Foxconn Blood Rage - If Looks Could Kill (UPDATE)
by Rajinder Gill on January 2, 2009 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Maxing out
The final challenge was to strap a cascade to the CPU and see how far we could push things with the additional overhead sub-zero temps can provide. Those of you into this sort of thing will be happy to know that we found no cold bug bootup limits on the board itself. Nehalem processors are known to average bootup limits in the region of 50-80C. Our retail i920 processors (purchased from Scan UK and Tank Guys) will boot on this board as cold as our smaller cascade will go, which is -95C (sounds lucky at this point does'nt it?).
There is one huge caveat, though: although our i920 CPU boots all the way down to the limits of the cascade, overclocking it at sub-zero temps is another matter altogether. Anything over a reference BCLK of 166MHz on the 20X multiplier refuses to boot. We added a number of shims between the evaporator and CPU to increase the temperature delta to find where this situation begins to manifest. Our saved 195 BCLK x20 multiplier BIOS profile loads fine as long as the CPU is in the positive temperature region. Anything on the negative side and we're stuck at near board defaults for voltages.
The major obstacle for us was that we were limited to using "BIOS-boot only" overclocking. As we mentioned on page 2, the AEGIS panel and the last version of SetFSB did not work properly for us. Had AEGIS panel worked, we would have been able to tinker with voltages at the OS level perhaps providing us with enough room to manipulate the BCLK reference clock to favorable levels. BIOS voltages for the CPU and VTT/Uncore were raised and lowered in BIOS to see if we could get around any kind of current limiting at negative DTS readings; unfortunately, these attempts proved unsuccessful. What we ended up with as workable voltage put us in a worse position than when we were using water-cooling at ambient temps.
It seems we have an i920 processor with an odd cold bug, or perhaps we're seeing what could be some kind of power throttling due to a built-in CPU thermal condition breach. Nehalem monitors processor Vcore at all times and can make dynamic changes on-the-fly in an attempt to rectify temperatures that fall above or below predefined DTS thresholds. Still, this is another story altogether and not something we're blaming the board for just yet. Although we are beginning to see BIOS's on other boards that offer partial workarounds to some of these conditions. A hard modification will be required to the Blood Rage to overcome some fo the current throttling at the PWM end of things, and this is an avenue we will explore. Before doing that, we're going to try out a few more processors to double-check everything and report back in the full review.
After all that effort, it was back to water-cooling the processor, and we managed to get a clean boot at 200 BCLK on the 20-21X multiplier and run 3DMark06 along with several other benchmark programs and applications.
 |
 |
We did manage to get the board to boot at 203 BCLK, but it seems our processor is too VTT hungry (at least on this current BIOS) to scale past this at voltages we'd deem being past intelligent for ambient benchmarking. The i920 series is hampered in this regard by Uncore and QPI MHz limits, although we did try lowering the multiplier/memory speed to work around this without success. Future tests will be compared against a retail Extreme i7-965 CPU to get a broader picture of motherboard capabilities.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
strikeback03 - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
Being "brand centric" is being a fanboi if you don't even consider other competing brands. The motherboard gods did not reach down and bless abit, Asus, Gigabyte, etc, with good reliable motherboards; they are the result of good decisions in design and support from the companies. These companies do produce the occasional problem product, and there is nothing stopping them from deciding to cut costs and ride their reputation for a while while producing substandard merchandise (see: Sony). At the same time ECS, Foxconn, etc could decide to dedicate the resources to produce good boards and support themselves, and in time they would have a good reputation. Every product needs to be judged on its own merits, not just the company reputation.As far as this board goes, the layout should make it obvious that this is not really a general-purpose board, but a benchmarkers delight. So as Raja mentioned, pressing the reset button isn't a huge deal if the board isn't in a case. The data is there to draw conclusions from based on each reader's needs.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
Being brand centric might mean you're a 'fanboi' if you're you. I however have larger issues to consider, such as customers to please, and support.The 'motherboard gods' do bless companies who put a bit of effort into their product, although you could also think of that as the company being thorough. Every company does have problem products I will agree with that, but time after time again, and it is time to call a lemon, a lemon. As for judging a product by its own merits, I could not agree more, that said there are companies whom have already been named who do put out quality products time , and time again. All you have to do is ask any professional, and I bet if you did not know already it would not be hard to figure out. *hint* Asus does not enter the picture.
Also, I could care less if this is an "benchmarking board", for $300 usd it had better work right, and maybe even serve me coffee in the morning. People such as myself are tired of paying a premium for "quality" parts, only to become a paying beta tester. Now, if Foxconn had a reputation for giving good support, this whole conversation would be moot. As it stands, I can go to the competition and get a rock solid board with excellent support if needed for half the price.
