A7N8X-E Deluxe as an alternative for socket 462

[I.nfraR.ed]

Yes, VTT tracks Vdimm and maintains 1/2 ratio correctly. As soon as I put a dimm in the closest slot to the cpu it freaks out. Without voltmod it is fine. Could do 250 2.5-3-3-6 1T with 2x256MB TCCD

Maybe could try to replace the capacitors.

 

PS: I think the ICs chip responsible for DRAM PLL might not like it. I don't see how I can separate them. VDD (several pins) for the ICS93733CF is from Vdimm. Nominal is 2.5V, so Asrock gets away with moderate increase to 2.6-2.7, but I'm hitting the tolerance. Recommended is 2.3V to 2.7V max. I'm way beyond that, closer to the absolute maximum.

Quote

Supply Voltage (VDD & AVDD) . . . . . . . . . . -0.5V to 3.6V

 

Edited October 22, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[Alpi]

On 10/6/2019 at 9:54 AM, TerraRaptor said:

I have checked EBED bios and it works fine. I was able to pass pifast @275 and it validates 282.5mhz 

https://hwbot.org/submission/4254667_terraraptor_reference_frequency_a7n8x_e_deluxe_282.46_mhz

Wow ! Crazy, really crazy ! No words what I feel now. Reading the whole topic again, and at first I want to delete my hwbot acc (mostly kidding ) but after I'm just happy to see You guys at work, making miracles ! Awesome, really think it is ! 

[I.nfraR.ed]

Some update (22 Oct):

Got 4 mods now - Vnb/agp, Vsb, Vdimm, Vcore. Mods for NB and VDIMM are "reverse" and require 2 smd resistors to be removed - higher the resistance, higher output voltage. Quite hard to desolder and solder, since it is between slots - you really need to have a steady hand. R-C divider circuits are used for both.

Vnb doesn't seem to help much and above 2V I get artifacts, so probably need to test another card. Maybe some ATI would work better.

Vsb not sure if helps, but since the controllers are there it might allow me to go higher without dropping IDE.

Vdimm, still the same situation. 3.1V seems to be the maximum I can get away with. Anything higher and I think the PLL freaks out, since VDD is derived from Vdimm. So maybe the better plan is to leave Vdimm as it is and disconnect all VDD pins of the PLL, then feed it with constant external 2.5V. It will be hard :(. Perhaps it would be easier to move the whole PLL on external PCB and reconnect just needed pins, but supply VDD pins with external ref voltage from a DC-DC buck stepdown.

Board can boot 260+ and work in bios, but is unstable in windows. I can now use TCCD-based memory, but they can't go very high with CR=1T. 2T is needed which kills performance, together with the looser timings required (2.5-3-3-6-12). At 2.4GHz I'm 3 seconds slower than @TerraRaptor and higher frequency would allow me to beat his score (with worse efficiency).

I've spend one night trying to install new windows from usb or use acronis to restore a tweaked image without any luck. Finally installed acronis as a windows program and restored from there. The board is PITA to work with.

Edited October 22, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[TerraRaptor]

@I.nfraR.ed 

As you were looking bios design guide, here is quite interesting one for amd 762 which also gives some better insight on romsips (or SIP ROM :)). 

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/A/M/D/-/AMD-762.shtml

Looks that EB/ED thing relates to slew rate and is actually 3-bit entry. So my previous research on replacement values with 0/F is a bit wrong due to varying lenght of some entries.

[I.nfraR.ed]

Thanks, that would definitely help. Slew rate and drive strengths are exposed in DFI Ultra-B bioses, but I haven't played much with them. In fact haven't played with the DFI board much, since it is much more unstable and picky than Abit.

It is important to see the correlation between different bits, for example, one needs to set BYP (bypass) bit to 1 first in order to use the external values for N and P transistors. That's why nothing happened when I tried to set them by had on a running system.

 

I might get my hands on a new tool with all the options included, not just the well-known timings. Depends what can be R/W runtime.

 

Edit:

That's the maximum DRAM frequency I can do with BH5@~3.08V in Dual Channel 1T. Higher than 3.1V and the board freaks out.

Most of the screens on the desktop got corrupt after some subsequent crashes. Should have saved it on usb earlier, but it is still visible.

Interestingly enough, I can't do 250 stable anymore and could not go to 260 for "a screen", no matter the volts (raised or "stock"). Perhaps I did it on a later bios, don't remember.

Spent some time figuring out the timings in wpcredit, however I'm able to control the main timings only. Others seem to be read-only

b0/d0/f3x56

[1,0] tRP (11-5, 10-4, 01-3, 00-2)

[3,2] tRCD (11-5, 10-4, 01-3, 00-2)

[5,4] tCL (11-3, 10-2.5, 01-2, 00-1.5 or reserved) - readonly

[7,6] tRAS (11-9, 10-8, 01-7, 00-6)

Lowest is 10 -> 00010000 -> 2-2-2-6

If someone finds PCR file for KT400/A or datasheet for KT400/600/880 please let me know.

