8RDA6+ Pro Romsip Mod

[MietmaN]

I've found something, that looks similar to my 3D2001SE stability problems :

http://www.au-ja.org/review-3x754-u4.phtml

The guys tested the mobo with 5 different memory sticks sets. After 4 to 8 hours of looping 3DM2001SE the benchmark crashed - they tried different memory modules, different drivers, other graphic cards and PSUs. They always test for stability at FSB200 by running 3DMark2001SE, Sandra Burn-In and Prime95 for 24 hours. No overclocking at all.

I just can't imagine the motherboard had conflicts with all 5 memory sets.

I've heard from Merlin, that alpha memory timings can have an influence on the 3D2001SE stability (e.g. 40333533 seems to increase the stability), but at real high FSB frequencies like 240MHz or higher.

[treeninja]

It's sad to hear that Merlins PC was destroyed. I use his bios for a week now, and i'm very happy with the speed of my PC. i have now stable sistem at 250 FSB thanks to merlin. With stock bios i could not reach that high.

Thanks again Meriln!!!!

[Daniel ~]

Bad things happen to good people. Merlin has been very good to AOA, shame that no good deed goes unpunished!!

[Wolf2000me]

Hey all

Upon browsing i found a tool, probably already known to most of you but none the less, i used it. It allows to control the alpha timings and latency timings for nforce2 motherboards. Written by Tictac and Codered.

http://forum.abit-usa.com/attachment...&postid=379291


I haven't tried the alpha timings but i did notice all the latencies stood on 32. Which is rather abnormal, or so i thought. I changed them to what i thought was about right, meaning 32 agp controller, 255 Agp bus, 64 pci. But that gave me my stability problems i described earlier right back. With the exception that it did not cause a lot of errors and warnings in the event viewer. Just three compared to more than twenty. Perhaps that has something to do with the bios by merlin? Perhaps that has something to do with the capacitor i had to bend quite far and still is? Or perhaps something else. I have no idea because i have no idea what "rather insignificant changes" were made to the bios But perhaps both the problems i have and those you get MietmaN are related to those latencies. Two of them are AGP bus latencies which could be rather significant. Even the PCI latency should not be overlooked. Also, i gained my stability on a longshot changing my AGP aperture size back to 64mb.
So i'm not saying this is it but it could be something

The program doesn't seem to work properly with monitoring programs running. It does okay with USDM but motherboard monitor does all kinds of fishy things when applying stuff on reboot. Also to run it i had to turn off mbm5.

As to Merlin loosing his rig. That's a shame... **** can and does happen to everyone sometimes.

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by treeninja

It's sad to hear that Merlins PC was destroyed. I use his bios for a week now, and i'm very happy with the speed of my PC. i have now stable sistem at 250 FSB thanks to merlin. With stock bios i could not reach that high.

Thanks again Meriln!!!!

Really, really amazing FSB frequency. I can only dream of similar results - what memory sticks are you using?



@ Wolf2000me :
I had played with the mentioned tool before Merlin released his bios. All the latencies were 32 with stock bios, as far as I can remember and so they remain with Merlin's one. Strange they are, indeed ...

What alpha memory timings do you have at FSB200? Merlin has written, that his bios uses 40225323, stock DFI is 40333331 and 3DMark2001SE should be the most stable at 40333533.

When I come back home I'm gonna try some different latencies as well as alpha memory timings. Since you've gotten rid of some of your problems by setting AGP Aperture Size to 64MB, I will also mess around with this setting (256MB at the moment).

Btw. I've just checked the event viewer in my notebook and has discovered, that I get plenty of errors every day (Application - COM+ and EventSystem, System - Service Control Manager). Despite all those errors my system seems to be very stable, so what the hell .... ?

EDIT : I've also tried changing the memory precharge setting in bios - didn't seem to afflict stability nor performance (Auto, On, Disabled). I've also marked, that it is disabled by default in Merlin's bios, while set to auto in stock bioses.

