***Asus Rampage III Extreme Owners Thread***

[skuldarin]

How's prime running? Would be surprised if you are getting a few errors in LinX but can pass Prime without any. I only test with full memory with LinX, no point testing it with less as it's too weak and not diagnostic.

Why is your uncore so low? You can gain plenty of performance getting that up to where it should be

Lastly, when you quote voltages, what are your real load voltages as per CPU-Z (vcore) and everest (everything else)? BIOS voltages are not real voltages and are not what your processor is running at.

sorry fort he late reply. it was prime stable for about 3 and a half hours (woke up to a room that had gone to about 90 degrees from comp). as for my uncore, i didn't play around with it enough but it was 1 knotch above the lowest setting and was just to get it stable.

voltage wise, bios / evo set to 4.0625 but with 100% LLC it fluctuates upto about 4.125 at the most. i'm gonna load up 0003 to and tweak it abit more and try to get it even more stable. the biggest challenge will be getting it thermally stable through this summer >.<

[spoolindsm127]

Well, you just might need more voltage. How much are you feeding it with?
I use 1.475V on a daily basis, LinX 20 loops stable, but keeping temperature under control is a must.

Sorry for the super late reply

I fed it up to 1.41875v and kept getting BSODs early in LinX testing. I was suspecting heat to be the problem. It was .

The solution was a combination of BIOS 1207 and -2.7c Chicago night Spring weather

Needed 1.4v Vcore and 1.256v QPI.






Feels good to finally be part of the club

[skuldarin]

Feels good to finally be part of the club

grats! kinda funny how LinX let you pass 20+ rounds at that speed with PLL at the stock 1.8125v, mine freaks out if it's any higher than 1.7.

try uploading BIOS 0003 and see how you fair, you may have better temps


--------------------------

so i went and uploaded BIOS 0003... as stated above, my temps improved even though i had to feed a bit more voltage to the cpu. went from 88-89*c at full load average at 1.40625v to about 82-83*c average at full load with 1.41875v. still LinX testing for the moment but i'm at 4.509ghz again. once i get it to pass atleast 3 rounds with 8 gigs of mem i'll do some hours with Prime. i also swapped CPU OC power to T-power instead of X-power to help even the thermal levels which it does seem to help.

[CryptiK]

sorry fort he late reply. it was prime stable for about 3 and a half hours (woke up to a room that had gone to about 90 degrees from comp). as for my uncore, i didn't play around with it enough but it was 1 knotch above the lowest setting and was just to get it stable.

voltage wise, bios / evo set to 4.0625 but with 100% LLC it fluctuates upto about 4.125 at the most. i'm gonna load up 0003 to and tweak it abit more and try to get it even more stable. the biggest challenge will be getting it thermally stable through this summer >.<

Wow 4v, insane One of the strong points of 32nm Gulfies is that their Vtt requirements are lower than Bloomfields (generally speaking here) and you should be able to get it up over 3400MHz pretty easily. Uncore is IMC as well as L3 cache, so it can have a large impact on some tasks.

Sorry for the super late reply

I fed it up to 1.41875v and kept getting BSODs early in LinX testing. I was suspecting heat to be the problem. It was .

The solution was a combination of BIOS 1207 and -2.7c Chicago night Spring weather

Needed 1.4v Vcore and 1.256v QPI.

http://img51.imageshack.us/i/45ghzlinx.png
http://img864.imageshack.us/i/45ghzlinx2.png


Feels good to finally be part of the club

Nice job on 4.5GHz What is even more awesome to me, is that ram speed/timings! DDR3-1716 MHz 6-6-6-18, nice.

