Takaharu

Yup, I’ve finally got it, the Extreme9. The speed is AMAZING!
I had to get a replacement motherboard because the X79 UD5 truly was that bad. If you want to use a motherboard with all of the default settings then it was ok (just ok). Windows would boot, everything runs at stock and that’s about all you’re getting. “That doesn’t sound so bad” I hear you cry. After all, I’m not mad about overclocking. Be that as it may, I did state all of the default settings. By default, this includes Intel Virtualisation. As I run virtual machines having that setting turned off does not do me any favours. I turn that setting on and Windows loads to a black screen with a mouse cursor. So, I whack in the Windows 7 disc, run a startup repair, reboot and all is fine. “So you fixed it. So what’s the problem?” The problem was that I didn’t have to run startup repair once. I didn’t have to run it on every boot. It just seemed to be each time that I turned it on in the mornings.
Overclocking with the UD5, forget it. Yes it overclocks, yes it’s stable – solid as a rock in fact – it still has the issue with booting Windows but then the next day the BIOS gives up; the PC would turn on for a few seconds, reboot then repeat. Long story short, this happened a few times. Having dual BIOS turned out to be completely pointless for this; booting using the second BIOS was exactly the same as resetting it then booting.
Using the default BIOS settings seems to be the most reliable approach but when you pay over £200 for a motherboard you pretty much want it to work, flawlessly.
There must have been something else wrong with the motherboard though because my system is so much more responsive. Motherboards may make a difference but dang, this is like upgrading the processor and RAM.

Anyway, what I ended up doing was purchasing the Extreme9 after filing for an RMA with the UD5. Took me about four hours to get the system up and running, though I can’t quite figure out how it took that long. All seemed to be fine, except that the PC refused to display anything. After making sure that the graphics cards were correct I took out two sticks of RAM so that it ran in quad-channel and all seemed to work fine. Damn, did it work fine?! Everything was plug and go with the Extreme9; plug everything in, one quick trip to the UEFI screen to make sure virtualisation was set (it was), two clicks to set the overclocking profile to 4GHz and away we go. No reconfiguring boot devices, nothing.
I must also point out how impressed I was at the overclocking profile list – it shows you what the processor is capable of (5.2GHz in this case) and showed the high end clock speeds in red. As I have 1600MHz memory I assume the red ones are disabled, I didn’t bother trying them. At first I tried out 4.6GHz (I thought, “why not”) but the system didn’t boot. A quick reset and a selection of 4GHz and I was off to install Windows. That has to be the least amount of configurations I’ve done for a BIOS and I’ve worked with Dells.

I’m a little disappointed in the Game Blaster because it won’t recognise 5.1 output with a microphone; the microphone has to be plugged in the front for the 5.1 to work with it, otherwise it would need to be stereo or digital for one of the ports to be changed into a mic port.
I had one slight hiccup after I installed the Extreme9, though that was my fault: I had installed the last 2 sticks of RAM in the motherboard, despite having setup the system initially with 4 sticks and overclocked the system to 4GHz. Windows booted the first time but I wasn’t so lucky the second time. A quick reset, followed by re-applying the overclocking settings and it was as good as gold. No repairing Windows either (yes, that’s a dig at you, Gigabyte!). Fingers’ crossed it maintains this stability. Did I mention the speed?

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WxMan1

O.k.

Fine.

I'm happy for you.

O.k.

Fine.

[objections trail away]

blibbax

Are you running the 6 sticks in triple-channel, then?

It amazes me that new motherboards can have so many little quirks and flaws - it sounds like even the Extreme9 has a few. Why aren't these products thoroughly tested? Your configuration (3930k+6 sticks of RAM) is hardly unusual.

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Takaharu

Nah, blibbax, I think you mis-interpreted, though I didn't really explain it clearly enough. What I had originally done with the E9 (which didn't work at all) was put the RAM in quad + dual channel. It makes sense that it didn't work because the motherboard runs in single, dual, triple or quad channel mode, not a mixture. I changed the memory to quad-channel and that worked fine. When I changed the memory from quad-channel to two lots of triple channel (which is what I'm running with now) the motherboard wouldn't boot because the overclocking settings were still set for quad-channel. A quick reset of the OC settings and all worked fine.

I'm considering going back to my D2X because I'm really not getting on well with the Game Blaster - I'm not keen on the fact that I have to plug the mic into the front port (which would be extremely difficult with any other case) but more due to the fact that I get a horrible feedback when using my headphones. There's an electrical buzz every time I move the mouse cursor too. The coax works fine with my speakers but I want to be able to use my headphones without compromising.
It's a shame because I liked the idea of being able to sell on my soundcard to gain some money back.

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blibbax

That's shocking from the sound card.

Triple channel sounds like the best solution in your case - it's not like you need the extra bandwidth. You could always pick up a couple of extra sticks to finish it off :P

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Judas

may want to make a correction to your specs list there.. seeing as it's saying 3630K

i haven't messed with anything really much... mostly ensureing everything is rock solid.. which it is.. i think even my OCZ vertex 3 has settled down now that it's running on a newer more powerful sata controller....

Curious though, what temp/settings using to hit 4ghz.. i haven't moved from my default 3.2ghz yet. although i frequently go into the cpu-z and find it reporting 3.8ghz.

