Biostar Tforce overclocking stories??

mr-busta

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 25, 2005
Messages
117
Guys..... where are the Biostar Tforce overclockers? I haven't heard one overclock story since the board came out. How high has anyone gotten??

I just got the Biostar Tforce board yesterday with a A64 3000+ (Week 19 E3 Stepping). So far I've only been able to get it up to 2070 Mhz (230Mhz x 9) on 1.550V. A very pathetic overclock to say the least. I have only DDR400 Kingston Value Ram, but I have it at underclocked at 188Mhz. I'm not sure if I got a dud CPU or does this motherboard just suck? Has anyone else gotten a decent overclock on this board?
 
lower your cpu multi and set a memory divider, then see how high u can crank the fsb on the mobo. that'll give u more of an idea of if its dud/bad mobo or dud cpu. and make the htt link multi 2 or 2.5, whatever the lowest is.
 
Mine should be coming in a couple days. I will let you know.

I have a Venice 3500 that does 250x12 all day long

and I have an Opteron 150 coming also.

So we will see what fun there is to be had, if any.
 
Ok, I've had a little bit more time to play with it tonight... I've turned down the multipliers (CPU and HT) as well as the memory mutliplier and cranked up the CPU bus......... but it just won't go above 230Mhz. I'm pretty bummed, with all the oc settings this mobo has, what use are they if it won't go above 230?

Maybe I just have a bad board, don't know... let me know if anyone's got some decent speed out of this mobo
 
mr-busta said:
Ok, I've had a little bit more time to play with it tonight... I've turned down the multipliers (CPU and HT) as well as the memory mutliplier and cranked up the CPU bus......... but it just won't go above 230Mhz. I'm pretty bummed, with all the oc settings this mobo has, what use are they if it won't go above 230?

Maybe I just have a bad board, don't know... let me know if anyone's got some decent speed out of this mobo


Mine has the same problem, or similar. When I set the FSB/HTT anywhere above 230, it takes a long time to POST, and when it does, it's back at 200. Hmmmmmmmmm.
 
No lock, maybe? Is there a jumper to raise the board voltage? Lower the HT multi to 3x or less, use a low multi and use a 133 or 100 divider. If you still can't get above 230... well... the board is craptacular.
 
I think it might be a BIOS issue, it does have settings for PCIe speed...
I was using 3x HT mult and 133 ram divider to eliminate those as issues.

The reason I think it's BIOS and not something else is - 229 works perfectly but 230 doesn't.
 
Anything in the BIOS like "SB PCI-E performance" or something like that?

I've found in the case of the ATI mobo I have, that the Northbridge/Southbridge interface appears to be...flaky. Or something. Dunno. Audigy I have gives me a "squeal of death" on extended use when overclocked with that enabled, disabled and everything seems good.
 
lets just hope that DFI releases a good one w/o these issues :)

...whenever they finally get around to releasing it, that is. :(
 
Neutraleyes said:
I think it might be a BIOS issue, it does have settings for PCIe speed...
I was using 3x HT mult and 133 ram divider to eliminate those as issues.

The reason I think it's BIOS and not something else is - 229 works perfectly but 230 doesn't.
Could be. ECS had an issue at exactly 250. You guys try anything above 230?

Then again, my NF7 used to crap out almost immediately at a specific fsb.

Edit: Someone named "Hotrod" just posted a review on Newegg claiming to do a 2.64GHz clock on his X2 4400. That would mean a 240 fsb... I'd keep trying guys.
 
Could be. ECS had an issue at exactly 250. You guys try anything above 230?

Hey thanks for the tip! I just tried 236...., boots! :eek: ...then 243....it boots!!! :) I sent Biostar an email on this problem. Definitely looks like a BIOS issue. Hope they release some updates.

I'm gonna try seeing what the bus limit is tonight and then raise up the multipliers, hope things get better.... I'll keep you guys posted.
 
Good to hear there is some overlclocking coming out of these things. Cos im prolly going to be building my brother a rig with a tforce.
 
I'm now at 242 x 9 = 2180MHz and HT x5. Looking a little better.... but I'm still not satisfied. I am now completely convinced that there are some serious BIOS issues here.

Tonight, I tried the bus speed from 229 to 257 in 1MHz increments and found that only 229, 235, 236, 239, 242 work *fairly* reliably. I kind of gave up at 257. This was all at HT x5 multi. I went back to REDUCE the HT multi to x4, x1, and AUTO on the same 229, 235, 236, 239, 242 frequencies and they didn't work (meaning boots in safe mode back to 200)!!! This does not make sense!

Now I'm starting to realize how Biostar got its Geforce6100 board out first before the others..... they didn't QC the board before releasing!! :mad: Biostar better get a workin on some BIOS updates fast..........

Some other issues:
* my Happauge TV tuner card has sound but a blank video overlay. Could be the BETA drivers from nVidia that came on the Biostar CD. I've upgraded to the latest BETA drivers but still no change.......
* note: to run your memory in Dual Channel mode you need to populate every other DIMM slot. (makes no mention of it in the manual, wasn't obvious to me)
* I wish there was a way to disable the "safe mode" boot when the board detects unsafe overclock. Very annoying when I know it should work (i.e. underclocking), then it boots into "safe mode". grrr
 
Thanks for the testing. Were you running a memory divider?

Rule of thumb goes HTx5 @ stock, HTx4 up until 250, HTx3 above that. ...but it sounds like the Biostar can't do lower HT multis. If that's true that sort of screws over overclocking.

That dual channel setup has been standard on nVidia boards since nForce2. Don't feel bad, because you would not know that unless you have used one in the past. The good thing about that is ATi boards do the same thing, but their board's requires the modules be in slots 1-2 or 3-4, which means the RAM is harder to cool.
 