[zoson]

every chip is different. my 980 is 4.5ghz stable at 1.40625 vCore. his is a 970, not much different in comparison other than it having 4 cores instead of 6.

not trying to call anything out and be the rude guy, but even with the difficulties i've had, i can safely say that's not entirely true.

assuming your timings are the same as your sig there, try running on 2N instead. i've noticed on mine it doesn't like using 1N with 12gigs (granted you have 3 sticks of 4gb and i'm running 6 sticks of 2gb). when i took out 3 of mine, i was able to play with base clocks with alot more forgiving headroom than with all 6 sticks. the amount of memory is just too much of a load to go too outlandish with how high of a speed you go with. hell, my system throws a fit with any mem speeds over 1866. i start hitting 1900's and sticks start droping like flys even with RTL's heavily loosened and CL timings put as far as 12-12-12-30-100. though i am running on outdated bios again so things may change... but 12gb is a completely different playing field for sure.

970's are exactly the same as 980 except it's locked to 25 multiplier instead of unlocked. They're both 32nm 6c/12t parts.

I've tried running 2T along with slacking my timings a lot to try and get above 200bclk with linx stability, but no dice. It seems like a hard wall at 200 for me. I can get up to 204 and do maybe 5 loops, but it always seems to error out after. Temps also seem to get out of control. they spike almost 10c.

[CryptiK]

Skuldarin - if you are dropping sticks at certain speeds, use BIOS 0003 and set your tRL values, this may help you.

[Toritechie]

I've had my 980x for a week or so now, and have spent quite a fair amount of time getting it stable at various clocks, and error free in linx.

Tonight, I hit 4.4Ghz (23 x 192), QPI 3447, Uncore 3830, memory 2:10 @ 1914.

However, I had to do this with about 1.46vcore. QPI didn't have much bearing on things, only upping the vcore gave me error free results with linx passes. If the vcore was around 1.4 - 1.44 it would always error out on the first or 2nd pass, yet the system never bluescreened.

I have had the system running 4.5Ghz - but this is with Linx errors, and also the 1.5x memory divider.

My CPU is watercooled, and temps with my current voltage did get into the mid 80's, which is more than I would like to see regularly. I need to find a way to bring down the vcore yet still maintain a decent overclock. Perhaps I just got a 980x that needs voltage to pull the numbers.

I've tried many combinations of Uncore and memory speeds, bclk and multiliers, yet it always comes down to the vcore setting to attain stability. I guess this is a given, but I see many of you guys hitting similar clocks with lower vcore.

I'm using G-skill Tridents, perhaps there is better memory out there that would allow me to hold a higher overclock with less vcore. Open to suggestions!

[zoson]

I've had my 980x for a week or so now, and have spent quite a fair amount of time getting it stable at various clocks, and error free in linx.

Tonight, I hit 4.4Ghz (23 x 192), QPI 3447, Uncore 3830, memory 2:10 @ 1914.

However, I had to do this with about 1.46vcore. QPI didn't have much bearing on things, only upping the vcore gave me error free results with linx passes. If the vcore was around 1.4 - 1.44 it would always error out on the first or 2nd pass, yet the system never bluescreened.

I have had the system running 4.5Ghz - but this is with Linx errors, and also the 1.5x memory divider.

My CPU is watercooled, and temps with my current voltage did get into the mid 80's, which is more than I would like to see regularly. I need to find a way to bring down the vcore yet still maintain a decent overclock. Perhaps I just got a 980x that needs voltage to pull the numbers.

I've tried many combinations of Uncore and memory speeds, bclk and multiliers, yet it always comes down to the vcore setting to attain stability. I guess this is a given, but I see many of you guys hitting similar clocks with lower vcore.

I'm using G-skill Tridents, perhaps there is better memory out there that would allow me to hold a higher overclock with less vcore. Open to suggestions!

Tuning CPU PLL(which also tunes QPI PLL behind the scenes) is the only thing I've found that has allowed me to lower vCore while maintaining my overclock. Sweet spots I've seen always seem to be on whole or half step: eg:
1.2
1.25
1.3
1.35
1.45
1.55
1.6

Those are the values I've seen people working with. Personally, 1.55 -> 1.2 -> 1.25 are the best, in that order.

[donmarkoni]

@Toritechie

What is your VTT? UnCore at 3830MHz might be your problem, if VTT is set too low.
I highly doubt that your CPU is that bad. Might be that you are compensating lack of VTT with high vCore.

