What controls Turbo Core in Xeons?

[Zladimir]

Turned out to be a silly error on my part. I hadn't realized/didn't remembered this board was an X99M Extreme4 not an X99 Extreme4 and that their BIOS is different. Once I load/mod the right BIOS I'm able to get further, but the 3.2 (latest) BIOS) has (for me at least) removed some critical voltage control. So, progress is limited.

What kind of voltage control you expect to have ? The Haswell Xeon architecture doesnt allow by hard lock many settings. There are no FIVR settings or real vcore settings (the cpu decides all by itself). All you can do is to modify the voltage input slightly, which may lower temperature and current, but thats all.
Even if there is an option available it will have zero effect.

 

[RonRonsen]

Hi,
Can anyone explain me how to use the v3x2.efi.? The best would be like a little Guide step by step.
Ronny

 

[Zladimir]

Hi,
Can anyone explain me how to use the v3x2.efi.? The best would be like a little Guide step by step.
Ronny

Read the first 3 pages, there is everything described in detail.

 

[cekim]

What kind of voltage control you expect to have ? The Haswell Xeon architecture doesnt allow by hard lock many settings. There are no FIVR settings or real vcore settings (the cpu decides all by itself). All you can do is to modify the voltage input slightly, which may lower temperature and current, but thats all.
Even if there is an option available it will have zero effect.

The 3.10 bios had Vcore/Vcache controls (as does my Z10PE-D16 WS). I could be wrong, but I believe those are functional even in v4 much less v3. Empirically, I needed to bump Vcore a little to be stable with uCode stripped and V3.EFI run. As I understood Dufus' various comments, he actually undervolted it a little in his script (I haven't had a moment to read through the C source or disassembly of V3.EFI yet), so I was in effect, reversing his setting from what I understood.

Again, I can A/B that change in the 3.1 bios and either boot and run indefinitely with Vcore offset or I can boot and freeze reliably without it. So, something is changing. Lacking that setting, the 3.2 bios freezes every time mid-way into a linux boot (about where 3.1 would without VCore offset a little.

 

[RonRonsen]

With no experiences with efi is the Dufus guide on Page 3 difficult

 

[cekim]

With no experiences with efi is the Dufus guide on Page 3 difficult

There's a simplified version that follows his - keep reading...

 

[cekim]

Taichi update w/2696v3 (moved from unstable X99M Extreme4):
1. Stock - default bios
all core turbo during stressapp = 2.8GHz

2. Patched Taichi 1.4 Bios + V3.EFI as bcfg driver add 0 ...V3.EFI "v3 Turbo" auto-loading by default now
All core turbo during stress app:
a. 0x39 ucode - with and without HT (same result)
3.1GHz
b. 0x27 ucode - with and without HT (same result)
3.1GHz

So far Taichi is stable and easy to setup and reboots without code 79/hangs. Not sure what's wrong with my X99M E4 MB, but it doesn't like this experiment at all.
<snip>
If I lower the load, I can see some higher clocks:

Here is a synthetic load (no FPU/AVX, just a tight loop) on 8 cores:

Every 3.0s: grep -i mhz /proc/cpuinfo | grep -i ": 37" Fri Mar 10 15:01:14 2017

cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.492
cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.941
cpu MHz : 3799.941

If I go to 10 cores, I start seeing some TDP throttling (its not temp - only at 46C package - H110i) down to 3.3, 3.5, 3.6 etc... and some bouncing up and down between those and 3.8.

So, in all, I think this is now working exactly as it should/will in that there are still hard TDP limits being enforced, but so long as temp is in check, it will make better use of the chip...

Now for some real load testing...

 

[cekim]

As previously, even real-world 8-core loads can keep up 3.6-3.8GHz. 9-10 start getting a little choppy.