[tamashumi]

Hi guys

I'm new here and I'm new owner of 8rda6+ PRO mobo (8rda3+ before). I've read all of this thread and got many questions but don't wanna to spam all my newbie questions at once

so only part of it:

1. what are known (4 sure) bugs at current version of Merlin's bios mod, becouse I'm not sure should I flash it.
2. I can reach FSB only about ~185MHz right now as I have barton 2800+ with locked multiplier :/ so dunno if I get any profits with Merlin's bios flashed?
3. how is it going Merlin's work on new version?
4. does any of sata controllers at 8rda6+ mobo got NCQ support? (I read at other threat that sil 3114 will support it with software driver in future, but I have raid0 array connected to nvidia controller, so I can't switch without data lost :/ can I? )

...go go go Merlin! xD

[Áedán]

AFAIK, the nVidia controller doesn't support NCQ, unless you have an nForce 4 board.

[tamashumi]

Originally Posted by Áedán

AFAIK, the nVidia controller doesn't support NCQ, unless you have an nForce 4 board.

thx for re

damn! not good to hear that...

anyone know when this software NCQ support for sil 3114 can be expected?

[Áedán]

I have no idea - I don't work for either EPoX or Silicon Image!

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by tamashumi

I'm new here and I'm new owner of 8rda6+ PRO mobo (8rda3+ before). I've read all of this thread and got many questions but don't wanna to spam all my newbie questions at once

Welcome to the forums!

Originally Posted by tamashumi

1. what are known (4 sure) bugs at current version of Merlin's bios mod, becouse I'm not sure should I flash it.
2. I can reach FSB only about ~185MHz right now as I have barton 2800+ with locked multiplier :/ so dunno if I get any profits with Merlin's bios flashed?
3. how is it going Merlin's work on new version?
4. does any of sata controllers at 8rda6+ mobo got NCQ support? (I read at other threat that sil 3114 will support it with software driver in future, but I have raid0 array connected to nvidia controller, so I can't switch without data lost :/ can I? )

1. The only bug I have is the so called "cold boot issue" : after having turned your system off your PC won't boot, although there are absolutely no problems with "warm" restarts. You have to turn off the power supply for a few seconds and turn it on again, then it boots normally. Ups, I would forget the S3 energy saving suspend-to-RAM and hibernation problems - I don't use them, so I've almost forgotten about them. I haven't heard of any other issues, so if you don't mind the above ones, plz flash the bios, since it's really god damn fast.

2. You wouldn't get much profit then, exactly as you have already suspected. Merlin's bios has got much better FSB200 ROMSIP table with chipset's timings and generally is quicker + L12 mod bulit-in, if you wanted to go high above FSB200.

3. No news and no chances for any at all - his small son has messed around with Merlin's water cooling and flooded the whole computer, destroying all data on HDDs. There won't be any new bioses for any nForce2 motherboard from Merlin anymore - only for nF4 in a future.

4. I don't know, I don't use SATA hard disk drives. From what I've read accidentally here in the forums Áedán is right.

cheers

[MietmaN]

Welcome guys

Today I swapped my G.Skill's memory sticks with legendary Mushkin Enhanced PC3200 Level II V2 (Samsung TCCD, V1 were on BH-5 and BH-6) from a friend of mine. Since then I've had no 3D stability problems at all. The memory is capable of doing 2-2-2-11 at 2.63v (bios) 'till FSB210. At FSB220 it's only "benchmarks stable", even at 2.90v, but I'm really pleased, since it's now doing 2-3-3-11 at 2.63v and seems to be fine (Prime95 Blend).

So, finally, after many weeks of mostly theoretical discussion, I've resolved my problems and found the proper memory for my motherboard. I'm glad both my old good Radeon 9800PRO@XT and Epox mobo are all right - above that, the issue didn't have anything to do with Merlin's bios, what makes me particularly pleased

cheers all!

[Daniel ~]

Good on ya!

I hear you about the BIOS, no one like to see a friend step in it!!

[MietmaN]

Thanx, Daniel - I was already thinking of changing either my mobo or even the whole system (though I'm in the red now ).

[Daniel ~]

Overclocking means never having to say your in the black! ":O}

[tamashumi]

Originally Posted by MietmaN

Welcome to the forums!

THX! for welcome

Originally Posted by MietmaN

1. The only bug I have is the so called "cold boot issue" : after having turned your system off your PC won't boot, although there are absolutely no problems with "warm" restarts. You have to turn off the power supply for a few seconds and turn it on again, then it boots normally. Ups, I would forget the S3 energy saving suspend-to-RAM and hibernation problems - I don't use them, so I've almost forgotten about them. I haven't heard of any other issues, so if you don't mind the above ones, plz flash the bios, since it's really god damn fast.

heh, ok I try flash it. That's what for atx switch-off button at PSU is :P Besides I can always return to relase bios. What is that S3 energy saving? any important issue? hibernation - who cares?

