Cool-n-Quiet Athlon 64 Motherboards

toonz · **Joined:** Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:12 pm **Posts:** 25

I’ve got the Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP (s754 version) with an Athlon 64 3200+ and Cool’n’quiet works perfectly if you wanted to add it to your recommended Cool’n’Quiet motherboards list.

There is a BIOS switch for it in the F1 BIOS (or at least the F1 BIOS on Gigabyte’s website is the one that says it added support for Cool’n’Quiet) and you just have to change the power management in Windows to Minimal Power Management. I’m not sure if that’s the same as every other board but that’s what I needed to do.

Gotta love having the cpu idle at 800MHz.

MikeC · **Posted:** Mon Nov 15, 2004 3:07 pm

Cool-n-Quiet Athlon 64 Motherboards updated, thanks again to Joachim -- jojo4u.

DeathAndPain · **Joined:** Tue Dec 14, 2004 1:20 am **Posts:** 1

Petr wrote:

Athlon 64's memory controller can without help handle only two DIMMs. The third one requires external memory buffer present on motherboards (memory buffer is on my KT600 mobo as well). Cool'n'Quiet is not supported if three DIMMs are used because while FID_Change command is issued, A64 can not control the mobo memory buffer. That results in crash or data corruption. This rule does not apply to s939 as there are two memory controllers present, therefore it can handle 4 DIMMs without any problem with Cool'n'Quiet.

Question: Do double-sided DIMMs count as two DIMMs in that respect?

Trip · **Posted:** Tue Dec 14, 2004 2:12 am

Edward Ng · **Posted:** Tue Dec 14, 2004 6:37 am

Erhm...still no DFI LAN Party UT nF3 250Gb for Socket754 list?

Eh; it'll come in time, no doubt...

trxman · **Posted:** Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:22 pm

GlassMan wrote:

Cool'nQuiet works on Chaintech VNF3-250 motherboard at last. A new BIOS dated 092104 enables C'nQ by default. I have confirmed this by AMD's Dashboard and Nvidia's System Utility. At no load the Cpu runs at 1Ghz at 1.1 volts. The multiplier changes from 11 to 5 and back.

Is C'n'Q still enabled if you overclock your FSB and/or CPU?

Jan Kivar · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:34 am

According to this post, Soltek SL-B9D-FGR (EQ3901-300P) also has a working C&Q support.

Cheers,

Jan

aaaxxxlll · **Joined:** Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:51 pm **Posts:** 1

In case you haven't noticed, Asus is trumpeting their support of Cool n Quiet all over their site. A number of the motherboards on this page clearly support CnQ, altho there's no easy comparison chart I could find to determine which ones. Just hafta click thru and check for it listed on the motherboard's page.

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm

ilh · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:25 am

I can confirm that CnQ works on the DFI nF4 Ultra-D. I can see my 90nm 3500+ go down to 5x200 and 1.1V in CnQ mode according to cpu-z.

It seems to idle about 4C above ambient with a 7000-Cu at 5V.

Devonavar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:04 am

ASUS K8V Deluxe SE works.

Tibors · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 11:47 am

MSI RS480M2-IL (a.k.a. MS-7093) supports Cool'n'Quiet. It has no undervolting options in the BIOS (and no overclocking options either). But because of the CnQ support this can be done with software.

This is a socket 939 micro-ATX board with integrated video.

I don't know how noobish my next remark is

I see a lot of post where people say you have to set the Windows "Power scheme" to "Minimal Power Management" for CnQ to work. With this board this setting has no effect on CnQ. In stead there is a sepparate tab in the "Power Options" dialog for turning CnQ on or off.

MikeC · **Posted:** Thu Apr 07, 2005 11:10 am

Another big Cool-n-Quiet Athlon 64 Motherboards update, thanks to Joachim -- jojo4u.

