PiLsY
09-09-2003, 06:13 AM
Just got the board for review yesterday.
Its VERY cheap at only £65 including VAT over here (thats around $75 for you yanks ;)), has full dual channel support and the Ultra 400 northbridge. Lan onboard, 5.1 sound onboard using the realtek 650 codec (but not the MCP-T so no dolby). 6 USB 2.0 ports though. And thats pretty much it. No firewire, no sata. Just the bare stripped down NF2 .
One very big plus point is a safe mode recovery jumper. You simply flip this jumper to its 2-3 position and you boot up at a bare 133mhz with default multiplier. You can then enter bios, change your settings a touch then save and exit. Switch th epc off, flip the jumper back into normal mode and boot up at your new settings. No resetting bios settings to get a boot at all. It just bypasses the bios altogether.
Overclocking is all done via bios, with the following settings available...
Vcore to 1.85v (with a 1.5v cpu fitted)
Vdimm to 2.7v
Vagp to 1.7v
FSB to 300mhz
Thats right, no chipset voltage - uh oh! Thatll have to be modded at a later date to release the full potential of the board (probably along with the vdimm) ;).
However, the board has been a nightmare to get going. The first problem I faced was a lack of the 4 holes around the socket. Ive ended up having to use an MCX370 heatsink, which is less than ideal. It suffers from the same multiplier affliction as the early NF7 boards did. For those who dont know about it, this is a problem with multiplier application tied into current FSB. From 199mhz and upwards you lose certain multipliers. The only multipliers available at 200mhz and over are 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 9.5 and then 11x and over. Theres an annoying hole in the available multipliers, which despite a solid 12 hours of work I have not been able to solve.
And now for the good stuff....
This is without a doubt the fastest NF2 board I have ever used. Once you have overcome its quirks youll be blown away by the speed. I am currently testing in memtest at 11.5 x 200, using DEFAULT vcore (something neither my 8RDA+ or NF7-S v2.0 could achieve by some 150mhz) totally stable. And now for the really good part - memory performance at this speed using 2/6/2/2 timings is equal to the NF7-S @ 233mhz and better than the 8RDA+ @ 237mhz. Simply unbelieveable.
Ive not pushed the FSB yet, so I cant tell you how far itll go on stock vDD voltage. Im guessing the 2.7vdimm will be a real problem as well. As is now, if I can get the board to 215mhz stable I will be equalling or besting the performance of my NF7-S @ 243mhz.
For those interested the rig is as follows :
MSI K7N2 Delta-L
XP1700 DLT3C AIUHB0310XPMW
MCX370-C w/30cfm evercool 60mm fan
1 x Twinmos BH-5 256mb single sided
1 x Twinmos / Twinmos 256mb single sided
Dual mode enabled.
Leadtek Ti4200 AGP 8x
All in all concidering the price I have the feeling this board could be a winner. Very annoying to set up overclocked, but it should be stated that all current CPU / multiplier / fsb combinations that AMD are currently providing will work perfectly. All multis work at 133 and 166mhz, and the only 200mhz cpu, the 3200+, uses an 11x multi, so all is well there too.
There wont be much more info until I get the review done (should be by the weekend), just thought Id give you the heads up while I sit here running memtest ;).
For those interested reported bandwidth at 11.5 x 200 in memtest is 1577mb/s. My record is 1734mb/s @ 243mhz on the NF7-S. Each mhz is gaining around 17mb/s, so its looking good so far :).
PiLsY.
Its VERY cheap at only £65 including VAT over here (thats around $75 for you yanks ;)), has full dual channel support and the Ultra 400 northbridge. Lan onboard, 5.1 sound onboard using the realtek 650 codec (but not the MCP-T so no dolby). 6 USB 2.0 ports though. And thats pretty much it. No firewire, no sata. Just the bare stripped down NF2 .
One very big plus point is a safe mode recovery jumper. You simply flip this jumper to its 2-3 position and you boot up at a bare 133mhz with default multiplier. You can then enter bios, change your settings a touch then save and exit. Switch th epc off, flip the jumper back into normal mode and boot up at your new settings. No resetting bios settings to get a boot at all. It just bypasses the bios altogether.
Overclocking is all done via bios, with the following settings available...
Vcore to 1.85v (with a 1.5v cpu fitted)
Vdimm to 2.7v
Vagp to 1.7v
FSB to 300mhz
Thats right, no chipset voltage - uh oh! Thatll have to be modded at a later date to release the full potential of the board (probably along with the vdimm) ;).
However, the board has been a nightmare to get going. The first problem I faced was a lack of the 4 holes around the socket. Ive ended up having to use an MCX370 heatsink, which is less than ideal. It suffers from the same multiplier affliction as the early NF7 boards did. For those who dont know about it, this is a problem with multiplier application tied into current FSB. From 199mhz and upwards you lose certain multipliers. The only multipliers available at 200mhz and over are 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 9.5 and then 11x and over. Theres an annoying hole in the available multipliers, which despite a solid 12 hours of work I have not been able to solve.
And now for the good stuff....
This is without a doubt the fastest NF2 board I have ever used. Once you have overcome its quirks youll be blown away by the speed. I am currently testing in memtest at 11.5 x 200, using DEFAULT vcore (something neither my 8RDA+ or NF7-S v2.0 could achieve by some 150mhz) totally stable. And now for the really good part - memory performance at this speed using 2/6/2/2 timings is equal to the NF7-S @ 233mhz and better than the 8RDA+ @ 237mhz. Simply unbelieveable.
Ive not pushed the FSB yet, so I cant tell you how far itll go on stock vDD voltage. Im guessing the 2.7vdimm will be a real problem as well. As is now, if I can get the board to 215mhz stable I will be equalling or besting the performance of my NF7-S @ 243mhz.
For those interested the rig is as follows :
MSI K7N2 Delta-L
XP1700 DLT3C AIUHB0310XPMW
MCX370-C w/30cfm evercool 60mm fan
1 x Twinmos BH-5 256mb single sided
1 x Twinmos / Twinmos 256mb single sided
Dual mode enabled.
Leadtek Ti4200 AGP 8x
All in all concidering the price I have the feeling this board could be a winner. Very annoying to set up overclocked, but it should be stated that all current CPU / multiplier / fsb combinations that AMD are currently providing will work perfectly. All multis work at 133 and 166mhz, and the only 200mhz cpu, the 3200+, uses an 11x multi, so all is well there too.
There wont be much more info until I get the review done (should be by the weekend), just thought Id give you the heads up while I sit here running memtest ;).
For those interested reported bandwidth at 11.5 x 200 in memtest is 1577mb/s. My record is 1734mb/s @ 243mhz on the NF7-S. Each mhz is gaining around 17mb/s, so its looking good so far :).
PiLsY.