Biostar TPower I45 and 8gb of F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK -- Possible?

[trala]

Hi Everyone,

Out of sheer frustration and desperation did I decide to write you guys (didn't want to bother anyone with my amateur tweaking -- at first). But for the longest time now I have not been able to find any setting that is stable to run my 8gb of F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK (4x2gb) on my Biostar TPower I45 motherboard.

I have a E8500 Core Duo CPU, which is capable of quite solid overclocks, and the Biostar board can achieve good overclocks as well. I ran pretty stable at default setting with G.Skill DDR2 800 (the dark blue sticks) 2x2gb, but I have never been able to find a sweet spot for the 1066 G.Skill.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit and I would like to get some performance out of my system (i.e., use the 8gb of ram). The most stable I've been able to run was with OC's around 4Ghz (for example, 9x450 (4050mhz), mem bus at 540 (1080), 12:10 ratio -- oddly -- and some other settings) but never have I found a good stable situation, not even at stock cpu speeds.

I've tried all kind of voltages, frequencies, but never found a stable situation. I can run regular apps, browsing, for sometimes hours, but eventually there comes a freezer or lock up. Or a display crash, that is common (it's not other hardware, I've tried the 1066 on another mobo (auto settings only), and have tried diff videocards, etc.

For a peek at the Biostar TPower bios settings, look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25...biostar-612mhz

I have read on the G.Skill forum about setting this kind of ram to 4-4-4-12 timings instead, and running it at 800. I was thinking that would be possible to run my CPU at 9.5x400=3.8ghz, which would be decent. But would do I need to know in regard to this motherboard, because I can not find any information about running this memory on this board, so please advise. I've put this memory away several times and I'm tired of doing so, I have 8gb of it and I would like to be able to use it somehow

Thank you

[Tradesman]

So you are actually running two sets of this RAM, have you tried at 5-5-5-15, DRAM voltage at 2.1, CR at 2, and tRFC about 68....if that doesn't work, could you post the current BIOS settings you are using, also BIOS version (hoping it's the latest, if not might want to flash).

One problem you might have is the two kits you have just don't want to play well together.

[trala]

Thank you for your timely reply.

Yes, two sets not playing together nicely is a possibility, but when I ran only 2 sticks in dual channel I also had problems. Then I tried interchanging them and running all four separately, but still I had stability problems.

I have tried your suggested method already in several configurations (I've been reading the forum and some other places) but that doesn't work either.

Currently I have the bios setting on default or it would not let me do anything... It has done that one time before, but after a little while I was able to OC again. I've read several people describe the same situation, which later cleared up (mobo protection of sorts? I don't know what that is).

Yes, I am using the latest BIOS rom, actually I flashed it again today as it was not showing default RAM timings (5-5-5-15) as it usually does (even after loading defaults), so I could not use 'auto' there. After the flash it defaulted back again. Honestly, what is the best motherboard to work with these RAM modules? Frankly, I'm not that impressed by this Biostar board, it seems I'm always having problems of some sort (well, mostly with this RAM, but still). I still need to get this to work though...

My wife's PC has a Gigabyte board but needed RAM, so I had to split up the 8gb of 800 ram (G.Skill) to give her machine 4gb, thus splitting up that set. I tried running 4gb of this 1066 ram in her machine, but I had the same problems: display crashes and freezes. So to prevent her from having such problems (which at the time I had already seen were hard to solve) I used the 1066 ram on my PC and let her have the 800.

I considered many things, including PSU, but I have a Corsair 750w and only 1 HDD and an ATI 3850 so that should really not be a problem either.

I'm kind of at my wit's end at this point...

[Tradesman]

Have you tried running memtest to see if you have a bad stick or two? and could you post your BIOS settings, ram settings and system voltages

[trala]

Hi Tradesman,

To answer your question, no, I have not run MemTest on these. Last night I put 4gb of the 800 G.Skill RAM in, after the mobo stabilized again, and this morning put the 1066 ram back in. I have it basically running at stock settings, most settings on 'auto', except the RAM voltage (which the bios sets to 1.8 or 1.9 by default, so I raised it as you can see from the pics).

This setup is running pretty stable in that I can do most desktop things and even played some Nexuiz (shoote game) and no freezes. Here are the pics:

















So now I'd like to know where to go from here when raising the CPU freq to around 4ghz or 3.8 or something in that vein. Do I not raise the ram voltage from where I have it, do I raise the NB or FSB voltages because it's 8gb, etc? Most OC configs I try with this RAM end up causing freezes or display crashes. Thank you.

[trala]

Sorry, had to leave earlier but now I can work on this some more. After saving the above setting as a BIOS preset, I am now going to try some OC settings to get a bit more out of the RAM. This Biostar board does allow for pretty high FSB frequencies, so technically I could run it at 533mhz so that I could take advantage of the 1066 RAM and run it 1:1 ratio. However, I cannot find any solid information on such a configuration with this particular RAM, and as I mentioned before almost no configuration I can make with the RAM is truly stable.

Anyway, I will try to some simple OC's and report back here and perhaps you can help me point out if there's some settings that need changing.

[trala]

This is about as stable as I can get an OC on this PC with the 8gb 1066 ram. As you can see, I have followed the 8 & 68 timing setting as you have suggested. I have the ram running at its native 1066 through the FSB at 533. This does not produce any serious heat in my system, even when playing a 3D game all temps remain very acceptable (love the 250mm side fan on this case, it keeps everything cool and it is quiet).










This config is running the most stable for me right now. However, when playing a game for a while, I got a freeze and cpu was 100% utilized by the game, although I could stop the process from task manager and it didn't BSOD (this sort of thing happens all the time with my experiments to get a stable situation). I've tried several settings around this semi-stable configuration, such as slightly lower and higher voltages, but got mostly BSOD's out of those. Of course I choose the applications and games that normally give me no problems on a stable setup, and I have updated my BIOS and hardware drivers to their latest version, updated system runtimes, etc.

I noticed when setting the Chipset voltage too low (lower than 1.248v) the Chipset I/O controller would not load (under Device Manager) and my graphics were reduced to 800x600 quality upon boot. So that means the Chipset was starved. Right now 1.248 seems to be the happiest medium in this config. When raised by +.050 it BSOD's. One time my Realtek Audio (integrated) would not load either when playing with those voltages.

So, given the settings in the bios and from AIDA, is there anything that could be suggested to make the system more stable? Thank you for your time.


EDIT: I have also been able to produce an OC of similar stability with a multiplier of 9 x450 (4050mhz), which has lower FSB but ran the RAM at 1080 mhz but ratio of 12:10.

I also tried the 4-4-4-12 timings at 900mhz for the RAM, but it would not boot up at all and it sorta reset everything in my BIOS.

[GSKILL TECH]

NB/SB Voltage states 1.336 in one picture. You can try raising this more to see if it can help with stability. Also tRFC near 80 may help with 8GB stability as well.

Keep tweaking, almost there!

Thank you
GSKILL TECH