calebb
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2000
- Messages
- 8,758
0406 for plain P5K NOT DELUXE!! (1MB Image) (I haven't tried this BIOS but I assume it's newer than the one that ships with this board)
0304 BIOS for P5K Deluxe (2MB Image) (4 May 2007)
More random info on the P5K here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=144199
Useful information if you're running into stability issues when you are really pushing your memory - manually tweaking subtimings might help out if you're close... but I don't like living that close to the edge
0304 BIOS for P5K Deluxe (2MB Image) (4 May 2007)
- The BIOS that shipped with my board was 0123 and the latest available on Asus' website is 0202. I'm not exactly sure where these leaked from... but they fix some things I was having issues with! In fact, I found this BIOS linked on anandtech's forum when I was trying to figure out why my RAM (Crucial Ballistix PC8500 CAS5, 5-5-5-15 @ 1066) would only work if DRAM Voltage was "auto" - if I manually set it to 2.2V, the system wouldn't POST and I would have to reboot and use the OC recover... And I was not able to determine exactly what DIMM voltage was being used from sisoft, cpu-z, PC Wizard 2007, etc...
In any case, with the new BIOS, I was able to set the voltage to 2.2V and it POSTS correctly at those timings.
- The CPU Voltage Damper was not working correctly, even when forced to enable. Per spec, VCore can drop soemthing like 5% and still be within spec. This feature prevents the voltage from dropping as much under load... supposedly. With the 0123 BIOS, E6320 @ 2.8GHz dipped from 1.375V -> 1.35V under load with CPU Voltage Damper enabled. With 0304 BIOS, the voltage does not dip at all (to 3 decimal places) when under load. I just ran Orthos for 40 minutes while I was eating dinner and the voltage stayed constant at 1.375V
- MOTHERBOARD TEMPS ARE LOWER! (Well, the sensor reports a lower temperature now, for better or worse...) The room temp is the same as it was when I was testing earlier and I've made no additional changes to my system. After 30 minutes of Orthos, my motherboard temperature was hitting 55C with my current settings. Now it maxes out at 50C.
- Memory performance slightly decreased - although it was small, so it could be an anomaly. (Sisoft Sandra: 7065MB/sec -> 7009 MB/sec) I only ran the test once. If I was writing a review for a website, I would run each test 3 times and average the results and report the std deviation... but I'm not so there you go. Conspire away
- CPU-z was reporting odd values for CAS latency - sometimes as high as 33 when it was actually set to 5. CPU-z seems to report the correct values for memory timing now.
- BIOS settings are reset when you update - but if you save them to an OC profile, you can easily restore them after the update.
More random info on the P5K here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=144199
Seems for at least 1:1, 4:5 and 2:3 dividers AUTO subtimings are set pretty tight, performing in Super Pi times just behind manually set subtimings of 3-30-8-3-6.
Useful information if you're running into stability issues when you are really pushing your memory - manually tweaking subtimings might help out if you're close... but I don't like living that close to the edge