X48 Rampage Formula Preview.

[bigslappy]

Hi,

It is my first post, so hello everybody .

My DFI NF4 Ultra-D died on me so it is time to change my Opty165@3.0 ghz for something newer.

I did a lot of reading during last week but I am still confused.

I have q9550 E0 which board you would say would be better to clock it P45 (M2F) or rather X48 (Rampage).

I read that on P45 has better "support" for 45nm quads and it is easier to achieve 450+ FSB but I can see better OC in signatures of ppl with X48 Rampage.

Just to say I do not care about any kind of bundle like i.e. 2x PCIe x16.

Which board would you suggest (other brands are also welcome but not DFI I have enough of semi finished product).

GigaByte EP45-UP3P they are getting massive O/C's on that new board


Linky 's

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=203272



http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=206096

[majesty413]

today new bios 0601.

[ElAguila]

today new bios 0601.

Do you have a link to it? I went to the asus site and only saw 0410 listed as the most recent.

[chris8325]

Do you have a link to it? I went to the asus site and only saw 0410 listed as the most recent.

http://dlsvr04.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/...rmula-0601.zip

[sxs112]

ASUS Rampage Formula 0601 Beta Bios
[ 0601 ]
----------------------
Fixed some RAID card does not be detected when plus it in PCIEX16_2

[Brama]

I guess it is similar to prebeta 501. I will check it this evening.

[mikeyakame]

nothing new to report. same old same old. doesnt break anything, yet doesnt change anything visible. i guess we wait for guys who had raid controller issues in the 2nd pci-e port to announce it works.

[bigslappy]

NewEgg has these now ........


......http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231201

review of this stuff

http://www.ur-hardware.com/Memory/G.Skill-4GB-PI.html
__________________

[DEFLORATOR]

nothing new to report. same old same old. doesnt break anything, yet doesnt change anything visible. i guess we wait for guys who had raid controller issues in the 2nd pci-e port to announce it works.

No, 0601 doesn't work for me. Just like 0501, PC boots, but Adaptec 3405 SAS raid-controller isn't detected. asus

[mikeyakame]

did you flash it with the latest firmware?

[doodah10]

NewEgg has these now ........


......http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231201

review of this stuff

http://www.ur-hardware.com/Memory/G.Skill-4GB-PI.html
__________________

I followed the Newegg link and I guess they don't have it. However yesterday I installed 8GB G.Skill PC8500 in place of 2GB Patriiot PC9600. The Patriot supposed to run at 1200Mhz would only run at 1149 max and was at 1117Mhz and 2.3v when I did the swap. I changed to 2.0v and from 5-5-5-12 to 5-5-5-15 but left the 1117Mhz and all other settings alone and it ran just fine in both XP x86 and Vista x64 plus made it through a few minutes of Prime before I shutdown for the night.

[Brama]

No, 0601 doesn't work for me. Just like 0501, PC boots, but Adaptec 3405 SAS raid-controller isn't detected. asus

My Adaptec 5405 with latest firmware is detected every boot by 501 and 601.


P.S.: Modules in BIOS 410-501-601 look the same, using MMTOOL 3.12 and comparing binary of any module extracted from BIOS, using WinHex. Is there any hidden module that MMTOOL is not able to display or are really the same modules with only the number and the date changed????

[ElAguila]

The link showed up for the bios for me. If there is no change other than for the raid controller I will stick with 0410. Check my sig and you will see that I have these GSkill sticks running 8GB and they run well.

[mikeyakame]

My Adaptec 5405 with latest firmware is detected every boot by 501 and 601.


P.S.: Modules in BIOS 410-501-601 look the same, using MMTOOL 3.12 and comparing binary of any module extracted from BIOS, using WinHex. Is there any hidden module that MMTOOL is not able to display or are really the same modules with only the number and the date changed????

did you decompress the modules? did you compare the boot block of the bios? that's where there should be changes, and possibly in 1B module.

[Roger_D25]

This question is a bit off topic from the current conversation but does anyone know where the voltage read points are on this board? Although I did manually go through each page of the thread I did try searching it with no luck? Besides that I did some googling but again came up short? I even spent some quality time with my meter trying to find them myself but its always difficult to verify if I'm actually pulling the right voltage? Thanks for any help you guys can give! Besides that I just installed my new GSkill PC2-9600CL5D-4GBPI and they booted rightup at 1200Mhz @ 5-5-5-15 on 2.06v (266strap). This stuff is amazing for a 4GB kit, glad I found a kit in stock because I had been looking for a while with no luck!

