Thank you for all results so far 😀
@up I know. For anyone who doesn't know - Phenom II x4 with AGP capability setup requires one of these :
ALiveDual-eSATA2 (LINK)
AM2NF3-VSTA (LINK)
shiva2004 wrote:I have a 4CoreDual-Sata2 myself, but with a humble Pentium D 920, much more in line with what the chipset was designed originally for, and taking into account that the Asrock 4CoreDual were dubbed as bad motherboards for quad cores, the fact that you can run an overclocked QX9770 in it is amazing. Have you modded the mobo or is it in its original configuration?
Very nice, anyway.
First of all don't get the wrong idea : They are BAD MB for almost all Quad Cores.
Why ?
Because maximum stable FSB sucks on them (for Quad Cores it's only 270-290MHz), and those boards can't adjust Vcore from BIOS (which is a real problem when MB has -0,05V difference between VID setting and what acutally goes to CPU in IDLE, and in LOAD you get Vdroop on top of that [think almost -0,1V between BIOS setting and Load Vcore]).
How to get around that limitations (or at least how I did it) ?
FSB limit :
You either go high stock multi (like x10 minimum, and x12-x14 as an optimal value for Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad).
Pentium Dual-Core E5600/E5700 are a good example here because they got low 800MHz FSB as start (+are cheap and OC well on stock Vcore).
It may be impossible to get them to post on 1066MHz without Flexibility Option enabled tho (FSB Straps).
OR, you go full extreme mode :
With Core 2 Extreme/Pentium Extreme Edition (and unlocked multipliers for CPU), maximum FSB limit isn't that big of a deal in their case (you will still lose few % of performance because of lower FSB when comparing to OC'ed "locked" chips on P965/P35 based boards).
Other problem for good OC on these boards, is no Vcore control (and it can limit OC quite a lot, even on unlocked Extreme chips).
I knew from my Vannila P5B Quad core tests, that 45nm quad's don't need a lot VRM power to stay stable under 4GHz mark, so higher Vcore should be OK heat wise (it will require some airflow over VRM section, but that's why I used biggest "BOX" Intel cooling I could find 😀).
Then I used a simple VID pin mod to make board think my CPU's default voltage is 1,3875V (instead of standard 1,2875V).
VID Pin Mod uses the same basic method as the other LGA 775 pin mod, the "BSEL Mod", but instead of joining BSEL Pins, you tape/connect VID pins to "Low" and/or "High" pins that are nearby.
I did BSEL mod my PDC E5800 to 1066MHz FSB, to make better FSB Strap config possible (ie. with no need for "Flexibility option" to work on 1066MHz FSB). Bit of warning here : Doing BSEL mod on E5800, required VID Mod for CPU to even POST.
You can go lower multi on locked higher multi Core 2 type chips with this boards, but only after changing max. multi in BIOS (just FYI).
Between unlocked/high multi CPU and BSEL/VID Pin mods (that use tin foil and double sided tape's glue 😁), the only thing left was to update BIOS to latest Beta (can be found here : LINK).
And that was it.
No hardcore hardware modding (ie. cutting socket), no cables to join some capacitors and coils to some other stuff, etc.
Just cheap and simple method that does GREAT things for performance.
To sum it all up :
Those ASRock AGP LGA 775 boards, are the only ones I enountered so far that actually NEED a Extreme Edition CPU's to get most out of them (which is curious in itself, since they are usually at least 4x as expensive as boards themselves...).