General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[Xa3phod]

Here is a question: Can you run ECC ram on an Asus Rampage III Formula X58?

 

WhisperingKnickers and I both thought you could, but you would love the ECC part of it. But, I have tried and it won't boot with the ECC ram I have. (With an X5670).

 

Anyone have personal experiencer with this setup? (Mobo and ram), or did I have to hit some setting in the bios? But in the manual it says non-ECC ram, but it also says max 4gig dimms, and my 8gig dimms (non-ECC) work just fine.

[Pasi123]

1 hour ago, Xa3phod said:

Here is a question: Can you run ECC ram on an Asus Rampage III Formula X58?

 

WhisperingKnickers and I both thought you could, but you would love the ECC part of it. But, I have tried and it won't boot with the ECC ram I have. (With an X5670).

 

Anyone have personal experiencer with this setup? (Mobo and ram), or did I have to hit some setting in the bios? But in the manual it says non-ECC ram, but it also says max 4gig dimms, and my 8gig dimms (non-ECC) work just fine.

On my board (P6X58D-E) ECC memory works as a normal non-ECC DDR3 memory. I currently have mixed 4x 2gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600MHz and 2x 4gb Kingston DDR3 ECC 1333MHz

[Xa3phod]

Anyone know a link to a really good guide for overclocking an Asus Rampage III Formula? I'm so out of practice with a board this old, I forgot more than I know.

 

Can't adjust the multiplying over 24, so I believe I have to OC the BLK (base clock) to get to 4.0Ghz? Also, I'm running 1600 DDR3 ram...just two sticks for now. I can't boot if I set the ram to XMS or to 1600. On auto it goes to 1333Mhz. Also, will it be running double channel til I get a 3rd stick of ram? If so, what is better for now:

 

2 sticks (8 gigs each ) of 1600Mhz ram in double channel (16 gigs total)

 

or

 

3 sticks of (2 gigs each) of 1066 ram (6 gigs total)

 

I definitely want to overclock to a minimum of 4.0 Ghz, but prefer to get it to 4.2-4.5.

 

Any assistance helps.

 

Thanks and thanks to WhisperingKnickers for all the help so far.

 

p.s. can I isolate the Baseclock on this board without messing with the PCIe and ram speeds?

[Zando_]

Hmmmm.... I just followed the steps from a YT vid to get my Xeon X5675 to 4.2GHz, it'll go to 4.5, but ARMA crashes for some reason. Basically set everything to as low as possible, then bump the voltages to max and the BLCK to 183-210

[Ground]

So, new 24/7 overclock - 4.32 GHz. Small bump from 4.2, but I also tuned my memory settings and overclocked my GPU a bit. Well, main goal in these tuned settings was to be able to reach 1000 CB in optimal conditions  - also the highest value I can stay in high QPI speed, else I might as well go all out.

https://valid.x86.fr/gdt8ki

And yeah, x58 is a BCLK platform, though with a Rampage III (I still need a new board - you can be happy with your max multi of 24; I only get 19...) it shouldn't be a big issue. I've done 250 with my board (I know it can do at least 253, but temps on the NB were really uncomfortable there and I have to raise my PCIe clock quite far for this), but 180 should be easy with most boards and with a little tuning (make sure to keep an eye on memory speed) 210+ should be doable too, though probably not necessery with a multi of 24. 

 

RAM - just use the 16 GB kit, memory performance should be comparable and 1600 dimms should give you some extra headroom. 

[Icehunter]

Please forgive the questions (and my 2010 cable standards) but here goes.

 

I currently have the following:

i7 960

24GB  RAM 2x OCZ3G1333ULV12GK

GA-X58A-UD3R (rev 2.0)

ADATA SX900

3TB 7200 (can't remember manufacturer)

GTX 950 (replaced Radeon 6870)

 

I've ordered from ebay a W3690 for ~140 CAD.

 

Is there anything else I can add to this system to boost it's performance without having to spend 2000+ on a new system?

 

My SSD now only gets 120 writes, 385 reads despite being attached the the proper port. I've happy this system has lasted over 7 years but would like it to last a few more; especially since RAM has more than doubled in price over the last year.

 

Is there some overclocking (safe) potential out of the system as I've never done it before? This new chip will be the same as a i7 990x in terms of feaures/speed/etc.

 

Ideally I would love a new monitor since my current one is a Asus M238H... but at the same time I was looking at new cases like the Phantes Evolv Tempered Glass edition.