[DEFLORATOR]

did you flash it with the latest firmware?

Yes, latest firmware.

Guys who recently purchased RF, please tell what the latest revision of the board is. Still 1.00G?

[MordantsNeed]

DEFLORATOR - I got my Rampage Formula about four weeks ago and it was a 1.00G.

[Roger_D25]

Yeah still 1.00G, mine just arrived 3-days ago from newegg.

[DEFLORATOR]

Yeah still 1.00G, mine just arrived 3-days ago from newegg.

Yeah, that sounds good, Asus didn't introduced any minor changes in board's schematics

[Brama]

did you decompress the modules? did you compare the boot block of the bios? that's where there should be changes, and possibly in 1B module.

I extracted from BIOSes every single module decompressed and the differences shown by WinHex are only the build number and date.

Boot block (module 08) is the same bit per bit.
Module 1B has only the usual date and build differences and some bytes at the end that I think doesn't matter.........

Extended Boot Block (module 15 with EBB), see below




This is HOLE1 compare, very similar to EBB, probably where EBB fits:

[chris8325]

just flashed 0601 - doesnt work for me ....

adaptec 29320LPE is not detected - no success since 0308

@Brama - what about a modded 0308 with E0 update ?

[Brama]

just flashed 0601 - doesnt work for me ....

adaptec 29320LPE is not detected - no success since 0308

@Brama - what about a modded 0308 with E0 update ?

E0 microcode patch corrects only the E0 cpus errata, no more. Better than nothing but at booting the "unknown cpu" message will remain.
With this message, every AUTO setting in the BIOS, will not be optimized on your cpu.

If you put everything on manual, the message at boot is only annoying.

[drew and not u]

Hi guys, coming out of lurker mode for this. I'm doing some overclocking for a friend and can't get this Q9450 stable at or past 3.8.

Specs:
-Q9450
-Rampage Formula (0601 bios, pencil vMod, active NB cooling[doesn't go above 35c])
-4GB G.Skill 1066
-Seasonic 550W PSU

Ran perfectly at 450FSB with just a small vCore bump and everything else auto.
However it doesn't like 480+ FSB. At 480 I can get it to post and get into windows, but any load causes a bluescreen. Increasing the CPU PLL or FSB termination causes it to not load windows at all, or not even post. I have the CPU multi turned down to 6 while I try to get these higher FSBs to work. The ram is only at 960/2.1v so that shouldn't be it. All CPU features are disabled.

Here are the settings that have allowed me to at least run orthos for about 30 seconds before crashing.

Ai Tuner: manual
CPU Ratio: 6
FSB Strap: 400
FSB Freq: 480
DRAM Freq: 960
CPU vCore: 1.356
CPU PLL: auto (worse when I increase)
NB Voltage: 1.51
DRAM Voltage: 2.1
FSB Termination: auto (worse when I increase)
LLC disabled (pencil vmod done)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[chris8325]

E0 microcode patch corrects only the E0 cpus errata, no more. Better than nothing but at booting the "unknown cpu" message will remain.
With this message, every AUTO setting in the BIOS, will not be optimized on your cpu.

If you put everything on manual, the message at boot is only annoying.

i would not mind bios messages or manual adjust but
cpu temperature is constantly @ 100 degrees ...
... so no cpu temperature readings form bios (and no report from coretemp, realtemp, ...)
and no fan control ....

[mikeyakame]

I extracted from BIOSes every single module decompressed and the differences shown by WinHex are only the build number and date.

Boot block (module 08) is the same bit per bit.
Module 1B has only the usual date and build differences and some bytes at the end that I think doesn't matter.........

Extended Boot Block (module 15 with EBB), see below




This is HOLE1 compare, very similar to EBB, probably where EBB fits:

The changed bits in 1B probably do mean something. You'd need to throw both a previous 1B and current 1B into IDA and disassemble the changed bits to see if they are actually different. A few changed bytes account for a few instructions difference usually. if I recall you need to disassemble the 1B module as 32-bit code. I'll try find some time to disassemble both and see the diffs this week.