X48 Rampage Formula Preview.

[Antineutrino]

Thanks a lot SoLoR for the quick preview of the new Bios....

[Alien Grey]

Here is galery of extreme tweaker menu and dual bios function.

edit: you also see option DRAM Refresh Period aka TREF?! finaly, options are light/lighter/moderate/strong/stronger.... now just give bios we can flash ;( EBB from 0902 does not work, there should be at least checksums also corrected, but i seriously dont want to brick mobo with to much of experimenting so ill just wait but my fingers are itching....

edit2: skews are up to 1500ps in steps of 100. If anyone wants to know more about certain option just ask...

Mine are itching too.

Thanks a lot for the sneak peak in the BIOS rom. If all of this is going to be available in a working BIOS it's going to be hours of fun to tweak the settings.

[m4gg0t]

Aren't these the BIOS from the Rampage Extreme the DDR3 version???

[SoLoR]

Aren't these the BIOS from the Rampage Extreme the DDR3 version???

there are some evidence about that, but theory is that asus trys to make same bios for both extreme and formula... and lets hope this is really the case and they didnt make some kind of mistake again

[Alien Grey]

there are some evidence about that, but theory is that asus trys to make same bios for both extreme and formula... and lets hope this is really the case and they didnt make some kind of mistake again

The BIOS revision is really 0002 and no naming mistake from ASUS.

$ASUSAMI$Rampage 0002 03/09/2010-14:18:04 Bearlake Extreme ASUS ROMBUILD414

Nice found SoLoR.

[SoLoR]

That "Extreme" string bugs me and why there is only Extreme... i would get if it would be Extreme/Formula or something, but only Extreme ? oh well, lets wait couple more days until they they give you working bios.

[Alien Grey]

That "Extreme" string bugs me and why there is only Extreme... i would get if it would be Extreme/Formula or something, but only Extreme ? oh well, lets wait couple more days until they they give you working bios.

And the DDR3 but that is just naming and is easy to change. I know that they probably think "Why don't these guys just buy a Rampage Extreme".

This would be easy but it isn't the same. It feels like cheating to me and everything I've done with tweaking to get my board to run at these frequencies would be a waste of time.


You might win the race by changing your car but it would never feel the same than winning the race with tuning your own car.


With that said all we can achieve on our Rampage Formula should also be achievable on the Rampage Extreme if you can get your memory running stable at the higher frequency. That's why I think that an almost exact same BIOS is a win-win situation for both boards.

[OLDcomer]

I hope this new BIOS to be successful at high fsb clocks.
I've got a picture with 20 LinX's passes at 8.5x500 (0802 bios) but didn't make it at 9x500 (5 passes only).

LinX 20 passes 8.5x500


LinX 5 passes 9x500

[leo27]

The most exciting thing for me is what i see in screenshot 3, individual CPU GTL refs from ref0 through to ref3 !!!!!
If they can do this for the extreme there is no reason it can't work on the formula

[Alien Grey]

LinX 20 passes 8.5x500


LinX 5 passes 9x500

You beat me I could never do 5 passes stable at 9 X 500MHz.

But I didn't really try hard because I knew it would never be 100% stable.

[Alien Grey]

@SoLoR

Could you explain the dual BIOS feature that you've fouund in that BIOS?

Is that possible to have on our Rampage Formula or do you need a second BIOS chip on the board to have that feature?

[SoLoR]

Im not sure what with that dual bios feature, because you would need 2nd bios chip for that... And ye it seems like Rampage Extreme have it, but Formula does not.... Thing is, more and more im looking in this 0002 bios, more im wondering if Asus screwed up and sended you wrong bios again and this is kind sad news, but i dont want to spread negative vibes and lets hope for the best! This 0002 bios is more smiliar to existing 1202 bios for Rampage Extreme, then to bios for Rampage Formula...

[Antineutrino]

LinX 20 passes 8.5x500


LinX 5 passes 9x500

I see 1.456 Volts in CPU-Z...
How did you set Vcpu in BIOS?
And Vnb ?

Those maximum temperatures are insanely high...


Perhaps with new BIOS will be easier to reach 9x500 with lower voltages...

[OLDcomer]

I see 1.456 Volts in CPU-Z...
How did you set Vcpu in BIOS?
And Vnb ?

Those maximum temperatures are insanely high...


Perhaps with new BIOS will be easier to reach 9x500 vith lower voltages...

1.475V bios, LLC = Disabled, pencil vdrop mod

[Alien Grey]

Im not sure what with that dual bios feature, because you would need 2nd bios chip for that... And ye it seems like Rampage Extreme have it, but Formula does not.... Thing is, more and more im looking in this 0002 bios, more im wondering if Asus screwed up and sended you wrong bios again and this is kind sad news, but i dont want to spread negative vibes and lets hope for the best! This 0002 bios is more smiliar to existing 1202 bios for Rampage Extreme, then to bios for Rampage Formula...

