GA-X79-UP4 memory and bios issues

[joemamasan]

GA-X79-UP4
Core i7-3820
Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 4 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 2133MHz
Seasonic 600W PSU
bios F3p

ok...i have gotten this board running for a few days now, and i have run into all kinds of flakey behaviour

1) there appears to be no possible way to run this memory at 2133 or even 1866 mhz, even at full voltage and increased IMC and/or Vtt or X.M.P. profile
2) at 1600mhz in bios, the computer often boots in 1333mhz 90% of the time, and working settings that are reproduced in BIOS will not provide duplicate results
3) if you raise the BClk by as little as 2, it proceeds to knock out the intel drivers for both the onboard LAN and my Intel Pro/PT 1000 gigabit nic for no apparent reason

the only thing that HAS worked is raising the multiplier to 43... (i.e. 4.3 Ghz)

and the only thing that appears to cause 1600mhz to actually boot is to use the outdated and clunky Easytune software to set 1600mhz and then reboot

while the system is perfectly stable at 4.3ghz/1600mhz, there is alot of weird behaviour here

as it seems there is no Bios update in over 6 months now, these x79 boards seem well behind in updates compared to Z77 chipset and such

thanks for any thoughts or ideas anyone here has on these issues

[joemamasan]

Update:

i have located and installed the new F3t beta bios and the results are much better

i have successfully booted at both 1866 and 2133mhz on the ram!

2133 seems a little less stable and requires much lower timings and higher voltages...not sure its worth it for the small performance gain

i havent tried any additional overclocking so far, but things are looking encouraginng for the moment


P.S  guess it was the BIOS like i thought after all :

[joemamasan]

furthur update:

with a little voltage and such, this is now running 4.5ghz with the ram at 2000mhz

everything that didnt work at all before, works now

temps at low 60s at load with just a Hyper 212 Evo

just a heads up to anyone that had the same issues

[nitromau]

hello, Joemamasan.
I have a Gigabyte motherboard model GA-Z68XP-UD3P with a i7 2600k and 8GB vengeance Corsair 1600MHZ.
and I want to change the corsair with a new memory to 1866 or 2133 MHz (2 x 4Gb) to overclock my cpu.

On gigabyte website, the list of compatible memory offered for this motherboard covers almost all models out of production.
So I would like to know if the two models of memories that I have indicated below are supported and compatible.

Patriot 8GB Kit 2*4GB DDR3 1866MHz serie Viper 3 IEM Limited CAS9
Patriot 8GB KIT 2*4GB DDR3 2133MHz Viper 3 Series Black Mamba CL11

Do you think that Corsair and Kingston are more reliable for gigabyte motherboards??

thanks

[joemamasan]

not sure... havent had a X68 board from them
Patriot was like the only choice for 2133 and 4 sticks on this board listed on website
just make sure the voltage is correct for your board

keep in mind the performance increase from 1866 to 2133 isnt all that much
if there is a big price difference, you may do just as well with the low-latency 1866

good luck

[xplode]

I have almost the same configuration as yours but have no problems with memory.

i7-3820
16GB Corsair Vengeance (CMZ16GX3M4A2133C11B)

Memory works out of the box. Just switched XMP to Profile1 and thats all. My ram works on 2133 as it supposed to.

[Scracy]

Iam running similar configuration Corsair CMT16GX3M4X2133C9 F3t bios without any issues allthough i have had to increase Vram to 1.6V instead of 1.5V. Prior to increasing Vram i had media centre crashing and sidebar crashing issues,according to corsair up to 1.9V is ok for this kit.

[joemamasan]

i have reverted to 4.3 ghz... 4.7 was way too voltage hungry for my taste
absolutely stable and runs cooler here

[joemamasan]

hello, Joemamasan.
I have a Gigabyte motherboard model GA-Z68XP-UD3P with a i7 2600k and 8GB vengeance Corsair 1600MHZ.
and I want to change the corsair with a new memory to 1866 or 2133 MHz (2 x 4Gb) to overclock my cpu.

On gigabyte website, the list of compatible memory offered for this motherboard covers almost all models out of production.
So I would like to know if the two models of memories that I have indicated below are supported and compatible.

Patriot 8GB Kit 2*4GB DDR3 1866MHz serie Viper 3 IEM Limited CAS9
Patriot 8GB KIT 2*4GB DDR3 2133MHz Viper 3 Series Black Mamba CL11

Do you think that Corsair and Kingston are more reliable for gigabyte motherboards??

thanks

i dont think you can broadly say any ram variety is good

i will say the Patriot has worked well and was a very good value for a 4 x 4Gb kit

good luck

[Scracy]

Each to their own i guess a number of sandy bridge e overclocking guides have stated that 1.5v and below is fine for 24/7 use. It does seem though that gigabyte boards on the x79 platform seem to require a higher v core than other manufacturers for some reason. I have got eist etc enabled so as far as i am aware im not running a constant 1.48v v core when at idle,can anyone confirm?

