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

[p3gaz_001]

@ p3gaz - TBH 4.6 2D/3D (except 06/Vantage) shouldnt be hard to do if your CPU is capable of it. I got mine almost LinX stable at 4.5, then did some 3D including 06/Vantage at 4.5 and ran SPI32M at 4.66GHz on my 990X. On my old 920, benching at 4.6 was harder as I was at the boards BCLK limit without slow mode enabled, but with an EE you are not running out of BCLK. Some not great bloomfields were just a PITA to try those speeds on, I had a couple that would barely do 4.5 bench stable at 1.42v HT off.

Also why do you have PCI-E freq set to 101MHz, that was a trick from back in the day, don't need to increase it with X58 until you are running out of BCLK which at <170 you are not.

Your uncore is very high, your CPU IMC would have to be good to handle that and also DDR3-2000+ ram speeds. My opinion is you are pushing it all too hard and you don't know your gear, ie: what it needs to be stable with 4.5GHz core, what Vtt you need for 4000MHz uncore, and what Vtt you need for 4000MHz uncore plus DDR3-2000MHz. Without knowing where to start, you are going to have a seriously hard time doing everything at once.

Take it slow, do it bit by bit.

Test your CPU with LinX or Prime at say 4.2/4.3/4.4/4.5GHz with low uncore and ram speed. Plot how it scales - this will give you an idea of what it needs for higher speeds.

Test your uncore with lower CPU speed and low ram speed, and note what it requires for various speeds.

After that you will mostly 'know' your cpu.

Then test your ram, with low CPU speed to keep it out of the equation, and keep uncore at 2x ram speed. Keep your QPI data link rate in the safe zone too. Try different combinations of timings at various speeds, for example set 1.65 vdimm, and see how tight you can go on timings testing stability with HCI Memtest (my personal fav for mem testing as it shows up instability very fast) at various speeds, ie: DDR3-1600, DDR3-1800, DDR3-1900 and DDR3-2000 as a minimum.

This can all take a long time, overclocking requires patience and a methodical approach. There's no cookie cutter method when it comes to different mixtures or ram,boards and CPU's with different capabilities. You have to take it slow, start at sensible speeds and test all your components.

1. your RAS to CAS is lower than your CAS, not good. keep 9-9-9 for 2000mhz on mem or try 9-10-9.

2. your RTL and tRL timings are set to auto, you need to set them manually for 2000+mhz on mem otherwise the bios will set too tight of timings on them, other times too loose.

3. 1.6v on the CPU for 4.5ghz is STUPID HIGH. you should try 1.4-1.47v, 1.6 can fry your chip unless your on phased cooling or on LN2.

4. disable your CPU TM function.

5. you've no need to increase ICH PCIE voltage, put it back to auto.

6. your CPU PLL voltage is too high (though within intel's specs) it should be lower to near it's stock of 1.81v or lower.

7. your QPI data link is based on your CPU speed and mem speed. the higher your mem speed is, the higher the data link you'll want in order to have bandwidth to deal with it.

My Opinion: your CPU vcore voltage is way too high and you're also toying with mem speeds that are too high with timings that are too tight. start small and work your way up. also your qpi data link rate is too low for the speeds your going for. high cpu speed, high mem speed and high uncore speed requires higher data link.

ok .... got much work to do .... thanks guys.

and, this card is good for the pci_ex4 ye?