Originally Posted by MietmaN

2. You wouldn't get much profit then, exactly as you have already suspected. Merlin's bios has got much better FSB200 ROMSIP table with chipset's timings and generally is quicker + L12 mod bulit-in, if you wanted to go high above FSB200.

yup, I need to switch for mobile thingy. I guess no one of you wanna buy Athlon 2800+ ? :P L12 mod means that I can rise higher FSB - correct?

Originally Posted by MietmaN

3. No news and no chances for any at all - his small son has messed around with Merlin's water cooling and flooded the whole computer, destroying all data on HDDs. There won't be any new bioses for any nForce2 motherboard from Merlin anymore - only for nF4 in a future.

realy bad luck for us and for Marlin of course :/ all data o_O: that's got to hurt...

Originally Posted by MietmaN

4. I don't know, I don't use SATA hard disk drives. From what I've read accidentally here in the forums Áedán is right.

...not using SATA by any special reason?
I just've bought 2xST160827AS drives. Not sure what I'm supposed to do now with ~300gb disk space, hehe. but I switched only to increase performance SATA+raid0 I feel the kickoff . I wrote to Sil support. w8ing for reply

one more: I see we have same CPU cooling unit. What's your temp during normal work on mobile? mine 45-46 @ [184x12.5MHz,3000rpm] and 39-40 @ nominal [166x12.5MHz,2500rpm]. damn, hot barton

[MietmaN]

S3 enery saving is some kind of newer genaration e.s. than S1 - allows to put your PC down to sleep like a notebook
S1 and hibernation writes down all useful data on your HDD, S3 and suspend-to-RAM - stores everything in the memory, needs strong +5VSB line. This is all I know and I really don't have to know more, since I don't use these functions. If I'm wrong, then plz somebody correct me.

L12 mod makes your motherboard (chipset) think your CPU is at FSB166/200 (depends on the mod) as a default, what sets some more loose timings for the chipset and allows to reach higher FSB. Here's some basic "know-how" :

http://www.geocities.com/trats102002/nf7sFsbsense.html

It's particualarly useful with mobile CPUs - many hit the wall at FSB200-205 with their default FSB133 and sharp chipset timings. In many modified bioses it's built in the bios - so is the case with Merlin's one.

As to SATA - there's no significant difference in performance between SATA I and PATA (ATA100/133), so why should I sell the two HDDs I own? Maybe I will buy one in few months, don't know - my current disc space is enough 4 me.

cheers

... and flash, like it's described at the beginning of this thread (btw. do you have a floppy disk drive?)

@ Daniel : plain truth!

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by tamashumi

one more: I see we have same CPU cooling unit. What's your temp during normal work on mobile? mine 45-46 @ [184x12.5MHz,3000rpm] and 39-40 @ nominal [166x12.5MHz,2500rpm]. damn, hot barton

Do you really own a Pentagram cooler? I'm asking, since I used to have Thermalright SI-97, which I'm gonna RMA probably tomorrow and I can't recall when I changed my sig.
Plz, write the V-core, so we can compare; it doesn't make sense otherwise.

[tamashumi]

Originally Posted by MietmaN

As to SATA - there's no significant difference in performance between SATA I and PATA (ATA100/133), so why should I sell the two HDDs I own? Maybe I will buy one in few months, don't know - my current disc space is enough 4 me.

I had sata before but I wanna set raid0 array so I sold older one and bought 2 new one to get identical models. between single drive and striped array there is some difference I guess. ...and this not supported NCQ, grrrrr :/

Originally Posted by MietmaN

... and flash, like it's described at the beginning of this thread (btw. do you have a floppy disk drive?)

sure thing

Originally Posted by MietmaN

Do you really own a Pentagram cooler? I'm asking, since I used to have Thermalright SI-97, which I'm gonna RMA probably tomorrow and I can't recall when I changed my sig.
Plz, write the V-core, so we can compare; it doesn't make sense otherwise.

hehe yea, pentagram - same model as at your's si