ASUS RAMPAGE III EXTREME BIOS - V1601 - Updated OROM MOD

[pir8man]

I had the OCZ RevoDrive X3 and Intel RAID working on my R3E once upon a time. I do remember that finding the correct settings for boot-up was a challenge, but there is a working combo. I only used it for a bit as my raid volume was HDD based, so I moved to to the Marvell controller where it performed better.

... sorry, my weekend was too busy with car work to have time for OROM testing. hopefully this week(end).

[tomasso]

I have completed my overclock except for memory timings.  Although I do not want to hijack my own thread with OCing, I will post my findings for others to review...  Your mileage WILL VARY!

I have overclocked BloomField (C0 and D0 stepping) and now GulfTown (B1).  I have done extreme air and water cooling solutions.  My current setup is a full motherboard waterblock and cpu waterblock with custom radiator/res/pump setup. 

BloomField C0 are horrible overclockers:  Air coolers may peak somewhere around 3.7GHz.  Water coolers may peak about 4GHz.
BloomFiled D0 and Gulftown B1 are good overclockers:  Air coolers should peak around 4GHz. Water coolers hope for +4.4GHz.

You will see from my results that the motherboard does NOT need any better cooling than the stock cooler.  I would only recommend motherboard waterblock with GPU water cooling and LN2 phase-change unit for the CPU.  Only with that setup would anyone really push this motherboard to it's limits.

My Findings:
There are 2 combatants for us overclockers jitter/noise in the internal signaling of our cpu/mobo components, and heat.  We tend to throw voltage at any overclocking issue which actually creates more jitter AND heat.  On this motherboard, we have three helpful BIOS options that directly reduce jitter/noise.  These are CPU Clock SKEW, IOH Clock SKEW, and CPU PLL Voltage. Adding clock SKEW does more to stop jitter/noise than adding voltage.  A little goes a long way here, thankfully it's also hard to overdo it.  I ran mine all the way up to 1000ps in testing and worked down to 500ps for both CPU/IOH when it crashed.  This is where I learned they like to be at different offsets 500/600ps passed on down to the current 100/200ps delays. Every motherboard and Processor is different in how much skew it will want for any overclock, so start high and work your way down here once you reach your overclock goals.  If reaching higher from a stable overclock, add a few hundred to each to assist with keeping voltage needs down.

HEAT is the first wall i hit with any of my CPU's on this motherboard for both UnCore AND CPU.  First the BloomField's 2x multiplier to memory speed was creating way too much heat.  D0 stepping perform better here as they can run same mhz with less voltage (thus heat).  Gulftown has 1.5x uncore speed requirement which allows for high ram speeds with lower uncore speed and voltage.

CPU PLL Voltage feeds the clock generator that clocks up the CPU and UnCore.  Any noise here is multiplied.  So the lower the CPU PLL voltage, the less noise passed on to the CPU and UnCore.  Once I found a decent overclock at 1.8v. I then lowered this as much as possible.  Once lowered, it produced less heat and noise, allowing me to lower my CPU Voltage and QPI/DRAM Voltage.

Finally, make sure you enabled QPI LL Calibration.  (the jumber just left of ATX24 power connector)
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I gotta say though my Xeon W3680 has a memory controller rated for DDR3-1333.  The 980X is still rated for DDR3-1066.  So maybe my memory controller & un-core are better.  Thus allowing me such low QPI/DRAM voltage.

IF anyone has any questions, please PM me or start a new thread somewhere.  I will not respond to OverClock questions in this thread.
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New Template has many changes/updates.  Too many to list as it was still a work in progress. pretty [censored] complete now tho.

hi, great work. I'm using this bios with an I7-960 in raid without problem. I have a side question since i'm a noob at overclocking and can't get to 4 ghz
and with the icrazy setting only 3,6 works with reasonable temps. What i don't understand in the bios overclock settings is how to keep the memory timings the same (in my case 1066) and still overclock this processor wich is a D0 stepping b.t.w. Sorry to ask like this but you said you had one and know this great board well and I could not find a good guide on this specific processor. Maybe it isn't possible to raise the ghz without affecting memory
because its 'locked' but i'd like to know for shure as i can't really find it in the bios settings. Thanks and keep up the good work! Tom.

[pir8man]

hi, great work. I'm using this bios with an I7-960 in raid without problem. I have a side question since i'm a noob at overclocking and can't get to 4 ghz
and with the icrazy setting only 3,6 works with reasonable temps. What i don't understand in the bios overclock settings is how to keep the memory timings the same (in my case 1066) and still overclock this processor wich is a D0 stepping b.t.w. Sorry to ask like this but you said you had one and know this great board well and I could not find a good guide on this specific processor. Maybe it isn't possible to raise the ghz without affecting memory
because its 'locked' but i'd like to know for shure as i can't really find it in the bios settings. Thanks and keep up the good work! Tom.

Hello and welcome... Please do not hijack this BIOS MOD thread with overclocking questions.
Start a new thread and I will be happy to offer my input.
Once you start a new thread, edit your posting with a link to the new thread.
Thank you!

[M4tador]

Hi!

Where do I get the bios s19i? or some bios recommended before patch 106A5?  to test sxxi and s21i without and with patch 106A5 cpu.

Any recommendations for one and another bios?

TY for this great job.

[pir8man]

Hi!

Where do I get the bios s19i? or some bios recommended before patch 106A5?  to test sxxi and s21i without and with patch 106A5 cpu.

