A88XM-PLUS problems and questions.

[slashandburn]

I'm new about these parts, hopefully getting straight to the point isn't considered bad etiquette.

I got this A88XM-PLUS with a Kaveri A10 7700k. GPU is a Sapphire R9 280x (HD7950?) and the ram is 2x 4gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1866Mhz (9,10,9,27) 1.5v. In dual channel.

My problems I think stem from the board. Specifically a bad bios flash. It came with BIOS version 1501. Newest was 2302. Flashed 2302, everything seemed fine until i was poking about in cpuz checking my ram timings were correct, as the bios DOCP profile seemed to read it right in the bios but miss completely by the time windows booted. So my manually configured ram timings were good. But then the NB frequency in the cpuz memory tab caught my eye. 200Mhz. Which seemed bizarre. I'm no expert but I expected nearer 2000Mhz. Back to BIOS. NB Freq and CPU / NB V offset definately set to auto. Reboot. Check cpuz again. 200mhz. All other settings at default. No ovérclock. Baffled.

Then ensued a bunch of stability issues that let me to eventually reflash the old 1501 bios. Now cpu-z shows a far more friendly NB Freq of ~1600mhz, occasionally dropping to 1400. I think its at least stable now.

Does this sound right? The Northbridge frequency? I'm suddenly very suspicious as to why it would default to 200mhz, and whether or not its current "auto detected" frequencies are correct. I don't think they are. Temperatures all seem fine under load.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I'm reluctant to manually push the NB frequency without really knowing what ballpark I should be going for.

Cheers
Iain

 

[Ketchup]

CPU-Z could just be reading it wrong. Are you running 1.73?

Could just be a buggy BIOS.

 

[slashandburn]

Yeah 1.73. I thought maybe, yes CPUZ might be wrong, but if I set NB frequency to 1800 in bios, CPUz reads 1800. If I set auto it clocks down to 1400/1600. It's on auto until I'm sure my RAM wasn't causing the stability problems, I'll aim to run memtest overnight.

I'm reluctant to keep messing around, it finally seems stable with everything set to stock in BIOS besides RAM speed and timings. The NB frequency is bugging me though. I'm at least satisfied that it's no longer reading 200Mhz when set to auto and the strange lockups have stopped. Touchwood. Hopefully a bad BIOS and the problem is solved.

Wondered if anyone else had encountered similar problems. Also I get the feeling I've missing something glaringly obvious. I've been looking at numbers so much over the past few days I'm starting to notice patterns that probably don't exist.

Early impressions of this board and cpu aren't great, so far. Maybe I just forgot the frustrations of fine tuning a new system.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Your base NB frequency should be 1800 mhz. Set it by hand. If you can't run 1800 mhz NB with stability then something is seriously wrong, and I would recommend RMAing your parts.

Also, if you want to test your NB, just set your RAM to DDR3-1333 with default timings, underclock your CPU to about 3 GHz, and then run Prime95 custom 768k min/max fft size, ffts in place. Or you could try the largest y-cruncher run that your RAM will allow (probably 1g). If it bombs out like that, you know it's the NB doing it to you.

 

[slashandburn]

Thank you DrMRLordX! Everything I needed to know and more. I shall try the test you described if I have any issues manually setting the NB to 1800.

I'm wary of the ram. I know I should probably be testing this thing at 1333 until im certain the rest of the system is stable. But I paid for 1866 c9 and ideally want it to run there.
I shall report back soon.

With some cpuz screenies if I'm still struggling. Thank you both for your input!

 

[Ketchup]

How many sticks do you have? If more than two, it may automatically set things a little on the loose (or downclocked side), in which case you may want to manually set it at the rated speed, if the system can handle it.

 

[slashandburn]

Just 2x4gb. I already have manually set the timings. I originally tried The D.O.C.P profile which seemed to take a guess and miss.

I'm taking the word of CPUZ, but the timings appear to be fine.

Edit: It boots at 1800Mhz. Everything else unchanged. Seems stable. Running Prime95 for a bit.

 

[slashandburn]

Now then. So far it seems okay. One thing though. My BIOS, besides the NB frequency option tells me to "maintain a NB:VRAM frequency ratio of at least 1.25:1 for proper operation". This higher speed RAM sort of breaks that ratio. Should I be running it at 1333 to get maintain this ratio? Or is this one of these rules that's made to be broken?

What mean is, would I see any benefit to pushing the NB to 1900mhz to maintain a slightly better than 1:1 ratio with the DRAM frequency?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Ignore the 1.25:1 ratio bit. All the Asus boards say that. My A88x-Pro certainly does.

Now, you will see some benefit from higher NB speeds, but those benefits will emerge regardless of your memory clockspeed.

Oh, and you're welcome. Glad to help.

 

[slashandburn]

So far so good. I'm still suspicious of this machine though. I think there's almost a part of me that actually wants it to be defective so I don't need to spend anymore time wondering if its functioning properly. But benchmarks all seem in the right ball.

I'm poking around Aida64 now trying to find things to worry about. CPU V core seems a touch high, 0.9v - 1.35v. (bear in mind no overclock).

