**Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 OC-Tips-Bios-Discussion Thread**

[bumbeldi]

Hi everyone, this is my first post and i hope that some one can help my on my problem.
I've got some trouble with my bios configs (F6), every time when I'm playing BF Bad company 2 i've got random BSOD, but on running Prime95 it stay stable.
My rig config is:
I7 930 @ 4200 watercooled
Gigabyte UD7
Ripjaws PC3-1280 C8
HD 5870 watercooled

And bios config at the moment is:

Advanced CPU Features:
CPU Clock Ratio ................................ [21]
Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech ...................... [disable]
CPU Cores Enabled .............................. [All]
CPU Multi Threading .............................[disable]
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) ........................ [disable]
C3/C6/C7 State Support ......................... [disable]
CPU Thermal Monitor ............................ [enable]
CPU EIST Function .............................. [disable]
Virtualization Technology ...................... [disable]
Bi-Directional PROCHOT ......................... [enable]

Uncore & QPI Features:
QPI Link Speed ..............................[7.20]
Uncore Frequency ............................[3.400]
Isonchronous Frequency ......................[enable]

Standard Clock Control:
Base Clock (BCLK) Control .......................... [enable]
BCLK Frequency (MHz) ................................[200]
PCI Express Frequency (MHz) ........................ [100]
C.I.A.2........................................... .. [disable]

Advanced Clock Control:
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[700]
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [700]
CPU Clock Skew ............................. [0]
IOH Clock Skew ............................. [0]

Advanced DRAM Features:
Performance Enhance ...................... [Turbo]
Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) ........... [disable] 
System Memory Multiplier (SPD) ........... [8.0]
DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD) ............. [quick]

Channel A + B + C

Channel A Timing Settings:
##Channel A Standard Timing Control##
CAS Latency Time ......................[8]
tRCD ..................................[8]
tRP ...................................[8]
tRAS ..................................[24]
CR.....................................[1]
B2B.....................................[]


Advanced Voltage Control:
CPU Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping
Load Line Calibration ................. [Level 2]
CPU Vcore ..............................[1.28125] 
QPI/VTT Voltage 1.150v .................[1.315]
CPU PLL 1.800v .........................[1.84] 
PCIE 1.500v ...........................[1.500]
QPI PLL 1.100v ........................[1.200]
IOH Core 1.100v .......................[1.800]
ICH I/O 1.500v ........................[1.600]
ICH Core 1.1v .........................[1.400]

DRAM
DRAM Voltage 1.500v .............. [1.64] 
DRAM Termination 0.750v.......... [AUTO]
Ch-A Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-B Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-C Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-A Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-B Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-C Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]

I already try many different voltages configs but unfortunately the problem stays, BSOD
If some one have any idea what cant by the problem i will appreciate.

[ABalthazor]

980's oc very well due to 32nm but also (in the long run) could be a bit more sensitive to high temps and v's for the
same reason....Intel max v's are vcore and vtt up to 1.4v and cpu pll up to 2v - so you have lots of head room here - provided your cooling can
handle it.
also -
CPU Clock Drive-----------------------------------------[700mV] make 900mv
PCI Express Clock Drive----------------------------[700mV] make 900 mv

What are these 900 mv values based on? I'm just curious. Personal testing? Intel references?

I put these into my system (installed two weeks ago, still trying to find optimal values at stock to make it stable) and the 900 mv values do
appear to increase stability in Prime95.

I'm trying to get my 12GB Kingston 2000 MHz RAM stable at stock BCLK (1866 MHz, effectively, using stock 133 BCLK; 9-9-9-27 timings) and I'm
trying to figure out where the QPI voltage should be. It appears that 1.4v might be a tad too low; I'm occasionally getting errors in the 'blend'
test of Prime95. Although once I put the 900 mv values in the above two spots in the BIOS I haven't encountered another Prime95 error using
1.4v QPI.

What QPI are other users having success with the 980-x, 12GB RAM, and 1600MHz+ RAM speeds?

[Anvil]

I dropped back to f4 for this reason

I'm staying with F7p for now, I noticed the need for more VCore but it's not that bad.
I've been using the F7j bios for a while (modded with the Intel 9.6 raid option rom) but storage benchmarks results appear to be better using the original 8.9 ROM for some reason. (still using the RST 9.6 drivers though)

On F7m the vdroop was the same for LLC=1 and LLC=standard. I guess it was a mistake and they have fixed in it now.
F7p seams to be using Intel's recommendations for LLC=standard, which always had a big vdroop on UD7.
So, if you are using LLC=standard, you have to increase the BIOS-set and it will result in higher idle vCore on F7p.
I haven't tested the stability throughly yet, just had some quick tests, and it seams to be stable with the same load vCore on my setup.

