Gene-Z gen3 3603 BIOS missing settings

[Bluntwrapped]

Hi, I recently upgraded the BIOS on my Gen 3 Gene-Z to 3603. I used EZ Flash for this.

There's various settings missing from the BIOS now including turbo and some voltage settings. Can anyone help?

[SUKARA]

Did you mean the Extreme OC profile? Or OC detail options?
Maybe you must be re-set those options by yourself....

[Bluntwrapped]

I have lost things like turbo ratio and PLL overvoltage. Have ASUS have deliberately locked down these settings for Xeon CPU's?

[Raja]

Two things:

1) If the CPU you are using is not listed in the CPU support list for this board, the microcode supporting the processor won't be in the BIOS. So functionality may be reduced (on top of the CPU being locked in various ways). It's not on purpose - Xeon's are workstaion processors and we have a range of workstation boards geared around them. The teams for the WS boards are totally separate as are the BIOS validation/support features.

2) It is possible you have a corrupt ME FW. This can result in some of the options going missing after a UEFI update. Official workaround is to get a new BIOS chip or board replaced. In your situation you are battling the fact that the CPU is not likely supported on this board as well, so it could be tricky...



-Raja

[Bluntwrapped]

Ok, so the Z77 version of the Gene will have these features available since the Xeon E3 1230V2 is listed as a supported CPU? Or would this be exactly the same as my Z68. I noticed:

"*Intel Xeon Processor Family is designed for servers. Some features may not support when installed on Z77 chipsets. For more details, refer to ASUS support site at http://support.asus.com"

Are these details available? Has this been documented somewhere?

I manually re-flashed my ME FW last night using FTK and a tutorial I found over at http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1726429.

According to the BIOS it appears to be fine. It's version 8. something. If it was corrupt it would it be shown as N/A or similar?

[Raja]

Depends on the corruption.


No they are not documented. It might refer to multiplier control (where possible). Without the correct mircode, you can lose the ability to change DRAM or CPU multipliers and some of the power saving features may be quirky.

If it's working fine then keep on using it, I guess. When/if an update stops the processor POSTing (if ever) then maybe look at the WS boards instead.

-Raja

[Bluntwrapped]

Yep, it's working fine. Was just slightly puzzled to why these features of the BIOS aren't there. Would have been useful to have these so I could do some tweaking.

Would be great to see an update further down the line for this. I guess it's probably unlikely since the P8Z77 WS is out there. It's just a bit pants since I love my ROG board and it's black/red colour scheme, just as much as I love my Xeon E3-1230V2!

The reason I asked whether this is deliberately disabled is due to other Z68 manufacturer boards offering the options I'm looking for - even with this CPU installed. Since it's entirely possible, I'm trying to get my head around why ASUS hasn't considered this too. Only reason I can think of why is to help push WS board sales.

[Raja]

Well the Xeons are locked as well. They aren't really the target market of the ROG boards at all. Tweakers generally opt for CPUs that have most of the DRAM ratios open at the very least. I don't think we'll be adding support for them across the range of boards any time soon.

[Bluntwrapped]

One of the reasons I was attracted to this CPU is price/performance. It's a hidden gem in the 1155 Ivy series. They generally under volt well too.

Thanks for your time Raja.

[Raja]

Undervolting has been made quite obsolete thanks to C-State power savings. At/near idle power gating results in such low current consumption that the VID does not play much part in temps or power consumption.