A7N8X-E Deluxe as an alternative for socket 462

[ozzie]

40 minutes ago, Antinomy said:

That's some terrific job you've done. Took me a while to follow you studies. I'll check my disk - remember having some AMD NDAs that might help. One file is in archive - does anyone know a tool to crack password fast enough?

 

Oh, BTW - how about testing these regs for Multiplier-on-the-fly for Nforce2? Guess I'll put to keep all NF2 stuff in one place.

 

hey stranger, long time no see ants , hope your well in this time of virus issues, heres a link for you, choose urself , apologise to infared and the guys , not trying to hijack your great thread 

https://testmatick.com/10-most-popular-password-cracking-programs-in-2019/

Edited May 19, 2020 by ozzie

[I.nfraR.ed]

13 hours ago, Antinomy said:

Oh, BTW - how about testing these regs for Multiplier-on-the-fly for Nforce2? Guess I'll put to keep all NF2 stuff in one place.

I've tried this and some other combinations, but it always leads to a freeze.

I don't know if there are other prerequisites. 

[Tzk]

I've bought some more ram and tried to get 2x512mb stable on my a7n8x. Sadly it seems to be impossible to get TCCDs stable above 240MHz. I've now got 4x512mb Corsair 3200XLs (TCCD), 2x 512mb Geil Ultra-X (TCCD) and 2x512mb Corsair 3200C2 v4.2 (TCC5) and all Sticks run into a wall at 240Mhz, regardless of voltage or timings. I even flashed the SPD on the 3200XL to disable the 2nd rank, resulting in a 256mb SS stick. But that changed nothing, the 240Mhz wall is still present. However my Infineon 6A (256mb) can run up to 257Mhz 32M at 3.6V flawlessly.

Question is if the Vdimm VRM is at its limit or if the NF2 can't handle doublerank sticks. I noticed that with 2x256mb Winbond, the Vdimm rises about 0.1V when under load (3.6 ->3.7V).

Have you had issues with fluctuating Vdimm on the A7N8X @Terraraptor ?

---

Now two thoughts:

a) why is the OCZ DDR Booster listed as incompatible for the A7N8X? Can't we feed external Vdimm? If so: why?

b) How on earth is the A7N8X generating VTT? I attached a close-up shot of the Vdimm regulator on the board. The RT9202 generates the VDimm and is the chip where one applies the Vdimm mod (FB pin). but there's no other chip to generate VTT (1/2 vdimm).

I booted the board and checked some voltages. Here's what i found:

VTT is generated from VDimm through the mosfet next to the two black caps. There's some sort of feedback loop throught the small fet onto the big mosfet (shown with red traces). I've not found the regulator for the gate voltage yet. Not sure if there actually is any regulator?! When running 2.9V Vdimm i measured 2.15V as gate voltage on the big mosfet. I also noticed that Vdimm is generated from the 5V rail.

EDIT:

So i investigated further and found a small resistor which has the Vdimm on one and the VTT on the other side. It seems to feed the opamp right next to it... The opamp then drives the VTT mosfet. So it looks like the VTT is generated by a simple resistor offsetting the Vdimm and driving the opamp... Interesting!

EDIT2:

As i'm not an electical engineer... Is this plausible or completely wrong? I got no clue...

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Tzk

[TerraRaptor]

1 hour ago, Tzk said:

Have you had issues with fluctuating Vdimm on the A7N8X @Terraraptor ?

Haven't checked that. Seems like board will trigger protection if external vrm is being sensed.

PS. Attached is A7N8X-E boardview file and boardview software - should be easy to understand.

BoardViewer A7N8X-E.rar

[Tzk]

You gotta be kidding me... ? How awesome is that... I'm out of words right now. That's a powerful tool!

Edited May 27, 2020 by Tzk

[WMDK]

2 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

Haven't checked that. Seems like board will trigger protection if external vrm is being sensed.

PS. Attached is A7N8X-E boardview file and boardview software - should be easy to understand.

BoardViewer A7N8X-E.rar 1.35 MB · 6 downloads

Do you, by chance, have that for other boards as well? NF7-S 2.0 maybe? Or do you know a source for these files? That is one powerful tool man! 

[TerraRaptor]

14 hours ago, WMDK said:

Do you, by chance, have that for other boards as well? NF7-S 2.0 maybe?

