**Official** Asrock Z68 Gen3 Extreme7 & Extreme4 thread

[Unoid]

Hardocp sure loved the Z68 X4 G3

[vulture_g7]

@zoomee

I can't thank you enough! Works rock solid @ 5.14! I do have quite high temps at the hardest prime95 cpu test (core 3 is steadily between 89-90 celsius) , but as I'm on air and as I won't be keeping that speed for 24/7, I'm greatly happy with it! I have to tell you, core load to 200 made all the difference, I wouldn't have even noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it! Again thx man!

CPU Ratio: 50
PLL Overvoltage: Enabled
Min and Max Turbo - 250
Core Load: 200
Turbo Volts + 0.050
Spread Spectrum: Disabled

Offset Volts: +0.065
LLC: Level 2
Rest Auto

oh and in CPU settings - disable all the power state stuff except C1E.

This is sorta wierd and I don't trust this board - As I had it running 12hours of prime95 stable on them same settings above (actually with only min and max Turbo of 200 each) when I first got it - no problem. ran Prime95 overnight last night - checked it at 4hrs - working fine. Checked it this morning and just a black screen! (no BSOD)

Its why i'm insisting on a more reliable BIOS.

[tipes]

@zoomee

I can't thank you enough! Works rock solid @ 5.14! I do have quite high temps at the hardest prime95 cpu test (core 3 is steadily between 89-90 celsius) , but as I'm on air and as I won't be keeping that speed for 24/7, I'm greatly happy with it! I have to tell you, core load to 200 made all the difference, I wouldn't have even noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it! Again thx man!

You could try reducing the min/max turbo by small increments until stability is lost and then put back up 1 notch - found this had a big effect on temps, try it.

Zoomee - did you try a bit less than 200 for core load, or try reducing in small steps - just curious as this may also have a big effect on temps?

Mark

[zoomee]

At the moment I'm only 80% happy with this board even though I've helped sell at least 20 of these Extreme 4 G3's in the last couple of weeks in the UK!!

I can make 5Ghz stable - but the darn LLC is all over the place so my temps touch the high side when aiming for 5Ghz
I would just aim for 4.8Ghz long term 24/7 useage but that darn boot-loop (and sometimes no boot) issue is killing me!!!

For now I'm going to have to settle for 4.6Ghz until ASRock pull their finger out and sort the BIOS on this thing
I've spent the past too weeks trying to get a stable decent overclock that I've hardly used my PC at all! -

[vulture_g7]

@tipes

thx for the tip, I'll try it

@zoomee

do you think this boot-loop is a random thing ie doesn't happen to everyone, not to me either (well...not yet at least, fingers crossed it won't happen at all). So, maybe it isn't the bios, but maybe fauly mobbo part(s) or maybe only some cpu chips behaving bad?

[TEDY]

so where to get 1.10d bios?

[zoomee]

@tipes

thx for the tip, I'll try it

@zoomee

do you think this boot-loop is a random thing ie doesn't happen to everyone, not to me either (well...not yet at least, fingers crossed it won't happen at all). So, maybe it isn't the bios, but maybe fauly mobbo part(s) or maybe only some cpu chips behaving bad?

Not sure mate. I used to get it all the time on 1.0 and 1.1 bios. Moved to 1.1d and didnt get it for a while, but its started again now so i went back to 1.1

Ive settled at 4.8 on ~1.35volts offset using Auto OC 4.8 setting. Prime95 passed for 8hrs last night at about 65degrees C. And IBT maximum runs upto 70degrees so its liveable for now until we see some more bios revisions

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[Rapt0r]

I have read through some SB OC guides roughly follow seems to me alot people can get to 4.5Ghz easily...I could not do 4.5Ghz at 1.35V,now doing 4Ghz at 1.26V any users using ASRock Z68 Extreme 3 Gen 3 don't mind can share some settings? I did not disable all the default power savings function because I think when idle at 4.5ghz abit waste of energy...could it be the power savings function limiting the OC?

[Ket]

Same again today... cleared BIOS and started of from the beginning again.
44x LinX stable
tried 46x with PPL overvoltage and extra Vcore and stupid code 70 again and again...
My patience with this board is running out...

