How to check for C2 steppings on chipset for Haswell motherboards?

[Jumpman23]

I emailed Gigabyte support and they've told me that the C2 stepping is already out in the market. How is one suppose to tell the difference when purchasing? So far, I haven't seen it advertised on the box of new motherboards.

 

[Dave3000]

I'd like to buy the Asus Z87 Plus and an i7-4770. I checked boxes white label on the side and it didn't mention anything about revision number or it didn't have C2 on the label and as a result I don't know if it's the C2 stepping of the Z87 chipset. I checked other brands of the Z87 motherboards and they don't mention the revision number or stepping, well one of the brands said revision 1.0 on the box. I just can't risk taking my chances right now on purchases a Z87 motherboard as it's too soon for me to be confident that I will get a C2 stepping. The sales guy didn't know if they were revision C2 on any of the brands either.

 

[VirtualLarry]

CPU-Z should be able to tell.

 

[vailr]

Did any C1 chips even make it to retail boards? Intel did their C1 recall before the Haswell CPU & chipset was officially released.

 

[zir_blazer]

Did any C1 chips even make it to retail boards? Intel did their C1 recall before the Haswell CPU & chipset was officially released.

Huh? Haswell was launched with the C1 Chipsets. C2 was expected to be shipping at the end of this month.

 

[vailr]

Sorry: after reading some more on the subject:
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6578
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/15374/
C1 stepping chipset motherboards were indeed released at Haswell's launch, even though the USB 3.0 related "erratum" was known about. C2 stepping products supposedly just began release from Intel on July 15.
Retail boards could start becoming available after August 1, although older inventory would tend to be shipped out from retailers first. I'd say that waiting until September 1st (depending on the specific retailer) might give a better chance at actually receiving a C2 stepping Haswell board.

 

[Jumpman23]

The Gigabyte support rep told me that all their boards in the market right now are of C2 steppings and that the C1 was only on pre-production boards.

 

[vailr]

Well: who knows? Can someone with a Gigabyte Haswell board run CPU-Z and post a screen capture that includes the mainboard chipset stepping version?

 

[zir_blazer]

The Gigabyte support rep told me that all their boards in the market right now are of C2 steppings and that the C1 was only on pre-production boards.

Which sounds pretty much impossible according to current info, unless Intel did things VERY ahead of the previously leaked schedule and every other news site is wrong.

 

[Jumpman23]

Well: who knows? Can someone with a Gigabyte Haswell board run CPU-Z and post a screen capture that includes the mainboard chipset stepping version?

This is probably the best way. How come no one's done this? Is this really that minor of a problem? I feel like this is a huge annoyance since I have an external connected most of the time.

 

[vailr]

I found a screen capture of CPU-Z on a Gigabyte Z87X-OC board:
http://upic.me/i/7w/g3300.png (lower left of the image)

Post #6 from this page:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...6-**Official**-GIGABYTE-Z87X-OC-OC-Force-Club
It shows:
Chipset: Intel Haswell Rev. 06
Southbridge: LynxPoint Rev. 04
So: may need some other Intel chipset identifier.

 

[zir_blazer]

I found a screen capture of CPU-Z on a Gigabyte Z87X-OC board:
http://upic.me/i/7w/g3300.png (lower left of the image)
Post #6 from this page:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...6-**Official**-GIGABYTE-Z87X-OC-OC-Force-Club
It shows: Chipset: Intel Haswell Rev. 06
So: may need some other Intel chipset identifier.

Lynx Point 04 = C1

Revision ID will change from 04h to 05h.

 

[thewhat]

Here it says we'll probably have to wait at least until September:
http://www.techpowerup.com/187392/m...8-series-chipset-to-show-up-by-september.html

 

[rob426]

Well: who knows? Can someone with a Gigabyte Haswell board run CPU-Z and post a screen capture that includes the mainboard chipset stepping version?

Bought 15 June

 

[vailr]

Conclusion: wait another 4 to 8 weeks, or so. My guess on identifying C2 stepping boards: Gigabyte may change the version number to: 1.1, like they did when they updated their Z77X-UD5H board. In that case, the VIA USB 3.0 controller chip was updated on the Z77X-UD5H board from version 810 to version 811. The board version number is printed on the board near the first PCIe video card slot.

 

[bankster55]

all current retail ASUS Z87 are C1

The $64,000 question is whether the mobo makers will eventually offer an exchange for C1 mobo, or perhaps a resolder of SB, or will they just leave everything as is. I guess I will have to call Intel one of these days to find out. No one else seems to know.

 

[wand3r3r]

Are people getting c2's yet?

Seems like a pretty bad bug for anyone with usb3 devices when using sleep.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Why is Intel even having chipset bugs in bloody 2013, isn't the SB chipset SATA3 bug two years ago a harsh lesson already? Some heads over there need to roll.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Why is Intel even having chipset bugs in bloody 2013, isn't the SB chipset SATA3 bug two years ago a harsh lesson already? Some heads over there need to roll.

