XFX 790i - FIRST LOOK

[Tatty_Two]

XFX have released new P04 Bios

Thanks, I will give it a go tonight, hopefully I will be able to hit 4.5gig stable now with this baby wolfdale! What improvements have you seen so far?

 

[warhammer]

I loaded the EVGA bios stability has improved for me not happy about the poor 06 results it has been sitting on 3.6 for the last 12 hours with out freezing up.
Will load the XFX bios and see if theres any difference.

 

[jonmcc33]

Do not get motherboards with nVIDIA chipsets! Here's a valid reason why!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipse...a_Corruption_During_Overclocking_Company.html

 

[Judas]

Do not get motherboards with nVIDIA chipsets! Here's a valid reason why!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipse...a_Corruption_During_Overclocking_Company.html

There are the words "May receive data corruption " this does not mean you will

 

[Tatty_Two]

Do not get motherboards with nVIDIA chipsets! Here's a valid reason why!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipse...a_Corruption_During_Overclocking_Company.html

Old hat, mine didnt have any corruption and today BIOS P04 has been released that sorted the problem......when I got my Gigabyte x38 DQ6, the early BIOSes kept re-setting and not saving the settings, continual crashes but I didnt stop buying Intel chipsets, sometimes these things happen with all manufacturers hardware.........here is a reason to get an NVidia chipset..........

 

[jonmcc33]

There are the words "May receive data corruption " this does not mean you will

Why should you have any to begin with?

 

[Judas]

Why should you have any to begin with?

I have not had any lol this is a great board

 

[jonmcc33]

I have not had any lol this is a great board

Play with fire and risk getting burned. I've tried one nVIDIA chipset and it gave me so many problems...never again will I get another.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Play with fire and risk getting burned. I've tried one nVIDIA chipset and it gave me so many problems...never again will I get another.

Of the last 4 boards I have owned in this order......................

Asus P5N-E Sli 650i
Asus P5K premium Wifi Black pearl Special Edition
Gigabyte x38 DQ6
XFX 790i Ultra

They were ALL fantastic boards, the only 2 however that didnt cause me ANY problems out of the box were the 650i and the 790i so we all have different experiences.....when you have one Intel chipset board problem,what are you going to do?......go Via!!

I just read an entire thread at Anandtech relating to teething issues with your motherboard on it's release, clearly your experience of the board is different because you have kept it.....just like my expereince of the 790i Ultra chipset , as I said before, issues that other people are having is fairly immaterial IMO if they dont effect me.....just my thoughts, an issue aint an issue if I dont experience it!

 

[Judas]

Have had plenty of Nvidia chipset boards and have not been burnt yet, even though some have ran rather hot.

The Gigabyte P35T DQ6 was my first Intel board had a nice experience with this board also

 

[Tatty_Two]

Am up to 4.45gig now bench stable, not orthos yet though. How you getting on with yours Judas?

 

[Judas]

Just a thought Tat what mem slots are you using ? its just i noticed some thing strange
when had my modules in the black slots i had poor memory performance, my Everest read was just slightly over 4400 mb/s even though i was running it at ddr3 1800 mhz at 7-7-7-20 1t
then i put them in the grey slots and it jumped up to under 9000 mb/s (Everest read )

 

[Judas]

Am up to 4.45gig now bench stable, not orthos yet though. How you getting on with yours Judas?

For me it was a bit of a bumpy start lol... First when i booted into bios for the first time all my voltage settings weren't on Auto some were way off ... then Vista would not let me in lol
So i had to reinstall and even though i had reinstalled it kept on bsoding most likely bios issue.
Been stable since latest bios upgrade.

The XFX bios is way better than the Gigabyte, the multi threading tab is quite good, can turn off all 3 cores. Being able to unlink the memory is also great can just set it to what you want
only thing with my processor is it an older version 1066 fsb so i lose a bit on mem performance
(have to think about new processor)

Been mostly playing around with the memory

Damn nice oc you got there Tat is that with both cores?

 

[jonmcc33]

Of the last 4 boards I have owned in this order......................

Asus P5N-E Sli 650i
Asus P5K premium Wifi Black pearl Special Edition
Gigabyte x38 DQ6
XFX 790i Ultra

They were ALL fantastic boards, the only 2 however that didnt cause me ANY problems out of the box were the 650i and the 790i so we all have different experiences.....when you have one Intel chipset board problem,what are you going to do?......go Via!!

I just read an entire thread at Anandtech relating to teething issues with your motherboard on it's release, clearly your experience of the board is different because you have kept it.....just like my expereince of the 790i Ultra chipset , as I said before, issues that other people are having is fairly immaterial IMO if they dont effect me.....just my thoughts, an issue aint an issue if I dont experience it!