- Strange POST code 70/71 errors
>>>please disconnect all SATA and USB devices, remove PCI & PCI-e cards. Slots PCIE2 and PCIE4 can remain populated because they are linked to the CPU directly. Switch off power, press the power button twice to discharge, and then move the clearCMOS jumper to the other position for 10 seconds and put it back to the original position. Power on and try to boot. If it boots now, then the personal settings for SATA Operation Mode can be restored if necessary. Reconnect devices one by one and test in between. The POST code could be related to one of the connected devices (or to the power supply powering those devices or to some cable). If without any devices connected and after clearCMOS it still stops at the same POST code, then the board might be faulty.

For anyone with other odd issues: Set your BCLK to 100.1, disable spread spectrum and OC from there. The architecture of SB just does not take kindly to BCLK being OC'd.

[zoomee]

Will try that mate. I found allot of instability though due to llc control varying wildly!

If one leaves spread spectrum enabled it auto downclocks BCLK to 99mhz i found so its always disabled to give me bang on 100....hmm

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[zoomee]

Not sure mate. I used to get it all the time on 1.0 and 1.1 bios. Moved to 1.1d and didnt get it for a while, but its started again now so i went back to 1.1

Ive settled at 4.8 on ~1.35volts offset using Auto OC 4.8 setting. Prime95 passed for 8hrs last night at about 65degrees C. And IBT maximum runs upto 70degrees so its liveable for now until we see some more bios revisions

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

EXACTLY same settings as what i used yesterday wont run IBT maximum again today! See what i mean about unstable?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[vulture_g7]

:/ Hope you find a way to solve this m8! I understand this can be nerve-wrecking....

EXACTLY same settings as what i used yesterday wont run IBT maximum again today! See what i mean about unstable?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[Ket]

Will try that mate. I found allot of instability though due to llc control varying wildly!

If one leaves spread spectrum enabled it auto downclocks BCLK to 99mhz i found so its always disabled to give me bang on 100....hmm

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Its a bit of a long shot, but you may be able to help stabalise the vcore by removing the MOSFET cooling and applying your own TIM instead of using the stock thermal pads. I would probably consider sending the board back for replacement though if the steps in my other post don't help. TIM replacement is largely just for keeping things as cool as possible, but who knows, maybe the MOSFET heatsink isn't mounted quite right or something.

[Undermoose]

Asrock, Extreme7 Gen3, been using it now for a couple of months happily. Everything been running great on my CrossfireX rig using a single 1920 x 1200 panel. Then I get the idea to do an Eyefinity Rig. 3 x Dell U2412M monitors (very nice and 1920 x 1200), SIIG Tri-monitor stand, and I already have two EAH6970 graphics cards. Things are pretty decent, however I feel like I've been getting ever so slight a touch of lag...

The best example, Battlefield 3, 5760 x 1200, auto settings, I'm getting 15 to 50 FPS, averaging just over 30, but then the sudden drops to below 20 fps are killing it for me... I spoke to my AMD Guru who tells me I need to change out to an AMD motherboard and ditch Sandy Bridge LOL Bah to that, but I am thinking perhaps the NF200 chip is sucking...

So I threw hardware at the problem and got a third EAH6970 for tri-fire, sure enough the max FPS improved, but I'm still getting the sudden drops in FPS. Tri-fire seeing 15-70+ I disabled crossfirex, using one card and Eyefinity, interestingly I'd get less FPS but I wouldn't drop down to 15 fps. I'd see 20-30 the game was more stable (but FPS to low). As a test I start my rig using MSCONFIG and disabled everything but Microsoft stuff, not much difference in game play, but a slight performance increase.

All things being equal I'm starting to suspect the motherboard has issues. What the issues are, who knows? BIOS? Hardware?, NF200? Anyone think I just need tweaking of some sort?

[Ket]

Asrock, Extreme7 Gen3, been using it now for a couple of months happily. Everything been running great on my CrossfireX rig using a single 1920 x 1200 panel. Then I get the idea to do an Eyefinity Rig. 3 x Dell U2412M monitors (very nice and 1920 x 1200), SIIG Tri-monitor stand, and I already have two EAH6970 graphics cards. Things are pretty decent, however I feel like I've been getting ever so slight a touch of lag...

The best example, Battlefield 3, 5760 x 1200, auto settings, I'm getting 15 to 50 FPS, averaging just over 30, but then the sudden drops to below 20 fps are killing it for me... I spoke to my AMD Guru who tells me I need to change out to an AMD motherboard and ditch Sandy Bridge LOL Bah to that, but I am thinking perhaps the NF200 chip is sucking...

