X48 Rampage Formula Preview.

[Alien Grey]

Fixed my stability problem.


The cause of my troubles is the pencil mod. I gently wiped it off with a small paint brush and blew out my case.

Now it's stable running again at 4.05GHz and DDR 1199MHz with tRD 6 and tREF at 16120T with the same settings that I was using with BIOS 0902.



Prime95 custom blend amount of memory used 3200MB.






EVEREST Cache & Memory Benchmark.





Small gain than using a refresh period of 16383T with MemSet.


Also running fine in Ubuntu 64 bit so I can say that it's possible to use a refresh period of 16120T for 24/7.

[Trust13]

in my case it looks like i have to rise the CPU-Voltage with the new Bios for one nodge. from 1.281v to 1.287v in Bios for 4.05Ghz, with tREF 13000T. You are lucky to use 16120T, but with 13000T i have simular or a little higher troughput than you have.

[Alien Grey]

in my case it looks like i have to rise the CPU-Voltage with the new Bios for one nodge. from 1.281v to 1.287v in Bios for 4.05Ghz, with tREF 13000T. You are lucky to use 16120T, but with 13000T i have simular or a little higher troughput than you have.

Well Windows XP X64 isn't the best OS and I should already use Windows 7 but I'm afraid that a lot of older programs that I need ain't going to work anymore.

Once I've got a new graphics card than I'm going to make the switch to Windows 7.


So where is the BIOS with the Special 133 Mode?

I thought that ASUS was going to give us a BIOS to help us stabilize the board at high FSB because that is what we would like to see and that the Special 133 Mode would make that possible.

But I guess that the Retail Q9650 Overclocking Thread is a Gigabyte only thread.

[Alien Grey]

I checked my BIONC results and all packages that I finished yesterday are validated so I know now for sure that it's stable with a refresh period of 16120T in Ubuntu 64 bit.

I've got two packages with a compute error from a few days ago when I was still using the pencil mod but I guess that's normal if you try to run it at 4.05GHz with +/- 27 Watt full load instead of +/- 100 Watt.

I still don't know what exactly went wrong with the pencil mod because it has been working stable for quite some time and I didn't see any change in voltage idle or load with LinX if I checked it with CPU-Z but EVEREST showed me +/- 27 Watt full load with LinX. It didn't fail immediately but only after some time running and that's even more confusing.

[leo27]

It could be just that the pencil wore off a bit and it needed to be re-applied . At least you know that the tREF feature and bios 0001 works as expected.

[phillai]

Can anyone help me out please? I've recently bought the OCZ Limited Edition 100 GB SSD drive and I can't force this to work thru AHCI despite me getting this to work on AHCI before, before I reformatted my PC.

I am on 0902 bios and I can only get my OCZ Limited Edition 100 GB SSD drive to work thru IDE at the moment.

My PC refuses to boot up past the BIOS, if I enable AHCI.
It just hangs and gives me this message...

Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1

After looking on the OCZ forums, thinking that there may be a problem with my OCD LE drive, I've come to the conclusion that there is no fault with the drive and its something to do with my Asus Rampage Formula that's giving me these problems...

Anyone got any ideas to help me out?

[Per Hansson]

phillai: now I'm just guessing here but I'd imagine the Intel RAID BIOS houses the logic for the AHCI aswell
So what version is your Intel Storage ROM BIOS?
And also have you tried RAID mode aswell?

[phillai]

How do I tell what version my Intel Storage ROM BIOS is?

And yes, I tried in RAID and it doesn't work as well!

This worked before in AHCI so I'm really puzzled why I can't get this working...

[Per Hansson]

phillai: If you enable RAID mode you will see last in POST the option ROM loaded and it's version info displayed.
A while ago I modded the Asus Rampage Formula BIOS with JMicron Option ROM v1.07.04
And Intel Matrix Storage Manager Option ROM v8.7.1007
There are no other mods in this BIOS, only the option roms have been replaced...
Note that now there are more recent versions of these options roms available, so if you want you can search and find more updated modified BIOS versions...

http://hem.spray.se/hanzzzon/RAMPAGE...69-1.07.04.rar

[SoLoR]

OK here ill share my bioses public. Down are links for 2 bioses 0902 and 0001 (alpha). Both have Intel Option rom v9.6.0.1014, JMB Option rom v1.07.14 and Asus SLIC 2.1. Feel free to try them.