I have a nice collection for pre-nehalem era of Asus boards (although no REX x48). Here is the link posted at vlab.su - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-NAgz5wvIdJV2NrbHJvQUZqbkU/view

For other brands, you have to search and usually these are "pay to access" resources. There are some boardview files available for MSI, Gigabyte, modern Asus. Important note - viewing software may be different. Sometimes these are not as comfortable and easy as the above - Asus TSICT etc are pain in the ass to use.

 

[Tzk]

I'm still trying to find the FSB limit of my boards chipset. @digitalbath suggested to try Hynix BT-D43 or DT-D43 on 256mb Sticks. Not efficient, but seems to run well on nforce 2. So, here we go 260Mhz 32M... That's the first try with those Hynix. Seems like my Infineon 6A are currently limiting me at 257Mhz

2x256mb Hynix BT-D43 | 2.9V | EBED Interface On | BPL 3.19 1T
260Mhz x 9 | 3-4-4-11
A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 | Vdd 1.85V

Aircooled: Zalman 7000Cu on XP-m 2600+ and stock NB heatsink + 120mm fan blowing onto it.

EDIT:

263Mhz passed 32M. However i can't complete a 264Mhz run, even when i raise the Vdd from 1.85V to 1.925V. I guess that's the limit of the board. Got a blackscreen after 10 loops.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

 I saw that @digitalbath made a nice Epox mod as well. I will test those on my 8rda6+ pro.

Can someone please explain again what was the difference between: ebed, dded and ed?

edit: I saw some good stuff on page 2 and 3 so I will try and read again. 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[Tzk]

Sure! It refers to the romsips inside the bios. Ed and ebed is taken from merlins taipan bios and those are based on dfi beta bios. Dded romsips are made by digitalbath. 

iirc ed is fastest of the three, but gives you the lowest fsb. I found that Ebed gives a bit more fsb but the tradeoff is a bit less efficiency. Dded is again a bit slower than ebed, but perfect for max fsb runs. 

I‘m able to run 32m at 263mhz fsb with ebed romsips (see above), i‘d say try for yourself, but ed or ebed isn‘t a bad choice

Edited June 4, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

Thanks. I was able to run 260-266 on my nf7 before it died 2 weeks ago. I think it was ed. 
my Epox is ed as well (254-257) with an old bios. 
I have an Asus now as well. 

[Tzk]

If you got an -E Deluxe, then @digitalbath made a "new" modbios, if it's a regular Deluxe v2.0 then i can upload my port of it. Both got the Alphatimings, Drivestrength, Slewrate and Romsip options directly in bios. We noticed that some board won't respond to Vdd and some take a lot of it. So make sure to check if your board likes high Vdd. He got a board which runs 250Mhz+ on 1.6V while my A7N8X Dlx needs 1.85V to reach 260Mhz.

and a question for @I.nfraR.ed: What does the "drive strength" option in your tweaker do? I can choose "normal" and "weak", right? Does that mean that choosing DS 1 to 15 will result in 15 "normal" and 15 "weak" options? Or are these 15 options partially normal and partially weak, just like on DFI NF4? (DFI got "strong DS" for the even options: 2/4/6/8 and "weak DS" for the uneven options 1/3/5/7).

Currently it seems like all ram chips i tested liked DS around 3 to 4, even winbond. i haven't tested the "weak" option though.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

I have the A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 version and I am running the ED55 Digitalbath version. Is that the recommended version for now?

It didn’t come to testing the NB yet, I am planning to test it with my Tccd kit first to get an idea. This way I can do it unmodded. My dead nf7-s did a 260 boot at 1.6v. Even with mosfet replacements the 12v and 5v give 0 Ohm When connecting with ground. 

[I.nfraR.ed]

3 hours ago, Tzk said:

What does the "drive strength" option in your tweaker do? I can choose "normal" and "weak", right? Does that mean that choosing DS 1 to 15 will result in 15 "normal" and 15 "weak" options? Or are these 15 options partially normal and partially weak, just like on DFI NF4? (DFI got "strong DS" for the even options: 2/4/6/8 and "weak DS" for the uneven options 1/3/5/7).

Currently it seems like all ram chips i tested liked DS around 3 to 4, even winbond. i haven't tested the "weak" option though.