Maybe it is time someone started doing reviews on the average every day system board/parts most people would use instead of wasting every ones time reviewing a niche product that obviously is not going to sell well. To add insult to injury, we see these same kind of reviews _all_the_frigging_time_ here, it would be nice to have a change.
Rajinder Gill - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
Thanks StrikeBack..Updated first page btw with a para at the top - Foxconn appear to have fixed the issue. I'll be checking this out for myself. They had to change 3 SMT resistors on their boards to rectify it. It only affects some of the high power supplies over 1000W, which many of the people who buy boards like these seem to have - although not all of the PSU's appear to have the issue.
Sorry for the inconvienience caused btw..
later
Raja
7Enigma - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
Thank you as well from me for the update. I was hard on this article earlier in the comments (and still stand by them), but thank you for the update. I can see now why you were not as gung-ho to bash on the mobo (as not everyone was having problems with it), but I still feel the criticism towards the product was warranted.It is a shame that RMA is required and not just a bios fix. I'm hoping they at least pay shipping both ways....
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
That's Ok. You live and learn. It was a mixture of getting something up fast and not having enough feedback that prompted the format. The Bloodrage is quite a niche product so it can take a while to get sufficient feedback from users in the wild before you can really say soemthing is seriously wrong. Even though our PSU's threw curve balls, similar units from users and in labs have not - go figure, (where do you go from there?) Anyway, I'm glad they're on it and have nailed it. My sample board here is a rev. 1.0 btw, I'm not sure if the updated boards have a different rev number yet - I'll ask.WIth the PSU swap it's a completely different board. I'm running through the regular daily testing atm rebooting, overclocking etc and not one problem since making the PSU change.
Again, sorry for the rigmorale folks. Foxconn have been great over the past few days answering everything within minutes mostly. Thank Sascha @ Foxconn support!
regards
Raja
Gasaraki88 - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
Thanks for the update. =)Rajinder Gill - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
If any one reading this has an afflicted board/PSU combo;http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p...
later
Raja
yyrkoon - Sunday, January 4, 2009 - link
It is a shame companies like this still litter the market with junk motherboards, and companies such as ABIT who at least once in a while make a few decent boards go out of the business. To be perfectly honest though, I have been using ABIT since the early to mid 90's, and their boards have ALWAYS served me well.I guess I will be moving to Gigabyte, it sure will not be foxconn.
hooflung - Sunday, January 4, 2009 - link
While I won't lay the blame completely at Anandtech's feet I feel these articles are just reader fodder in the sense that any news is good news. Review after review from this site and others the consensus is X-58 motherboards suck. Despite the quality of the components. Despite the quality of the build. Despite the quality of the spec's and engineering of Intel's chipset and cpu... these boards are just plain quirky.If AMD did this we'd have a complete AMD motherboard review that criticized the company left, right and center and point out how good Intel is. Seriously guys... I'd rather read about how good P45 chips are doing and a review of companies who gave the best amount of bios and mobo support throughout the product cycle than late breaking news on how much potential a motherboard could have with a few tweaks.
Also, Foxconn is crap for supporting their motherboards. I have their 780G mini-atx and the NIC died on me after a Vista Realtek 8111B driver update to the point NO OS would install an official realtec, official foxconn or opensource driver even though the chip is seen by all OSs. Foxconn responded for a week to me via email with broken English requests to try xyz that I already did, and explained to them, and then asked ME to contact Microsoft and Realtek to inquire into what might have happened to the Realtek August 2008 Vista 64 driver updates. I mean... ok. Yeah... one guy with a warrantied board asking these companies... or a multi-million dollar partner. Which one is more likely to get a response?
Screw Foxconn... screw all these bloody half-baked Intel X58 mobo reviews and get down to what many people crave. Real company insight in an unbiased fashion. Get back to the basics and quite this techfodder.
InSearchOf - Saturday, January 3, 2009 - link
i have decided on buying a motherboard based on the P45 chipset since for me it offers the best bang for your buck. the dilemma im having is which manufacturer should i put my money in?ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, DFI etc....
ive also read alot and one should never buy the first versions of mobo and wait for 2nd version after the kinks have been worked out but how long before manuf. put a revised mobo on the market after first release? 3, 6 or 9 months???
what about BIOS updates? how often do these companies update them and how do they treat RMAs and warranties?
can any of you enlighten me with your past experiences and knowledge!
thanks