**Official** Asrock Z68 Extreme4 thread. Share your experiences, OCs & tech issues!

[Sined]

Been wondering, what dpc does people have? - and which settings and setups ofcourse, maybe it'll bring some life back to the thread aswell :]

[Ket]

Uhh... do you mean DPC latency? Thats a soundcard thing youknow..

[Sined]

Oh i know, just asking cause mine is hovering at 50-120 when doing nothing, but it can go to 500~ when playing videos or listening to music while browsing, But im just going to blame that on nvidia drivers, seems to be the one that jumps up each time :\

[Ket]

DPC latency can be reduced on the driver level. One example of this is with the Xonar cards. Stock drivers have DPC latency hover around 200, if you use unixonar drivers though that latency can be reduced to around 80.

[Sined]

Aye, im using the modded Xonar drivers for my DX aswell, using the C-media version from CarvedInside

[Anusha]

Is there any word from AsRock whether this mobo will get support for IvyBridge CPUs?

[TEDY]

of course it does.

[Anusha]

of course it does.

so i suppose they will release the updated bios when ivybridge is released.

[TEDY]

it's already supported....

[Anusha]

it's already supported....

i'm sure it doesn't, at least NOT YET. they'll have to release a bios update.

[Ket]

When I last asked my contact about IB support I was told they were not 100% sure as they were waiting for intel to tell them if the Z68 could support IB. Technically, there really isn't any reason why not but as intel so often tend to do they will likely force you to go and buy a Z77 based board. This is the latest UEFI I know of for the Z68 E4: UEFI L1.60K, dated March 5, 2012.

[Anusha]

When I last asked my contact about IB support I was told they were not 100% sure as they were waiting for intel to tell them if the Z68 could support IB. Technically, there really isn't any reason why not but as intel so often tend to do they will likely force you to go and buy a Z77 based board. This is the latest UEFI I know of for the Z68 E4: UEFI L1.60K, dated March 5, 2012.

we shall see in a few weeks then. either way, the high temps of IvyBridge chips when overclocked is pulling me back from IvyBridge. will be keeping the SB most probably.

[Ket]

Ditto. IB is only a incremental step forward anyway offering HD 4000... ahem.. forgive my use of the word.. "graphics", and PCI-E 3.0. Thats it. Sadly for IB it really is a case of "nothing to see here, move along.." although a Z77 is probably worth purchasing in anticipation of a IB die shrink.

[Olivon]

There will be no IB die shrink. Next stop is LGA 1150 and Haswell 22nm.

[Ket]

A IB revision then. A lot is floating around about poor IB yields, no doubt the troublesome 22nm process will be refined with a couple new steppings and by then a IB chip would likely be well worth looking at. Sort the apparent leakage problems out and suddenly IB looks like a completely different chip.

[clubber_lang]

I would think it would be in Intels benefit to revise those damn Ivy's sooner or later.....if what we have seen so far happens to all the new ones being released. It aint gonna be a big seller of a chip , because you can cook your breakfast on and heat your house at the same time with it. IF they sell these new ivy's and they perform the way the early released cpu's ( not sure where they came from )......I honestly don't see them being a big seller at all. In fact if I owned a 2500K , 2600K or a 2700K.....sold it off for anticipation for Ivy.....I'd be pissed right about now.

[Ket]

Its inevitable there will be new steppings and revisions. Personally, once intel knew about the prblematic yields it would of made sence to stick with 32nm and release a 22nm Ivy once the problems get ironed out. Ivy would be in somewhat of a better light if intel did that I reckon. Anyway, this thread isn't really for IB talk, not until we know if IB will be supported on the Z68 anyway. Until then IB talk can be continued in this Z77 Extreme 4 & Extreme6 thread

[Anusha]

Ket, is there a way to load the different OC profiles from within Windows?
eXtreme Tuner only allows you to overclock manually, not load a profile. (the profiles shown in OC DNA section)

[Ket]

I don't think there is. This is mainly because even if you could dynamically load a profile from OC DNA you would still need to restart for some settings to take effect.

[Anusha]

that's a shame. i would like to have it run at stock or at a mild overclock when doing general stuff, and load up a higher OC profile when gaming or video encoding stuff or if there is a specific need. Rebooting every time is not an option. Oh well... I wonder if tuning apps from other manufacturers offer this feature.

[Ket]

Thats what intel speedstep is for Left enabled most of your OC won't "kick in" until the CPU comes under heavy load.

[MacClipper]

Beta L2.0x UEFI BIOS are now hosted under the respective beta zone downloads of each LGA1155 mobo for 22nm Ivy support.


HTH

[Ket]

Ahh well it seems my contacts got the go-ahead from intel. I'm glad intel aren't pulling their usual stunt and forcing everybody to change their mobos this time around.

[Ket]

For anyone that hasn't tried it yet here are some screenshots of beta UEFI 2.02. Its not necessary to do so but to ensure I had a completely clean flash I first downgraded to UEFI 1.1 through pure DOS, then used instant update to upgrade to UEFI 2.02. I'm only running stock atm while I test stability but certainly I've already noticed very slick boot times and lots of new options within the UEFI itself

[Ket]

For anyone wondering about OC potential with UEFI 2.02 see the screenshot.

My thoughts on UEFI 2.02:

Ok, consider this a conclusion as I've extensively used every other (official and beta) UEFI for the Z68 Extreme4.

Overclocking: Wonderful. With all previous UEFIs booting into Windows @ 5GHz was simply impossible, with this beta 2.02 I can boot into Windows @ 5GHz with 1.5v. I haven't tried higher frequencies at 1.5v or lower voltage @ 5GHz but the results are testimony to themselves. The new beta UEFI simply does magical stuff for overclocking.

Other things I've noticed is that boot times are very slick and fast indeed, if fact the whole operation of the system is significantly slicker. Top stuff indeed. There are also lots of new options in the UEFI to play with, some of which you can see from the screenshots I posted yesterday.

Bottom Line: Would I recommend users to flash to this UEFI? Absolutely. Its fast, stable, system operation is very slick indeed, theres new options to play with in the UEFI, overclocking is exceptional and there are no bugs I've found thus far. Well worth trying.