[joemamasan]

Intel spec sheets actually show 1.65 as being ok... i have had no problems with it

1.48v seems pretty high...may want to check out the various LLC and DVID options to prevent VDroop on this board

[crfrank]

GA-X79-UP4
Core i7-3820
Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 4 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 2133MHz
Seasonic 600W PSU
bios F3p

ok...i have gotten this board running for a few days now, and i have run into all kinds of flakey behaviour

1) there appears to be no possible way to run this memory at 2133 or even 1866 mhz, even at full voltage and increased IMC and/or Vtt or X.M.P. profile
2) at 1600mhz in bios, the computer often boots in 1333mhz 90% of the time, and working settings that are reproduced in BIOS will not provide duplicate results
3) if you raise the BClk by as little as 2, it proceeds to knock out the intel drivers for both the onboard LAN and my Intel Pro/PT 1000 gigabit nic for no apparent reason

the only thing that HAS worked is raising the multiplier to 43... (i.e. 4.3 Ghz)

and the only thing that appears to cause 1600mhz to actually boot is to use the outdated and clunky Easytune software to set 1600mhz and then reboot

while the system is perfectly stable at 4.3ghz/1600mhz, there is alot of weird behaviour here

as it seems there is no Bios update in over 6 months now, these x79 boards seem well behind in updates compared to Z77 chipset and such

thanks for any thoughts or ideas anyone here has on these issues

I had the same problem with a similar set - went backwards and forwards between Patriot and Gigabyte - in the end it seemed to be that Patriot were using an updated version of XMP with some of their latest kits and the GA-X79-UP4 didn't like it at all - in my case with my kit and the shipped BIOS I had to actually wipe the CMOS to get the board to boot again if I enabled XMP in the BIOS... In the end I just left the kit running at 1600 as even with manual settings I couldn't get it to run at anything faster without being VERY ropey and never at the specc'ed 2133MHz...

Haven't tried XMP since, but now I'm on F3u and since you seemed to have some luck with F3t I might be tempted to give it another go...

[joemamasan]

GA-X79-UP4
Core i7-3820
Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 4 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 2133MHz
Seasonic 600W PSU
bios F3p

ok...i have gotten this board running for a few days now, and i have run into all kinds of flakey behaviour

1) there appears to be no possible way to run this memory at 2133 or even 1866 mhz, even at full voltage and increased IMC and/or Vtt or X.M.P. profile
2) at 1600mhz in bios, the computer often boots in 1333mhz 90% of the time, and working settings that are reproduced in BIOS will not provide duplicate results
3) if you raise the BClk by as little as 2, it proceeds to knock out the intel drivers for both the onboard LAN and my Intel Pro/PT 1000 gigabit nic for no apparent reason

the only thing that HAS worked is raising the multiplier to 43... (i.e. 4.3 Ghz)

and the only thing that appears to cause 1600mhz to actually boot is to use the outdated and clunky Easytune software to set 1600mhz and then reboot

while the system is perfectly stable at 4.3ghz/1600mhz, there is alot of weird behaviour here

as it seems there is no Bios update in over 6 months now, these x79 boards seem well behind in updates compared to Z77 chipset and such

thanks for any thoughts or ideas anyone here has on these issues

I had the same problem with a similar set - went backwards and forwards between Patriot and Gigabyte - in the end it seemed to be that Patriot were using an updated version of XMP with some of their latest kits and the GA-X79-UP4 didn't like it at all - in my case with my kit and the shipped BIOS I had to actually wipe the CMOS to get the board to boot again if I enabled XMP in the BIOS... In the end I just left the kit running at 1600 as even with manual settings I couldn't get it to run at anything faster without being VERY ropey and never at the specc'ed 2133MHz...

Haven't tried XMP since, but now I'm on F3u and since you seemed to have some luck with F3t I might be tempted to give it another go...

well i upgraded to the F3t beta bios, most of my memory issues went away
but...
theres nothing i can do to make this run at 2133 any more
i did get it to work for a while, but it wasnt stable
so, i decided to try to reduce latency which is higher for the quad-channel boards

so i have gotten 9-10-9-28- 128 1T working rock solid at 1.65V ...this has latency down to 21.5ms in Sisoft Sandra
also the jump from 1666 to 1866 is the last one with a reasonable performance increase...
after that the percentages get pretty small

one thing i ran into, i had to use EasyTune in some instances to get ram speeds about 1600 to 'stick'...try it if you have this problem
good luck

P.S. it still requires CMOS reset if you set XMP on F3t...
    i may take a look at F3u...thanks for that info

[joemamasan]

thats 'above 1600' sorry 

[crfrank]

SUCCESS!!

...Just updated to the new F4 BIOS (which is official, not beta) and tried the XMP profile for my Patriot RAM at 2133MHz - and it WORKED  

Seems stable too - Windows is OK, and been playing a few games with no crashes - so give it a go Joe and see what you think.

You have to flash it through Windows using @BIOS - if you try through the BIOS Qflash option it says the flash utility is out of date.

Oh - I never really noticed before - but is the BIOS temperature readings for the CPU completely wrong with Gigabyte boards? I hope so - In the BIOS it was reporting my CPU tempature in the mid 80's centigrade - and that's with a water cooler lol... Got much more sensible readings in Windows....