Look, there's one massive downside to that board—even if it really is top-tier hardware.
I gave those engineers a serious piece of my mind—told them they need to implement a three-step voltage adjustment setting, capped at a 10% increase at most. But as it stands? You can't even drop it below the CPU default. Ridiculous.
It’s a disaster... everything else is actually pretty solid—except for those damn R U P A s. It’s honestly a crime not to have holes in a board like that... You can always mess with the voltage—that's an easy fix—but trying to drill holes through it later? That's where the real headache starts.
I’m just sitting here wondering... how is it even possible? I've got one rig that's twice as powerful on paper, yet Far Cry stutters like crazy... while this other machine—running on half-broken, mismatched memory that barely stays stable—
is absolutely flying... cranking it at VERY HIGH settings with 4x anisotropic filtering!!! Pro 1024x768 resolution too.
I honestly can't wrap my head around it—is AGP really four times more effective than the 6800? It's actually showing some teeth. It makes you wonder... what was even the point of all the "new" stuff?
Here’s a bit of an insane test, but I’ve run it a few times now... and the results are always pretty much the same. The only real downside is that Seagate 80GB SATA drive... total junk. It's slower than an old 5400 RPM Maxtor, let alone those old ATA 133 80GB Max drives.
Temperatures are identical—for anyone sweating over a couple of degrees... plus there's a 20% difference in transfer speeds.😎
PC Mark 2002... CPU hit 7067... not bad, right? Mem test... 6612 HDD 1057
Running on an Epox board with a mobile chip at 2.3GHz—11.5x200 (using 2x256 MB Corsair 2 x512 3200 C2 rev)
I honestly can't wrap my head around this CPU score...
It's even weirder that bumping it up to 2.4 GHz actually drops the score by a few hundred points!?... Someone please try to convince me otherwise... I wouldn't trust anyone else to explain it, but apparently... it's not all about the megaherc.
my temps at 300/700 are actually ten degrees higher than when I run 1.7V at 350/850 !!!
how? don't ask me... this thing has been weird since day one—but now it's crushing 3D Mark like it's nothing... and honestly, it's performing way better than it should for a 2.3GHz mobile chip !!!
So they aren't even that expensive anymore... just buy a different one if it's giving you such a hard time. You sure you're grabbing the right driver? There are a few different versions out there—they look pretty much identical, aren't they?
Or just try swapping it out with something else until you figure it out... if that's even the issue... though it probably is.
If you’re absolutely positive it isn't some kind of virus... try swapping out the drivers first.
What kind of modem and chipset are we talking about here?
Windows might have just slapped its generic driver on there—those things can be total disasters. I've seen them tank things like Conexant hardware without breaking a sweat.
You won't find anything until you figure out who the real troublemaker is...!!!
It’s easy enough—boot from a CD with those memory and CPU testing tools... run them through once using the basic default settings.
After a bit, you start poking around and checking everything one by one... seeing how close each component is to its "limit"... because right now, at default, something might just be running right on the edge.
I'm not pushing it past 1.8 V... It runs fine at 1.75V with the same clock speed, but that’s basically its "ceiling" for normal OC. If I crank it any higher... what's the point? It just runs hotter for maybe a 1% gain... totally pointless... Right now, temps are 32 for the motherboard and 40 for the CPU at idle, then about 50 under load (on the diode, obviously!). This is a Bart 2500+... the cheapest one... and honestly, for the price, it's a better deal than a standard desktop Bart 2500+... quite a solid buy.
Still... this Epox RDA3+ board isn't even worth mentioning for overclocking (the FSB is a disaster!!!) compared to something like DFI or Soltek RL. It barely hits 235 MHz, and there's the memory limit too—currently sitting at CL2, 5-3-3-7... it can do CL2, but it's not 100% stable at 2.77 V, and at 2.93 it doesn't even work right!?... which surprises me a bit.
I should have grabbed some A-DATA, but they weren't available... though this setup is fine as it is.
Bandwidth at 225 FSB is around 3450/1350 and everything works fine.
Did you see those monsters with the A64 xxxx+ and 6800 Ultra... they only show about 30% better performance in Mark... and the damn thing costs at least twice as much.
I still stand by my point: the NF2 has peaked and reached perfection; it's got no issues left and it's a better investment than that "shaky" A64... people are going to come for me, but the fact remains: my colleagues working with A64 on the same software are dealing with plenty of... crashes!!!! ...it's using the 754 chipset, and in my opinion, it's not meant for serious users.
Only the 939 is actually interesting, but even that feels too new... makes you wonder about the actual value. Intel🙂 has nothing to offer once you take the price into account...
You’ve still got two USB drives left if you want to trade them for the Gera and Krhko ones.😉
Deal!?
We can settle this fast—unlike those politicians who just stall for time and blow through our tax dollars for nothing... we've practically paid everything back already.😁
Look, just get it through your head—you need to give back Gera, Zaljev, and Krhko.😁 USB 2.0 has more bandwidth than you'll ever actually need—honestly, it's plenty. If you're having trouble with an HDD plugged into a USB 2.0 port, the issue is likely sitting in your BIOS—and there’s usually a specific setting in there to enable support for external USB drives. Other ideas—if everything was just freshly installed with SP1 and SP2—I’m out of thoughts.