[Toritechie]

@Toritechie

What is your VTT? UnCore at 3830MHz might be your problem, if VTT is set too low.
I highly doubt that your CPU is that bad. Might be that you are compensating lack of VTT with high vCore.

Hey don,

My VTT is 1.41 at the moment, i'll try increasing it and dropping my Vcore later on ... will let u know

[tomovk]

Hi guys!

I just got a 990x last week and trying hard to find a 24/7 OC for it.
What do you think is the max vcore for 24/7, if i only use it for gaming? Im watercooled with the Swiftech h20-320 kit, and NB waterblock also from swiftech. Currently im stuck at 4.5ghz, 1.39 vcore in bios, in cpu-z it reads 1.376 in idle and from 1.343 to 1.349 in load under prime95, cpu pll at 1.31v, all that with LLC at 50%. I have the rampage III extreme board, of course. I would like to use it in the primary rig for at least 3 years, so I would like to find a sweetspot between safe vcore and performance, something that can give it a run for the money but not devastate it (i know will probably sound stupid to you guys, sorry). Batch nuber of cpu is 3045A709 . Im a little dissapointed with this CPU, i thought according to info on the web prior to the release, I could have a higher 24/7.

Thanks guys, please give me some advice!

[zoson]

Since I can't seem to increase my core clock or bclk at all past 200, I decided to tune Uncore freq.
4.2GHz @ 82.9GFlops:

x18 up from x15! I had to increase vQPI from 1.3375 to 1.3500.
It creates a nice look with QPI and Uncore synchronized.

I think I might not have enough cooling to go faster, since I top out at 84C with Linx at 4.2GHz. Although, I feel like I have a lot more performance at 4.2 than many have at 4.5! I see many 4.5GHz club members with less GFlops.
Right now I have 3x 120mm rads. Two GTX 120's and one GTS 120. One GTX has push/pull. One GTX can only have push because of its location. The GTS only has pull on it now, but I was thinking I should add another fan for push/pull there. It will take some very careful alignment and I have to swap my barbs back to straight from the nice rotary 45's:

[spoolindsm127]

grats! kinda funny how LinX let you pass 20+ rounds at that speed with PLL at the stock 1.8125v, mine freaks out if it's any higher than 1.7.

try uploading BIOS 0003 and see how you fair, you may have better temps

Thanks mate .

Maybe it's because I'm still on Bloomfield I can pass with PLL at stock 1.81v? I think I can still pass with it lowered to around 1.6v but I haven't tried that yet. I'm just glad I got to 4.5 successfully

Right after the 4.5GHz pass I flashed to 0003. Haven't tested it yet but I will definitely give it a try. I hope it helps my temps as much as it did for you

Nice job on 4.5GHz What is even more awesome to me, is that ram speed/timings! DDR3-1716 MHz 6-6-6-18, nice.

Thanks! I was thinking that since 4.5GHz is kinda of a big feat I should loosen ram timings to 8-8-8-24. I saw some other users running up to 1720 at CL6 on the same kit I have so I just went for it. It was a combination of strong memory, cpu and imc, and mobo.

I love memory overclocking so I'm very tempted to tighten TRFC and make some other tweaks. But for now I want this feeling to last lol

[skuldarin]

Wow 4v, insane

haha i know i mistyped there yes, 4v, i use compressed super LN2 and turned my 980 into a super conductor and power it with a nuclear reactor.

Skuldarin - if you are dropping sticks at certain speeds, use BIOS 0003 and set your tRL values, this may help you.

i already loaded 0003 actually. at the moment i've only been trying to get 4.5 stable again with it, i haven't done much mem tweaking yet. but so far i lowered my rTL's to 60, 61 and 62 down from 58, 58 and 60 (stock) but that's about it.

[skuldarin]

well i'm sure my system just doesn't like going over 1866 on mem. i think it's specifically mem related as my dominators are of those non hyper chips (can't remember off the top of my head, they are the one's that don't like going with even numbers on the cl's, it's gotta be 8-9-8 or 7-9-7 and so on.) no big deal really, not much of a different between 1866 and 2000. i've increased rTL's as far at 74, 75 and 76 with +5 down the board and still can't get through full windows boot without crashing so... ohwell.

i'm thinking of trying 1800 and going for 6-8-6-24-72 2T though or 8-9-8-24-72 1T... either way i'ma go for the faster latency / response.