So I threw hardware at the problem and got a third EAH6970 for tri-fire, sure enough the max FPS improved, but I'm still getting the sudden drops in FPS. Tri-fire seeing 15-70+ I disabled crossfirex, using one card and Eyefinity, interestingly I'd get less FPS but I wouldn't drop down to 15 fps. I'd see 20-30 the game was more stable (but FPS to low). As a test I start my rig using MSCONFIG and disabled everything but Microsoft stuff, not much difference in game play, but a slight performance increase.

All things being equal I'm starting to suspect the motherboard has issues. What the issues are, who knows? BIOS? Hardware?, NF200? Anyone think I just need tweaking of some sort?

1. You don't need to change the motherboard or any of your hardware. Whoever told you that you needed to do that is.. well.. this forum will banana dance men out the words required

2. The NF200 chip does have additional latency costs, but nothing that should effect FPS too badly.

The more than likely cause for your FPS drops are either;

A: Poor coding in the game, probably fixable with a patch if FPS dips like you have are a common problem
B: Poor AMD drivers / profiles. In this case you just have to play the waiting game to see if AMD fixes it.
C: Of course, make sure all your other drivers are bang up to date.
D: Try a HDD defrag with a good defrag utility like diskeeper.

[Undermoose]

1. You don't need to change the motherboard or any of your hardware. Whoever told you that you needed to do that is.. well.. this forum will banana dance men out the words required

2. The NF200 chip does have additional latency costs, but nothing that should effect FPS too badly.

The more than likely cause for your FPS drops are either;

A: Poor coding in the game, probably fixable with a patch if FPS dips like you have are a common problem
B: Poor AMD drivers / profiles. In this case you just have to play the waiting game to see if AMD fixes it.
C: Of course, make sure all your other drivers are bang up to date.
D: Try a HDD defrag with a good defrag utility like diskeeper.

Thanks for the response.

I've suspected drivers first of course, but I've spoken with people who run Eyefinity with three monitors and battlefield 3 with full ultra settings and don't have my issue. However, they run the AMD side fo the fence, "Dragon Platform", AMD 990FX Mobo, 6 core CPU, and Graphics. They claim they have no issues with their crossfire rig, but I personally have never seen this setup.

My System Specs:

i7 2600k cpu.
Asrock Extreme7 Gen3 mobo.
2 EAH6970 Graphics cards (3rd arrives Monday, but tested tri-fire)
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit w/sp1.
3 Dell U2412M LCD e-IPS panels.
1 I-INC 28" LCD TN Panel
16gb Mushkin 1600mhz DDR3.
6 2TB Seagate Constellation drives (4 in raid 10, 2 single utility drives).
1 OCZ 60gb Vertex 3 SSD (caching mode)
Antec HCP1200 PSU
Lanboy Air Case

I'm running Sandy Bridge UEFI boot 4TB Raid 10 volume (2 partitions) with OCZ Vertex 3 caching the entire thing so I don't think it's disk related.

I spoke to AMD who suggested the RADEONPRO utility, but I didn't have much luck with that. They did say on the phone they know they have issues with their drivers, but also said the game has issues that need to be addressed as well, and that both EA and them are working towards the fix.

I've had the CrossfireX setup since December 2010 so well aware of the driver waiting game of this past year, but I'm new to Eyefinity so this is a little learning curve happening, thanks again for the input.

[vulture_g7]

Anyone knows if it's somehow possible to oc the cores individualy on the ext4 gen3?

[videogamer323]

ext4 gen3 here and this board is about to go out the window. I have benched a few times at 5ghz then I reboot and I can no longer freaking boot back to 5ghz... 4.5 seems to boot every single time without issues, but anything over that and I get the stupid reboot loop. I see F1 or F2 on the LED screen before reboot, this will happen 0-3 times then I get the stuck 70 on the LED screen. After this I have to bios reset and start all over again. Seems like if I load one of the presets then go turn it off and up the multiplier I can boot 1 time back into my desired overclock (80% of the time) until I reboot again... I'm about to send this board back unless someone knows how to fix this. Recommend me another board around the same price bracket for a nice OC on water??
Thanks

ps: this bios is a laggy POS!

[R_1]

Well, man... Nobody can guarantee, that your CPU is capable of operating at 5GHz, so be more reasonable and post what settings are you using. Have in mind, that even 100Mhz difference between 4,5 and 4,6Ghz has a noticeable price to pay in Vcore and temp increase. And yeh UEFI BIOS is laggish and unpolished, even v.1.10 is considerably more unstable for pverclocking than first release.

