Help needed with Gigabyte P55-UD3

Hi guys, need a bit of help please. I have just built a new system, the main components of which are i5 750, Gigabyte P55-UD3, and G-Skill 4gb 1600mhz 7-7-7-24 RAM.

It's the BIOS I'm struggling with...it defaults the RAM to 1333mhz (133 bclk) and the CPU to x20 (x21 for turbo), which is fine, however I want the RAM to run at 1600mhz. I selected the XMP RAM profile which automatically altered the bclk to 160 (increasing RAM speed to 1600) and the CPU multi to 16. Now the problem I've got is the turbo multi for each core also says 16 and sure enough I don't get any turbo kicking in in Windows.

I've tried enabling/disabling C1E and EIST etc but nothing I do seems to allow me to have any turbo. I'm not bothered about overclocking as I only have stock cooler, I just want the damn turbo to kick in!! Is this impossible due to changing the bclk?

Any help appreciated, thanks

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Not much boost in going from 1333 -> 1600, unless you overclock. The timings provide more of a boost. With your ram you MAY (???) be able to tighten the timings up abit by running @ 1333. May be wrong, but some of the articles dealing with speed seem to favor this point of view.
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 25-11.html
Quote
Knowing all of these results, it is obvious that highest speed DDR3 memory only makes sense for serious enthusiasts, or for those with unlimited budgets. Everyone else should focus on mainstream clock speeds of DDR3-1066 or DDR3-1333, and go for a trustworthy brand and the quickest timings their budget allows.

PS: If and when I build my I5, I will also get the 1600 RAM.

Message edited by RetiredChief on 10-05-2009 at 09:13:21 PM

Reply to RetiredChief

I've posted the beginnings of a tool to compare latencies on tri-channel RAM here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] omparisons

The fact is that the new i7/i5 architecture is much more responsive to low-latency, as opposed to faster-clocked RAM; I recently wrote this, in explanation:
"There is a place where high speed, versus low latency, will be an advantage - any operations that require large, sustained, reads from and writes to RAM - like, as I mentioned, video transcoding... I always consider my 'pass/fail' system stress test to be: watch/pause one HDTV stream off a networked ATSC tuner, while recording a second stream off a PCI NTSC tuner, while transcoding and 'de-commercialing' a third stream to an NAS media server... But, for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of use, this is not the case. What's going on behind the scenes: the task scheduler is scurrying around, busier than a centipede learning to tap-dance, counting 'ticks': ...tick... yo - over there, you gotta finish up, your tick is over, push your environment, that's a good fella; oops - cache snoops says we've got an incoherency - grab me a meg for him from over there; ...tick... you - get me the address of the block being used by {F92BFB9B-59E9-4B65-8AA3-D004C26BA193}, will 'ya; yeah - UAC says he has permission - I dunno - we'll just have to trust him; damnit - everybody listen up, we've got a pending interrupt request, everyone drop what you're doing, and you - over there - query interrupt handler for a vector - this is important!!! ...tick.... This is why (aside from the obvious matter of access architecture) that swap files are optimized in 4k 'chunks'... And the most fascinating (scary) thing about it all, is that, at some synaptic, neural level, we're doin' the same thing! (...though, the older I get, the less dependable my interrupt return mechanism is - I repeatedly find myself at the bottom of the basement steps, wondering "now what did I come down here for?!" )

Reply to bilbat

Did you find a solution to your problem? I ran into a similar situation with a GA-P55M-UD2, G.Skill 2x2GB 1600 CAS9's and an 97 860. My CPU multiplier got stuck at x21 or x22, so yours getting stuck at x16 is odd. Still, maybe the 'fix' I found will work for you, too.