I've got a huge vdroop on my UD7 as well (using standard LLC), not so sure about the new layout though, looks like my P55-UD6 board

Thanks for a lot of useful posts Sam

[stasio]

Latest beta BIOS:

GA-X58A-UD7 - F7r
-15.June 10

[SteveRo]

[QUOTE=ABalthazor;4435761]What are these 900 mv values based on? QUOTE]


Good morning,
For me, running these at 900mv has provided more stable cpu oc's and has also enabled significant overclock of pcie speeds.
Using an Areca 1231ml4g h/w raid controller, I have been able to get pcie 119 (stock is 100) pcmv stable - resulting in some very nice pcmv scores -

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcmv=308078

[klataa]

Latest beta BIOS:

GA-X58A-UD7 - F7r
-15.June 10

Any changes?

[ABalthazor]

I'm trying to get my 12GB Kingston 2000 MHz RAM stable at stock BCLK (1866 MHz, effectively, using stock 133 BCLK; 9-9-9-27 timings) and I'm
trying to figure out where the QPI voltage should be. It appears that 1.4v might be a tad too low; I'm occasionally getting errors in the 'blend'
test of Prime95. Although once I put the 900 mv values in the above two spots in the BIOS I haven't encountered another Prime95 error using
1.4v QPI.

What QPI are other users having success with the 980-x, 12GB RAM, and 1600MHz+ RAM speeds?

Unfortunately I'm still getting Prime95 errors when using 12GB RAM @ 1866 MHz and 1.4v QPI. I'm trying 1.42v. I'm leery of how much QPI voltage I'm adding and am wondering if I should just give up on 12GB RAM @ 1866 and just drop it down to 1600.

Thoughts, anyone? Your feedback is appreciated.

[Sam_oslo]

Unfortunately I'm still getting Prime95 errors when using 12GB RAM @ 1866 MHz and 1.4v QPI. I'm trying 1.42v. I'm leery of how much QPI voltage I'm adding and am wondering if I should just give up on 12GB RAM @ 1866 and just drop it down to 1600.

Thoughts, anyone? Your feedback is appreciated.

The RAM-speed doesn't have to be the biggest problem, the high Uncore needs high VVT. You could use x10 RAM with x16 Uncore on 980x, if you want high RAM speeds. Or you could use 1600MHz RAM with tight timings too, you won't notice any difference for 24/7 use.
But you should decrease your VVT for 24/7, we don't know the long term degradation effect of hight VVT on 32nm yet.

[ABalthazor]

The RAM-speed doesn't have to be the biggest problem, the high Uncore needs high VVT. You could use x10 RAM with x16 Uncore on 980x, if you want high RAM speeds. Or you could use 1600MHz RAM with tight timings too, you won't notice any difference for 24/7 use.
But you should decrease your VVT for 24/7, we don't know the long term degradation effect of hight VVT on 32nm yet.

Thanks, my uncore default was 21x w/ a 14 RAM multiplier, I may just drop to 1600 MHz and effectively decrease the uncore while I'm at it. Or play around with the best setup that allows me to keep VTT to < 1.4

[SteveRo]

@ABalth - yep for 24/7 I would stay at or under vtt of 1.4v with the 980 (intel max) - at least until more folks report in using higher for longer.
Remember when i7 1st came out - intel told us all that the sky would fall on us if we used higher than 1.6v memv and running over that turned out to be no big deal (at least so far).

[ABalthazor]

@ABalth - yep for 24/7 I would stay at or under vtt of 1.4v with the 980 (intel max) - at least until more folks report in using higher for longer.
Remember when i7 1st came out - intel told us all that the sky would fall on us if we used higher than 1.6v memv and running over that turned out to be no big deal (at least so far).

This seems to be the consensus, and these processors are just too expensive to risk.

I dropped my 12GB Kingston RAM down to 1600 MHz (stock BCLK currently, 12 RAM multiplier, 20x uncore / 2666 set by Auto), and I'm testing it with 1.3v VTT.

Interestingly, when I manually set the RAM to a lower multiplier (12 vs. 14) the timings dropped by themselves when using an XMP profile for the timings. They're now set to 8-8-8-24 vs. 9-9-9-27. I can't find 8-8-8-24 in any of the RAM SPD settings, so I guess that is coming from the motherboard? Weird.