I'm not sure it does anything after the DRAM is initialized. 790FX boards have it as a setting i the bios. In K8 bioses it's called "DRAM Drivers Weak Mode". Normal is the recommended setting.

 

Some quotes from documents:

Quote

DRAM Drive Weak/Normal mode: Weak/Normal; Memories data bus drive mode.

 

Quote

DRAM Drivers Weak Mode (DramDrvWeak)—Bit 7. This specifies the programming of the DRAM data drive strength mode when the EMRS command is issued during DRAM initialization. 0 = Normal drive strength mode. 1 = Weak drive strength mode.

 

Quote

DRAM Drive Strength (Normal Drive)

Similar as in the case of the memory I/O buffers, the memory controller can adjust the drive strength according to overall system memory load. That is, with higher system memory density and consequently more memory chips that need to be driven by the controller, higher drive strength is necessary. However, other parameters also play into this setting as, for example, the specific resistor configuration on the memory PCB. For most memory modules, the best value is "normal".

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

2 hours ago, Sparks.nl said:

I am planning to test it with my Tccd kit first to get an idea.

You can try that, but expect serious issues when reaching 245 to 250Mhz. At least with 512mb Kits. I currently got 6x 512mb TCCDs (4x Corsair XL, 2x Geil Ultra-X) and only managed to get one of the Geil sticks through 32M in singlechannel. I'm not sure what's holding me back right now, as all other sticks fail, regardless of Vdimm (tried 2.6 to 2.8V).

ED55 Bios is fine, as long as you got all "extra" options like Drive strength, Slewrate and Alphatimings. So far Drivestrength 4 and Slewrate 10 works best on my TCCDs. I also found that settings Trc to 14 (instead of default 13) and Trfc to 16 (default 15) and using CL3-3-3-11 seems to improve stability above 240Mhz. Tref of 2560 seems to also work well.

FYI ED55 are the romsips made by Infrared for his NF7 and AN7. We ported those as they are similar to EBED/ED but seem work a tiny bit better.

And last but not least: I found Hynix 256mb Sticks work very well on my A7N8X. Was able to reach 264Mhz FSB with just 2.7V. My board is seriously modded though. Vdd, 12V rail mod, Vdimm, extra caps on vdimm.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

Thanks for your input. I will try those settings. 
for fsb testing on my NB I always use one specific XL kit I own, it seems more friendly altough these are 512’s. 
I won’t be running pi 32m yet because I will wait for running it with vdd an vdimm modded.

I have one more question: Where is the vtt measuring point? 
 

edit: I was planning to replace the other 6.3v 3300’s for cpu with solids (1500 or 1800) and place them on the other side of the motherboard.

For the 2 caps near the 12v mod I will use 2 1000uF solids. I hope this will do it. 

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[Tzk]

VTT is generated from Vdimm (yes, seriously!) and thus is tracking Vdimm. You can even use the boardviewer archive terraraptor linked above to get the pinout of every single component on the A7N8X. Tracing Vtt is very easy then To measure Vdimm i suggest to use the point on the VTT mosfet, right next to the two caps. That's "after" the copper coil. The other measurement point (bottom of picture) ist "before" vdimm passes the coil and thus about 0,1V higher.

I tried tracing down VTT recently, so here you go:

Edited June 3, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

Thank you, that is a complete answer. So when modding vdimm, vtt always scales if I understand this correct. 
And since 5v is used a mod for vdimm is easy then. I was thinking of using the FireRAM module or the OCZ Booster. 
 

edit: this was a short adventure... motherboard died after swapping some caps. 3rd board in a few weeks (2 socket a and 1 socket 939). 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[Tzk]

Afaik the Vdimm VRM IC got overvoltage, undervoltage and overcurrent protection. Afaik that interferes with the booster when you exceed 2.8V. However Vdimm of up to 3.6V isn't an issue woth voltmod. Just note that under load Vdimm may raise even further. I've had up to +0,1V under load. So keep it at ~3.5-3.6V for 2x256mb winbond as that'll result in up to 3.7V under load.

If your booster works, please let us know

 

Datasheet of Vdimm VRM IC (RT9202) attached.