The problem I was running into, and it sounds like you may be having, was basically that Turbo was not working. I traced the cause of this problem to be turning on the XMP RAM profile in the BIOS. With XMP turned off, Turbo mode worked as expected. With XMP turned on, Turbo stopped working. After some easy changes to a few default settings in the BIOS, I was able to get XMP and Turbo working together. The changes I had to make in the BIOS were on the Advanced CPU Core Features page:
Intel Turbo Boost Tech. - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU Cores Enabled - left as All
CPU Multi-Threading - left as Enabled
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) - changed from Auto to Enabled
C3/C6/C7 State Support - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU Thermal Monitor - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU EIST Function - changed from Auto to Enabled
Bi-Directional PROCHOT - changed from Auto to Enabled

My board now idles with a multiplier of x9 (about 1.2GHz). And when I run a single thread of Prime95 it hits a multiplier of x26 and the max speed of 3.46GHz. Turbo now appears to be working with RAM set to XMP.

Note: These readings are as reported by CPU-Z. CoreTemp approximately matched the idle numbers, but it never reported a multiplier and speed higher than x22 and ~2.93GHz. I'm hoping CPU-Z is correct and CoreTemp has a bug keeping it from reading this processor correctly!

It sure would be nice if Gigabyte explained under what conditions "Auto" settings would result in Enabled vs. Disabled. But since they don't (or I couldn't find it), I have to assume that if I changed any settings, i.e. when I turned on XMP, all of the Autos would be treated as Disabled.

I have not been able to find confirmation of my work elsewhere in the forums or on the internet yet, but I am fairly confident that I have nailed down the cause of and solution to my problem. If you test this theory please let us know the results.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by ekoostik on 10-22-2009 at 06:16:18 PM

Reply to ekoostik

When leaving BIOS function in "Auto", usually it means this function is decided by the BIOS policy. In this case, when CPU ratio is set by manually, Turbo Boost will be disabled by BIOS policy if you leave the option in "Auto". To change the status, manually set to enable will overwrite the policy it set.

Reply to Fatbird

ekoostik wrote :

Did you find a solution to your problem? I ran into a similar situation with a GA-P55M-UD2, G.Skill 2x2GB 1600 CAS9's and an 97 860. My CPU multiplier got stuck at x21 or x22, so yours getting stuck at x16 is odd. Still, maybe the 'fix' I found will work for you, too.

The problem I was running into, and it sounds like you may be having, was basically that Turbo was not working. I traced the cause of this problem to be turning on the XMP RAM profile in the BIOS. With XMP turned off, Turbo mode worked as expected. With XMP turned on, Turbo stopped working. After some easy changes to a few default settings in the BIOS, I was able to get XMP and Turbo working together. The changes I had to make in the BIOS were on the Advanced CPU Core Features page:
Intel Turbo Boost Tech. - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU Cores Enabled - left as All
CPU Multi-Threading - left as Enabled
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) - changed from Auto to Enabled
C3/C6/C7 State Support - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU Thermal Monitor - changed from Auto to Enabled
CPU EIST Function - changed from Auto to Enabled
Bi-Directional PROCHOT - changed from Auto to Enabled

My board now idles with a multiplier of x9 (about 1.2GHz). And when I run a single thread of Prime95 it hits a multiplier of x26 and the max speed of 3.46GHz. Turbo now appears to be working with RAM set to XMP.

Note: These readings are as reported by CPU-Z. CoreTemp approximately matched the idle numbers, but it never reported a multiplier and speed higher than x22 and ~2.93GHz. I'm hoping CPU-Z is correct and CoreTemp has a bug keeping it from reading this processor correctly!

It sure would be nice if Gigabyte explained under what conditions "Auto" settings would result in Enabled vs. Disabled. But since they don't (or I couldn't find it), I have to assume that if I changed any settings, i.e. when I turned on XMP, all of the Autos would be treated as Disabled.

I have not been able to find confirmation of my work elsewhere in the forums or on the internet yet, but I am fairly confident that I have nailed down the cause of and solution to my problem. If you test this theory please let us know the results.

No still haven't found a solution to this. My CPU multiplier doesn't get stuck at x16, I can change that to whatever I wish, but whatever I set it to, the turbo frequency is locked at the same value when it should be x1 higher for each core. Hopefully this makes sense! Even when enabling everything on the advanced CPU core features, I don't get any turbo, only reduced multipliers when usage is low.