Pétur · **Posted:** Fri Apr 08, 2005 8:58 am

Am experiencing first hand that C 'n Q isn't working on my GA-KNXP-9 running W2K. The driver loads but keeps the CPU at low speed, so I could have bought a slow CPU

Also: dual power module fan and nF4 fan are loud as hell. Power module fan can be removed as the heatsink doesn't get warm at all and the fan of the cpu blows a bit on it. Replacing nF4 fan with nb47j is less evident, still not sure it's working OK (Gigabyte board lacks goor reliable sensor readings!)

Peter

m0002a · **Posted:** Fri Apr 08, 2005 9:18 am

Pétur wrote:

Am experiencing first hand that C 'n Q isn't working on my GA-KNXP-9 running W2K. The driver loads but keeps the CPU at low speed, so I could have bought a slow CPU :(

I haven't tried this yet, so I may be wrong, but I think you may have adjust the settings in Windows Power Managment to activate CnQ. This is the same place you adjust the other power saver settings.

Pétur · **Posted:** Sat Apr 09, 2005 9:58 am

m0002a wrote:

I haven't tried this yet, so I may be wrong, but I think you may have adjust the settings in Windows Power Managment to activate CnQ. This is the same place you adjust the other power saver settings.

Well, I have the power scheme set to 'Minimal Power Management' and on the 'Cool 'n Quiet' tab I selected 'Automatic Mode' (the other being full performance)

According to some doc I found on the net, this should be the way it's set, alas most talk about WinXP, not Win2K...

Peter

jojo4u · **Posted:** Sat Apr 09, 2005 10:20 am

A Gigabyte-board equipped system sucked repeatedly around 10-20% more power than any other manufacturer. This is true in all tests of the C't since quite a time. One exeption is the actual Nforce4 board.
What are feelings about adding this information into the recommended document? Would you feel that it is informative?
And btw, boards with nVidia chipsets generally make your PC use around 5% more power compared to VIA or SIS as well. This is backed up by the C't and http://www.goodwin.ee/sulo/Power2.htm.

goodwin.ee wrote:

One interesting thing that somewhat suprised me when testing K8 and P4 boards. P4 chipsets actually consume the least amount of power. VIA chipsets which have two chips besides the integrated northbridge come a very close second, but most surprisingly, Nvidia nForce 3 chipset, with its one sole chip beside the integrated northbridge, actually consumes a whole lot more than all the others. Especially on boards which use linear regulators to feed the northbridge.

PaleMelanesian · **Posted:** Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:17 am

Chaintech VNF3-250 s754 works with 2 DIMMs and a CG 2800+.

Chang · **Joined:** Mon Oct 11, 2004 12:26 pm **Posts:** 129

MSI RS480M2-IL is a 939 µATX board, not a 754 ATX board.

Sabrewulf165 · **Joined:** Fri Apr 23, 2004 8:46 pm **Posts:** 34

CnQ with 2 sticks works fine on MSI K8MM-V (MSI-7142)[/url]

shtef · **Joined:** Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:53 pm **Posts:** 13

There is an interesting issue with C'n'Q and 4 DIMMs on my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard (witl latest BIOS v.1013).
I have Athlon 64 3200+ CPU (Venice core) and 4 Kingmax 512MB PC3200 (CL2.5) memory modules (all identical).

- When I use 2 DIMMs, at 400MHz (MB default) C'n'Q works fine.
- When I use 4 DIMMs, at 333MHz (MB default) C'n'Q works fine.
- When I use 4 DIMMs, at 400MHz C'n'Q prevents system from working.