18 core real loads quickly bring everything to 3.1GHz:
16 core loads allow that to breathe a little and things look more like this:
cpu MHz : 3385.492
cpu MHz : 3586.113
cpu MHz : 3520.437
cpu MHz : 3495.820
cpu MHz : 3498.335
cpu MHz : 3100.328
cpu MHz : 3300.230
cpu MHz : 3413.972
cpu MHz : 3100.148
cpu MHz : 3581.082
cpu MHz : 3354.945
cpu MHz : 3390.433
cpu MHz : 3579.464
cpu MHz : 3385.312
cpu MHz : 3388.636
cpu MHz : 3388.726

Playing around with under-volting VCCin. Need more testing to tell what/if its doing, but so far it looks like it helps the TDP basket in loads like this and gives a little more head-room, but only subjectively at this point.

Also running this as CAS11 non-ECC (2800CAS15 g-skill DIMMS). Will gather some more data to see how much that really helps.

Running a real load of mine in something that scales reasonably well to 16 cores at least (note, I did a quick test of something I know scales well in time - run it for an hour or 2 minutes and you'll get the same offset in performance from one system to another):
2x2690v4 2400DDR4 CAS17 - x16 cores: 1m:54s (3.2GHz all-core turbo)
1x2696v3 2133DDR4 CAS11 - x16 cores: 1m:55s (3.3-3.5ish all-core turbo - see above)

That's pretty darn impressive as far as I am concerned...

EDIT:
1. looking like about 5% hit to go to CAS15 (default) from CAS11 2T. I have one memory channel (B) on this chip that won't tolerate 1T pretty much regardless of voltage or timing.
2. Effect of negative offsets to VCCin are subtle (hard to measure), but I can see it in the typical mix of clock rates. With significant negative offsets (-0.140 that frankly, I am surprised works) you see as above - a mix from 3100 to 3600. With "Auto" it settles at 3200-3300 quickly under sustained load. The actual impact on measured performance and temp is in the noise however.

 

[adefry23]

very interesting thread as the owner of two xeons 2649v3 and 2622v3 and a keen gamer would like to boost the all core to turbos of 3.0 and 3.4 both are engineering quality samples ive tried and tried but unfortunately failed to mod my msi bios I have the x99s sli plus can anyone help please

 

[Zladimir]

very interesting thread as the owner of two xeons 2649v3 and 2622v3 and a keen gamer would like to boost the all core to turbos of 3.0 and 3.4 both are engineering quality samples ive tried and tried but unfortunately failed to mod my msi bios I have the x99s sli plus can anyone help please

First of all is needed to know what kind of motherboard you have. This determines what bios you have. And in the end you get linked to forums win-raid.com, as they have all details and tutorials about bios modding, quite nicely explained even for newbies.

 

[vercety]

Cekim, check message 213. Also, here you have a zip with all the necessary files and steps

http://www80.zippyshare.com/v/U179LJHE/file.html

 

[adefry23]

hi zladamir ive got the msi x99s sli plus ive got all the files but ubu doesn't work and you need to hexadecimal the driver out cant work it out

 

[cekim]

Cekim, check message 213. Also, here you have a zip with all the necessary files and steps

http://www80.zippyshare.com/v/U179LJHE/file.html

I grabbed your zip earlier this week it was very helpful. The more recent post here asking for a guide was RonRonsen not me. Thanks again for your guide and zip.

 

[cekim]

I had some issues with the USB/EFI which turned out to be a dodgy motherboard. However, some people have asked me about that step of creating a bootable USB/EFI disk. Vercety's .zip and guide includes this, but just for the sake of anyone else having issues and to provide some more detail:

Assuming you do not have or are not sure if you have an EFI bootable usb drive. You can make one. WARNING: this will wipe the drive. Copy anything you want to keep elsewhere.

1. enable GPT on your USB thumb drive:
(some info here - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn336946.aspx)
- insert thumb drive
- run command prompt (cmd.exe)
- run diskpart in command prompt
- list your disks (DISKAPRT>list disk) to figure out which disk
DISKPART>select disk <disk number>
(where <disk number> is 0,1,3, etc...)
- clean, convert and partition
DISKPART>clean
DISKPART>convert gpt
DISKPART>create partition primary
DISKPART>exit

Your drive will now have GPT enabled, but has been wiped and needs to be formatted (could be done in diskpart, but easier in explorer).

