Crosshair IV Formula with updated RAID ROM

[CrimInalA]

I can't seem to find a custom 2002 bios of the CHIV formula with this updated raid rom .
Does anyone know if it exists and where to find it ?

The new ROM is needed to enable "read ahead" and "write back" raid options in raidxpert .

[CrimInalA]

Which is the latest raid rom in fact for SB850 ?
I found 3.2.1540.31 but , that is already dating from 2010 !
Nothing newer is there ?

my 2002 bios has v 3.2.1540.6 in it .

[NEOAethyr]

There's supposedly some issues with the later raid rom's.
I guess we'd have to try and find out .

I can try to mod the bios using the basic tools for ami to doit, I can try anyways.
Gonna need some raid roms to try though .

Been studying up on ami bios'es.
I'm learning but I never was able to figure out what they are using for a compressor.
At least not yet.
I can apparently mod efi bios'es though too with the tools I got, don't got an efi board so that doesn't matter any.

[CrimInalA]

Hi , I went ahead and slipped 3.2.1540.31 in the 2002 bios .
Will report back when its fully been tested and benchmarked .

2 questions though .

- which problems are reported with the newer raid roms . some brands like asrock already did put them in final bioses if im not mistaken .
- is 3.2.1540.31 really the latest rom available ?

[CrimInalA]

I flashed and tested my modded bios , don't see any issues .

So for people who want to upgrade the 2002 bios and 3.2.1540.31 raid bios on their Asus Crosshair IV Formula , you can download it here :
DOWNLOAD LINK

I find testing performance quite hard without trim , as every test is different from the last one .



What i also did was deleted my old raid0 and created a fresh one (CTRL+F) with options 128k stripe , read ahead and write back .
When i check in windows afterwards , in raidxpert 3.3.1540.19 (is there a newer version?) . I see no cache and write through activated . When checking back in CTRL+F i see the read ahead and write through options aren't there while i definately created the raid with these options . Instead it shows no cache for read and write back for write .
Does this board maybe not support those cache options like gigabyte motherboards do ?

I checked a few more times and i can create the raid with the right options , reboot several times and check ctrl+f , but once i boot into windows the previously set options in ctrl+f go away .

When you flash it try it out and let me know how it performs for you .

Regards ,

[NEOAethyr]

Just flashed it .
I ran some benchs and they do seem a little bit higher, for ex. I'm beating scsi 320 on hdtach.
Aida benchs seemed higher, hd wise.
That all could be due that I got my pcie clocked up to 150mhz.

But there is a difference in seek times or something.
When I 1st start up, with the 2002 rom, I load up a video in mpc-hc and it lags to all heck.
Happens every single time I try to run a video in that program from a fresh start of windows.
But after updating to the modded rom with the updated raid, no such probs, at all.

Granted seek times are still up there a bit when seeking some video files, it's not as near as bad as it was before.
That I can say for 100% surity.


To put it simple.
It's a mild improvement .

[CrimInalA]

To put it simple.
It's a mild improvement .

That's also what my benchmarks showed in fact . Less spikes , more consistent and mostly a tad faster .
Do let me know if you notice any issues with the new raid rom so i can try to reproduce it .
So far everything seems smooth .


Few benches :
BEFORE = raid rom 3.2.1540.6
AFTER = raid rom 3.2.1540.31
P4spooky = raid rom 3.3.1540.14

BEFORE AFTER P4spooky

BEFORE AFTER P4spooky

BEFORE AFTER P4spooky

BEFORE AFTER P4spooky

BEFORE AFTER P4spooky

[CrimInalA]

Guys i'm thinking about something .
SB850 and SB950 have the same functionalities right ?
Can't we use the raid rom and raid option rom from those newer motherboards , like the sabertooth 990fx ?
Their raid option rom for example is at 3.3.1540.14 currently .

also , is someone able to log in to the developer part of the amd website to get the very latest roms ?

