ASUS Intel Beta BIOS Releases and Official Support

[Looker]

I too have been a long time ASUS fan, and just got one of the newer R3F's with a 950, and I'm just about ready to throw it out the window, it drops my SSD on the SATA-III controller every couple reboots without rhyme or reason and usually the only way to get it back is clear cmos, shut down, start up and reconfigure the bios, but you can only enable AHCI on one controller at a time, i.e. standard sata2 or sata3, this is rediculous, I have never had a board so buggy in 20 years, I can't even overclock for snot on it without the marvel controller dropping the drive. I'm thinking I might be calling EVGA soon... unless someone else can recommend a good X58 1366 board... I don't want to switch teams because I have always had very ood results with asus products but this thing is aweful.

[Diverge]

I too have been a long time ASUS fan, and just got one of the newer R3F's with a 950, and I'm just about ready to throw it out the window, it drops my SSD on the SATA-III controller every couple reboots without rhyme or reason and usually the only way to get it back is clear cmos, shut down, start up and reconfigure the bios, but you can only enable AHCI on one controller at a time, i.e. standard sata2 or sata3, this is rediculous, I have never had a board so buggy in 20 years, I can't even overclock for snot on it without the marvel controller dropping the drive. I'm thinking I might be calling EVGA soon... unless someone else can recommend a good X58 1366 board... I don't want to switch teams because I have always had very ood results with asus products but this thing is aweful.

I could have sworn I saw some bench tests of the SATA3 controller used on the asus boards. The intel chipset SATA2 controller is faster. I'd just use that and not bother with it (assuming you have no problems with sata2 controller).

[Chrysalis]

I use the marvell sata3 controller (not in full speed mode) and it appears fine performance wise.

The reason I use it is I use NCQ (ahci) on the intel ports but I have one hdd that performs horribly with NCQ, the hdd also cannot get recognised by the jmicron controller for some reason but works perfect on the marvell controller, this made me so glad i got the -E board as the marvell controller is not on the first gen boards.

[zoson]

Bingo,
Can you please let the ASUS BIOS engineers know that we must have QPI PLL control on such expensive motherboards?
It's really disgusting that it is not available on my Rampage 3 Extreme.

I put my CPU into a friend's x58a-ud3r, a board that's about $170 less expensive, and my CPU was unleashed. Upping the QPI PLL from 1.1v to 1.16v allowed me to run my chip at the EXACT same settings, frequency wise, with only 1.28v. It takes my R3E 1.38v to achieve this.

The cooling difference is phenomenal with a full tenth of a volt less required on core voltage.

This is a make or break for me to jump ship on ASUS to Gigabyte. It needs to be manually controllable.

I don't want to see any responses that this is QPI/DRAM voltage, because it's NOT.

[R37ribution]

I too have been a long time ASUS fan, and just got one of the newer R3F's with a 950, and I'm just about ready to throw it out the window, it drops my SSD on the SATA-III controller every couple reboots without rhyme or reason and usually the only way to get it back is clear cmos, shut down, start up and reconfigure the bios, but you can only enable AHCI on one controller at a time, i.e. standard sata2 or sata3, this is rediculous, I have never had a board so buggy in 20 years, I can't even overclock for snot on it without the marvel controller dropping the drive. I'm thinking I might be calling EVGA soon... unless someone else can recommend a good X58 1366 board... I don't want to switch teams because I have always had very ood results with asus products but this thing is aweful.

My Gene II was having similar issues once I OC'ed my W3520 above 3.9 Ghz. I had to raise my IOH voltage just a tad from the stock 1.11341 to 1.20616 and it solved my problem. Before I raised the voltage, my board dropped my Blu-Ray off the jmicron controller all the time. I had to power off the machine the next time it tried to post to get it to load the defaults due to a 'bad overlook', save my previous settings in the BIOS and exit.

After upping the IOH my chip passed 30 iterations of Linpack using 4096MB of RAM while the Intel ICY10R RAID was doing a verify on my mirror (proves the IOH voltage helped since its dealing with extra bandwidth of the southbridge during the rebuild) and my Blu-ray hasn't dropped since.

[KURTZ]

hey what about Maximus III Extreme BIOS? no updates yes?

[Looker]

My Gene II was having similar issues once I OC'ed my W3520 above 3.9 Ghz. I had to raise my IOH voltage just a tad from the stock 1.11341 to 1.20616 and it solved my problem. Before I raised the voltage, my board dropped my Blu-Ray off the jmicron controller all the time. I had to power off the machine the next time it tried to post to get it to load the defaults due to a 'bad overlook', save my previous settings in the BIOS and exit.