2. go to file explorer - you should still see your USB thumb drive there, but you will not be able to read/write it until you format
- right click on your drive (example: F:\)
- select "format"
- press "start" and leave everything at the defaults and it will format your USB stick.

3. You should now see an empty usb drive in explorer. Different BIOS will support various features here, but here's the most widely accepted approach that I know of:
- In your newly formatted USB drive (example F:\) create the following directory structure in explorer:
f:\EFI\BOOT
- Copy Shell.efi provided in this thread or Vercety's .zip to f:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI
(rename Shell.efi to BOOTx64.EFI in that directory).
- "safely eject" your thumb drive

4. In your BIOS - make sure that you have UEFI mode enabled (usually in "boot" or "Secure boot". This varies according to BIOS.

5. Either go to a BIOS boot menu or set the usb drive as the primary boot option for now. NOTE: your thumb drive formatted as above may appear twice as a bootable drive depending on your BIOS. Select the one that has "UEFI" in the name.

6. reboot or select this from your boot menu and you should now be in a UEFI shell (black screen, yellow and white letters).

Hope that helps.

BTW - in linux you'd use gdisk instead of diskpart to set the GPT label and create the partition and mkfs.fat instead of explorer to do the formatting.

 

[RonRonsen]

Update:
I used
http://www.computerbild.de/download/Rufus-8068060.html
To create a gpt USB Flash stick.
Put the renamed shell.efi as Shellx64.efi on root, and whoops shell is running with my BIOS.
Now I want to try the V3x2 of Welsper , I downloaded it and see its C format . Can I put it also on root of the stick and rename it or what is to do ?
http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=mobile.443bb8h.jpg

 

[Welsper]

I downloaded it and see its C format. Can I put it also on root of the stick and rename it or what is to do ?

No, this is source code. I shared compiled one a little earlier than source.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to return C3/C6 states now.
I've added microcode update into V3x2.efi after multipliers corretion.
Microcode is accepted and unlock works... But windows loading still freezes if C3/C6 is enabled in BIOS options.
Any ideas ?

 

[RonRonsen]

I have the same with c3/c6 state. No chance with enabled.
After I load the v3x2.efi with success , my BIOS boot again and the efi isn't loaded.

 

[custom90gt]

I have the same with c3/c6 state. No chance with enabled

Interesting, I could have sworn both C3 and C6 are enabled on mine. I did have to give it an extra .02 volts though to keep it stable...

 

[cekim]

I'm trying to return C3/C6 states now.
I've added microcode update into V3x2.efi after multipliers corretion.
Microcode is accepted and unlock works... But windows loading still freezes if C3/C6 is enabled in BIOS options.
Any ideas ?

Pretty sure I saw them disabled by default in my various systems. Any reason in particularly you are trying to get them to work? They show up frequently in changelogs of BIOS releases trying to fix bugs, straight up through Skylake.

 

[Ace123]

I have an asrock epc612d4i and xeon e5 2683v3
Has anyone done this with these boards and can someone help me modify a bios to try this?

 

[Ace123]

Man I've been reading through this thread and maybe I'm completely in over my head lol. I need some help to understand this

 

[custom90gt]

Man I've been reading through this thread and maybe I'm completely in over my head lol. I need some help to understand this

Read the first 3 pages or so over again, if you have questions post them. Everyone here has been helpful.

 

[Ace123]

Ok so ive downloaded the sweet "package" that someone put together which is AWSOME.
So ive downloaded the newest bios for my Asrock EPC612d4i and I copied it to the UBU folder of that package and the guide which is awesome on post 213 says to run the UBU as administrator. I click that and it says scanning. Then it says I have an ASUStek board (which I don't) and the model number is X99 deluxe (which it isn't) and detects all the Lan and raid parts and then. Then it says something about Aptio bios which might not work and something else.

I hit 7 for cpu microcode update like the guide says.

I get to this screen

 

[Ace123]

There is no "1" to hit like the guy says, just m, s , p ,and 0

 

[Ace123]

Nvm I uppacked the other UBU within that file, ran it, and it detected everything fine. Hopefully it modified the bios correctly.