A7N8X-E Deluxe as an alternative for socket 462

[Tzk]

PSU faulty? you got a electrostatic charge on you? GFX kills it? It must be something... Usually when something like this happens i get the cheapest board i got, some random ram, another PSU and start fresh. Just to make sure i stop killing hardware...

[digitalbath]

19 hours ago, I.nfraR.ed said:

 

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.

 

I don't think this will work for all multipliers. You will have to increase the first 2 numbers for small multipliers (7,6,5) to 16/17/27 for the system to be able to boot. With the last 2 numbers you can try 18/19/10 (0 = auto?).

[Sparks.nl]

I allready made an offer on a cheap mobo (killed the last one, 1 of 5...).
I ordered a new psu as well (Super Flower 2000w platinum). 

[Tzk]

I finally got my hands on a A7N8X-E Deluxe, chipset week is 47/2004. I can't get it stable at 208Mhz, regardless of modbios or ram used. However i noticed that even at default Vdd the chipset gets hot (i guess 45-50°c). Have you had such a bad clocking board before? And if so, might the high leakage of nb and sb hold me back right now?

Also what's your experience when using a cold (subzero) board, does the nf2 scale well with temperature? Or in other words: might excessive cooling help reaching higher fsb?

Edited June 6, 2020 by Tzk

[I.nfraR.ed]

I have gained maybe 1MHz if anything at all going from air to chiller on the NB. For validation only, might help with stability when running 32M, but I haven't tried that. In my experience it doesn't scale well with cold.

 

As for the other question - no, never had such a bad board. All my nforce2 400 ultra boards did at least 250MHz with mods. Maybe some bad capacitors?

Edited June 6, 2020 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

I've only had the board for a few minutes on the benchtable, so first i'll improve the cooling on sb and nb to check if it's a temperature issue. Then we'll see if there are other things holding me back. My other A7N8X Deluxe runs cooler at 1.9V Vdd than the new board at 1.58V Vdd, it gets extremely hot for such a low Vdd. I've already done the 12V rail mod as my psu only has 15A on the 5V rail. That gave me no improvement over stock. Same for a modbios (running @digitalbaths EBED right now).

The capacitors look ok, sadly i don't have the tools to measure them. Same for ripple on the main voltages, cpu, nb and ram. I guess i'll need to buy a small DSO to check these.

 

Edited June 7, 2020 by Tzk

[Bones]

19 minutes ago, 4n0nym0u5b3nch3r said:

Is there a modded BIOS available for the MSI K7N2 Delta2?

Would be best ask that question here: https://community.hwbot.org/forum/7-general-overclocking/

[Tzk]

@4n0nym0u5b3nch3r

Yes there is. @digitalbath made several versions and added Alphatimings, DriveStrength, Slewrate and Romsips to the Bios. Have a look at the bierbude server:

http://bierbude.spdns.org:2302/USER UPLOADS/digitalbath/MSI K7N2 Delta2/

changelog of his Delta2 DDED bios:

changes made:
* NVMM v4.35 1T
* [DDED]; ED romsips from Merlin interface on; DD modded romsips interface off
* Soft L12 Mod
* AMD Athlon XP-M name
* added tRC; tRFC; tREF; DIMM Drive Strength, DIMM Slew Rate, alpha timings and romsips options
* for hidden options press shift+F2, then alt+F3 in main menu

 

We can basically mod any NF2 board with Award bios. There's also new modbioses for Chaintech, Epox and Shuttle available

Edited June 7, 2020 by Tzk

[Tzk]

Sorry, you asked about Delta2 above... Then we'll have to mod a new bios i guess.

[digitalbath]

I'm sorry but we don't have any mod BIOSes for the delta-l. Delta2 boards have a different southbridge, so the BIOS versions are not compatible to each other.

[Sparks.nl]

Is that BIOS also for the MSI K7N2 Delta-L?

I bought one for €7,50...

 

edit: posted it at the same time...

Edited June 7, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[digitalbath]

Do you need a Mod BIOS for the Delta-L? As far as I know, nobody has created a mod BIOS for this board. I could do a mod BIOS but I don't own this board. So I cannot test the mod BIOS and guarantee that it works.

[Tzk]

Ah, well. The Delta-L ist the counterpart to the Asus A7N8X-X with singlechannel... Took me a few minutes to notice that..  

[Sparks.nl]

I am still in doubt of the need of a mod bios, I might as well use it for binning and testing. Great update from a sis board. 
But if it can be done and won’t cost to much time then yes. Other: no

Oh and I managed to save two nf7-s. I had a defective power on button In the time between the 3 other defective boards, so these two were not defective. And 1 gfx card won’t post on one of the nf7, that is confusing. 

[digitalbath]

I will see if i can afford some time for it next week. If you can post a screen like this, i can add some additional options like tRC, tRFC....

https://abload.de/image.php?img=cmosrwjmk.jpg

Edited June 7, 2020 by digitalbath

[Sparks.nl]

Thank you, take your time since I will pick it up tomorrow. I still need to install xp after this.

oh and it seems to be dual channel from what I could find. 