Any recommendations for one and another bios?

TY for this great job.

This forum does not give me enough space to have the older versions attached.  Due to that constraint, I have to remove the old attachments to fit in the new releases.  (I am currently using 19.18 of 20MB)  Actually, as I think about it, I may just pull all my BIOS files and post them via Gdrive link instead.  I'll toy with this after my current testing.

You can use the non-beta bios from ASUS website for basic CPU Microcode testing, or use on of the releases from ZIO's original thread.  I also have archives here of my older releases.  If you PM me, i can send you whichever prior release you want.

[pir8man]

OROM Testing delayed, obviously...

Sorry for the delays. I know a couple people are waiting for me to test the Marvell controller OROM issue...

I upgraded my system ram from 12 to 18GB, which called for adjusting the memory controller settings. I finally had time and got the system running stable this past weekend.

With that hurdle overcome, I can plug in two HDDs to the Marvell ports and start testing the controller OROM. I will roll back to the ASUS original OROM, so I can see what to expect first. Then I can update the OROM modules and see what is missing/different. I will only be testing with SATA3 HDDs, as these are the only drives we should connect to the Marvell controller ports.

[M4tador]

Hi!

Where do I get the bios s19i? or some bios recommended before patch 106A5?  to test sxxi and s21i without and with patch 106A5 cpu.

Any recommendations for one and another bios?

TY for this great job.

This forum does not give me enough space to have the older versions attached.  Due to that constraint, I have to remove the old attachments to fit in the new releases.  (I am currently using 19.18 of 20MB)  Actually, as I think about it, I may just pull all my BIOS files and post them via Gdrive link instead.  I'll toy with this after my current testing.

You can use the non-beta bios from ASUS website for basic CPU Microcode testing, or use on of the releases from ZIO's original thread.  I also have archives here of my older releases.  If you PM me, i can send you whichever prior release you want.

ok TY.
Meanwhile download the s21i version and change the microcode for 106A5 to an older one with mmtool, test and all ok.
With respect to intel controller in windows 7 and 10, I get better results with version 11.7.4.1001 AHCI driver vs 13.15.2.1000 and 13.6.3.1001 respectively.
regards

[pir8man]

ok TY.
Meanwhile download the s21i version and change the microcode for 106A5 to an older one with mmtool, test and all ok.
With respect to intel controller in windows 7 and 10, I get better results with version 11.7.4.1001 AHCI driver vs 13.15.2.1000 and 13.6.3.1001 respectively.
regards

That is correct for AHCI mode 11.x (S21i release) is the optimum OROM and software for our chipset.  OROM 13.x (S21 release) is only recommended for Win10 users that need Intel in RAID mode.  As that OROM has the best compatibility with the Win10 RST software.  I tried to express this in the first posts.

I always used the S__i releases myself as I never needed RAID mode on my Intel SATA ports.  When I ran Win10 on this board, I had PCIe SSD to boot from and W.D. Black RAID mirror on the Marvell controller.  I left the Jmicron controller disabled (for memory space).   

My new setup is FreeBSD based and will not need any of the controllers in RAID mode.  So again, I keep with the S21i (OROM 11.x) release for the best performance.

[pir8man]

I built some test bios' and went through testing Drive Xpert setup on the Marvell OROM.

I found how 1502 does find both drives correctly and my releases do not.

Unfortunately, I found that S17 (ZIO's release) had the same bug.  

EDIT:  More testing done:
There are 3 modules to the Marvell controller.  The OROM, the bootloader, and the firmware.  The firmware is what gets flashed to the Marvell chip itself on the mainboard.  The Firmware module is the problem.  When I flash S21i (my latest) with ONLY the Marvell firmware from 1502... Drive Xpert works properly.

ASUS Bios 1502 has Marvell FW v2.1.0.1413
Sinder,Zio, and my releases have Marvell FW v2.2.0.1125


Does anyone have the original untouched 1601 beta bios for the R3E for me to tear into?  Hopefully there is a newer and working firmware in that version.  I doubt it as ASUS said they only adjusted memory compatibility.  Just tyring to be thorough.

If anyone has 1601 untouched, please attach it to a post or a link to it.  Thank you.

[pir8man]

A bit more research done on Marvell Firmware revisions:
v2.1.0.1413 is the last of the 2.1 series.  It had all the bug fixes for the 91xx controllers.
v2.2 series was to introduce the 92xx controllers.
I may be incorrect that there is no later v2.1.x.x firmware.  I could not locate any, nor any reference to any newer in that series.  So I will release S22 as below.  If anyone has or finds different information, let us know.
UPDATE: I did locate firmware v2.1.0.1502 packaged in a Gigabyte MB bios.  Unfortunately it i an Award bios (ours is AMI) and the image extracts with all 3 modules combined in one FULL format.  I could not find a way to separate the FULL image back into the 3 modules we need in our bios for testing.

Sounds like S22 will have:
Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller - Bios : v1.0.0.1038
Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller - Firmware: v2.2.0.1125 -> v2.1.0.1413
Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller - Bootloader: v1.0.1.0002b

I have installed this combination on top of S21i for my testing.  Drive Xpert works as it should.  (I configured for speed, booted to win10 and it autoloaded the drivers.  Just had to partition & quick format the volume.  ATTO passes testing nicely.)

ALSO:  I went ahead and ran benchmark comparisons between these two firmware versions.  The speeds were basically identical.  So I don't feel bad about the downgrade.