But since I have Venice core CPU I want to use that memory at full potential. According AMD four DIMMs should work at 400MHz with Venice core CPUs. So I manually set memory speed to meet default values at 400MHz. System boots, but when I logon computer restarts. This seems that can harm system pretty badly since after couple of restarts MB reported that BIOS was corrupted. Fortunately MB wasn't permanently damaged. I tried with relaxing memory timings, with same result. So I believed that memory module is damaged, but after testing with memtest, I found that memory is working fine at 400MHz and default timings. Now since memory works while processor is running at default speed I started to think that C'n'Q might causing this problem. I started system in safe mode and disabled all startup programs and changed power scheme to Home/Office Desk to prevent C'n'Q from working. Then started system in normal mode and started all startup programs manually. Since system didn't crash I was almost positive that C'n'Q is at fault. I used Crystal CPUID to manually reduce CPU multiplier and system crashed.
I'm not quite sure what could cause this, since C'n'Q does work with 4 DIMMs but only at 333MHz. Its shame really, since CPU temperature rised 4-5 degrees at idle, CPU fan is rotating bit faster and power consumption is little bit higher.

jojo4u · **Posted:** Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:19 am

shtef wrote:

There is an interesting issue with C'n'Q and 4 DIMMs on my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard (witl latest BIOS v.1013).
I have Athlon 64 3200+ CPU (Venice core) and 4 Kingmax 512MB PC3200 (CL2.5) memory modules (all identical).

Did you try to set the command rate on 2T? Although AMD claims it will work 4 DIMMS at 400Mhz is still a bit of gamble with the Athlon 64

shtef · **Joined:** Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:53 pm **Posts:** 13

jojo4u wrote:

Did you try to set the command rate on 2T? Although AMD claims it will work 4 DIMMS at 400Mhz is still a bit of gamble with the Athlon 64

Yes I have set command rate to 2T, its the default command rate for these modules. I tried once to use 1T command rate with only 2 modules but some programs crashed because of this (like PCMark05 and memtest).

Devonavar · **Posted:** Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:47 am

Well ... since C'n'Q undervolts the CPU and the memory controller for A64 chips is on the CPU, the lower voltage used by C'n'Q is probably not adequate to run the memory controller stable at 400 MHz when it has to manage four DIMMs. Because the stable voltage varies from chip to chip, the only solution I can think of is to gamble on a new CPU and hope that it does better.

Or, you could just disable C'n'Q... :lol:

shtef · **Joined:** Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:53 pm **Posts:** 13

I'm not sure if that is so. I underclocked the CPU with Crystal CPUID by changing multiplier only (from 10x to 5x) - I didn't touch voltages, and system crashed as did when C'n'Q was enabled.
Seems that disabling C'n'Q is only solution for now.
I'll contact Asus support to ask them what is causing this -maybe its known issue, or maybe its BIOS issue that will be solved sometime.... hopefully

Thanks for the comment though :wink:

Devonavar · **Posted:** Sat Sep 10, 2005 12:21 pm

Hmm ... maybe it's a timing issue then.

shtef · **Joined:** Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:53 pm **Posts:** 13

Devonavar wrote:

Hmm ... maybe it's a timing issue then.

I've tried to relax timings (my first thought was to try that). I changed them from default for 400MHz 2.5 - 3 - 3 - 7 to 3 - 4 - 4 - 7, but system crashes immediately as C'n'Q underclocks/undervolts the CPU.

Devonavar · **Posted:** Sat Sep 10, 2005 2:20 pm

That doesn't prove it's not a timing issue ... just that it's not a minor timing issue.

prodigy · **Joined:** Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:26 am **Posts:** 1

Hello

This is my first post and i'm glad to be here, I just wanted to add a correction to the C'n'Q Motherboards list. I have an Epox 9NDA3I and it's actually a socket 939 board, not 754. Cool-n-Quiet works flawlessly on it using WinXP Pro and WinXP x64. My CPU is an AMD64 3500+ (Venice Core).

Later...

Christopher · **Posted:** Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:58 am

Hi, CnQ works with ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 down to 1.3V in official bios and down to 1.1V in unsupported ones. Works well in both windows XP and Linux for me. The motherboard doesn't support fan throttling, only monitoring of fans.

steve0 · **Posted:** Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:40 pm

Thanks for the infos!

Cool-n-Quiet Athlon 64 Motherboards

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