New Rampage IV Formula Owner

[Xaanix]

I have recently purchased a Rampage IV Formula secondhand from craigslist. I was one of the many people awaiting the Maximus V formula/extreme, but I was never fully comfortable spending so much money on the LGA 1155 platform after hearing that ivy bridge would be the last chip on it, and intel seems to have crippled ivy bridge intentionally. I believe this was to preserve LGA2011's position in the product stack, and I have high hopes that Ivy-Bridge-E will not be crippled by intel in the same way that Ivy-Bridge was. I fully expect Ivy-Bridge-E to be awesome and I'm eagerly awaiting it. I might be wrong about these assumptions, noone really knows except the brass at intel, but this makes sense to me, enough that i'm willing to abandon my plans for a Maximus V based system and switch over to the Rampage IV.

This is my First ROG board (*bow*)
I'm running a i7 3820
I've got 16 gigs of Patriot quad channel ddr3: PGQ316G1600ELQK (1600mhz, 9-9-9-24)
The guy threw in a Intel closed loop water cooler for free.

I have read the overclocking Sandy Bridge-E guide on overclock.net, but i have a few questions as they pertain to the Rampage's Bios:


Last night i started overclocking the rig a bit but i ran into some problems, which i believe may be related to the memory. My goal is to get a solid 24/7 overclock that runs no higher than 80C under full load and is closer to 60 for normal computing tasks and gaming. I also dont want to risk too much CPU Degredation, in case my plans to upgrade to Ivy-Bridge-E are delayed. Ideally, I'd like to use variable voltage, but i'm unsure of what offsets to try.

Last night i tried multiple times to increase the strap to 125, and increase the BLCK up around 118, but each time the machine would fail to boot. I'm wondering if this might be due to the RAM being substandard.

The only way i was able to successfully overclock was by increasing the mult as far as it would go (to 44) and leave the strap at 100. My VCore is currently set to 1.4v. When i left the BLCK at 100, this somehow gave me 4.3 ghz in windows, instead of the 4.4 I was expecting (4.4 is also what showed as the target in the BIOS). I did achieve 4.4 by increasing BLCK to 102.7. Anyway as i understand, this means the ram is still running at its stock frequencies of 1600mhz and i think thats why I was able to overclock in this way)

What do you guys think? Is my ram the problem? is 102.7 blck fine? Any idea why i'd instantly go unstable when attempting to use a 125 strap even when i lowered the mult and had plenty of vcore (1.4v?)

Step #1: Determine what type of OC you want: do you want a 24/7 OC? Or do you want something to pass a benchmark or just max CPU Clock? What type of memory frequency do you want? What type of cooling do you have? Once you determine those you should determine whether or not you want to use BLCK. You should also determine whether or not you want to use Power Saving states like (EIST, C1E, and C3/C6 states) to down clock your processor during less intensive loading scenarios like being idle. You should also determine if you want to just have a small OC without any voltage changes.

Where are these options in the Rampage BIOS? What settings are recommended for using a variable voltage? (what's a good offset to use? ). I am alittle worried about using alot of auto-settings as i know they tend to over-volt stuff (more than you need).

I used asus AI-Suite, and each time i increased the strap and confirmed it, the system would instantly freeze. When i rebooted, the settings i tried to apply would not be present.

What do the overclock profiles do? I tried using the 'every day gamer's OC' and it didnt seem to increase my vcore (was still at 1.24v or something, but my frequency was really high (like 4.7?) I knew this wouldn't be stable and sure enough once i started running prime, it BSOD'd.

Lastly, I know I need to read up on XMP, does this de-sync the ram from the blck? Could this solve my strap problem? Is this an ROG specific feature or a chipset feature?

[HiVizMan]

To engage the 125 strap you will need to set your BCLK to 125. It is built into the BIOS to change up to the next strap at 125.

Do all your clocking in the BIOS leave the AIsuite well alone.

I would read the guides that are sticky in the Rampage forum here - especially the one where RAJA explains what each of the bios options do.

[Xaanix]

I was under the impression that you could set the blck to something less than 125, as long as you keep your memory between 90-110% of stock speeds, so like 118 blck at 125 strap = 94%, which is fine.


Is that not correct?

[HiVizMan]

Not as far as I am aware. My understanding of the way that ASUS have set up the BCLK and strap relationship is that they have built in the strap change at 125.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Hi there!:)

The maximum mutiplier for that CPU is 43 hence at 100BCLK and strap at 1.00 4.3GHZ

Your GHZ will come from Multiplier x bclk x strap (1.00 or 1.25)

If your bclk is 118 and strap 1.25 a multiplier of 39 (I think that is default) is trying to give you 5.7GHZ! and not boot. Even a 30x multiplier will give you 4.4GHz at those settings.

Using manual voltage, best leave BCLK at 100 set 1.25 strap and then choose apropriate multiplier for your target clocks (36x gives 4.5 GHz 37x gives 4.6 both should be around 1.37 to 1.4 V depending on LLC and other settings in Digi+ etc.)

If you want to use offset you can't use 1.25 strap so BCLK of 105 and muliplier at 43 (strap 1.00) will give 4.5 GHz too...

[Xaanix]

thanks for the response, however what you're saying about the blck conflicts with what i read here:

http://www.corsair.com/blog/sandy-bridge-e-oc-guide/

Since Intel added the CPU Strap option we can now run higher base clocks than 110MHz without many issues. Selecting the CPU Strap option of 125MHz will allow you to run higher base clock because it takes the base clock and divides it by 1.25 to run the PCI-E/DMI Controller at a lower frequency. The chart below shows each ratio and how to figure out your PCI-E/DMI frequency to keep it between 90MHz and 110MHz.
Chart
Example Base Clock CPU Strap Math PCI-E/DMI Frequency
108MHz 100MHz 108MHz / 1.00 108MHz
130MHz 125MHz 130MHz / 1.25 104MHz
170MHz 166MHz 170MHz / 1.66 102.4MHz
260Mhz 250MHz 260MHz / 2.5 104MHz

[Xaanix]

Also i have epu power savings turned on but my vcore doesn't dynamically drop.. even when the mult goes down to 12x due to the system being idle.. see below:

[Xaanix]

Odd, I just put an offset of -.015v for vcore and reboot (before i was offset 0), and suddenly the vcore is dropping dynamically again (.i.e. its working correctly now).

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Xaanix wrote:
thanks for the response, however what you're saying about the blck conflicts with what i read here:

http://www.corsair.com/blog/sandy-bridge-e-oc-guide/

Hmm confusing :confused: but are they are just presenting the same thing a**-backwards. For example first line if you set BCLK 108 and strap at default 1.00 you get "baseclock" 108 second line set BCLK 104 strap 1.25 you get "baseclock" 130......( I think if you set BCLK 130 the BIOS will automatically set strap 1.25 in reality your BCLK will be 104) mutiply any of these by multiplier and you get your GHz...

I can't work out the overclock in that thread though....the final clocks are BCLK (114.5) x multiplier (42) bypassing the strap completely?!? Really confused:confused::confused:

On more stable ground....Using manual voltage puts the same volts through your CPU no matter the usage. Offset enables the power saving features (only at strap 1.00)

[Xaanix]

basically what they're saying is that only the cpu gets multiplied the way you're referring to, but the speed of the ram gets divided by the strap so the rest of your components arent running at 125 blck, even though your cpu is.

i.e. 125 blck and 125 strap = 100 for your componenents and 125 * mult for your cpu.