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Tipstaff

Are you certain it's the sound card, or is it just an assumption because that's where you hear the noise?

The reason I ask is because that buzz may not necessarily be a sound card specific problem. Just remember that everything is connected to the motherboard in some fashion. While the card could be an issue there are other factors that can cause this problem. The poll rate rate could be set too high for your USB ports (most gaming mice's software jack the rate to 1ms, which might be too much in this case), there might be an isolation issue between one of the components in your case, it could even the case itself, specifically the front panel connector for the mic port or the front panel USB ports to the motherboard, it could be a motherboard issue, or even power supply related. Even drivers can cause this too (video, network, sound card, and USB).

One thing of interest is that most people see that the sound card is PCIe 1x, and put it into the 1x slot. Instead, try putting into the very last PCIe 16x slot, as far away from the top most components. Try that first, as well as the rear ports. Then maybe move on to trying out the old card. If you hear that buzz with that card then you might have a bigger issue at hand.

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Judas

yeah i've had numerous machines with the mouse movement seemingly effecting the headphones resulting in a buzz/whine/almost digital like sound of sorts. Many of them are the result of poor grounding of the case at the audio port part of the case. Other times it's just weird mouse related polling like tipstaff mentioned, and sometimes it's just a bad headset or chip with no decernable way of resolving it. There are rare cases where a driver update or sample/format change has fixed it.

I get it occasionally even on my silverstone where as the same board in a Coolermaster 690 II rev 3 case didn't produce the same issues with identical hardware. However the 690 II rev 2 case did.... so this make me think that the audio ports used are the case... outputing directly out of the back of the motherboard has always been fine however usually.

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Tyrsonswood

This may be the quality of the cable used inside the case to connect to the front jacks, (or the routing of the cable if they weren't routed the same, Judas) Cable routing and quality of the cable play a role here and you guys with a digital/computer background may not think along those lines. (that's not a dig, it's just you don't come from an analog viewpoint) If moving the internal cable around changes the amount of interference at all then this is the issue. No driver, hardware swap, USB polling changes, etc. can fix a cheap poorly routed cable. Now, Tipstaff's example of moving a soundcard could actually have inadvertently re-routed the cable and it wasn't actually the different slot that did it.... I don't know, I wasn't there, but it's possible.

I've only run into this a few times and every time moving the cable fixed it.... One time I actually changed out the cable just because I had a better one laying around.

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Takaharu

In regards to the soundcard, I'll find out when I try the D2X. Even if I don't keep it and I can fix the issue it'll be something to test. I'm not sure about putting it in the last PCI-E port because I remember reading about the slots running in 16x/0x/16x/0x. I'll try it but I'm just saying. I also find it rather odd that they specify four speeds for five PCI-E slots (excluding the x8 slot).
I think it might also have something to do with the "external" power that's required for SLI - the molex connector above the top PCI-E slot. I might bother trying that theory out but if the issue is resolved by unplugging it it won't really help as it's apparently required for SLI.

As for overclocking, Judas, I changed the setting in the UEFI to overclock for me for 4GHz. On idle I'm keeping under 35°C with the fan speeds at minimum.
I did a bit of research when I used the UD5 and apparently to get to 4GHz you just need to change the vcore to 1.270v, the multiplier to 40 and if you're RAM speed shows low then change the XMP to profile 1. Also, ensure that the memory tuning is set to normal if currently set to turbo.
For 4.7GHz, according to a review, you change the vCore to 1.4v, the multiplier to 38, the base clock to 123.75MHz, the CPU strap to 125MHz and the RAM to 1.98GHz at 1.65v. I believe that was using 2GHz RAM, however.
I can't vouch for the 4.7GHz overclock but I can tell you that those settings worked fine for 4GHz on the UD5. I'm no overclocker so someone may suggest alternatives to achieve those speeds.
I'd also like to add that unless you want a shock when reading your electrical bill, keep SpeedStep turned on. I haven't come across anyone that has found a dis-benefit from having SpeedStep turned on but the wattage is a heck of a lot higher when running at full power.

I'll let you guys know how it goes with the soundcard.

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blibbax

Can't you get the 4.7GHZ just by setting the multiplier to 47, the vcore to 1.4 (or less) and leaving everything else as it is?

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Takaharu

blibbax - dunno, don't really care as the motherboard does all of its settings for me

I finally tried out the soundcard reconfigurations. The D2X in the x8 slot works fine. No noise at all when no sound is produced, as it should be. I got reminded of the awesome sound quality
The Game Blaster in the bottom x16 slot has power but is not recognised by Windows so I'm guessing that the motherboard is running that slot on x0 as I suspected.

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blibbax

"5 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (PCIE1/PCIE2/PCIE4/PCIE5: x8/8/8/8 mode or x16/0/16/0 mode; PCIE6: x8 mode)"

So that's actually (x8/x8/x1/x8/x8/x8) or (x16/x0/x1/x16/x0/x8).

In your case (bold indicates used slot): x16/x0/x1/x16/x0/x8 or x16/x0/x1/x16/x0/x8

Kinda sensible - encourages you to leave space between 1st and 2nd card if you go for tri-SLI :P
You could also fit tri-sli and a soundcard in - x16/x0/x1/x16/x0/x8

Kinda sucks for people going for tri-sli in standard ATX cases though. Not that I imagine that that's many people.

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