When I was doing the CPU bus tryouts I was using the lowest DRAM multi, which I believe was CPU/18. I eventually made it up to CPU/14.

Anyway, I have some good news.... Biostar promptly sent me a BIOS update through email this morning which added a "Watchdog time" setting. This seemed to help stability a lot..... I am now at 292 x 9 = 2628 MHz @ 1.5V; HT=x4; DRAM multi @ CPU/14. I am now running prime95 for this afternoon to test for extended stability.

Biostar said that they would post the new BIOS today. Things are looking better...... Thanks to all for your help.....
 
With the original BIOS I was also able to get 259 and 272 to boot.

Has anyone had any issues with data corruption with this board? My hard drive took a nose dive on me last night, but I ran some diagnostics on it (hooked up to another motherboard) and it tests out fine. I lost about 40GB of data, :( but I was able to recover most of it. BUT, this drive has been peculiar for a while, so I don't want to throw blame on the Biostar.

Biostar didn't post that BIOS. Mr-busta, I wonder if you could please send it to me at neutraleyes AT gmail DOT com? or upload it someplace? TIA.
 
mr-busta said:
When I was doing the CPU bus tryouts I was using the lowest DRAM multi, which I believe was CPU/18. I eventually made it up to CPU/14.

Anyway, I have some good news.... Biostar promptly sent me a BIOS update through email this morning which added a "Watchdog time" setting. This seemed to help stability a lot..... I am now at 292 x 9 = 2628 MHz @ 1.5V; HT=x4; DRAM multi @ CPU/14. I am now running prime95 for this afternoon to test for extended stability.

Biostar said that they would post the new BIOS today. Things are looking better...... Thanks to all for your help.....


mr-busta, yhpm.
 
I have the Tforce board with the funky connector colors. I don't know what the other board is. It looks like the same layout, but with more subdued colors.

At this moment, I'm still trying to get it Prime95 stable, which may take some time. I'm in the 2.6GHz ball park, which I'm pretty satisfied with. I'm using all onboard sound, VGA, LAN, and a PATA hard drive and they all work fine. The only thing is my TV tuner which I've mentioned before has a blank video overlay, I hope nVidia can update the drivers for this soon.

Here are my system specs:

Aspire X-Qpack m-ATX case
Antec Smartpower 2.0 350W
Athlon 64 3000+ @ 2.6GHz
Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU HS
Biostar Tforce6100-939 mobo
2 x 512MB Kingston DDR400 Value RAM
Western Digital 160GB PATA
Lite-on DVD burner
Hauppauge WinTV tuner card
 
looks like the M9 can be distinguished by the lack of power/reset buttons and the red PCB. Also it is apparently not part of the biostar "T-series" which means it probably has a different bios with less features.

mr-busta- red or blue pcb?
 
Neutraleyes, its a blue PCB with the yellow and orange connectors. The T-series version.
 
heh, I was just scared for a minute that the magic BIOS you sent me may have been for the wrong board. But insanity won out over caution and I flashed anyway...

up to 279*9 =2500mhz now :D
 
Would flashing the M9 with the Tforce Bios still work? because as far as i can tell the chipsets are the same.
 
Highly likely. I told you guys to go for it!

Before:
e-penis

After:
E-PENIS

See? You can't argue with the facts! ;)
 
i tried flashing the bios that was linked to before - cu51ma12.bst but no good. i used the integrated bios flashing tool in the bios, used a floppy with only the updated bios file and it said "file not found". i tried using a bootable floppy with awdflash and the bios file and got something like "file is incorrect for your system" . then i boot into windows, and tried winflash, and got the error "file wrong size". i am using the t6100-939 board, no doubt about it. it matches up with the photo in the manual and the website, also has the diag leds, which the m9 does not have, and has the power/reset switches oriented horizontally, rather than vertically like on the m9. i saved the existing bios to my drive and it is the same size as the one i downloaded. anyone else having this prob? wtf?
 
I downloaded that file that was linked using a couple different proggies and can't get it to even be seen with MODBIN! Trying to extract things out of it with CBROM also said it was an invalid file name. Either that file is corrupt somehow or Biostar built in some sort of copy protection into it.

If someone can extract their bios from a TForce board (NOT the M9) or send me the new Biostar one, I would really like to look at it.
 
Sorry guys :( , somehow the file I posted was corrupted when I uploaded it. I deleted the post.

The file that Neutraleyes posted above is good. I md5sum'd it (using Fastsum 1.3) with the file I have on my hard drive. They match. Here's the md5sum if you want to make sure.

415003B2A0B05D4EC4B47A0BD01F9F7C *CU51MA12.BIN
 
anyone tried an opteron in these boards yet?

I guess u would need 300 FSB to get close to the dfi ATX boards
 
I am sorry...

Data on an OC testing system? Shame...(grin) especially if you don't have a backup....

Now - get back to work and overclock those boards... I have had my Q-Pack sitting in the garage for the past 2 months... and I need a mobo...

C'mon... Overclock those bad boys... gotta X2 3800 waiting for it!!

(ps - Naw, i ain't cheep)
 
Neutraleyes said:

thanx man. that did it for me. i was using the windows thing to oc, which was ok, considering you could control vcore, vdimm, multi, htt, mem speed, mem divider, but bios is always better. running at 10x270 @ 1.62vcore (1.7 set in bios - undervolts a lot). my config

3500 venice with venus 12 hs/ 80x15mm fan (zalman coming)
512mbx2 pqi turbo tccd 1/1 2.5-3-3-7 1t 2.8v vdimm
2xmaxtor 250gb maxline 3 raid 0
6800 gt
pvr 150
benq 1640 dvdr/rw (same as plextor)
antec 550w tru control
x-qpack
 
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