0902
0001

[Antineutrino]

OK here ill share my bioses public. Down are links for 2 bioses 0902 and 0001 (alpha). Both have Intel Option rom v9.6.0.1014, JMB Option rom v1.07.14 and Asus SLIC 2.1. Feel free to try them.

0902
0001

GREAT!!!
Thank You a lot SoLoR!!!!!

[phillai]

SoLoR, I tried your 0902 bios. Still the same result!

It's still hanging on Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1

[SoLoR]

SoLoR, I tried your 0902 bios. Still the same result!

It's still hanging on Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1

you said it worked on one point... maybe something simply got broken with your mobo... try some other port or something... Thing is, if it works on some point and then suddenly stops working it must be some kind of hardware failure.

[Alien Grey]

It won't work at least not without trouble. OCZ recommends to disable it in both Windows and the BIOS.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...r-new-OCZ-SSD.

AHCI is bull and causes more trouble than performance gain.

[p4spooky]

OK here ill share my bioses public. Down are links for 2 bioses 0902 and 0001 (alpha). Both have Intel Option rom v9.6.0.1014, JMB Option rom v1.07.14 and Asus SLIC 2.1. Feel free to try them.

0902
0001

I am not able to download these files. Can you please reupload or to a different host? Thanks

[phillai]

SoLoR and Alien Grey, thanks for your help and comments regarding the trouble I have enabling AHCI.

I'm sick or reformating my PC so I might stick with IDE for now, till my next mobo build...

Then again, I might try it once more this weekend!

[SoLoR]

I am not able to download these files. Can you please reupload or to a different host? Thanks

just direct download links get changed after a while... anyway click download your self

0902
0001

[SoLoR]

SoLoR and Alien Grey, thanks for your help and comments regarding the trouble I have enabling AHCI.

I'm sick or reformating my PC so I might stick with IDE for now, till my next mobo build...

Then again, I might try it once more this weekend!

one last thing you can try is set it to RAID mode (without using actualy RAID) and RAID option rom will take care of AHCI... it should work in theory

[Alien Grey]

@SoLoR

The easiest way to share your stuff is to use DropBox. You have 2 GB of space to use for free to share your stuff with friends that have a DropBox account or public if you put the stuff you want to share in the Public folder.

[Alien Grey]

one last thing you can try is set it to RAID mode (without using actualy RAID) and RAID option rom will take care of AHCI... it should work in theory

In theory.

AHCI


AHCI is not official supported on OCZ SSDs and may under some circumstances affect performance,
specifically during windows installation. Enabling AHCI can result in higher performance in synthetic
benchmarks for SSDs and HDDs alike, but can cause hang-ups and intermittent freezes in SSDs since it allows multiple access requests to compete for a drive that is not made to address re-ordering of commands in the queue. We recommend AHCI is set to disabled in both Windows and in the BIOS.
Native Command Queuing greatly increases the performance of standard rotational drives but it has no bearing on SSDs.

[SoLoR]

Native Command Queuing greatly increases the performance of standard rotational drives but it has no bearing on SSDs.

ah... if this is true then there is no much point with bothering with AHCI, unless i guess you have non SSD drivers attached to controler as well.

[SoLoR]

Rampage Formula offical 1001 bios!

And moded version. Now brb reboot! didnt even try it my self

EDIT: eh pfuj... bios is dated 11th march so its month a half old and a month older then 0001... So i saw the date, it fecked my settings up, checked bios, saw tref option is missing and flashed 0001 back. Maybe someone else can find out if something regarding OCing is changed...

[kuebk]

Where did you find it?

[SoLoR]

Where did you find it?

on Asus FTP, its not added to downloads on support page yet, but should be in a day or two i guess...

[Alien Grey]

ASUS Rampage Formula BIOS 1001 Dated: 03/11/2010-13:26:57 - released April 29, 2010

Description (ASUS):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ 1001 ]
----------------------
Fixed USB keyboard F1~F12 key can't use in BIOS setup after press the cursor key a long time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



No Refresh Period, no Special 133 Mode, no updated Option ROMs and no BIOS birthday party.


Just an other don't use the clock skew, use MemSet, high voltage release in a row.


Now I'm sure that we won't see the Special 133 Mode soon in an other BIOS release and ASUS released this one because they don't want us to have a BIOS birthday party.



ASUS Rampage Formula BIOS 0001 FTW.



It's exactly the same as BIOS 0902 so don't expect better overclocking results but I'll give it a try in the weekend.