[videogamer323]

Yea, I guess I will be happy with 4.5ghz. Boots like a charm and runs great a 1.3v. I had to go back to 1.0 bios cause the 1.10 is just so laggy. I can't even get my cpu to go past 4.5ghz anymore so I guess my cpu has the multiplier wall at 45. I have a nice watercooling setup and full load I am hitting 59c running linX for 4 hours with no errors. Worst part is that I had 5.0ghz and ran it stable for a few hours then I could no longer boot to it at all or anything over 4.5ghz... Regardless this is a major upgrade from my 3.45ghz q9450 and am loving it so far!

[magnetic]

so where to get 1.10d bios?

Yes, where please?

Ket i don´t see in 1º post the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 gen3 beta bios!!!

This link don´t work anymore http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D3MO1UOW

[EzyRyder]

Thanks for the response.

I've suspected drivers first of course, but I've spoken with people who run Eyefinity with three monitors and battlefield 3 with full ultra settings and don't have my issue. However, they run the AMD side fo the fence, "Dragon Platform", AMD 990FX Mobo, 6 core CPU, and Graphics. They claim they have no issues with their crossfire rig, but I personally have never seen this setup.

My System Specs:

i7 2600k cpu.
Asrock Extreme7 Gen3 mobo.
2 EAH6970 Graphics cards (3rd arrives Monday, but tested tri-fire)
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit w/sp1.
3 Dell U2412M LCD e-IPS panels.
1 I-INC 28" LCD TN Panel
16gb Mushkin 1600mhz DDR3.
6 2TB Seagate Constellation drives (4 in raid 10, 2 single utility drives).
1 OCZ 60gb Vertex 3 SSD (caching mode)
Antec HCP1200 PSU
Lanboy Air Case

I'm running Sandy Bridge UEFI boot 4TB Raid 10 volume (2 partitions) with OCZ Vertex 3 caching the entire thing so I don't think it's disk related.

I spoke to AMD who suggested the RADEONPRO utility, but I didn't have much luck with that. They did say on the phone they know they have issues with their drivers, but also said the game has issues that need to be addressed as well, and that both EA and them are working towards the fix.

I've had the CrossfireX setup since December 2010 so well aware of the driver waiting game of this past year, but I'm new to Eyefinity so this is a little learning curve happening, thanks again for the input.

Have you tried disabling MSAA (put it to OFF) and just use the FXAA (Post-Processing AA). It gives you the same quality as MSAA 4x without the 15% - 20% performance hit.

My crossfire setup runs everything on Ultra (minus the MSAA as above) on a single 2560x1440 screen and my framerate doesn't drop from 50 fps - ever. Usually in the 60 fps region if not higher.

[Ket]

Links will be back up when I get a chance guys, I'm reorganising everything and updating stuff.

[TEDY]

ket: could you make your sig smaller?

[bat4]

Thanks for the response.

I've suspected drivers first of course, but I've spoken with people who run Eyefinity with three monitors and battlefield 3 with full ultra settings and don't have my issue. However, they run the AMD side fo the fence, "Dragon Platform", AMD 990FX Mobo, 6 core CPU, and Graphics. They claim they have no issues with their crossfire rig, but I personally have never seen this setup.

My System Specs:

i7 2600k cpu.
Asrock Extreme7 Gen3 mobo.
2 EAH6970 Graphics cards (3rd arrives Monday, but tested tri-fire)
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit w/sp1.
3 Dell U2412M LCD e-IPS panels.
1 I-INC 28" LCD TN Panel
16gb Mushkin 1600mhz DDR3.
6 2TB Seagate Constellation drives (4 in raid 10, 2 single utility drives).
1 OCZ 60gb Vertex 3 SSD (caching mode)
Antec HCP1200 PSU
Lanboy Air Case

I'm running Sandy Bridge UEFI boot 4TB Raid 10 volume (2 partitions) with OCZ Vertex 3 caching the entire thing so I don't think it's disk related.

I spoke to AMD who suggested the RADEONPRO utility, but I didn't have much luck with that. They did say on the phone they know they have issues with their drivers, but also said the game has issues that need to be addressed as well, and that both EA and them are working towards the fix.

I've had the CrossfireX setup since December 2010 so well aware of the driver waiting game of this past year, but I'm new to Eyefinity so this is a little learning curve happening, thanks again for the input.

Have you tried without that caching mode for SSD? My theory is that the caching mode sometimes creates high latency and this results in FPS drop. Check your latency with DPC latency tool.