 

Edited October 23, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[TerraRaptor]

17 hours ago, I.nfraR.ed said:

datasheet for KT400/600/880 please let me know

Here is PT880 (shouldn't be way different to KT880): http://bitsavers.org/components/viaTechnologies/VIA_PT880_Pro_North_Bridge_Data_Sheet_Sep2005.pdf

[I.nfraR.ed]

19 minutes ago, TerraRaptor said:

Here is PT880 (shouldn't be way different to KT880): http://bitsavers.org/components/viaTechnologies/VIA_PT880_Pro_North_Bridge_Data_Sheet_Sep2005.pdf

Unfortunately offsets don't match. Haven't found a tool which can read all the timings. AIDA reads more than others, but if I change a timing with wpcredit cpuz is the only one reflecting it. AIDA always reads 2-2-2-6, even if I set e.g. 2-2-2-9.

Edited October 23, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[TerraRaptor]

BTW, found a message to @Antinomy as we were discussing my experience with A7V880:

Quote

maximum stable 1:1 overclock is 230 2-2-2-6-1T (memory capable of 248 2-2-2-6-1T with higher divider and 3.3 rail mod). Chipset doesn't like more than 1.9v - mobo simply won't post. Maximum fsb is 245 Mhz. Mobo was triggering psu protection with 2GHz barton, but epowered it worked flawlessly @2.761 (230.1*12). Performance is not that good - nforce is faster in superpi and pifast at same settings/clocks.

 

[cbjaust]

is there any commonality with KT266 and KT400? I have a KT266 PCR file but I'm sure you'd have it too.

[I.nfraR.ed]

Starting from KT400A through KT600 and KT880 should be similar.

KT400A and KT600 are almost the same (same part numbers), KT880 is an evolution of KT600, but most registers are probably the same.

To be honest, I expected a bit better performance from KT880. It might be just the Asrock board/bios, but it's not much faster than single-channel KT600.

I believe performance could be improved by tweaking DRAM and V-Link registers, but need the documentation for this.

Found this site, so it seems KT333 and KT400 PCR files exist, but downloads are broken and can't find them anywhere else: http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/

It's probably incompatible anyway, because the part number is different and I need at least KT400A or newer.

KT880 was so late in the game that it never got popular. People only bought boards based on it for cost-saving systems.

Edited October 23, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

My Nanoflasher works (even on Win10 64bit!). As a first step i moved some items in bios around... Clock+Timings control now resides in a new "OC menu" tab on my A7N8X bios.

This makes bios flashing/recovery so much easier... Just pop the bios chip, insert in flasher, plug flasher to usb, flash and put chip back into board. You can't test various bios files any faster...

Edited October 23, 2019 by Tzk

[I.nfraR.ed]

3 minutes ago, Tzk said:

My Nanoflasher works (even on Win10 64bit!). As a first step i moved some items in bios around... Clock+Timings control now resides in a new "OC menu" tab on my A7N8X bios.

This makes bios flashing/recovery so much easier... Just pop the bios chip, insert in flasher, plug flasher to usb, flash and put chip back into board. You can't test various bios files any faster...

I usually hot-flash in windows with WinFlash. Have a bios extractor clip, many spare Winbond bios chips and if anything goes wrong I just pop the bad chip out and put the working one. Have a willem programmer as well. Useful for full wipe and re-program, prepare several backup bios chips, etc. But that nanoflasher is much easier to use, since it is just USB.

[Tzk]

Yep, before i also had a spare chip as backup. But still the hotflash takes ages to complete: swapping chips, boot into win, hot-swap chips, flash, shutdown, repeat

Now i just edit bios via modbin, save every few steps and just flash the file. Takes like 3 minutes per try My bios chips are still on their way from china, i ordered 5 pieces for <6€. For now i use a spare chip from another A7N8X.

 

Funfact: Windows Defender just removed the Nanoflash Tool from disk as it was detected as malware... /facepalm

Edited October 23, 2019 by Tzk

[I.nfraR.ed]

11 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

Here is PT880 (shouldn't be way different to KT880): http://bitsavers.org/components/viaTechnologies/VIA_PT880_Pro_North_Bridge_Data_Sheet_Sep2005.pdf

Many of the registers match, but the primary timings don't. Not much to be gained, though. Everything is already set to fastest values.

Slackening the timings and turning some things off might help with FSB, but I'm searching for performance boost.

[Tzk]

I'm currently trying to add new items to the a7n8x bios... There's a great guide by Polygon of the (now gone) Rebel Haven forums called "Practical Bios editing", but sadly i can't seem to replicate the steps he took. It looks like there's two types of Award v6.00 bioses: a) with _item.bin b) without _item.bin. In case b) the Bios settings are stored directly in the 128kb system bios module inside the bios and mixed with something that looks like assembler (?!). Whenever i change something to add another item, modbin won't read the bios anymore.

My A7N8X bios has got some unsused settings which i can use, but there's only 5 of them and i need like another 10 more...