[NEOAethyr]

If you make one with the 3.3.x rev rom I'll try it.
It has to be done anyways, or it should be done...

If it works, great.
If not, I should have no probs recovering.
Just take care and please not make me a bios that doesn't post lol...

Btw.
What sort of sig are you looking for when you are swapping out the raid rom.
How are you going about telling which is the raid rom in the 2002 bios in the app you're using?

I only ask because I haven't looked at all the uncompressed roms yet, just a few.

[p4spooky]

Asus Crosshair IV 2002 Modified

Changes Made:

1. Updated AMD RAID ROM To 3.3.1540.14
2. Updated JMicron 363 ROM to 1.0.7.28
3. Updated AMD AHCI ROM To 3.0.C.5

Note:

1. Flashing involves risk, use with caution
2. Have a Bios recovery plan BEFORE flashing
3. Backup data on your existing array

Please provide feedback.

[CrimInalA]

Asus Crosshair IV 2002 Modified

Changes Made:

1. Updated AMD RAID ROM To 3.3.1540.14
2. Updated JMicron 363 ROM to 1.0.7.28

Note:

1. Flashing involves risk, use with caution
2. Have a Bios recovery plan BEFORE flashing
3. Backup data on your existing array

Please provide feedback.

*Scrapes throat* Santa ? Is this You ?

p4spooky , you made my day with this one !
I checked the file before flashing , looked ok so i flashed . Works per-fect-ly .
I will post screenshots in my above comparison post . Also the booting screens (especially RAID) are MUCH faster .
I didn't even have to recreate the raid itself .

A few questions if I may , so I can learn something from this .

- Is there a reason why you updated the Jmicron too ?
- Where did you get the non-UEFI MISC.bin for the Raid rom ?
- How come the MISC.bin (23k) is so small compared to the previous one (61k)
- How to check the version of MISC.bin

Again : thanks so much for this !


My conclusion for the 3.3 rom =
Sequential r/w are up
Access times are worse
Random r/w are worse

BUT this is not due to the rom , but the drivers . As I have tested ROM 3.2.1540.31 before with 3.3.1540.26 drivers and got slower random and access times too .


Others please test and post screenshots of your findings .

[NEOAethyr]

I can confirm too that the bios is working, with the updated 3.3.x raid rom.
I Just flashed it .

Seems a bit snappier but it's to early to tell.

[p4spooky]

Glad to know. Please make sure you use a driver at least 3.3.1540.17 or above. For Win 7 please use Catalyst 12.3 RAID Driver

@CriminalA: To answer your questions:

Is there a reason why you updated the Jmicron too ?

I found the latest version of JMicron ROM detects drivers faster during boot. Asus version was VERY old.

Where did you get the non-UEFI MISC.bin for the Raid rom ?

From MSI - Look at the latest bios for MSI 990FXA-GD65 (this board uses UEFI but ROM and MISC.SEG were extracted from this bios)

How come the MISC.bin (23k) is so small compared to the previous one (61k)

I am using the same version on my Crosshair V board that I modified (see HERE)

So I was confident that it will work. However the offsets for F1 module changed when I updated the bios - hence the caution note before flashing . Regarding size, I am not sure why there is a huge difference. The good news is it works!

How to check the version of MISC.bin

You cannot, however you need to use the correct MISC.SEG that goes with the Option ROM, otherwise the array will not be detected.

Glad to help Crosshair IV owners, again shame on Asus for not keeping the ROMs updated on their "flagship" ROG boards

[davidm71]

Seems like this new bios is working just fine but my ATTO scores are slightly slower for some reason.
Maybe its because I installed the 12.3 raid drivers?

Could be for a variety of reasons as my last bench was a few months ago. Might have had degradation..

Thanks for the mod..

[p4spooky]

@CriminalA: Thanks for updating the benchmark results with the new ROMs. I can see improved performance especially on the Seq reads but the HDTune Pro Random Access results are worse than before. Am I reading this correctly?