After upping the IOH my chip passed 30 iterations of Linpack using 4096MB of RAM while the Intel ICY10R RAID was doing a verify on my mirror (proves the IOH voltage helped since its dealing with extra bandwidth of the southbridge during the rebuild) and my Blu-ray hasn't dropped since.

Yeah I tried a couple different voltages and finally got the ram to run at ~2133MHz (it's corsair dominator gt and supposed to be spec'd at 2000@1.65v) and that in and of itself has taken forever, only to have it boot up and as soon as windows boots it just restarts. I think the cpu was only running at like 3.33GHz or something. I dunno, I think the gene or exreme would have been a better buy, but I'm really looking at the EVGA offerings. Maybe there will be another bios update in another 3-4 months that will help stabilize this board, but for me just getting it to run all of my hardware _at spec_ as opposed to on 'auto' has taken forever and I've yet to get a stable O'C'. I must have just a bad combo of hardware or something

[zoson]

Bingo,
Could you please find out a table of values for what QPI PLL voltage is set when a CPU PLL voltage is selected on the Rampage 3 Extreme?
Example:
1.36v = x.xv QPI
1.81v = 1.1v QPI(assumed)
1.82v = x.xv QPI
1.84v = x.xv QPI
etc.

I asked ASUS support for this information and got a very bad reply:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.

I am afraid to say that I am not allowed to give this kind of value.
I think you can operate according to the spec and manual of your CPU.
Or contact with Intel for consultation.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Please contact with me if you have any other questions.

Best Regards,

Stacey

ASUS Customer Service

This is a key overclocking value and we need to know this information to prevent providing too much voltage to QPI PLL!!!
If you could supply the full table of values or a method of calculating the values all the way from 1.2 to 2.0v it would be excellent.
Thanks!

[dMITIj]

Bingo,
Could you please find out a table of values for what QPI PLL voltage is set when a CPU PLL voltage is selected on the Rampage 3 Extreme?
Example:
1.36v = x.xv QPI
1.81v = 1.1v QPI(assumed)
1.82v = x.xv QPI
1.84v = x.xv QPI
etc.

I asked ASUS support for this information and got a very bad reply:

This is a key overclocking value and we need to know this information to prevent providing too much voltage to QPI PLL!!!
If you could supply the full table of values or a method of calculating the values all the way from 1.2 to 2.0v it would be excellent.
Thanks!

+1 here, i to would like to know

[donmarkoni]

Bingo,
Could you please find out a table of values for what QPI PLL voltage is set when a CPU PLL voltage is selected on the Rampage 3 Extreme?
Example:
1.36v = x.xv QPI
1.81v = 1.1v QPI(assumed)
1.82v = x.xv QPI
1.84v = x.xv QPI
etc.

I asked ASUS support for this information and got a very bad reply:

This is a key overclocking value and we need to know this information to prevent providing too much voltage to QPI PLL!!!
If you could supply the full table of values or a method of calculating the values all the way from 1.2 to 2.0v it would be excellent.
Thanks!

+1

[zoson]

ASUS Tech support has officially failed completely:

Hello,

Overclocking options are provided in the BIOS for experienced users to utilize in order to overclock their systems to their maximum potential. Asus does not provide any support whatsoever for overclocking as this can potentially cause damage to your hardware. We do not provide tables/charts or indexes of any kind to facilitate this overclocking. There is no false advertising involved here. Yes, the board has many options for overclocking, however we do not claim or guarantee that we will educate, instruct, or provide detailed explanations for how to do this. Your best bet would be to visit the more popular overclocking forums on the web, such as overclock.net, for advice on overclocking your board and what various options in the BIOS change or affect.


Best Regards,

Chris J.
Asus Support

I think I might stop buying asus now.

[VoXPCS]

EVGA Classified 3... nuff said.

[AceBaran]

Asus fail big time here -10

[Leeghoofd]

ASUS Tech support has officially failed completely:

I think I might stop buying asus now.

What did you expect from a tech reply ? a guideline how to do it ? To reveal the hows and whats ? Maybe they don't even know it themselves. I'm already surprised he dared to direct you towards OCN.net...

[WeaponX]

Yeah I don't understand what you guys are expecting from Asus?? I'm happy they even gave us the ability to overclock. I've had too many Gigabyte boards fail on me in both abilty to overclock and reliability. With my Asus boards its been a dream as with many other Asus products.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[zoson]

I was looking for an explanation as to how the board behaves with this secret adjusting of voltage, unseen to the user, so that I could use the BIOS correctly.