[ABalthazor]

This 980x and UD7 are new installations; I re-used my 5970s and RAM from an EVGA board. I'm still testing stock settings to establish baselines.

When comparing Company of Heroes benchmarks, my current 980x/UD7 rig was getting really low minimum frame rates - around 4 FPS - compared to my previous setup, where my min FPS ranged from 50-90.

Reducing the memory speed, the uncore, and the VTT voltage resulted in an increase in my min FPS in this benchmark up to the expected range - in this case, 67 FPS. So I'd say I was definitely running with some instability trying to get 12GB RAM to run that fast with the 980x, and that instability contributed to the exceptionally low min. FPS results.

[ABalthazor]

In reviewing settings in EasyTune6, I'm seeing the IOH Core voltage as set to 1.14V (with a 'power on' voltage of 1.2v.)

Where is this 1.14v coming from? I have it set to Auto in BIOS, and in BIOS it states that the 'normal' setting as being 1.1v.

Does 'Auto' change the IOH based on the number of or type of PCIE devices or something?

Just wondering what other users are experiencing. I'm still at stock, establishing my stable baseline.

[Shiranui Gen-An]

Anyone have issues pushing Elpida Hyper-based kits to DDR3-2100+ on this board with higher BCLK like 210? I'm trying to figure out if it's my CPU or the mobo. I've tried VTT up to 1.65v without a lot of success. Does CPU skew help any?

[greensmith]

I had Exactly the same issue you had , 9 days of Double boot from cold but run fine on over-clock settings when i rebooted , prime,gpu-z ect all fine even temps were fine. i pulled HDD's,swapped mem, updated Beta bios's ect absolute nightmare ..

it was just that Double boot reset and MIT defaulting from overnight , day to day Mb run fine.

i swapped the UD7 , since then no issues. the fault was that Random you would know it was the Board , no error codes on led nothing , only thing on this Ud7 is the led Volt lights on default were off , on the old Ud7 the DRR were at max load.. imop it was some sort of volt regulator issue .. i no one thing i aged after that problem , and i have had a few hardware issues over then years, but this has tobe top of the list or very near.

also your the First i have seen posted, with Exact same issue i had and were talking google search ect ..

good to see you sorted issue though ,and just wanted you to no it was a Hardware issue and not your overclock

I'm getting this problem as well, Adding an extra 2minutes to my boot time is a bit annoying.

It seems that all the X58 boards are troublesome. I had two ASUS x58 boards and returned them both.

Now this is happening with my latest (the UD7) Did you find out if it was anything specific on the motherboard that caused the issue? maybe loose connections or CPU seating?

I don't understand how it could be - if it boots fine from cold with default settings, it has to be something to do with the BIOS, right?

Thanks,
Tom

[Fritz_the_germ]

But you should decrease your VVT for 24/7, we don't know the long term degradation effect of hight VVT on 32nm yet.

So do you know the long term degradation effect of hight VTT on 45nm already?
I am running 1,38v VTT (1,64VDimm) for a 24/7 use.

[Sam_oslo]

So do you know the long term degradation effect of hight VTT on 45nm already?
I am running 1,38v VTT (1,64VDimm) for a 24/7 use.

That's OK for 45nm.

[boldenc]

guys today I updated my bios from F7p to F7r, I noticed the update went fast. I used Q-Flash, it showed erasing and updating till the half bar and the other half bar went very fast in a sec then verifying and completed. The PC boots fine and my old settings working fine, just curious about this thing.

[Bodar]

Have you guys tried the UD9 yet! It's so awesome! 4-way watercooled cards at 1.14v

[Fritz_the_germ]

That's OK for 45nm.

Thank you.
But how high can I set the VTT/VDimm without leaving a safe level?

[klataa]

Hi everyone, this is my first post and i hope that some one can help my on my problem.
I've got some trouble with my bios configs (F6), every time when I'm playing BF Bad company 2 i've got random BSOD, but on running Prime95 it stay stable.
My rig config is:
I7 930 @ 4200 watercooled
Gigabyte UD7
Ripjaws PC3-1280 C8
HD 5870 watercooled

And bios config at the moment is:

Advanced CPU Features:
CPU Clock Ratio ................................ [21]
Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech ...................... [disable]
CPU Cores Enabled .............................. [All]
CPU Multi Threading .............................[disable]
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) ........................ [disable]
C3/C6/C7 State Support ......................... [disable]
CPU Thermal Monitor ............................ [enable]
CPU EIST Function .............................. [disable]
Virtualization Technology ...................... [disable]
Bi-Directional PROCHOT ......................... [enable]