[CryptiK]

Hey don,

My VTT is 1.41 at the moment, i'll try increasing it and dropping my Vcore later on ... will let u know

Do try playing with PLL too. For an easier point of comparison and so we can get an idea of scaling, what does you CPU need for 4GHz LinX/Prime small FFT etc and 4.2 or 4.3GHz LinX/Prime small FFT?

Hi guys!

I just got a 990x last week and trying hard to find a 24/7 OC for it.
What do you think is the max vcore for 24/7, if i only use it for gaming? Im watercooled with the Swiftech h20-320 kit, and NB waterblock also from swiftech. Currently im stuck at 4.5ghz, 1.39 vcore in bios, in cpu-z it reads 1.376 in idle and from 1.343 to 1.349 in load under prime95, cpu pll at 1.31v, all that with LLC at 50%. I have the rampage III extreme board, of course. I would like to use it in the primary rig for at least 3 years, so I would like to find a sweetspot between safe vcore and performance, something that can give it a run for the money but not devastate it (i know will probably sound stupid to you guys, sorry). Batch nuber of cpu is 3045A709 . Im a little dissapointed with this CPU, i thought according to info on the web prior to the release, I could have a higher 24/7.

Thanks guys, please give me some advice!

This is like asking how long is a piece of string. No one's going to be able to tell you with any semblance of accuracy how much these things can take 24/7 for the arbitrary time period of 3 years without degradation.

Around 1.36v would be my personal limit, but I'm conservative with 24/7 PC's. When I bench I do it on bench only gear and on DICE and LN2 so my work/gaming PC has to be stable and I go for a balance between performance, heat production and reliability. I'm running my 990X daily at 4GHz @ 1.184v / 3600MHz uncore @ 1.244v / DDR3-1600 6-6-6-18 @ 1.55v because with that configuration I'm pulling ~78-79GFLOPS in LinX and ~17GB/s bandwidth and all at low voltages. FPS are still great with my card in the games I play and encoding/rendering/batch photo conversion is faster than my bloomfield was at 4.33GHz.

Since I can't seem to increase my core clock or bclk at all past 200, I decided to tune Uncore freq.
4.2GHz @ 82.9GFlops:

x18 up from x15! I had to increase vQPI from 1.3375 to 1.3500.
It creates a nice look with QPI and Uncore synchronized.

I think I might not have enough cooling to go faster, since I top out at 84C with Linx at 4.2GHz. Although, I feel like I have a lot more performance at 4.2 than many have at 4.5! I see many 4.5GHz club members with less GFlops.
Right now I have 3x 120mm rads. Two GTX 120's and one GTS 120. One GTX has push/pull. One GTX can only have push because of its location. The GTS only has pull on it now, but I was thinking I should add another fan for push/pull there. It will take some very careful alignment and I have to swap my barbs back to straight from the nice rotary 45's:
http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r...t=2e6b80b7.jpg
http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...h_2e6b80b7.jpg
http://s144.photobucket.com/albums/r...t=85256708.jpg
http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...h_85256708.jpg

Nice, I run ~3600MHz too. I see a lot of GT users leave this at <3000MHz and I wondered why since it has a large impact on performance. It's the speed of the L3 cache as well as IMC and so is critical in tuning overall performance.

Thanks! I was thinking that since 4.5GHz is kinda of a big feat I should loosen ram timings to 8-8-8-24. I saw some other users running up to 1720 at CL6 on the same kit I have so I just went for it. It was a combination of strong memory, cpu and imc, and mobo.

