VB8001 - hardware and BIOS

This blog item is not about performance, it's only about hardware and BIOS. You can find some performance numbers here.


VIA VB8001-16 is a mini-itx motherboard (17x17cm). It is powered by VIA Nano L2200 1.6GHz 64-bit CPU. It also has two DDR2 667 memory slots (up to 4GB), PCI-Ex16 slot for additional video card, 2xSATA ports, 1xIDE port and one mini-pci slot at back side. Northbridge is CN896 (integrated VIA Chrome9 HC graphics), southbridge - VT8237S. There are COM, VGA, 2xUSB, PS/2 keyboard & mouse, RJ-45 Gbit and audio ports. It sure looks quite empty :). I don't know why they didn't included two more USB ports. But it is embedded board so it's understandable. As you can find in the forum above you should be aware of mini-usb headers on the motherboard. Standard header to attach front panel USB won't fit without adapter. You can have additional six USB ports with them (three headers). One of the headers (12-pin) can be used for VIA wlan usb module. There are more headers on the motherboard but I won't go to the details about them. You can find description on the user manual if you need to. Motherboard still uses electrolytic capacitors instead of solid ones which became popular in many current motherboards. CPU and northbridge are covered by one "big" heatsink and they are actively cooled. Once again PicoPsu hits one of the capacitors but it is better situation than in VT310-DP. It fits almost by 100%. Fan is quite loud imho... This is there I hate VIA the most :). They've never done such things right (ok, it is my opinion too as I had only two mini-itx motherboards from them).



Enough about hardware which is as it is. I want to talk a little bit about disappointing points of BIOS. It is quite a standard AwardBIOS. However, it has some specific problems. Firstly, it sees only 3GB at boot (if you have 4GB. OSes see all RAM). Then you enter BIOS you find some more unpleasant surprises:

1. VIA CPUs have a feature called PowerSaver (or longhaul earlier) which has somehow similar purpose to Cool'n'Quiet and SpeedStep technologies accordingly in AMD and Intel CPUs. Theoretically you can choose between Thermal Monitor 1 (on-die throtting) and Thermal Monitor 2 (Ratio&VID transition) in BIOS (Advanced BIOS features->CPU Feature). You can find even a description of both options in BIOS. However, in reality you can't choose Thermal Monitor 2 for some reason (there is now such option to select). So once again I can't use PowerSaver at all (like it was in VT310-DP). CPU always works on full frequency.

2. There is no CPU temperature in PC Health Status. I need to use programs which aren't always accurate.

3. Boot from CD-ROM doesn't work with SATA CD/DVD-ROM. It wouldn't be an issue as it appears as separate device and you can choose it in boot priority, however there is a problem here. You can choose it in device priority only if boot(?) CD/DVD inserted (it didn't appeared with just simple data dvd inserted). Otherwise dvd-rom just disappears from devices. So, if you want to install a new OS from CD you always need to insert disk, go to BIOS and set a priority to newly appeared device.

4. SATA devices is not viewable in Standard CMOS features. It was so with old motherboards. So no progress here with VIA.

5. Overclocking options doesn't exist (only some RAM tweaking). However, it is not a big deal with such system.

Other problems aren't confirmed. I don't know if SMART working properly. There is no options to enable/disable it for hdds and applications doesn't detect any SMART values for my current hdd (but it might be other problems (for example, with hdd itself as I bought it used recently)).
I have read about issues with virtualization. BIOS doesn't have a feature to enable/disable it. Once again it might be a problem with software which doesn't know about such CPUs and its capabilities. And there is no clear option to disable integrated video if it is possible at all. I didn't try to disable shared memory as I was afraid that it might lead to the same situation as in VT310-DP (BIOS hangs and you need to clear it to boot).

So it is the start. I may update this blog with new problems in the future if I'll find/remember them.

VIA VB8003 - to buy or not to buy?

Not so long ago VIA announced VB8003 motherboard for multimedia. One of the main its features is a separate S3 435 ULP graphics processor with 256 MB GDDR3 memory. Combined with VX800 media system processor (which has its on integrated graphics) the motherboard has two HDMI ports and DVI, VGA as well. However, it is interesting how two graphics will perform in one time (as one hdmi comes from integrated graphics and the other one from 435 ULP as well as one vga from integrated and dvi from 435 ULP)... Is it possible to attach four monitors at once (2xHDMI, 1xDVI and 1xVGA) is unknown for me too. It appeared on some on-line shops for about ~225EUR without VAT. Despite interesting features, this price neglects it's attractiveness IMHO. What is more, a visible port which resembles pci-e x4 is some proprietary video capture port which is not compatible with pci-e. It is a biggest disappointment for me as I expected to used for some additional SATA ports or other pci-e boards. I don't know any board with such port even on VIA side (they said that it would be possible to add some video capture board or additional com ports which aren't interesting for me). The other disappointment is two fans on cpu and graphics processor. It will add more noise which is not very acceptable for htpc solution. I believe that it is possible to make it even fanless or at least to leave only one fan, however, VIA never tried to do such solutions (trying to save costs here?). Instead of standard audio jacks you have two rca jacks. However, you can get audio jacks in the front panel. One more good thing is dual Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 ports. There is one COM port. It is probably for embedded purposes as it is not used much in daily life. You also have LPC port for additional COM daughterboards and usb pin headers for WLAN (b/g) through USB module or expansion module for four additional USB ports and some mfc header for multifunction security module. There is Compact flash connector on the back instead of mini-pci like in vb8001 and vb7002 motherboards. You can see it as plus if you want to save some energy but most likely it won't be used. You need SO-DIMM DDR2 memory too.

