_pc]

just give up you aren't one of the lucky ones you have a bum core
sorry to be so negative but i just wanted to get right to the point

 

[BUCK NASTY]

I got lucky on my X2 550, but no luck on my Sempron 140. It keeps crashing when loading Windows. Sometimes you just roll the dice...

 

[suraswami]

Thanks all.

I am going to put in one of my PII 8xx procs to see how far it will go, but the board seems to stop @ 262 HTT if I use 4 sticks of ram and unusually I have to downclock the ram to 667. I never had this issue on the previous Asus or Biostar mobo. If this mobo will go only upto 262 then what a waste.

Should I return this sucker and get the MSI instead or just stick with trusty Biostar?

 

[suraswami]

Finally understood that this mobo absolutely hates to run all 4 mem dimms more than 800 Mhz speed. With 2 modules no problem going over 1066.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/mainboard/gigabyte-ma790gp-ud4h-790gx-p2.html

Right now @ 270 * 13 with memory divider at 2.66 and NB multi at 9 and HT multi at 8.

Timings are 4-4-4-18-21-2T @ DDR2 720.

I guess going lower on the timing will give better performance here

Since I know the max freq of this 550, I am trying to see how far the board will go before I start my venture with the 8xx.

And oh I went back to F5 bios from F6. I am going to update to f6 and see if its the same.

 

[suraswami]

ok 277 HTT is the absolute max stable so far.

 

[Zubasa]

On the problem with 4 sticks of ram, I think you should increase the CPU NB VID in your bios.
The problem with RAM OC have very little to do with the mobo itself, but the memory controller in your Phenom II.

 

[suraswami]

On the problem with 4 sticks of ram, I think you should increase the CPU NB VID in your bios.
The problem with RAM OC have very little to do with the mobo itself, but the memory controller in your Phenom II.

I upped .1v on the CPU NB VID and .075v on the Northbridge. Still same effect. Should I go more?

 

[p_o_s_pc]

I upped .1v on the CPU NB VID and .075v on the Northbridge. Still same effect. Should I go more?

you can give it a try some chips need the extra voltage to get them stable. If it still doesn't get stable then give up and just use it as a dual

 

[suraswami]

you can give it a try some chips need the extra voltage to get them stable. If it still doesn't get stable then give up and just use it as a dual

ha ha already gave up on it. Pulled it out, put my 805 and the board happily unlocked the extra 2MB cache and OCed to 3.28 Ghz

But the core temps are all shown 0 (zero), anyway to fix it?

 

[p_o_s_pc]

ha ha already gave up on it. Pulled it out, put my 805 and the board happily unlocked the extra 2MB cache and OCed to 3.28 Ghz

But the core temps are all shown 0 (zero), anyway to fix it?

nope there isn't a fix for it. You give up the temp readings for the extra cache

 

[suraswami]

nope there isn't a fix for it. You give up the temp readings for the extra cache

One more thing I noticed, without unlocking the L3 cache CPUZ says its 4MB L3 which is 64-way set associative

If I unlock the extra 2MB then the L3 changes to 48-way set associative.

So which one is better? and whats up with that?

 

[p_o_s_pc]

that one i'm not sure about.Maybe do some benchmarks and see what one has better performance?

also you could do some encoding/decoding and other CPU intensive task and keep an eye on the time it takes and that should be a good way to see if it helps or hurts the performance. Just try alot of different things so you cover all areas it could affect

 

[suraswami]

that one i'm not sure about.Maybe do some benchmarks and see what one has better performance?

also you could do some encoding/decoding and other CPU intensive task and keep an eye on the time it takes and that should be a good way to see if it helps or hurts the performance. Just try alot of different things so you cover all areas it could affect

I guess its like having more Ram vs faster ram. Also checked on my 720BE and it too says the L3 is 48way which is 6MB.

I will do some checks later.

 

[p_o_s_pc]

I guess its like having more Ram vs faster ram. Also checked on my 720BE and it too says the L3 is 48way which is 6MB.

I will do some checks later.

maybe its just AMD's way of making up for the lack of (extra)L3

 

[Zubasa]

I upped .1v on the CPU NB VID and .075v on the Northbridge. Still same effect. Should I go more?

You can go quite a bit more I believe, and clocking the NB/memory controller in you CPU also increase performance.

One more thing I noticed, without unlocking the L3 cache CPUZ says its 4MB L3 which is 64-way set associative

If I unlock the extra 2MB then the L3 changes to 48-way set associative.

So which one is better? and whats up with that?

Not sure, I just notice that on my 810 after you post this

 

[suraswami]

unlocked the 810 too

 

[suraswami]

ok now I have a wierd issue, both CPUs stop around 3.25Ghz just like a Stop sign. The 810 stops @ 250 * 13 and 805 @ 262 * 12.5. Any voltage on CPU, VID, NB, SB or RAM no effect at all. Unusually there is no option for HT over volting.

This board has 8 pin Power pin for the CPU, my Cooler Master 500W PSU has only 4 pin, so I used a spare 4 to 8 pin convertor. Will this cause this issue? Should I swap for a native 8 pin one?

Any suggestions?

 

[suraswami]

Any Thoughts?

 

[suraswami]

Here is my OC on PII 810.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=818973

Extra 2 MB cache unlocked and NB running at 2304 Mhz. Ram is running @ 1024 with 5-5-5-15-2T.

 

[suraswami]

One more thing I noticed is the default CPU volts is 1.28v before unlocking the cache, but if unlocked the mobo automatically sets to 1.39v. So It needs that much voltage to function properly and it becomes a 125/140 watt CPU. The CPU has been stable for 2 days with the cache unlocked.

I have to manually undervolt and see if its still stable (which I doubt). Also going to pull out my Kill-a-watt and plug the PC in to see whats the difference.