Probleme mit 4coredual-sata2 und DRAM interleave

[JAKNIt]

Hello and sorry for writing in English -> my German is actually almost unusable


I'm a foreign user and I would like get in touch with someone expert in 4coredual-sata2 advanced setting\tuning.

I recently bought Asrock 4coredual-sata2 card, a Q6600 CPU, 2 x 2GB Mushkin Enhanged Ram (4-4-4-12 @ 800 Mhz) to make use of my old AGP Sapphire HD 3850.

I immediately installed the modded BIOS from PCtreiber.net (L2.20).

I was able to tune this PC in a decent way, finding a stable tuning with DRAM settings to : 2-3-2-9 @ 533 Mhz , CR 1T, dual channel.

Now, I'm able to make it run with DRAM interleave in 4-way without any problem.
Setting it to 8-way I can run without any problem at the first boot, but if I re-boot or switch-off and then on again, the system doesn't boot up and hangs up at the boot initial screen, showing the concerning sentence "single channel memory mode".

I'm looking for someone that was able to make use of 8-way memory interleave on 4coredual-sata2 board or better knows advanced memory settings, to exchange ideas.

I would like get in touch with the team members that developed the modded BIOS from PCtreiber.net (L2.20) to explain my troubles...looking around in internet I saw that someone was able to use the 8-way interleave using the 4coredual-vsta, that permits to fine tune CLKBUF delays in 50 ps steps (while in 4coredual-sata2 actual bios only 150 ps steps are possible).

I hope someone of you could give me some tips for this old board....



Giacomo

[Tweak-IT]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Thats quite old hardware so there are only a few people that know these old stuff at all

At first look you use quite aggressive ram timings.

That can be ok but ram timings are tied to the interleave settings.

So try to alter your ram timings then you should be able to set it to 8 way.

From the official manual:

[FONT=sans-serif]DRAM Bank Interleave[/FONT]
[FONT=sans-serif]Use this option to select DRAM Bank Interleave. Configuration options:[/FONT]
[FONT=sans-serif][Auto], [Disabled], [2-Way], [4-Way], and [8-Way]. The default value is set[/FONT]
to [Auto] to set the timing by dram SPD

[JAKNIt]

Dear friend, thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately eventi increasing the timings and\or lefting all of them to auto, with command rate to 2T, the board behaviour is the same.

I think there is some bug in BIOS code that prevent the board to auto-recognize the RAM installed after the re-boot when 8 ways is set.

I also tried to force the 8 way interleave by software after booting windows 7. This ia really a violenze but 50% of attempts works.

[Tweak-IT]

So i have another option you might try.

Maybe rising the volages "slightly" will help of the cpu/ram.

And as always the usual disclaimer... you may blow the world apart doing so or ruin your pc so adjusting the voltages on your hardware is your risk...

[JAKNIt]

Dear friend, I tried also that but also the voltage isn't the problem. I think it is in the BIOS code itself, and in the start up phase after resetting or rebootings the PC from the beginning

[Tweak-IT]

So you need to mod that BIOS since settings can't help you then.

So assembly is the language you need to know or know someone that can understand it.

[JAKNIt]

Yes probably

Another option to investigate could be the advanced memory configuration settings menu.

Also, I had to set the delays skew to 300 ps for channel A and 450 ps for channel B to make it works stable.
Now, if it would be possible a slight modification of the menus to adjust the values in 50 ps steps (as in 4coredual-vsta bios) instead of 150 ps (my bios) it would be great.

Do you know someone having the 4coredual-VSTA to ask some screenshots of the PCI control register values ?

[Tweak-IT]

Just my 5 cents but modifying raw data is way easier than code.

Basically something like hex editing a savegame i mean.

More exactly dumping and analyzing the whole CMOS (to find the desired values) then directly writing to it may be way easier than fidling with binary machine code.

[JAKNIt]

I tried by changing the PCI control register on the fly by a programma called Read and wrote everything.
By changing pci0 dev0 func3 offset69 from A3 to e3 you can force the chipset to work with 8 waus interleave.
25% of times it worked, 75% of times caused windows 7 Blue screen

[JAKNIt]

OK, just changing my way of doing it I ported the success rate of the software modification to a 99% ratio of success !

It is only necessary to wait some minute after boot before to proceed with the modification....probably windows had still some critical task to execute and I was disturbing it.

I quote the software way as solution for 8-way interleave activation on 4coredual-sata2 , since the BIOS solution is not feasible with this board probably

[ASrock_User]

Do you get any real benefits from using 8-way?

[JAKNIt]

Yes of course, I can see an increasing of memory speed of 150-200 MB/s

[Tweak-IT]

But what application does benefit from that minor increase in memory bandwith anyway?

I mean if memory bandwith is a serious concern then why not jump onto the DDR 4 train?

[ASrock_User]

Exactly that is the point.

Of course you get some better scores in some benchmarks. If your goal is to just tweak the maximum out of the system for that reasons it is okay. However, almost no real application will get an significant performance improve.

[JAKNIt]

I confirm that my target was to squeeze as much as possible juice from this orange.

Anycase, now I know the limits, and I hope my only solution could be useful for someone else