Normally this is a manual control that you can set in BIOS. It is on all EVGA, and Gigabyte i7 boards, including the exceptionally inexpensive UD3R. Unless Bingo can come through here, I'll likely be switching to a Classified 3, and selling off my R3E.

This all started when I built a new PC for a friend on the UD3R, and it took my CPU with my same memory to 4.5GHz, while my R3E struggles for 4.2GHz. Not only did it run my chip faster, it also did it with the same voltage.

[AceBaran]

With evga classy i could do 4.5 24/7 stable and 225 bclk.. R3E goes weird on me @ 215 Bclk.. if qpi pll is the setting that will take me over 215 and further.. then i want the info ! I dont need a automatic pilot.. i want full control of the car i drive >_<

Said that i still love this board since it feels more stable then the classy for me.. only <215 bclk

[Leeghoofd]

Where you running the same hardware with the Classie ? You mentioned the classy went sometimes spooky on you, yet claim it stable ? Really 4.5ghz with 225Bclock and 20 multi ?... 215 with 21x for 4.5GHz, maybe you got things mixed up ?

[AceBaran]

Yes stable.. and yes to same hardware..

Sorry i wasnt very clear in my writing maybe.. Stable @ 4.5 yes with 215 bclk.. could boot up to 225 bclk but could not get it stable.... but i think that was couse of my lack in clocking skills

Edit: oh yeah the classy went spooky on me indeed @ 225 Bclk..same as R3E does @ 215

[JohnZS]

Yeah I don't understand what you guys are expecting from Asus?? I'm happy they even gave us the ability to overclock. I've had too many Gigabyte boards fail on me in both abilty to overclock and reliability. With my Asus boards its been a dream as with many other Asus products.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

I expect ASUS fix BUGS in BIOSes for all boards which were fixed on other boards.

For example. The ASUS P5E3(X38) and P5E3 Pro(X48) received BIOS updates which resolved the QX9650 and QX9770 BIOS bug whereby you cannot boot using a manual multiplier without being greeted with a VID failing to match CPU ratio error.

This issue STILL remains in the Rampage Extreme (X48 and supposedly ASUS' premier 775 board).

Another issue is that they updated the RAID option ROM to 8.7.0.1007 for the P5E3 and P5E3 Pro and Maximus Formula, but they did not bother with other X38/X48 motherboards.

It is things like this which annoy me with ASUS.

If ASUS were bothered to resolve the last few niggling issues with the Rampage Extreme motherboard I would say that it is without the best motherboard I have ever owned, for now it is only among the best and is very good, only let down by fundamental bugs ASUS know about and more annoyingly already know how to resolve!

John

[dctokyo]

ASUS Tech support has officially failed completely:

I think I might stop buying asus now.

What did you expect from a tech reply ? for them to go over and do it for you?

[dMITIj]

No but it will be nice to know what to do without that setting in the BIOS and why its by auto set it self to an xxxx value.

[Alien Grey]

What's the meaning of this thread?



Is it to give us the feeling that ASUS really cares and is going to fix all our BIOS problems. I've been in contact with ASUS for 2 years trying to let them fix the problems with the ASUS Rampage Formula and add some BIOS features that should have been there from the first release BIOS for that board.

After 2 years and little to no progress I gave up on them and they are probably happy that I don't bother them anymore.
We're using the latest unofficial 0001 BIOS with updated option ROM's added by SoLoR.

Soon every board is going to have it's unofficial BIOS that doesn't help you any further.



@JohnZs

Here's the unofficial BIOS for your ASUS Rampage Extreme board: ASUS Rampage Extreme BIOS 0002

This unofficial BIOS has DRAM Refresh Period (tREF) and Special 133 Mode (I don't know what it's supposed to do or when to use it).


That's the kind of support they give you. You ask for an ASUS Rampage Formula BIOS and they give you an ASUS Rampage Extreme BIOS.

[zoson]

What did you expect from a tech reply ? for them to go over and do it for you?

Then you paid attention and realized I'm only asking for details on the behavior of the board so I can operate it correctly. Learn to read and comprehend, or do I need to go over to you and read the entire thread to you?
You, sir, are a typical example of a PEBKAC. Read the whole thread.

I asked them the exact same thing I asked Bingo, here.

[AceBaran]

PEBKAC

that made me

But +1 to you Zoson... i totaly agree >_<