There's no question about the fact that this is similar to the Extreme BIOS but they did work on that BIOS recently as you can see at the build day and the odd revision number. Maybe they called it 0002 because this BIOS isn't complete and wasn't supposed to be released yet.

In there reply they told me to update it later and that also makes me believe that this is still a work in progress.

I hope that the new BIOS is going to have all these features in it or it's going to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me.

1.475V bios, LLC = Disabled, pencil vdrop mod

I think I'm also going to do the pencil mod to remove the vdrop. I can't use the Loadline Calibration and I was thinking that maybe if I do the pencil mod to lower the vdrop a bit that maybe I could use Loadline Calibration to disable the vdrop completely.

It's just a theory. I don't know if it's going to work but if it doesn't I can always add some more pencil strokes to disable the vdrop completely.

[Antineutrino]

Alien Grey,
did they give you any news about the bios when they realized it was not right to flash?
What are we expecting?

Cheers!

[Alien Grey]

Alien Grey,
did they give you any news about the bios when they realized it was not right to flash?
What are we expecting?

Cheers!

The reply was very short. All that they were saying is not to flash it and that it's going to be updated later.

[Antineutrino]

Thank You Alien Grey...

By the way I would like to ask you about the CPU PLL Voltage...
Did you have any chance to play with it?

When I was trying to reach 4,5 Ghz I discovered that my system was unable to boot if I raise it a bit... So now I leave it alone at default 1,5.

[Antineutrino]

...And I would ask any moderator why not to change this thread name in somthing like "ASUS RAMPAGE Formula Official Thread"...
And Perhaps edit the first post adding the most significant settings, tips and tricks discovered by many contributors here...

[Alien Grey]

...And I would ask any moderator why not to change this thread name in somthing like "ASUS RAMPAGE Formula Official Thread"...
And Perhaps edit the first post adding the most significant settings, tips and tricks discovered by many contributors here...

Or maybe start a new thread if we can get our hands on a working new BIOS that contains all these new features.


Anyway if you would like to know what they've wrote to me, I've posted it in the thread on the ASUS Rampage Formula forum.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20100318140234531&SLanguage=en-us&page=1&board_id=1&model=Rampage%20Formula

[Antineutrino]

Or maybe start a new thread if we can get our hands on a working new BIOS that contains all these new features.


Anyway if you would like to know what they've wrote to me, I've posted it in the thread on the ASUS Rampage Formula forum.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20100318140234531&SLanguage=en-us&page=1&board_id=1&model=Rampage%20Formula

Thanks Alien Grey!
As you mention before that's indeed a short answer from Asus...

[Alien Grey]

I've been thinking that maybe the BIOS wasn't meant to be send to me at this time yet.

I don't know, maybe SoLoR can answer that, but maybe it was only meant to be testing on an ASUS Rampage formula board by one of the ASUS Engineers and they don't need the complete BIOS to put it on the board and make it work.

[SoLoR]

As fair as i know ExtendedBootBlock (that is missing in bios) is in case flash recovery (sometimes you can flash your mobo powering it up with USB key with FORMULA.ROM file on it, if main bios checksum is incorrect). So in case that everything works, it should never be needed.There is always a way to force flash certain bios on mobo there is AFUDOS ES (Engineering Sample), that allows you to flash any bios to any Asus mobo with AMI bios without ANY checks... recepie for disaster unless you can flash mobo over SPI interface. SPI interface allows you to flash mobo from other computer using LPT/USB interface, making LPT/SPI cable is also easy enough, even tho i didnt try it yet. But if someone is interested in "EXTREME" bios recovery check it here. When i flashed "broken" (read to much customized) bios, i RMAed mobo, before i found out this article, or i would try this method back then

[Alien Grey]

As fair as i know ExtendedBootBlock (that is missing in bios) is in case flash recovery (sometimes you can flash your mobo powering it up with USB key with FORMULA.ROM file on it, if main bios checksum is incorrect). So in case that everything works, it should never be needed.There is always a way to force flash certain bios on mobo there is AFUDOS ES (Engineering Sample), that allows you to flash any bios to any Asus mobo with AMI bios without ANY checks... recepie for disaster unless you can flash mobo over SPI interface. SPI interface allows you to flash mobo from other computer using LPT/USB interface, making LPT/SPI cable is also easy enough, even tho i didnt try it yet. But if someone is interested in "EXTREME" bios recovery check it here. When i flashed "broken" (read to much customized) bios, i RMAed mobo, before i found out this article, or i would try this method back then

I assume that this means that they don't need the EBB to test the BIOS because they can always flash it again without the need of the EBB in the BIOS.

If that is the case than I'm almost certain that the BIOS wasn't supposed to be given to me but the ASUS Tech Support did it without knowing that it wasn't complete and ready to be released. After all they promised me to send me the new BIOS as soon as it was ready and that's what they did without knowing that it wasn't complete yet.

[Alien Grey]

Is there a way we could compare this BIOS with the latest ASUS Rampage Extreme BIOS 1202 to see the differences so we could know that something did change in this revision 0002 rom?