Uncore & QPI Features:
QPI Link Speed ..............................[7.20]
Uncore Frequency ............................[3.400]
Isonchronous Frequency ......................[enable]

Standard Clock Control:
Base Clock (BCLK) Control .......................... [enable]
BCLK Frequency (MHz) ................................[200]
PCI Express Frequency (MHz) ........................ [100]
C.I.A.2........................................... .. [disable]

Advanced Clock Control:
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[700]
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [700]
CPU Clock Skew ............................. [0]
IOH Clock Skew ............................. [0]

Advanced DRAM Features:
Performance Enhance ...................... [Turbo]
Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) ........... [disable] 
System Memory Multiplier (SPD) ........... [8.0]
DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD) ............. [quick]

Channel A + B + C

Channel A Timing Settings:
##Channel A Standard Timing Control##
CAS Latency Time ......................[8]
tRCD ..................................[8]
tRP ...................................[8]
tRAS ..................................[24]
CR.....................................[1]
B2B.....................................[]


Advanced Voltage Control:
CPU Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping
Load Line Calibration ................. [Level 2]
CPU Vcore ..............................[1.28125] 
QPI/VTT Voltage 1.150v .................[1.315]
CPU PLL 1.800v .........................[1.84] 
PCIE 1.500v ...........................[1.500]
QPI PLL 1.100v ........................[1.200]
IOH Core 1.100v .......................[1.800]
ICH I/O 1.500v ........................[1.600]
ICH Core 1.1v .........................[1.400]

DRAM
DRAM Voltage 1.500v .............. [1.64] 
DRAM Termination 0.750v.......... [AUTO]
Ch-A Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-B Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-C Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-A Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-B Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-C Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]

I already try many different voltages configs but unfortunately the problem stays, BSOD
If some one have any idea what cant by the problem i will appreciate.

O M G
IOH Core 1.100v .......................[1.800]
ICH I/O 1.500v ........................[1.600]
ICH Core 1.1v .........................[1.400]

ioh core 1.8?????
ich core 1.4???

Why so high?? make it default!!!or raise
IOH Core 1.100v .......................[1.140]
ICH I/O 1.500v ........................[1.500]
ICH Core 1.1v .........................[1.1400]
thats max u need with HT off( why OFF?)!

What drivers u r using for ur ati card? I had BSOD on 10.4, now i have random crashes to windows on 10.6.

[SteveRo]

+1 with Klataa - those v's seem too high to me also.
also -
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[700]
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [700]

I run these at 900 - seems to help cpu stability and pcie oc.
pcie oc doesn't seem to do that much for vc oc but it can really increase the speed of the storage subsystem - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcmv=333089

[klataa]

+1 with Klataa - those v's seem too high to me also.
also -
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[700]
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [700]

I run these at 900 - seems to help cpu stability and pcie oc.
pcie oc doesn't seem to do that much for vc oc but it can really increase the speed of the storage subsystem - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcmv=333089

U have 5870 crossfire? I have a lot problems with mine in Battlefield Bad Company 2 Some crashes to windows and textures problem U have any idea? I was trying 10.4 10.5 and 10.6 wich i have now and still problems. Meaby its gigabyte fault(i doubt it but how know) im on F6 cause its seems to be most stable for me.


p.s

i want to buy a PsyhX like 9800GT or somethnig. But after that my pcix will work like 16x16 + PsyhX or 16x8x8?

[SteveRo]

@klataa -
I have single 5870
Are your runing oc'd?, try adjusting one at a time to find the culprit: vc core clock, vc mem clock, fan on full blast?, vc voltage - likely it is one of these.
Could be outside the video sybsystem but check VS first.
If you have everthing at stock on the vc's and you still have the problem then you need to look elsewhere - cpu oc? mem oc? sufficient powersupply?

I feel for ya - these things are very hard to diagnose.

[klataa]

@klataa -
I have single 5870
Are your runing oc'd?, try adjusting one at a time to find the culprit: vc core clock, vc mem clock, fan on full blast?, vc voltage - likely it is one of these.
Could be outside the video sybsystem but check VS first.
If you have everthing at stock on the vc's and you still have the problem then you need to look elsewhere - cpu oc? mem oc? sufficient powersupply?

I feel for ya - these things are very hard to diagnose.

My cards are stock. Cpu is solid stable mems are stock 1600 cl7 qpi is 1.335. Before ati i had 295 wich was also solid stable. I gues that this is driver issue. My powersuply is 1100w its quite old but still i have lots of W ill wait for next 10.7 meaby they will help!

p.s nice score you've got with single 5870, how did u do that?