GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

[Dewdman42]

I have a couple questions about a few settings in the BIOS which are not explained with enough detail.

1 - CPU EIST. I see that its supposed to over speedstep functionality to step down the speed of the CPU when not under heavy use. I have heard that this capability is disabled automatically when I am overclocking the machine. Is that true?

2 - Performance Enhance - it says I can use Standard, Turbo or Extreme. What the heck does it do? If I set it to Turbo or Extreme, what will it be changing exactly?

3 - I see that I can set the clock frequency as high as 700 with this BIOS, which would put the FSB at 2800mhz if I understand correctly... That sounds like a very bad thing to do. What is the upper limit of the FSB as far as the mobo is concerned and why would the BIOS allow me to set it to such a high value of 700?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

1. NO, you must manually disable that and a few others when overclocking. TM2, EIST, and Speedstep

2. It is unknown, if you are overclocking, standard is best

3. Yes, that is VERY high. The limit is not so much the board, but your CPU

So....With all your questions I think you should take a hour or two and read over the Guide I pinned it will further explain all of the BIOS features to you

[Dewdman42]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

I actually did read the pinned guide. Did not absorb all of it, that will take months, not hours.

Someone else told me that this mobo was limited to 1600mhz for the FSB and I'm trying to find out if that is the case.

so you're saying the EIST *DOES* actually work even when the mobo is being overclocked? That would be nice, I wanted to use it. I was told it didn't work whenever the board is being overclocked. Oh well, just goes to how much rumor and mis-information spreads around the various forums.

thanks.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

Nope, your real limit will be only your CPU, here is my DS4 at 3.4, I also run at 3.6 fine as well which is 1800, and I have booted in at 2000 FSB but my ram was the stability issue their >>>


When will you get your board? Yes, all those features work when overclocking, but they will stop you from doing so stabley so you will want them off. So yes, it works but no it does not work properly when overclocking so you will want it off

[Dewdman42]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

I have my board now. Until I get aftermarket cpu cooling, I don't plan to go past the 3.0ghz barrier. I actually ran some benchmarking tests with Sandra doing every possible combination I could think of to get an overall 3ghz box(for now). There were 5 combinations of clock speed and multiplier and ram multiplier that I tested. The one that performed best was 8x clock multiplier at 375mhz with ram multiplier at 2.40. I have kingston HyperX DDR2-800 which is overclockable to 900 or even 950 according to some people. By using 8x375x2.40, I was getting 3ghz cpu and 900mhz memory and that seemed to render the best results in sandra too.

here are some charts if you want to see:

http://public.dewdman42.fastmail.fm/overclock/results.pdf

If EIST causes instability, than that is reason enough to turn it off. Kind of a shame. Seems like it would be nice to let EIST slow down the CPU when its sitting idle and keep things cool. But I'm more interested in moderate overclocking. I will probably not ever try to overclock past 3.2 or 3.3. I know its capable of more but that is good enough for me. I just want to make sure that I use the right combination of settings to get maximum benefit from my RAM while also making sure the CPU is not being held back by anything related to clock speeds.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

Well the reason EIST, TM2 and Speedstep cause that is because they are based on default voltages and frequency's and such. When you change those to overclock those features do not recognize the new settings and run however they want which in turn may give you to little voltage and cause your settings to be very unstable. See what I mean now, when you think of it like that.

Yeah, best to get you a better cooler for overclocking, stock intel ones are not so great because they are designed for stock speeds and voltages.

I use a Zalman 9700 LED on my DS4 works great, but there are better coolers if you have a large enough case, such as the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

Hey Buddy, I use Sisandra, how do you make charts like that? Any tips would be great!


*EDIT*
Also you may be seeing 1:1 as not the best because you are using Auto for memory subtimings, correct? Which may not be the best timings possible for any of the settings, and could cause either to look better or worse then the other

[Dewdman42]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

I had to manually enter the results from Sandra into excel in order to produce the charts.

I tried messing with the memory timings, but everything became very unstable very fast. My memory is rated at 5-5-5-15. I tried 4-4-4-12 and it would work, but only if i did not overclock other things very much. So for now i am sticking with 5-5-5-15 as the memory is rated. I do not know if this made my comparative results skewed. What I do know is that 1:1 ram speed did not neccessarily give me the best results. I just don't know why.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

Well, yeah if it is rated at CAS 5 then CAS 4 is likely not going to work. And that could also be the reason your 1:1 is not the best, your ram doesnt run as good at slower timings because of High CAS 5. What ram is it?

[Dewdman42]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

The ram is Kingston HyperX DDR2-800. Its not top shelf overclocking ram, but its supposed to be designed for overclocking and better than the standard cheap stuff. That's fine. I'm only looking to do moderate overclocking anyway

[Dewdman42]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

Also, I reran my various benchmark tests, making sure that the timings were not set on auto. They may have been before. I got better results this time with manually set to 5-5-5-15 and also you will be happy to see that 1:1 did in fact out perform other settings. I have updated the PDF at the same link location I quoted earlier if you want to check it out.

I didn't rerun all the tests...only the ones that are right around 3.0 or 3.10 ghz. I tried 4-4-4-12 again and it only works with very very mild overclocking. I think I'm better off going for the higher clock speed, high ram speed/bandwidth, and stick with the 5-5-5-15 rating.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

Ya, if you ram is rated for CAS 5 (5-5-5-12/15/18) then it likely would not run 4-4-4-X at anything over 800 or even at 800, you could probably run it underclocked at 4-4-4 timings, but that would be kinda silly!

You need ram rated at 4-4-4 to to run those timings normally

[GIGABYTE - Janus Yeh]

Re: GA-P35-DS4 BIOS questions

as i know, if you set extreme and over clocking,
it will auto change to turbo or stand, for your system stable.