I swore I wouldn't load any more beta BIOS -- ooops I did it again: 9945

[entropic-remnan]

[sigh] I really did say I wasn't trying the 994x bios any further. I had played with 9943 without much luck.

But I saw a guy with basically the same RAM I have (Corsair Dominator Platinum CMD16GX4M2B3200C16) that has the e-die chips and he posted some shots from Thaiphoon Burner that had me thinking. He was able to use the actually speed strapping for his RAM with no Bclk overclock. I've never been able to make that work on any BIOS.

Left the CPU at default (no overclock), set the memory voltages and tried it with the 3200 strap. Fail. Looked to see if the standard memory timings from my chip set had loaded. No, changed the strap to 2133, changed it back to 3200 and it still wasn't 16-18-18-18-36 like it should be but was 15-15-15-15-34. Strange.

Set the proper "standard" timings manually. Fail again. But the new BIOS gives you access to other timings and I began to suspect they aren't being read from my chips right either.

So I looked at Thaiphoon for my set and got some info printed out. First off Thaiphoon doesn't know what type of Samsung die is. I know it's e-die from other sources.

Looking at the last page of the Thaiphoon report I'm looking a a bunch of timings that you couldn't access in previous BIOS. I noticed that the following timings mentioned in Thaiphoon are available (although they have like SM after them) in the Crosshair memory timings. Here is what they were in Thaiphoon for my sticks.

tRC (active to active refresh) = 54T
tFAW (four activate window delay time) = 36T
tRRD_S (short activate to activate delay time) = 6T
tRRD_L (long activate to activate delay time) = 9T

When I looked at those numbers in the BIOS they didn't match at all just like the basic timings didn't. So I manually set them to what was in Thaiphoon for my RAM.

I also took a cue from what I've been reading over on overclock.net and set the new "Gear Down" mode to "disabled", set the command rate to 2T, and my ProcODT ended up optimum at 80 ohms this time. 1.4 volts on the DRAM at boot and running, 1.1 SOC and 1.05 SB.

The result? RAM that boots cold or a restart with no issues at 3200. No Bclk overclock. All testing says it's good.

Now is this a success? Yes and no.

Yes, my DDR4 is running at 3200 mhz. But without access to those settings in the new BIOS I wouldn't.

The real failure to my mind is this: Why can Thaiphoon burner easily read my timings but the Crosshair BIOS can't? Isn't reading the SPD data the most basic of functions? How is it that it can't read timings that it knows about already from a stick that has that data in it?

The more I dig into this stuff, the more confused I am about the problems that are occuring. If I can read a report from a piece of FREEWARE for heaven's sake and put the numbers in why can't the BIOS? And why is Asus doing all this over on overclock rather than here? And does the stork really bring babies?

Anyway, after the mem was fine I put the pstate overclock back in and it's all running well. 3.8 ghz cpu and full speed 3200 mhz memory. Feck any memory overclock I'm just glad to have it running reliably at spec.

9945 has been the best BIOS so far with it's adjustability, but not it's adaptability. It still has no idea how to read the timings properly from a lot of memory sticks as shown by the folks having to tweak stuff the BIOS should handle with ease.

Sheesh, Asus.

[entropic-remnan]

I know, right -- it's just that for people with less technical bent it's much easier to read the Thaiphoon Burner report. But the AIDA is very compact. But that's why I tell people who maybe are struggling with this to get it in Thaiphoon.

Thanks for the input and you're one of the people who pushed me into buying AIDA64 and I don't regret it.

[whiskey-foxtrot]

entropic-remnants wrote:
I know, right -- it's just that for people with less technical bent it's much easier to read the Thaiphoon Burner report. But the AIDA is very compact. But that's why I tell people who maybe are struggling with this to get it in Thaiphoon.

Thanks for the input and you're one of the people who pushed me into buying AIDA64 and I don't regret it.

AIDA64 is definitely a great tool to have on hand; for memory issues I tend to fallback on Thaiphoon Burner as it's the easiest way to actually restore or write to SPD. In my case on Trident Z's which got corrupted by horrible LED controller software. I don't think you can write with the free version of Thaiphoon Burner, but the minimum is only $16 and well worth it just for the information alone. In the past I used it to write custom XMP profiles and have never looked back at another mem-tool since.

[entropic-remnan]

whiskey-foxtrot wrote:
AIDA64 is definitely a great tool to have on hand; for memory issues I tend to fallback on Thaiphoon Burner as it's the easiest way to actually restore or write to SPD. In my case on Trident Z's which got corrupted by horrible LED controller software. I don't think you can write with the free version of Thaiphoon Burner, but the minimum is only $16 and well worth it just for the information alone. In the past I used it to write custom XMP profiles and have never looked back at another mem-tool since.

I see people recovering their XMP data all the time with Thaiphoon so it's well thought of I know. I don't have RGB RAM (though my RGB on the motherboard is dead) and hopefully I won't have to worry about that particular issue. But prior to starting this Ryzen journey I'd never ever heard of Thaiphoon Burner. See what you learn when you have problems, lol?

[syldon]

I tried the 945 beta on release and could not get off the 2133 mark. I have never loaded beyond 2666 on any version before. I still cant get to 3200 even with increased voltages and changing to command rate 2.

But I am a happy bunny. Currently running at 2800 with the setting retrieved from both Thaiphoon and Aida. Strangely it runs more stable with increased bclk. So I'm on bclk 102 and I will leave there for now. Bank holiday weekend coming up and all. The furthest it stretched to was bclk 107 but felt laggy. It passed the CPUz stress test and all, but didn't feel smooth. Have not tried any in between due to time.

So all in all a little bit further. thanks again.

[entropic-remnan]

Well, we'll all keep trying, won't we? Are we pioneers or idiots -- or maybe white mice in a maze? Ha ha, not sure.