Overclocked s3 sleep error solution

As i wrote in the ga-ep35-ds3r review, it has problems waking from s3 sleep when overclocked. As i was trying all kinds of options, i hit the solution :

• On the main bios screen press ctrl-f1 to enable advanced options
• Select the advanced bios features screen
• Set the "No execute memory protect" to Disable (xd bit)

That's it no more bluescreens when waking from sleep when the fsb is over 300 ! As it is a motherboard/bios related the s3 solution works for both vista/xp. Strangely enough osx does not want to start with the XD bit set to disable, the apple boot screen comes up and then the board restarts. Running leopard on an overclocked ep35 is not a problem, but sleep mode will not function.

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R Review

Two days ago a new gigabyte motherboard a ga-ep35-ds3r, short : ep35, arrived. This as a replacement to my ageing, but still very fast, asrock conroexfire-esata2. Together with the ep35 i also got 2x2gb team elite ddr2-800 ram for the new motherboard. Why a new board when the old one is still wokring good ? Well i plan to buy a E8400 when they are available. That new 45nm cpu does not work on the old asrock, and i also had problems getting 4gb to work on the asrock. Furthermore the ep35 allows quite a bit of overclocking, so i can finnaly run my E6600 a bit faster. The asrock board is not suitable for overclocking.

Box contents :

Beside getting the board, you will also find a quite large selection of extra's in the box of the ep35. You get 4 sata cables, 1 floppy cable, 1 ide
cable, manual, quickinstall guide, driver disk, a Sata backplate with cables. Quite a lot for a mid price board.

layout :

The layout has some problems as seem to be the standard nowadays. The IDE connector is at the extreme bottom of the board instead of next to the large power connector. This gives some problems with routing the big ide cable through the case. It is really better to swap it with the place of the floppy connector in the middle of the board.

Also the 12volt power connector is at the top left of the board, not a problem if you have a normal atx case where the powersupply is above the board, however if you have a coolermaster CM690 with the powersuppy on the bottom of the case you can run into some wiring problems. The thrid and final layout problem is the place of the connector of the audio front panel, this is at the left of the board instead of on the bottom, now i have a cable running over the hot 8800 gt.

Installation Vista / Leopard osx86 :

Installing was very easy, gigabyte includes a large quick install manual that is very understandable. So if you never assembled a pc before it is not that difficult to do. Vista + sp1 installed without any problems, and the drivers from the driver disk, or better the gigabyte website also.

As i already had a leopard install on my old board, i tried to start leopard with my new board and the old install on the harddisk. To my great suprise this worked ! Leopard start without any hickups, the only thing i had to do was install a .kext for the new onboard sound. This is really amazing as leopard is certainly not made to survice a new motherboard.



Bios :

The bios is very complete also due to the 2 sata controllers that are on the board. The intel ich9r chip takes care of 6 SATA connections with a possibilty of ide, ahci or mode modes. Adding to that is a gigabyte controller with a further 2 sata port and an ide port. This controller also allows ide, ahci and raid modes.

The overclocking section is very complete with easy to understand help and clear selection of parameters. You can have the board do it for you, or you can select each and every parameter yourself. The board allows you to store different overclocking profiles within the bios, so you do not have to remember all the settings instead you can save them under names like "overclocked", "normal", or any other selfmade name.

Flashing the bios has it's own selection on the ep35, so you do not have to boot from a dos floppy. Just insert a usb stick with the new bios and flash
it from the bios flash utility. Furthermore there is an option to have the ep35 make a shadowcopy of your os install. I did not check this as i normally make a backup of vista with the system backup utility in vista itself.

Special options :

On this board there is a power saving option that comes with a program for windows, i tested it and it functions quite well. It will save about 10-20 watts on the out-of-the-wall power needs. However the utility has a horrible large interface and cannot be used when you overclock. It's use is also quite limited.

Problems :

Well there is only one real problem with this board : As soon as you overclock over a FSB of 300, the sleep (s3) function will fail. The board will enter s3 mode without problem, but once you wake the board it will reboot every 5 seconds. The only way to get out of this loop is to cut the power and wait 10 seconds before switching it on again. You will only have this problem with overclocking or when you have one of the new E8xxx cpu's. Gigabyte is informed about this problem and i hope it will be solved in one of the comming bios updates.

The workaround is to have vista go into hibernate mode instead of sleep.

Overclocking :

My current e6600 runs normally at 266x9 mhz, i upped it to 333 x 9 for a cpu speed of 3ghz. The memory multiplier is set at 2,4 so you get a clean 800. This is rock stable, apart from the sleep problem. Xbech on leopard get's a nice a fast 189 score !

OSX leopard fresh install, kalyway :

Leopard works great on this box, the only thing to do is to patch the sound with the 889a kext. The rest works out of the box ! Super !

Conclusion :

All in all this is a good board in it's price class. It has tons of features and is very overclockable. If you don't care that you have to hibernate (xp/vista) or just shutdown (leopard) when overclocked, this board is a 9 out of 10. Hopefully the only issue will be solved with a new bios in the comming weeks.

New iMac next tuesday ?

Just under two weeks ago, the apple laptops all got an update and even a little price drop for the entry level models here in the EU. Comming tuesday it's quite possible that the current iMac will get an update very much like the macbooks. So what is going to change ?

• CPU upgrade to the new intel mobile cpu's
• Ram will go from 1gb 667 to 2gb 800mhz
• Entry level harddisk to 320 rest bump to 400 top still 500
• Ati graphics mobilty 3400 and 3600

And hopefully more quality control with the tft screens. No more hairs/chineses food left overs/cracks/dust behind the screen please.

The above list is just my guess, the first 2 are almost certain to be true. With ever decreasing prices for harddisks, the 3rd guess beter be true also. A 750gb sata drive is now below 100 euro's and that's with retail channel markup and sales tax of 19%, so you can imagine that apple will have to pay less than 65 for such a drive.

The ati graphics update is wishfull thinking from my side, as we all know apple could not care less about graphics cards in their imacs...

Maxell 8gb Usb stick

Just got myself an 8gb Maxell usb stick today, it was on discount for just 25 euro's. It's relativly fast with an 11mb per second write speed and about 17mb per second read speed. It works great under windows/linux/osx. On 8gb you can fit almost 2 dvd's or one hd movie, what else can you say about such an item ? It works, it's fast and it's cheap !

The Acer 5220

The Acer 5220 is an entry level laptop for a very reasonable price. Depening on where you live, you can find it for 379-429 euro's. For our readers from the USA, that price is including the 19% sales tax that we have here..

The specifications of the laptop are quite good for the price, it is based on the 965 chipset with the x3100 graphics. That allows you to run vista with areo at full speed. Small 3d games also have no problem. The rest of the specs :

• Celeron M530 cpu, 512mb 667 sodimm
• 80GB harddisk, Dvd writer, 15.4 inch widescreen 1200x800 matt screen
• 4 usb ports, lan, wifi, cardreader, pcmcia, vga, svideo, modem, sound, bluetooth

As the memory is a bit smal, i upped this to 1,5gb by adding a 1gb Sodimm.

The build quality of this laptop is very very good, and no different from the rest of the acer lineup. Is there a catch to this price ? Well yes, there is no OS provided ! Of course that only makes it better as now we can choose our own OS.

On the 5220 you can run xp, vista, linux, and most interesting it is very compatible with Leopard ! What ? and acer with apple's os ? Yes that is no problem at all as you will read in the following posts on this subject.