Reply to GoonerTCN

I re-read your initial post and noticed I had missed something in there with all those numbers. It is odd to me that turning on XMP adjusted up your bclk. That doesn't happen with my i7 860. But the i5 750's are not always supported by the motherboards at higher speeds.

If you check the explanation of the i5 750 test setup in this review: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639
the thing that jumps out at me is "We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5/750 stock setup as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported in current BIOS releases for this processor at a stock Bclk setting of 133."

The increasing of Bclk could be causing your loss of Turbo. What happens when you disable XMP? Does Turbo work?

Also, how are you measuring the multiplier?

Reply to ekoostik

The bclk has to be increased to 160 as the highest memory multi is x10 (on my board at least). I'm using CPU-Z to measure the CPU multi.

I have actually just made an interesting discovery though... I'm still using a bclk of 160 and If I change the CPU multi from x16 to x20 I get turbo mode again. On the BIOS CPU summary screen it shows x21 for the turbo multi and CPU-Z confirms it. For some reason using any CPU multi below x20 will not allow turbo mode.

The only thing is I'm reluctant to leave the CPU on these settings due to only having a stock cooler!

Reply to GoonerTCN

I wondered about that. It (kind of?) makes sense that if you set a specific multiplier it would honor that. But if the multiplier is at 20 that is its natural state so then it would allow turbo. I guess I could see the logic in that.

If you're worried about temperatures you should download a program to monitor them. Take your pick. Common favorites include SpeedFan, CoreTemp and RealTemp. One word of caution with SpeedFan, unless they've updated it recently it reports ~20C low for the Lynnfield chips. You may want to download 2 programs to monitor temps until you get a feel for what is right. SpeedFan allows you to adjust the offset on the temperatures and there are other guides in these forums to help with that. (On a related note, CoreTemp does not measure single or dual core Turbo correctly, it never shows my i7 860 with a multiplier >22 even while CPU-Z shows x26.)

Another thing to consider:
a 160 bclk x 16 multiplier = 2560
a 133 bclk x 20 multiplier = 2660

So by turning on your XMP - which ups the bclk - and lowering the multiplier manually to what you think is safe, you can end up with a CPU that is actually running slower than stock. It's been pointed out already above, your observable gains from the faster memory are not very significant. And the faster CPU will bring greater gains than the faster memory. You may want to look into bilbat's advice and leave the memory speed alone and tighten the timings instead.

Reply to ekoostik

Ok thanks for your help (and the other guys too). I was running at the default lower memory speed as you say but I cant see it being a problem running 160bclk and x20 CPU due to the fact that during low usage the multi is reduced. Will defintely keep an eye on temps though.
Re tightening the timings, I have no idea what effect over-tightening has and whether it damages RAM etc. How do you know how much to reduce the timings? I'll have a look around myself but do you know of any good guides?

Reply to GoonerTCN

For temperature monitoring -
RealTemp: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/ [...] 203.38.zip
HardwareMonitor (32 bit): http://www.cpuid.com/download/hwmo [...] or_114.zip
HardwareMonitor (64 bit): http://www.cpuid.com/download/hwmo [...] 64_114.zip
CoreTemp (32 bit): http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/CoreTemp32.zip
CoreTemp (64 bit): http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/CoreTemp64.zip

For monitoring 'turbo mode': http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1417780

As far as memory tweaking, the first thing you want to do is get a solid 'read' of your actual SPD. Assuming this will run correctly on the new platforms, this tool is the best (MemSet4.1β6): http://www.tweakers.fr/download/MemSet41b6.zip
Again, assuming it runs, MemSet will also let you 'tweak' memory settings 'live' - I don't recommend its use to give a final setup, but, like EasyTune, it's good for quickly testing changes which you then want to go in and set permanently in your BIOS...

Reply to bilbat

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