I've had numerous Intel chipset motherboards and never seen data corruption from them by overclocking. That does go back to the days of the P4 Northwood, Xeon Prestonia and now Core 2 Duo. They all overclocked like crazy and never gave me problems.

My Asus A8N32-SLI gave me problems from the start and didn't really do well until I flashed the BIOS to the last release. The odd part is that Windows XP SP2 still wouldn't boot properly if I disabled the floppy controller. I had to enable it and then boot into Windows XP SP2 and just disable the floppy controller while within Windows. Sure, it's a Windows XP SP2 thing I guess.

Go to the original Amdmb.com forums (now pcper.com) and you'll read of plenty of problems with nVIDIA chipsets. I was very pleased when Intel released the Core 2 Duo so I could switch back and have a better option for a motherboard chipset as nVIDIA pretty much rules the AMD world.

 

[mlee49]

I like what I hear on this thread!! Nice oc tatty, I would love to see some benching!! Btw how about the first review link you posted, 110 hours on Orthos OMG!! What does that say, the hardware in the board or the board is freakin solid? Either way I havn't ran Orthos for longer than 6 hours and cant even load my ipod when it is running!!

I like the help on the mobo suggestion, if I dont need tri sli yet then the MSI 750 Platinum sounds right for me.

Damn nice boards, even for XFX or EVGA (usually considered cheapies)!! Keep crankin out the OverClock, you'll hit 4.5 soon!!!

 

[trt740]

Here is my Max /Ramage Formula X38/X48 Crossfire Board

Old hat, mine didnt have any corruption and today BIOS P04 has been released that sorted the problem......when I got my Gigabyte x38 DQ6, the early BIOSes kept re-setting and not saving the settings, continual crashes but I didnt stop buying Intel chipsets, sometimes these things happen with all manufacturers hardware.........here is a reason to get an NVidia chipset..........

for comparison with Tattys awesome XFX 790I sli board the first one is using memory speed DDR1200 5 5 5 15 t2 1gb of ram because one of my sticks went bad.
The second one is using 1 gb of ram set at DDR2 1114 5 5 5 15 t2. I for one love the 790I and want one but I have a Max /Ramage formula because of the price difference when I bought my board, but if I had a choice I would take the 790I at it's current price, and for the future DDR3 2000. Right now DDR3 doesn't make a giant difference as you can see, but in the future it will. I do like my MF/RF it is a good board. I just like the 790I board a little better.

after thought: I'm not sure what effect the 1 gb of DDR2 played against your 2gb of DDR3.

1.

2.

 

[trt740]

Nice overclock bro thats giant even more so because

Old hat, mine didnt have any corruption and today BIOS P04 has been released that sorted the problem......when I got my Gigabyte x38 DQ6, the early BIOSes kept re-setting and not saving the settings, continual crashes but I didnt stop buying Intel chipsets, sometimes these things happen with all manufacturers hardware.........here is a reason to get an NVidia chipset..........

it's a e8200 mines a e3110.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Just a thought Tat what mem slots are you using ? its just i noticed some thing strange
when had my modules in the black slots i had poor memory performance, my Everest read was just slightly over 4400 mb/s even though i was running it at ddr3 1800 mhz at 7-7-7-20 1t
then i put them in the grey slots and it jumped up to under 9000 mb/s (Everest read )

I went to 1828 in the black slots and was getting a fair bit higher than that (perhaps the secret is over 1800mhz), I think if you use the black it does cut back on performance unless significantly higher speeds are used to compensate, so that you can run stabily at plus 1800 speeds, go for the gray slots and keep memory at 1790 unlinked or any other speed below 1800 linked and you should see improvement, thing is, with an 8x multi, in many respects I have less flexibility linked but I suppose my 3:2 divider is going to be that much higher.

 

[Tatty_Two]

For me it was a bit of a bumpy start lol... First when i booted into bios for the first time all my voltage settings weren't on Auto some were way off ... then Vista would not let me in lol
So i had to reinstall and even though i had reinstalled it kept on bsoding most likely bios issue.
Been stable since latest bios upgrade.

The XFX bios is way better than the Gigabyte, the multi threading tab is quite good, can turn off all 3 cores. Being able to unlink the memory is also great can just set it to what you want
only thing with my processor is it an older version 1066 fsb so i lose a bit on mem performance
(have to think about new processor)

Been mostly playing around with the memory

Damn nice oc you got there Tat is that with both cores?

Yes both cores, cannot get it stable enough to run any benches with just one core although it will go into windows no probs, have done one core into windows at 590mhz FSB, that over 4.7gig!! thing is if I double click on CPU-Z to bring that up she crashes, have not tried a bit less yet, no time at moment.