Because people are obviously not willing to wait for the time it takes. Just look on the LGA2011 whining.

Also there are 100s of bugs in all Intel, AMD, nVidia, ARM etc products. And this bug is a very minor one to put it mildly.

The first C2 boards should hit anytime now.

 

[KentState]

My launch MB is the C1 version. I've had a lot of system problems swapping from the 3770k/Asus MB to the 4770k/GB while keeping everything else the same.

 

[chizow]

The Gigabyte support rep told me that all their boards in the market right now are of C2 steppings and that the C1 was only on pre-production boards.

Probably bad info from a misinformed tech rep. My board purchased on launch day is C1 and I'm sure most others from the last 2 months are as well. As others have stated, the message about C2 has been consistent, they should only be hitting the market around now.

Personally this errata hasn't impacted me, my connected USB bays/enclosures are both detected after waking from S3 Sleep, one is USB 3.0 one is not.

My launch MB is the C1 version. I've had a lot of system problems swapping from the 3770k/Asus MB to the 4770k/GB while keeping everything else the same.

I had a bumpy run at the start with this board and chipset to start as well, nothing game breaking but certainly very annoying. Here's a few things you can try that I figured out as I went:

1) Update your BIOS. F5 was the first stable release for many, for that board and most others in the UD line it looks like Gigabyte has settled on F6 as the latest stable BIOS.

2) Don't use XMP profiles. Will result in all kinds of flakiness and instability, from corrupted audio to random restarts and bluescreens (blaming Nvidia drivers, no less). This was actually pretty crippling until I figured it out.

3) Adjust Intel NIC settings in Device Manager to fix wake from sleep issues. If your computer went to Sleep and woke right back up, it's the WoL settings in the Device Manager properties for the NIC. Toggle off the WoL settings and you should be good to go.

4) ALWAYS make sure to set the SATA controller to RAID after BIOS flash or porting drives from an old build if you are using any RAID0 arrays. Unlike previous Intel chipsets, Z87 RAID controller does allow you to boot to an OS install set to RAID, even when the controller is set to legacy or AHCI. In the past this would usually BSOD and fail to boot. As a result, your RAID disks will almost guaranteed lose the RAID metadata and be corrupted if you boot to Windows in AHCI mode. Even using various tools to recover the RAID metadata like testdisk did not work, even though I had success with them in the past.

Rig is running like a dream now for the most part, I dialed my OC back a bit to 4.2 so I don't need as much voltage, just tweaking performance on my RAID 0 arrays at this point.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Because people are obviously not willing to wait for the time it takes. Just look on the LGA2011 whining.

Also there are 100s of bugs in all Intel, AMD, nVidia, ARM etc products. And this bug is a very minor one to put it mildly.

The first C2 boards should hit anytime now.

Don't drag in AMD or ARM because they are irrelevant to this issue. Somehow Intel super-complicated CPUs turns out fine with the usual harmless erratas but yet their much simpler chipsets doesn't, which begs the question of the sheer incompetence of their chipset divison. I find your Intel apologetic crap sickening to say the least.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Don't drag in AMD or ARM because they are irrelevant to this issue. Somehow Intel super-complicated CPUs turns out fine with the usual harmless erratas but yet their much simpler chipsets doesn't, which begs the question of the sheer incompetence of their chipset divison. I find your Intel apologetic crap sickening to say the least.

Do you think other vendor chipsets are flawless?
http://support.amd.com/us/ChipsetMotherboard_TechDocs/48671.pdf
http://support.amd.com/us/ChipsetMotherboard_TechDocs/49643.pdf

Seems AMD for example got plenty of USB related issues on their own.

37 XHCI State Machine Locks Up When Swapping USB 3.0 Devices During S3 (Hudson-3 only)
Description
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Swapping USB SuperSpeed devices on a USB 3.0 port while the system is in S3 state may result in a lock up of the XHCI controller state machine. This issue occurs if the new device connection status is registered in the XHCI controller during the sleep state. [/FONT]
[/FONT]Potential Effect on System
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]The affected USB 3.0 port will not be functional until after a system reset. [/FONT][/FONT]

Please keep this thread on topic - C1 stepping vs. C2 stepping availability. Thanks.
-Admin DrPizza

 

[Rvenger]

Here we go with 'lets look at AMD and put intel in a better light' situation.


Please, if you feel that someone is derailing a thread, just report the post. -Admin DrPizza

 

[ShintaiDK]

Here we go with 'lets look at AMD and put intel in a better light' situation.

You cant look at a single product like StrangerGuy and assume that x company is bad. Without having proper information about the standards and normal expectations in the product group.

The point is, all these erratas are very minor and wont make a difference for the wast majority.