I love memory overclocking so I'm very tempted to tighten TRFC and make some other tweaks. But for now I want this feeling to last lol

Yeah 4.5GHz was awesome to hit for the first time. I also rather enjoy ram overclocking and getting it tuned for good bandwidth and low latency can have a great impact on performance and how the PC feels to use. These kits will do 1700-1720 CL6 on 1.65v with tRFC ~60 (maybe have to use 72 depending on your kit) and tight subs, so have a go when you get the chance. I will play with mine a bit now I have a different CPU and board to learn.

haha i know i mistyped there yes, 4v, i use compressed super LN2 and turned my 980 into a super conductor and power it with a nuclear reactor.



i already loaded 0003 actually. at the moment i've only been trying to get 4.5 stable again with it, i haven't done much mem tweaking yet. but so far i lowered my rTL's to 60, 61 and 62 down from 58, 58 and 60 (stock) but that's about it.

Ah they're your RTL's, tRL is different In BIOS 0003 just below the RTL values are the tRL values.

well i'm sure my system just doesn't like going over 1866 on mem. i think it's specifically mem related as my dominators are of those non hyper chips (can't remember off the top of my head, they are the one's that don't like going with even numbers on the cl's, it's gotta be 8-9-8 or 7-9-7 and so on.) no big deal really, not much of a different between 1866 and 2000. i've increased rTL's as far at 74, 75 and 76 with +5 down the board and still can't get through full windows boot without crashing so... ohwell.

i'm thinking of trying 1800 and going for 6-8-6-24-72 2T though or 8-9-8-24-72 1T... either way i'ma go for the faster latency / response.

Elpida BBSE IC's. I have a GSkill kit with them, they are still very good. Some Hyper clocks better with staggered timings too.

RTL = round trip latency

tRL = read latency

Raju noted that this board can set tRL too tight sometimes, which is probably why we now have BIOS 0003 with that setting so we can offset it. tRL has a large bearing on dropping sticks when overclocking.

[skuldarin]

Ah they're your RTL's, tRL is different In BIOS 0003 just below the RTL values are the tRL values.

Elpida BBSE IC's. I have a GSkill kit with them, they are still very good. Some Hyper clocks better with staggered timings too.

RTL = round trip latency

tRL = read latency

Raju noted that this board can set tRL too tight sometimes, which is probably why we now have BIOS 0003 with that setting so we can offset it. tRL has a large bearing on dropping sticks when overclocking.

the slightly lower speed vs low latency is really showing it's worth for sure though. just at 512mb (light stability testing) on LinX, i went from about 72-74gFlops to 80-82gFlops going from 1866 @ 7-9-7-24-72 2T to 1734 @ 7-9-7-24-72 1T. i still want to get it to 1800 but it's helping alot.

yeah see i've been adjusting rtl's and i'm at 68, 69, 70 with +3 on all 3 channels. i'll lower some of the read times aswell, i think last i saw they were something like 5-15-10 or something like that.

[CryptiK]

At DDR3-1734 you should be able to get RTL's down around 59-61-63, at DDR3-1600 I'm running them 57-59-61 and could probably tighten them further.

An tRL offset of +1 or +2 should do you fine to start with.

[Toritechie]

the slightly lower speed vs low latency is really showing it's worth for sure though. just at 512mb (light stability testing) on LinX, i went from about 72-74gFlops to 80-82gFlops going from 1866 @ 7-9-7-24-72 2T to 1734 @ 7-9-7-24-72 1T. i still want to get it to 1800 but it's helping alot.

yeah see i've been adjusting rtl's and i'm at 68, 69, 70 with +3 on all 3 channels. i'll lower some of the read times aswell, i think last i saw they were something like 5-15-10 or something like that.

Sounds really good; mind if I ask what multi and uncore you're using? I've just hit 4.5Ghz stable; but an inordinate amount of voltage was required and my Gflops are less than some of my previous runs, since I am forced to use 2t or higher for my memory.

[skuldarin]

At DDR3-1734 you should be able to get RTL's down around 59-61-63, at DDR3-1600 I'm running them 57-59-61 and could probably tighten them further.

An tRL offset of +1 or +2 should do you fine to start with.

at the moment i'm testing 1866 on 1T timings so i have mine at 66, 67, 68 with +4 and still progressively tightening them each time i'm able to boot to windows successfuly.