[CrimInalA]

@CriminalA: Thanks for updating the benchmark results with the new ROMs. I can see improved performance especially on the Seq reads but the HDTune Pro Random Access results are worse than before. Am I reading this correctly?

While Atto shows improvements over the whole line , other programs seem to contradict this .
Fact seems to be though that their access times have doubled . The settings i use for the latest bios are read ahead/write back . While with the older roms i had to use NA/write trough . Also the newer rom uses 100mbyte system memory as cache as far as i have read on the internet . Hence the slower access times ?
Crystaldiskmark/hdtune/asssd tests seem more sensitive to access times compared to atto .
But let's face it , i'm not the expert to draw conclusions based on the above screenshots .

[nex_73]

@p4spooky: can you also please add 4(391) AMD AHCI ROM 2010 Ver 3.0.9 or later if you find?

[p4spooky]

@p4spooky: can you also please add 4(391) AMD AHCI ROM 2010 Ver 3.0.9 or later if you find?

Ok - Done. Found AMD AHCI Bios 3.0.C.5 from Gigabyte 990FX-UD3 F6K Bios. Please download the BIOS again from the link above. Please provide feedback if the new AHCI version improves performance when SATA is configured as AHCI.

[nex_73]

Thank you!
Only did a quick test on a 1 year old non tweaked Win7 64 installation.
AMD driver: 1.2.1.327
Before to the left and after to the right

[NEOAethyr]

I forgot I was dl'ing right now, no resuming.
I have to wait to flash and test.

I can't do much for testing when it comes to ahci though.

[Ccaution]

AHEM, I'll be the noob here, asking you BIOS editing lads, is there any possibility to add V's SLI support to the CIVF, by patching the corresponding string on a bios or something? Or am I missing something major here?



/I know it's rather of topic, but still I'd love to see such a bios for my lovely CIVF Keep it up, guys

[NEOAethyr]

Yeah it would be possible.
I think it's in the acpi tables, like the slic mod for windows.
From what little I've read of it ^^.

I know it's possible, but I don't know yet what all needs doing yet.
I don't have sli either so I was never worried so much.

I was thinking of that mod, the raid which is going on now.
Ahci I had no idea had it's own rom... lol

And some more settings.
The hard one would be to redo the cpu volt/multi and nb stuff completely.
Easy ones would be to add new mem settings.
Real issue is getting down to the dirty part and mapping out the cmos ^^.
Since I have no idea how to use smbus... wish I did.

I'de like to add some more settings for the memory and perhaps other misc timings.
Whatever deems important enough from the testing in dos bootstrapping into windows and testing .

Making small patches after booting isn't hard.
Timings/msr's and etc are plain simple.
Though I don't know how to go about replacing outright the acpi stuff after booting.
Kinda like a rootkit almost, but not in that sense.
People doit already from windows, at least they used to before win7 sp1.

I'll put it simply.
There are 2 methods for doing the sli mod.
Rootkit method, bios method.
And I don't know either yet.
But there are people out there I'm sure do , it'll happen probably .

Edit:
I'm thinking there is probably a patch out there already that does this, a patch or program for windows.
Rootkit style ^^.

[Ccaution]

I'm thinking there is probably a patch out there already that does this, a patch or program for windows.
Rootkit style ^^.

Yeap, there is anatolymik's HyperSLI which is rather good, but native SLI support would definitely be better imho

[davidm71]

Spooky,

Was wondering did you just repackage your mod with newer versions? If so how do I check I used the most latest release you posted?

Thanks!

[NEOAethyr]

I've been naming them 2002-m1, m2 and so on.

Been using the later raid mod without the ahci mod.
The v3.3.x raid mod.

Just got around to checking the ahci thing.
On my setup, I see the ahci screen for a split sec (didn't know there was one...).
And after that it goes black and does nothing.

Sorry it took me so long to test.
I gotta cousin staying for a few days .

I'm personally not so worried about ahci so much.