Has one of you managed to successfully add new items to a bios without _item.bin?

[TerraRaptor]

53 minutes ago, Tzk said:

I'm currently trying to add new items to the a7n8x bios

Just curious, what these new items can be?

 

[Tzk]

Basically whatever you want. By Default they're just items shown in bios without a function. You need to add the items, add the selectable options and then modify the code of some bios module to actually do something. You can for example modify any chipset register or even run custom code while booting. So it might be possible to change Alphatimings, Drive Strength etc. It must somehow be possible because DFI does it on LP B and Infinity. However this is a very difficult task as it involves assembler programming and reverse engineering. And i'm not a programmer... I'm currently trying to do this step by step, but still i might fail.

The problem is that there's only 5 unused bios items inside the A7N8X bios. However you got about 10 settings in NF2 Tweaker plus Drive Strength, Slew Rate, Data Scavenged Rate and Super Bypass. So this equals at least 14 settings. So i need another 9 items to be able to have them all inside bios. You could reuse other bios items, however i don't want to remove 9 (probably important) settings from bios.

DFI has about 250 items in bios while A7N8X only has 213 and -E DLX has 211. So there must be a way to have another 15 settings... As the difference between A7N8X and -E DLX is rather small, i'm comparing these to find the differences of the 2 settings and how Asus put them into the A7N8X bios. No clue if this is of any help, but that's the best idea i currently got.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Tzk

[I.nfraR.ed]

I don't think it's worth it, since you can tweak these things in OS.

It's good for gaining some experience, but personally I don't have so much time to waste for this. I waste it on other projects

You need to know assembly to successfully implement new functionality.

On a side note, I will have MSI KT880 Delta to try as well, should be a little better than the Asrock and its bios is standard AMI, which I could open with AMIBCP and edit - no hidden options though.

BTW, does anyone know how to display text correctly in Award Bios Editor? It is some problem with encoding or font and all the setup screen labels show as scrambled symbols. Perhaps it needs to be edited on Windows 98? I can edit it with modbin, but it's less functional.

Edited October 24, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

Afaik setting Slew Rate, Drive strength, Super Bypass and maybe Data scavenged rate  in windows freezes the system, no? I'm fully aware that you need to somehow trick the bios to make it execute custom code which you can put for example in a pci option rom...

[TerraRaptor]

13 minutes ago, Tzk said:

Afaik setting Slew Rate, Drive strength, Super Bypass and maybe Data scavenged rate  in windows freezes the system, no?

There could be another problem with your approach - bios will try to set it two times (first time - as it is being set, second time - with your new setting) and if these bits are "set once" it will freeze the system upon post/reboot once bios attempts to re-set it. So, basically, you need to find out how stock bios is setting these bits and probably skip this "automatic" procedure and then set it manually.

[Tzk]

This should at least work for the Subtimings as you can set these via NF2 Tweaker in Windows. Regarding the other settings: no clue. although i remember that you'd have to set multiple registers at the same time, else the system would freeze. But yeah, if we're going down this route it might be neccessary to remove the default routine and replace it with custom code. If i can't find a way to add new items this whole discussion is pointless though.

Edited October 24, 2019 by Tzk

[I.nfraR.ed]

The stepdowns are here and I've hooked one of them to the Asrock board. Didn't help with freezes when in dual channel and high Vdimm.

At ~3.37V real Vdimm I can only see the VGA OPROM message, but the board doesn't POST. Works with one dimm, but not with two and high Vdimm.

It's not visible in the photo, but the MOSFET leg is desoldered and bent up, so I can solder the external wire.

The green display is what I was using before to monitor Vdimm, but it's now disconnected, thus showing 0.00.

So the next idea is to desolder all VDD pins of the DRAM PLL ICS93735 and connect to external 2.5V. If that doesn't work, I give up.

 

 

PS: The board is probably dead, shorted 2 pins on the PLL

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by I.nfraR.ed

[Tzk]

I'm still digging through the bios to add/change options. Adding custom labels works now, but i need to find free cmos registers i can store my settings in. I found a screenshot of "ACE - Advanced Cmos Editor" but can't seem to find this tool anywhere. Do you guys know of a similar tool which shows the used/unused cmos registers?!

The other option is to extract all settings from system.bin (~210 items) and to manually build this table.

EDIT:

Looks like i finally found a tool which can do this... R/W Everything v1.7. If you select IO Index/Data  (Index Port 0074 + Data Port 0075), then you get the cmos data. Whoah.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Tzk

[subaruwrc]

this topic is just sick ! more info and knowledge in 1 post than all of my OC knowledge ever

 

[Tzk]

This is how far i've got up to now. Moving items around in bios is fairly easy, but now they also write their settings to the CMOS registers (i use 75h to 77h on a7n8x dlx). Next i'll try to inject code into one of the bios modules... Currently the cmos registers are set but there's no other effect - so no changed ram settings right now.

I also couldn't manage to add new unused items to bios. So for now i can only make use of the 5 items which weren't in use on the stock bios.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Tzk