Asus P67 BIOS question.

Best answer selected by irlwizard.

Alex do you also happen to know how to select the PCI slot to run at x16?

Gigabyte lets you choose if you want to activate
PCI
PCIe x8 (for slot 1 or 2)
PCIe x16 (for slot 1 or 2)

My friend said waking the PC out of sleepmode caused system crashes, that is why I recommended updating BIOS. Now the sleep modes no longer crash, but the FPS has droped down to 15fps. Sounds weird so maybe the default PCIe bandwith is lowered by default after the update.


So after the optimized default load. The plain is to make sure the CPU is using all power saving states/modes for sleep/idel. After that, force the mobo to use PCIe x16 on the VGA card, then manually tweak the RAM to run at its rated 1600Mhz 9CAS, and put comman rate to 1 even tho 2 is stock (command rate change will basically be the only 'overclock' we will be doing). Then uninstall VGA drivers and reinstalling them. It should fix the FPS issues. Hopefully you can tell that I know what I'm doing, just unfamiliar with ASUS BIOS, that's all. =)

According to the board's specs, the blue slot should run at x16. No setting in BIOS, I think, but I will check the manual. He can verify the bandwidth with CPU-Z.
Can you detail the configuration of his PC (RAMs model, CPU, GPU and PSU?

Thanks. I'm also having a look at the guide and can't see any PCI options except for page 1-24. Not sure about the GPU. CPU is Sandybridge 2600 without K, prolly some $10 PSU that comes with the case lol. Not sure about HDD either. All I know is mobo and the RAM is G.skill Ares 4x4GB, rated 1.5v at 1600Mhz 9CAS. Will advice downloading CPUz n GPUz so we find out about those, later.


Another funny thing that happened after the BIOS update was that the BOOT drive could not be read. No recommended configurations could change that so I adviced changing the SATA port. It now works and reads the HDD in the Marvell SATA 6GB/s port. I wanted it in the Intel 6GB/s port but my friend couldn't find one and is overseas so I can't go there to check. Anyway I don't see how the specs should matter, even if the PSU is bad and it had good FPS before, after the BIOS update the FPS should still be the same, if not more. I think the VGA drivers just need an update because they are older then the BIOS version and might not read properly.

The method used to update the BIOS was downloading the file into a FAT32 flash drive then updating it through EZ Flash 2 in the BIOS. So that should have been perfectly fine as well.

Weird issues. What I would try: remove 2 or 3 RAM modules and test with only one or two sticks installed. Then, the PSU might also add to the problem depending on the graphics card power requirements.
Updating the GPU driver might also help.
The SATA issue might be related to AHCI or IDE (if SATA was set to IDE or AHCI when installing Windows) and then switched by updating the BIOS he would get a BSOD.
Lot of "might", I know.

Yeah after it could not read the HDD my advice was to make sure the Storage Controllers where all enabled (not sure about ASUS but on Gigabyte you can enable/disable the actual controller). After we enabled everything that could be. We tested booting in AHCI mode, didn't work so we tried IDE, didn't work. That is when the SATA port was swapped. And it now reads in IDE mode. Friend is too noob to registry hack to allow AHCI mode so it can be in IDE for now.

A person who only found out about the existance of BIOS last week is too noob to run something like Memtest. xP So we can't rule out memory corruption but that is highly unlikely. After the old VGA drivers have been uninstalled and any leftovers removed in safe mode with guru3d's Driver Sweeper. The new drivers will be installed and I'll let you know if the FPS problem got solved. But thanks for taking an interest in the issue Alex. I still think Gigabyte BIOS is better tho, curse ASUS.  

What he can also try is clearing the CMOS (by removing the battery with the power supply off). Sometimes it does help. Testing with only one or two RAM sticks would rule out a memory issue. He can also check the Windows Experience Index. If low at CPU, memory or graphics he would know where to search.
Using an OS installed on a diiferent system can also give issues.