That aside, I should just stop tinkering and let it do its thing until it stops doing its thing, I guess.
Cheers again!

 

[DrMrLordX]

Actually, max turbo will go over 1.35v. You can lower that with a tool called amdmsrtweaker if you want to. It's not that hard to use once you get over the fact that it's a command-line interface tool. You can also defeat the p4 and p5 throttling if you like.

 

[slashandburn]

That's good news then! No pressure on me to get my head round this "voltage offset" way of doing things. I think I have it sussed but I'd rather be confident this rig is stable before playing with unfamiliar voltage options. Could be the difference between "it's broken" and "I broke it".

One more thing maybe worth mentioning, since all fingers are pointing towards a bad BIOS flash. This setup (minus discrete GPU) was foolishly purchased from a well-known UK high Street electronics shops. One of their daylight robbery range "motherboard bundles". I'm not here to hate on them, I do enough of that already and yet I still shop there. I only think this might be relevant as its dawned on me that sometimes these things are proprietaryor slightly tweaked boards and flashing a regular A88XM-PLUS bios to an A88XM-PLUS-7-MINUS-2 mobo (for example) might not be the best idea.

I've also just been informed by a friend and fellow "mobo bundle" sucker that the board advertised on his box (A55BM-E) was not the board he actually got inside the box (A58M-E}. Other components were as advertised. I don't think he's bothered about it. Somehow this all just seems relevant.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm. Well I can't speak to that, but you know the shop better than I. In my experience, bad BIOS/UEFI flashing just bricks the board. Poof, no workie. So if it works then you're ahead of the game compared to most people with a bad BIOS.

Anyway, you can get amdmsrtweaker here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?285742-AmdMsrTweaker-New-Versions

Be aware that you have to run the tool each time you reboot to gain the benefits of it. I have also personally had a lot of trouble changing the core clock speed (labeled p3 by amdmsrtweaker) on my 7700k. Mostly you're looking at changing p0-p2 and p4-p5.

 

[slashandburn]

Thanks again. I'll definitely look into that. Having to run something like that after every reboot reminds me of my old Phenom 950. I'll probably be looking to push this 7700k a bit when I getmore free time.

My only persisting problems are when I try to push the multiplier past 38x. That's cool with me for now. I'm fairly confident it will go up another point or two with a touch more Vcore but I'm happy for now. I'm fairly confident it's stable. I started getting suspicious of my PSU ("G7" 780w) so I've picked up a RM850 for a bit of added peace of mind when I do get around to pushing the cpu.

You have a point about the bios. It didn't brick it so perhaps the 200Mhz NB was just an error with cpuz. And I can't say for absolute certain if the NB frequency was reading correctly before that bios flash. It still seems to "auto" to 1600Mhz, but it's running fine manually set to 1800Mhz and reading correctly in CPUz.


*edit*
Grrr. Not stable at 38x after all.
AIDA64 reports NorthBridge VID as 1.0875 and CPU VID as 1.2375. Should I be looking to bump these to 1.15v and 1.35v respectively? Temperatures all seem good. 29C board and 30c cpu at idle.
I also perhaps should have emphasised earlier, I'm getting infrequent lockups. Damn thing just randomly freezes occasionally when it's asked to do something. Not reboots or BSOD's. If I reboot to BIOS temperatures read fine.

 

[kagui]

try running mem at default then test , sometimes they advertise as xxxx mhz speed but somewhere else it says only whit OC

 

[slashandburn]

RAM has been pretty thoroughly tested at 1866, 9-10-9-27. No errors reported by Memtest86 OR HCI Memtest86. It's Corasir Vengeance. Strangely there is no JDEC timings on the timings table for 1600Mhz, just 1333mhz (9-9-9-24) and below.Then the XMP profile for 1866mhz. But as I say. No errors reported with the memory..

I also ran prime95 (largeFFT) overnight (~7 hours) and it was still ticking along wquite happily when I climbed out my scratcher today. So the APU seems to be mostly functional too.

I've changed nothing since my last lockup and its been fine, even under stress. If anything the amount of cooling in this case is overkill considering its only being asked to do stock frequencies. I might need to start playing with msrtweaker sooner than I thought. Now, I guess I wait on the next random lockup. Oh joy of joys.

On the bright side I don't need this thing for anything overly important. I only want it to be stable for the sake of my sanity. I've invested more time and money into this rig than anyone with half a brain would deem sensible. I feel I've fully committed now. Stable or bust.

 

[Jubassi]

try using mem96 to test the ram it could be that causing the problems.

 

[slashandburn]

I'm not familiar with that one. Google doesn't seem to be either (though I haven't had a thorough search, just a glance).

Can it really be relied on to pick up on errors that HCI memtest and Memtest86 might miss?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Try 1.3v vcore to see if you can get it stable @ 3.8.

 

[slashandburn]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I'm at now. 1.320v all seems fine and well. Fingers crossed.

I'll report back.

 

[slashandburn]

Yup. Quite happy at 3.8ghz, Ram at 1866and northbridge 1800mhz. Thanks for all your help!