Bios 4301 and ROG Strix Z690 Gaming A holy cow what a total mess of a bios.

[Adrian1983]

Haven't tried any new bio's in a while as I am still on 2802 as it has been rock solid for me however thought I would try the latest and greatest 4301 and just LOL.

Where do I start.

Games crashing, Games not even loading at all! and Ghost Recon Wildlands takes about 5-10 mins to start haha.

MindsEye instant crash with the Unreall Engine crash log won't even load lol.

Banishers Ghosts of New Eden constant crashing within 1-5 mins no matter what I do.

Ghost Recon Wildlands eventually after 10 mins at the splash screen when trying to load eventually crashed after 30 mins anyway all pointing to NVLDDMKM driver crashing and while I was breaking my head thinking it was the Nvidia Drivers it was this BIOS!

Back to 2802 and everything back to normal.

What is this utter nonsense with these new bios's?

Loaded all defaults then manually entered all my usual settings including noticing even an error in the Q Fan config labelling where it normally says Lower, Middle and Upper temp when configuring your fans well for 1 of the fans I think it was chassis 5 it said Lower Point, Middle Point and Upper Point just for that fan header all the others were normal with the usual Lower, Middle and Upper Temp Label.

Who on earth is testing these before release? It's like a beta bios.

[Silent_Scone]

@Adrian1983 

You've not specified whether you're talking about at Optimised Defaults or with overclocking.

4301 introduces a new microcode revision.

[Adrian1983]

Hi there,

It's all optimised defaults apart from my usual 60mv undervolt on the CPU.

Voltage for the CPU is definitely lower than 2802 that I am on but so are the clock speeds like light loads not hitting 5.7ghz all core because of the C1E so that explains the clock speeds but I had terrible instability in UE games with that new bios, A couple would not even load, No shader or WHEA errors just point black UE crash to desktop log.

And the Wildlands that took almost 10 mins to get past the splash loading screen to the title screen another issue that does not exist 2802.

Not sure what's going on but it was all defaults as I said other than my undervolt, I did try lowering the undervolt by another 20mv so it was at -40 instead of -60 but it made no difference to the issues I was seeing.

[Silent_Scone]

As I say, new microcode. First thing you should assume is that the undervolt may not be stable at all. That's precisely what I'd do in your situation.

[Adrian1983]

Naturally yes but it was still spiking at some points to 1.41v at lower clock speeds than what I have with 2802, With 2802 it never goes over 1.41v however gaming voltage was lower with 4301 but that's because the clock speeds were lower so If I'd have taken my undervolt off it would have been spiking to 1.5v so for me that's just a no go when I have full 5.7ghz clocks with gaming and light loads that never go over 1.41v with 2802 not to mention the instability I was seeing.

In my instance I can't justify having to remove the undervolt for the sake of a bios when I am getting more performance at what would be a lower voltage with 2802 overall.

The 13th/14th gen has just been a mess from day 1 to be honest for a lot of folk although once I stumbled upon 2802 and found my sweet spot I can't see me changing this bios in the future for anything else.

[Silent_Scone]

In that case, you'll need to roll back; there’s not much more to say. Just remember, before Intel introduced the Default profile, ASUS and other vendors were effectively undervolting the CPU by tweaking the AC loadline out of the box. If you're not prepared to run the CPU at true system defaults for troubleshooting, then ultimately, the responsibility lies with you.

What was stable on an older BIOS with specific tweaks may no longer be valid under new firmware. Intel’s microcode updates can adjust voltage behaviour and power management, so clinging to the same undervolt values without verifying stability at defaults isn’t a reliable approach.

Best option to rollback if not willing to compromise. 👍

[Adrian1983]

It was not about compromising, I did compromise by accepting the lower clock speeds and performance if it was stable but if it's not even stable  at -40mv along with lower performance and crashes in games and slow loading of Wildlands and some games not even starting then you have to say something else is a foot when everything else I had was defaults other than feed the CPU another 20mv, Does not make any logical sense whatsoever.

Things is I have had this same board and CPU since day 1 release day, If my settings were an issue it would have already degraded, Sometimes one just needs to use a little common sense.

Aside from that though and I know it's not Asus's fault but telling someone to use full Auto defaults with these newer bios's including the C1E is like taking away 50% of my multithreaded performace, I was getting like a little over 20k in R21, As far as I am concerned that is not acceptable from Intel's point of view, Again not Asus's fault but it's kind of like misleading consumers into the performance of a product only for them to take away half of it because some are degrading, Not practical and most certainly not legal, It's bordering lawsuit territory.

I guess I have decent silicon with my 14900KF and why it's still running rock solid since day 1 even with no hack jobs from Intel with these newer bios's, Intel are totally to blame for not manufacturing decent silicon and selling it accordingly after all some chips they tried to par off as 14900K had almost 150mv swing lol, Ridiculous to say the least imho.

[Vynra]

while i comopletely understand about intel taking away performance via microcodes, you seem to be severely misunderstanding what the actual issue is.

It does not matter what your silicon quality of your chip is. That is not the issue when it comes to the degradation. The issue is a specific to a clock tree circuit that is (apparently) extremely sensitive and can unpredictably age to  both high temperature and voltage.

while your chip might be fine now, there is no telling when its going to start giving problems. C1E makes your cpu go in a higher performance state even though temperatures are high.

While I believe intel should've done a mass recall of these chips and actually fix the issue. You should take care of your chip if you do not want problems later.

[Adrian1983]

Not to sound patronising but of course it matters what quality silicon you have, A better silicon chip uses much less V/F curve auto voltage couple that with an undervolt also and there's a stone cold reason why my chip since I have had since Oct 2023 is still running perfectly fine since day 1.

The issues is a lot of the bad silicon with over 1.5V V/F curves have 100% been the issue coupled with people not understanding how to set their bios's up properly and not to mention overclocking also something I am not doing.

I have die sense V core reading on this board and the Vcore is actually lower than what the bios is saying.

Again that doesn't mean it's user error it's 100% Intel and the board manufacturers from day 1 squeezing and overclocking the chips for the YouTube reviewers at the beginning to make them look better than others.

It is still Intel's fault don't get me wrong, I would have seen issues by now with stability if this was on it's way and 1st way to easily see that is by running multiple shader compilations on different games to test for crashes, WHEA erros etc.

[Vynra]

i think the bios is doing you a favor by crashing mindseye. What a terrible game.