My Goddamn Motherboard

[rrjwilson]

I bought the motherboard just over a year ago, each day the POST time has become slowly longer and longer until yesterday when i booted up and BAM. One long beep for no reason, NONE at all. I was stock voltage and my usual gentle OC.

So now on order is a Asus Striker II Extreme 790i Ultra SLi motherboard. Its DDR3 compliant and I know that is great and all but is DDR3 pushing the boundaries yet or am I better sticking with my DDR2 SLi Ready stuff for the moment?

Oh and its ready for WC too so i'll be adding in a NB connection in my loop.

I know its ridiculous money but my original was awesome.

 

[Pat123]

dosent the striker 2 only take DDR3?

 

[rrjwilson]

Aria Website

It is DDR3 and DDR2

790i seems to be the bee's knees but has it any weaknesses that i can support.

Edit: DDR3 only according to every other place due to 790i Ultra Chipset not allowing DDR2

 

[Ham]

Im pretty sure thats wrong. 790i is DDR3 only.

Jim should be able to confirm this?

 

[JN]

IIRC nVidia was initially intending on making a DDR2 version of the 790i but close to release date they decided against it because it was too much hassle.

If you want DDR2, 780i is about as good as it gets on the SLI front.

 

[rrjwilson]

I've ordered some cheapy DDR3 memory to tide me over until i can find some beefy stuff.

I looked on nVidia and they implied only the 790i Ultra SLi was DDR3 only due to its extreme performance do-hikey-me-bobs. Thanks though guys.

So can anyone give me a finite answer as to the benefits of DDR3 over DDR2

 

[Phoenix]

Higher speeds and transfer rate, I guess?

 

[rrjwilson]

Seems odd the new mobo and RAM.

Its faster than my old kit spec wise and the system seems faster but 3DMark06 score has gone down by 100ish

 

[Uncle_Fluffy]

The DDR3 has much higher latancies than DDR2. The effect for a system at stock speeds is that it will be marginally slower.

The benefits of the DDR3 will be of use with high FSB speeds, in other words you need to be using quite a decent overclock for the extra bandwidth to make a difference.

 

[Kougar]

Aye, it's DDR3 only. Unfortunately there's no real gain for using DDR3 unless you enjoy synthetic benchmarks, or you game at 800x600

 

[rrjwilson]

Hate to say this but DDR3 has helped my stock clock scores jump. Count overclocked speed (which is actually help by my mobo being one of the most mental OC boards available) then you see it counts for a hell of a lot as only DDR3 can keep up with these sorts of speeds.

 

[Diablo13]

With the price of DDR 2 falling the way it is, it would take a lot more than synthetic benchmark hikes to persuede me to pay the current prices of DDR 3. By the time there are any real advantages to it and it's at least reasonably affordable there will be a DDR 4 out with 2000 or more FSB speeds. :crazy:

 

[rrjwilson]

Yes probably but then DDR3 will be the slow not DDR2. The real problem is the latencies. If you are not into the "synthetic benchmark hike" then why overclock as this will show the increase to you so surely OCing and benching go hand in hand.

 

[Diablo13]

Yes thats a good point rrjwilson. I do overclock and do use benchmarking software, though I mainly overclock to encode films etc and for more responsiveness in programs. My point was really that you can get very good overclock speeds with the current core 2 duo/quad core cpu's using good DDR2 memory at a very good price without breaking the bank and needing to buy an overpriced new motherboard and DDR 3 ram?

I just dont see the point of getting a very good cpu for 2 to £300 but having to shell out another £230 for a DDR3 compatable board and then another £550 for 4 gig of DDR3 memory sticks? Just makes the whole thing ridiculously expensive when new technology is around almost every week.

Maybe it's just because I can't afford to keep up with it, but I am quite happy with my present setup at the moment and it means I don't have to go out and sell my body.

Not that I would get much for it. :awhip:

 

[rrjwilson]

Ah well your reasoning although logical is slightly misguided given my setup standpoint.

Through luck and varying problems I gained my socket 775 status and my Q6600. Through hard earned cash i bought OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 memory. After one year of perfectly adequate safe OC at 3.0GHz 930MHz the board died. So i thought screw it. Went for "the daddy" motherboard (wallet said ouch). As for memory i bought a £40 2Gb kit because no where in the UK sells RAM even approaching the timings or speed that i think my rig deserve.

When I can grab some ProjectX beasty stuff then game on but until then i'll stick to my (horribly tacky) Gold OCZ memory.

 

[rrjwilson]

Oh and of course upgrading to "the daddy" requires the current "daddy" chipset - 790i.

This seems to believe video is evil and freezes after mere seconds of playback and with no news from nVidia or Asus it looks like i;m just gonna have to sit here like the rest of the 790i and 780i mobo people who have the same problem.

 

[Diablo13]

It really sucks when that happens. Manufacturers rush products out to be first at something and bombard us all with hype telling us why it's better than sex. Unfortunately they don't seem to properly test product configurations and drivers in a regular enviroment, only in controlled conditions. They all do it, from Microsoft down and having shelled out you then have to tell them whats wrong with it and wait for a batch of fixes which seem to take forever.

I recently got an E8500 cpu as soon as it was available, matched it with an Asus Maximus Formula board and 4 gig of Crucial Ballistix 8500 ram and a Corsair Hx 620 psu with a BFG 8800 GTX OC graphics card in a Thermaltake Armour case and water cooling. It should have been a dream setup for me but I seemed to get all sorts of problems with the board crashing on overclock. When it ran it was great and I overclocked the 3.16 gig chip to 4.3 gig running stable. Then for no reason it would crash while encoding with Nero or something similar and wouldn't boot up again? Sometimes I could just leave it running doing nothing but idle and come back and it was dead. I just couldn't get it to power up at all and neither could friends of mine with more experience. All I could do was wait about 12 hours with it unplugged, then it would boot and run as if nothing had happened. I took it back to Tekheads who changed it no problem, but the second board had the same problem and none of the numerous Asus updates seemed to fix it.

I know loads of people swear by the Maximus, but I got sick of swearing at it and got a lower spec Gigabyte board instead. Granted it doesn't overclock as well but at least it keeps running 24/7.

I wish you more luck than I had in getting your problems sorted.

 

[rrjwilson]

Thank you for the luck unfortunately it looks like im gonna need it. Its been 4 months since the first post i have found about the video playback was posted (which i assume is when they contacted the supplier and nVidia).

One person who builds custom systems as a job has been argueing the point that GTL voltages fix the problem on one forum however, four people have tried every combination (if same variance as mine that is 36x36x36x36 combinations) and the comp still just freezes out when playing video. Many also argue the point that if it was GTL voltages then the 790i chipset would already be set at those to account for the problem.