I planned to buy it after first announcement however price, two fans, video capture port instead of pci-e and some other minuses holds me back for now. I see it as failure as VIA VT310-DP was (interesting thing but the price/performance just unacceptable) but I might be wrong. Probably there are more interesting solutions and you can replace 435 ULP with low-end NVIDIA and ATI discrete graphics which will have the same or even better and guaranteed performance (as it is quite difficult to find anything about 435 ULP performance). I haven't found any reviews of the board yet. So that's all about it from me.

Haiku R1/Alpha1

The first alpha version of Haiku (R1/Alpha 1) is released today. It took about 8 years to reach with point. Give it a try. I will try it this evening and see what happens and what it can do. Special thanks for all developers who made this possible. It is only alpha but still the project will not stop at this I hope.

PQI doesn't work once again...

I installed a new F8c beta BIOS version on Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 motherboard yesterday. It appeared that this bios had broken memory compatibility once again. My PQI DDR3-1066U memory is not supported by this version (they worked ok with F6c, F6, F7 BIOS versions). So I needed to downgrade to F7. If you have this motherboard, be careful with upgrading to F8c and be sure that your memory is supported.

Core i7 920 to Xeon E5540 ES

I have changed a processor on my main computer to Xeon E5540 ES (2.53 GHz). I have received it from USA for a quite low price (I sold my Core i7 920 for the same price). The main purpose to change it was some curiosity to have an engineering sample and a lower TDP (which is 80W instead of 130W on XEON). What is more Xeon is workstation/server CPU which suits me more. I has a little lower clock rate (2.53 instead of 2.66) but faster QPI than (5.86 GT/s instead of 4.8 GT/s). You can find two scans of it in my cpu collection.

From CPUs collection

VT-310DP (VT8237R) and SATA II hard drive support mystery

As I wrote earlier I was planning to use my VT-310DP board for NAS server. It has an old VT8237R southbridge and support only SATA I mode and it can't recognize hard drive in SATA II mode automatically. In theory almost every SATA II hard drive in the market has an option to set 1.5Gbit/s performance (SATA I). Some of them use pins (WD, Seagate, Maxtor), other ones needs software solution (Samsung, Hitachi). However, this motherboard can't recognize many of them even if this mode is set. I have bought three Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB hard drives (SD1B and CC1G firmware). These drives used pins to set it to SATA I mode, however, VT-310DP didn't see them. The same problem I had with one Samsung 750GB hard drive (I used software solution to slow it down). However, this board recognized all WD drives with pin in it I had (current WD15EADS 1.5TB drive and older WD7500AACS 750GB GP). It also recognized an old Samsung HD160JJ with pin too. However, it didn't see newer 160 GB Samsung which hadn't pin and needed a software solution to slow down it (all current Samsung hard drives doesn't have a pin anymore). I have never tried Hitachi hard drives which uses software tool like Samsung too. I didn't find any clue about why some hard drives worked and other not too. Firstly I thought that a reason is software slow down and motherboard would recognize only hard drives with pins, however, seagate had denied this. I though that it might need spread spectrum enabled (some forum stated this), but WD hard drives worked with spread spectrum disabled. One thing is certain: hard drive has to work in SATA I mode but it is not enough...

So, if you have a motherboard with VT8237R southbridge and have problems with current hard drives I can only recommend Western Digital hard drives. They were only ones those worked as soon as I attached them (with pin, of course).

Another alpha: XP1000

I still couldn't identify what happened with my Microway Screamer. I changed a CPU but problem remained the same. Memory testing with memtest on Socket 7 motherboard didn't show any errors too (however, it doesn't have ECC support).

I have never mentioned before but I had another Alpha system. It is XP1000 motherboard with 667 MHz 21264 Alpha CPU. I have it for more than a year. However, I didn't know how to boot it, so I have never used it until now. It has three connectors from power supply (one of them is a standard ATX or at least looks like it). I don't know about others, maybe, they have some standards too. But it would be difficult to find new power supply for it. CPU with RAM are located on daughterboard. Unfortunately, I don't have case for it. What is more, I accidently damaged it a little some time ago.

So I tried to boot it once again. Firstly I used the same method as in microway screamer (read about engineering fix). It reacted and PSU started to work. However, the system showed no signs of life. CPU heatsink was cold all the time, no video appeared. So I tried to find how to boot it using "front panel" pins. It wasn't an easy task because I even didn't know in which direction (horizontally or vertically) I should experiment. However, I finally found two pins which booted the system. This time motherboard booted differently. LEDs on the motherboard lighted up. However even after this system shut down automatically in less than 15 seconds. So I connected computer to another one by COM ports. I got only versions of palcode in hyper terminal. Despite this I suspected that it can be due to CPU fan which wasn't attached. I tried attach a standard fan and fan from microway screamer, they both didn't spin. It appeared that it has yet another wire sequence (screamer is not the same as PC too). After I changed wires and booted with CPU fan, system shut down almost immediately again. I tried to look at hyper terminal and this time got an error message that case fan was not working. At that time I was very happy because I was almost sure that after I would attach system fan, motherboard will boot successfully. And it did! Though, I didn't try to add a video card. I only played a little bit with srm console through hyper terminal.

Two biggest problems with this motherboard are its size and heating. Motherboard is much larger than standard ATX and CPU daugtherboard is quite big too. You can't use standard case without modifications. What is more, cpu heatsink became very hot in a very short time. I don’t know if it is ok or I need a bigger cooler. We will see.