[Mr.Scott]

3 hours ago, digitalbath said:

Do you need a Mod BIOS for the Delta-L? As far as I know, nobody has created a mod BIOS for this board. I could do a mod BIOS but I don't own this board. So I cannot test the mod BIOS and guarantee that it works.

I have a mod bios for Delta- L. 

Done probably 10 or so years ago. Allowed me to get to 220 FSB or so iirc. It was a long time ago.

DeltaL585.zip

Edited June 7, 2020 by Mr.Scott

[Tzk]

I just had a look at the romsips in said bios. These somewhat look like DFI, but they're missing the POST fix at multi 10 and 10.5. So you might have issues coldbooting at those multis. Besides that it seems there's nothing to unhide. So that bios should work.

EDIT:

I did the 12V rail and Vdd mod on my -E Deluxe. Even with 1.8V Vdd it's not possible to get 225Mhz Singlechannel stable... I think that must be the crappiest A7N8X-E ever made...

Edited June 8, 2020 by Tzk

[Sparks.nl]

I will look at it. Thanks

Edit 18:53 (6:53 PM)

@Mr.Scott: I  just tested the bios but it didn't work on my Delta-L. 

@digitalbath: If you could make the bios that would be great. I am running a Win XP install now. So I expect it to finish today or tomorrow. 

Edited June 8, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[digitalbath]

It would be nice, if you can post this screenshot with this program. I will add then additional options.

latest official BIOS should be V5.9 for the MSI K7N2 Delta-L. Be aware, MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR uses a different BIOS (V7.8)!!!

[Sparks.nl]

5 minutes ago, digitalbath said:

It would be nice, if you can post this screenshot with this program. I will add then additional options.

latest official BIOS should be V5.9 for the MSI K7N2 Delta-L. Be aware, MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR uses a different BIOS (V7.8)!!!

I am running 5.9 as we speak but I just stumbled on a installation issue. (Black screen) in win xp install last phase. I will look at it when I solve this

[Sparks.nl]

Here is the screen you asked for. 
I put the dual channel proof also in the screenie. 

 

Thank you in advance.

 

edit: 20:50 - I noticed a NB voltage of 1.8v was/should be possible in the old modded bios. 

 

For those of you looking for voltage points for this board:

 

NB/AGP

 

245MHz FSB with 2x512MB tccd

Edited June 9, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[digitalbath]

The screenshot is fine. The CMOS register 73+74+75+76+77+78 are free. Just like I expected.

That timing is perfect, i just finished the BIOS mods. Some things left to say:

• the FSB Frequency is limited in the BIOS by 233MHz. I can not fix that.
• 256KB BIOS!
• BPL is 3.02 by default, I left it in the original version. I do not own good BPL Versions for 256kb BIOSes.
• I moved some options in the BIOS structure.
• unlocked all options, that make sense.
• This BIOS versions should work, but they are completely untested! I will not be responsible for any damages! Having a programmed backup bios chip before flashing is not a bad idea.

DeltaL_59_EBED_A6.zip DeltaL_59_ED_A6.zip DeltaL_59_X1_A6.zip DeltaL_59_DDED_A6.zip

[Sparks.nl]

29 minutes ago, digitalbath said:

The screenshot is fine. The CMOS register 73+74+75+76+77+78 are free. Just like I expected.

That timing is perfect, i just finished the BIOS mods. Some things left to say:

• the FSB Frequency is limited in the BIOS by 233MHz. I can not fix that.
• 256KB BIOS!
• BPL is 3.02 by default, I left it in the original version. I do not own good BPL Versions for 256kb BIOSes.
• I moved some options in the BIOS structure.
• unlocked all options, that make sense.
• This BIOS versions should work, but they are completely untested! I will not be responsible for any damages! Having a programmed backup bios chip before flashing is not a bad idea.

DeltaL_59_EBED_A6.zip 415.67 kB · 0 downloads DeltaL_59_ED_A6.zip 415.6 kB · 0 downloads DeltaL_59_X1_A6.zip 415.57 kB · 0 downloads DeltaL_59_DDED_A6.zip 415.69 kB · 0 downloads

Thank you verry much. ??????

I just noticed it is a smaller sized bios. I will test all versions later this week. I never flash any of my boards without using the external programmer so that should be no problem.

edit: 
I want to remove the vdimm mosfet first so that I can use FireRAM, it doesn’t like 5v. 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Sparks.nl

[Tzk]

8 hours ago, digitalbath said:

BPL is 3.02 by default, I left it in the original version. I do not own good BPL Versions for 256kb BIOSes.

Can't you use the 512kb bios BPLs for 256kb bios? So just port over BPL 3.19 and done?

@Sparks.nl

Afaik cpu-z reports dualchannel as soon as both dimm slots are populated. Even on my A7N8X-X (singlechannel) cpu-z reports dualchannel. Make sure to test this by running 32M or a similar benchmark which scales with bandwidth. I expect that the shown "dual" ist just plain wrong.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Tzk