 

[trt740]

Yes both cores, cannot get it stable enough to run any benches with just one core although it will go into windows no probs, have done one core into windows at 590mhz FSB, that over 4.7gig!! thing is if I double click on CPU-Z to bring that up she crashes, have not tried a bit less yet, no time at moment.

still very nice overclock

 

[Tatty_Two]

I've had numerous Intel chipset motherboards and never seen data corruption from them by overclocking. That does go back to the days of the P4 Northwood, Xeon Prestonia and now Core 2 Duo. They all overclocked like crazy and never gave me problems.

My Asus A8N32-SLI gave me problems from the start and didn't really do well until I flashed the BIOS to the last release. The odd part is that Windows XP SP2 still wouldn't boot properly if I disabled the floppy controller. I had to enable it and then boot into Windows XP SP2 and just disable the floppy controller while within Windows. Sure, it's a Windows XP SP2 thing I guess.

Go to the original Amdmb.com forums (now pcper.com) and you'll read of plenty of problems with nVIDIA chipsets. I was very pleased when Intel released the Core 2 Duo so I could switch back and have a better option for a motherboard chipset as nVIDIA pretty much rules the AMD world.

Noone is denying that users have not had issues with NVidia chipset boards, the contrary, I know there is lots of evidence to support that, point is, lots of people have had issues with Intel chipset boards and there is plenty of evidence to support that as well, my point is, I have never had any issues with Nvidia chipset boards so of course, I will continue to use them when they meet my needs because my experience is good, it's irrelivant what others experience is cause that dont matter hence my reference to teething problems with your board, if you had read all that stuff would you have bought the board, probably not but it obviously does a good job for you. In reference to the data corruption thing, it's not an issue if it does not affect me, and any past issues with Intel chipset boards may not be ones of data corruption, but hey, issues are issues.

 

[Tatty_Two]

still very nice overclock

Thanks, I have seen the scores your hitting in SM2.....very nice! I have another one to post on the puter but I am reformatting my Vista drive, the best I can get is just over 2600 so I think I am near the limit of the 8200 although TBH there aint many 8200's that will bench stabily at 4.45gig!

 

[trt740]

Thanks, I have seen the scores your hitting in SM2.....very nice! I have another one to post on the puter but I am reformatting my Vista drive, the best I can get is just over 2600 so I think I am near the limit of the 8200 although TBH there aint many 8200's that will bench stabily at 4.45gig!

I'm not sure it's the chips as much as it is your board those 790I boards are stable as hell. Hey tatty why doesn't the 790I pull ahead of my board more. The ram is alot faster? Whats the deal. I'm scratching my head, is it drivers or cpu memory controller cannot handle the bandwith? With ram that high and FSB that high, it should pull away big time. I can run mine at 560FSB but my ram cannot hit full potential it would be down in the 1150 range because of the divider. If I had DDR1300 I could use that FSB but I cannot yet performance would take a hit..thats why I used a x9.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I'm not sure it's the chips as much as it is your board those 790I boards are stable as hell. Hey tatty why doesn't the 790I pull ahead of my board more. The ram is alot faster? Whats the deal. I'm scratching my head, is it drivers or cpu memory controller cannot handle the bandwith? With ram that high and FSB that high, it should pull away big time. I can run mine at 560FSB but my ram cannot hit full potential it would be down in the 1150 range because of the divider. If I had DDR1300 I could use that FSB but I cannot yet performance would take a hit..thats why I used a x9.

I think you will find, if we both set our CPU's to the same speed, lets say 4.4gig ad we both pushed our memory to the max, and we both managed to get the best strap/divider then you would see a better score from mine but I am guessing not by a great deal.....why? because the memory speed is probably only a fifth of the overall test so it only plays a small (ish) part, if you think of the test, the 1st is memory and asts all of 3 seconds, the other 4 minutes or so is all CPU, yes the memory linked with CPU speed will still have a positive effect but not sure that it would be a big amount.....would be nice to try really.....what you think?

It would be even more accurate if you could get 4.4gig on an 8 divider also.

 

[trt740]

I think you will find, if we both set our CPU's to the same speed, lets say 4.4gig ad we both pushed our memory to the max, and we both managed to get the best strap/divider then you would see a better score from mine but I am guessing not by a great deal.....why? because the memory speed is probably only a fifth of the overall test so it only plays a small (ish) part, if you think of the test, the 1st is memory and asts all of 3 seconds, the other 4 minutes or so is all CPU, yes the memory linked with CPU speed will still have a positive effect but not sure that it would be a big amount.....would be nice to try really.....what you think?

It would be even more accurate if you could get 4.4gig on an 8 divider also.

Okay . the problem is they won't match up because at a 8x my ram won't reach it full potential on the low strap 1160 maybe high strap 1400+ which won't boot. I really need 9x for my ram to hit 1200+ If i use say 8.5x or 8x I cannot get it high enought to compete. If you try it and pretend you have DDR1200 you will see what I mean. Now if you had a E8400 we could do it. We could bench them at say 8.0 x550 and see that lets me hit DDR2 1200