DS9202-06.pdf

Edited June 3, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

This not booting or posting is without any mod, I just replaced some cpu caps. 
At first all fans were working and I measured  cpu, vdd, vtt and vdimm as ok, but still no post codes on my external card (not even 00). 
After some hardware swapping of it now runs only the green led at the pci port. Almost no voltages on the psu. 
 

edit: the booster needs a new var. resister (ordered), the FireRAM module is working perfectly. 
edit 2: it didn’t come to running the booster on this motherboard sadly. 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[digitalbath]

On 6/2/2020 at 5:23 PM, Sparks.nl said:

 I saw that @digitalbath made a nice Epox mod as well. I will test those on my 8rda6+ pro.

Can someone please explain again what was the difference between: ebed, dded and ed?

edit: I saw some good stuff on page 2 and 3 so I will try and read again. 

If you need a mod BIOS with other romsips for EPOX, I can create a version for you.
Merlins ED romsips and Infrared's X1 (ED55) have the greatest efficiency. It is difficult to make these versions even faster. Romsips like EBED and DDED are slower, but may give you some stability at high FSB.

 

funny thing: I found romsips in the DFI nForce4 BIOS that look similar to Merlin's ED Interface optimal romsips. I don't know what these romsips in the NF4 BIOS are for, but I tried the multitable part on the NF2. Result: ~40sec slower in 32M. 8 is a lot faster than D here. Didn't test max FSB though.

[Sparks.nl]

Thank you for your offer. I will test these first after I am sure which hardware survived. Since I only have 1 Epox board, this board will be tested only when I am completely sure what the problem is. 
 

About bad luck: Good to know that after 70 days my dfi nf4 board finaly made it here... that is, 1 village further up the road... Someone brought it back and now it is going back to France after no tries to get it even in the right town... 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[I.nfraR.ed]

Keep in mind that Asus have the polarity markings for capacitors the reverse of e.g. Abit and DFI.

So in fact you need to rotate the capacitor. You might know it, but just in case you've overlooked.

The filled half of the circle is the positive side.

  

3 hours ago, Sparks.nl said:

About bad luck: Good to know that after 70 days my dfi nf4 board finaly made it here... that is, 1 village further up the road... Someone brought it back and now it is going back to France after no tries to get it even in the right town... 

Doh, is it DHL? I've had similar, when all of my contact info is replaced with something like "GDPR!!!!", so the local office can't even call me, because my mobile number is missing. Luckily I had a tracking and called the office for assistance, otherwise it would be returned back to the sender. 

 

  

3 hours ago, digitalbath said:

If you need a mod BIOS with other romsips for EPOX, I can create a version for you.
Merlins ED romsips and Infrared's X1 (ED55) have the greatest efficiency. It is difficult to make these versions even faster. Romsips like EBED and DDED are slower, but may give you some stability at high FSB.

 

funny thing: I found romsips in the DFI nForce4 BIOS that look similar to Merlin's ED Interface optimal romsips. I don't know what these romsips in the NF4 BIOS are for, but I tried the multitable part on the NF2. Result: ~40sec slower in 32M. 8 is a lot faster than D here. Didn't test max FSB though.

Yeah, I've tried that long time ago and apart from being slower it did not gave me a higher FSB. I've always wanted to try 1618 or 1510 for all multipliers and see what will happen.

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

Digitalbath made a comparison of different romsips in 32M a while ago. Testing was done at 240Mhz x9, with Barton Cpu

Link: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/amd-sockel-a-thread.584473/page-76#post-27461560

Performance: X1 > ED, 619XT, Trats 619r2 > EBED > D26 MantaraysXT >>> DDED

However X1 to the others is a very close call.

I found that max clocks ranking is:

DDED > EBED > ED >>> D26 Mantarays

So i'd suggest to try ED/X1 or EBED. EBED gives a bit more FSB, ED/X1 a bit more performance. So if you're looking for that last few Mhz to use a smaller multi, then go EBED.  If you could use a higher multi with a bit less FSB, then go X1/ED to get as much performance as possible. We're talking about <5Mhz FSB improvement though.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

Thanks, I will try and test them in that order (someday). 
 

About the package: In the Netherlands it was PostNL who fuxxxd up... In France it was just my luck during a lock down. 
 

edit: I found the cause of 3 motherboard crashes... when one gfx card was plugged In Antother nf7-s went down. So now 4 motherboards defective. 

edit2: anther mainboard just went up in smoke. No idea what is causing this, but for now no testing or oc because I reaaly don’t know why I blew up 5 mainboards just by pushing power on. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Sparks.nl