EDIT / UPDATE: testing 1866 @ 7-9-7-24-72 1T RTL 60-61-62 tRL +3

[skuldarin]

Sounds really good; mind if I ask what multi and uncore you're using? I've just hit 4.5Ghz stable; but an inordinate amount of voltage was required and my Gflops are less than some of my previous runs, since I am forced to use 2t or higher for my memory.

i've been keeping my uncore at around 3200-3300 range for 1800-1866. the main thing i've found, lower base clock and higher multi helps. the higher the base clock, the higher the amperage pull on the cpu from what i see through ROG (though ROG isn't the best to use, it does give a good idea of things).

also, i've notice a bit more usefulness of my PLL being around 1.25 than the 1.629 i had it at before.

i've tested 115x39, 133x34 (my current), 155x29 and 187x24. all of which kept at about 3200-3300 uncore and kept as close as possible to 6.4gbits for QPI. also know that every one of these wwill show 4.480-4.5 in bios but will be AT LEAST 4.5 to 4.55 after boot up due to small variation in your ration when the bootup takes control of things.

QPI of about 1.35 to 1.37v seems peachy, vcore around 1.4125-1.425 so far.

EDIT / UPDATE: testing 1866 @ 7-9-7-24-72 1T RTL 57-59-61 rTL +2 @ 1.749v. all 12 gigs registering, LinX running full board. Uncore 3200 (3204), QPI @ 6.4gbit w/ 1.3625v, 133x34 @ 4.539ghz w/ 1.41875 vcore. currently with 1.4v PLL.

[spoolindsm127]

Yeah 4.5GHz was awesome to hit for the first time. I also rather enjoy ram overclocking and getting it tuned for good bandwidth and low latency can have a great impact on performance and how the PC feels to use. These kits will do 1700-1720 CL6 on 1.65v with tRFC ~60 (maybe have to use 72 depending on your kit) and tight subs, so have a go when you get the chance. I will play with mine a bit now I have a different CPU and board to learn.

I think I got pretty luck with my kit since it has no problem doing 2005MHz at 7-7-6-20-1T tRFC 60 with 1.65v. I'm thinking it shouldn't be a problem at a lower frequency. I'm going to work on memory timings next and possibly increasing the Uncore a bit.

And I just wanted to throw my $0.02 in about RTL values. I've been using Raja's rtl calc with 'Min Sep Delay ps' value set to 0.58 instead of the original 0.67. It seems my board runs tighter RTLs than what the original value of 0.67 calculates. At least for my setup it seems the best or most stable settings for RTLs are in a +2 and +1 pattern in relation to Ch.A. So for ex. my last run at 1716MHz RTLs were set at 48,50,51. Not the +2 +2 pattern I see people using. Only sometimes when the rtl calc calculates an RTL like 47.9, the board seems to want to still run RTL 47 on Ch.A and not 48. In this case a +3 +2 pattern for Ch. B+C works well, like 47,50,52

From my experience, RTLs have a BIG part in overclocking and making a successful LinX run. RTLs being set too tight can also cause dropped mem channels.

[CryptiK]

Awesome kit indeed, DDR3-2005 7-7-6-20 1T @ 1.65v

[skuldarin]

i actually had to do it +1 per channel from one another. when i do 2, IE 58-60-62, i BSOD if i test more than 2gb of mem in any burn test. but if i put to +1, IE 58-59-60, it's perfectly fine and actually stops on error instead of straight up crashing.

[spoolindsm127]

Awesome kit indeed, DDR3-2005 7-7-6-20 1T @ 1.65v

Thanks chief . Believe it or not I made 100 passes in LinX using 5120MB memory at those timings

i actually had to do it +1 per channel from one another. when i do 2, IE 58-60-62, i BSOD if i test more than 2gb of mem in any burn test. but if i put to +1, IE 58-59-60, it's perfectly fine and actually stops on error instead of straight up crashing.

Yea it can either crash from RTL being set too tight, or too loose also. Did you give +2/+1 ie. 58, 60, 61 a try?