 

Finally; is the $200 I spent so far not worth it as the board capacitors were only guaranteed for 50k hours? (140 for cpu, 50 for 12gb of ram)

[panther420]

Large tech support post incoming. You could probably even call it a graduate thesis given its length. Hope you can read it the whole way through.

 

So a few weeks ago I picked myself up an EX58-ud5 and i7-950 combo with 6gb of ram. I tried it as they gave it to me at freegeek, and it worked fine (an imgur album detailing my process can be found here.) Weeks later, I decided to hook it up to my system yet again, but this time, with an X5650 I ordered off of ebay. Low and behold, very little success.

 

After making some rookie mistakes with accidentally having cables too close to fans and not plugging in my EPS 8 pin all the way, it booted, but not without issues. Once it got past the "Detecting Hard Drives" and "Verifying DMI Pool Data" (you'll recognize that if you ever owned a late 2000's early 2010's Gigabyte board), it started a "Detecting RAM..." phase and after a few seconds would just hard crash, and reboot again. I tried going into the BIOS to see what was wrong and I noticed some weird stuff going on with the RAM. In the MB Intelligent Tweaker, there was a RAM info table with one row saying "Detected RAM" and the other saying "Enabled RAM" or something like that. As you can see in the imgur album, I am running a 3x2GB kit of OCZ Gold DDR3-1600. The table detected 2048mb in both the detected ram and enabled ram columns, which was good, but for the other two slots, only 2048mb was being recognized out of their total. It was really weird, but basically only 4GB was being detected out of my 6GB.

 

So, like any logical tech enthusiast, I changed the RAM from the white slots to the blue slots. Turned it on, and BEEP BEEP BEEP BEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP from the POST speaker, so no dice there either. I slept on the issue, and came back the other day. Tried everything I had tried previously again, and I got the same results. I tried screwing around in the BIOS to see if I could enable those last two slots to get them to work, nothing. Tried resetting the CMOS, nothing.  I then tried running the dimms in a configuration I didn't really want, which was single channel. One DIMM was in the first white slot, the second DIMM was in the second white slot, and the third dimm was in the second blue slot, if that made sense. Still only 4gb recognized and "Detecting RAM" crashes.

 

You might not believe this, but I'm not actually entirely incapable, so I decided to do some research on my own about this. At this point, I was figuring it was a Xeon compatibility issue; it was the only thing I changed since when I used the i7-950 to test it initially. I would put the i7-950 back in, but 1) I'm out of thermal paste and 2) the i7-950 wasn't with me when I was troubleshooting this and in fact still isn't. In pursuit of getting the Xeon to work, which was my only option, I consulted a Xeon compatibility website (http://www.pc-specs.com/cpu/Intel/Xeon/Xeon_Processor_X5650_/2111/Compatible_Motherboards) and looked for my board, the Gigabyte EX58-UD5. Low and behold, the compatibility score was 6.6, which isn't so great. I clicked on the description for the board and it told me on the website that the board only supported up to 1333mhz RAM. I, of course, thought I had a eureka moment until I went on the Gigabyte website and it told me it supported up to 2133+ mhz DDR3. Turns out, the board does only support up to 1333 mhz without using XMP. After the ram is overclocked, however, or using XMP, it can go all the way up to the advertised speed. My kit is a 1600 kit which does not use XMP to achieve its speed, which may or may not explain the compatibility issues.

 

So here's my likely poorly-backed and poorly-constructed theory for my issues. Firstly, the reason I think I'm just now encountering these issues with my X5650 is because server chips generally have more mediocre memory controllers. They generally only support the lowest speeds of the JEDEC spectrum, and in my case, that would be 800, 1066, and 1333 for the X5650. Since I'm using a more i7-optimized kit of DDR3-1600, it would make sense for me to have issues upon testing with a Xeon. But is there an explanation for the particular nature of my issues? I think so. This is where the conspiracy-theorist part kinda comes in. I think the white slots on the gigabyte board are the "non-turbo" ones, so to speak. They'll run at whatever speed will allow the board to boot, so to speak. The blue slots, on the other hand, are the "Turbo" slots. They'll run at the memory's speed and are therefore might cause crashes. That would explain the white ones at least allowing a POST while the blue ones just cause huge issues. But I'm not sure. This also doesn't offer an explanation as to why only part of the ram is detected for the white slots, but that's kind of where you (the reader of this post) come in. 

 

So, what do you think I can do circumvent these issues and use my Xeon fine? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Also, one last thing. I noticed all the Gigabyte EX58-ud5's I could find on the internet have their bottom slot orange, but mine has its bottom slot blue. The revision is the same, "REV 1.0 PCB MADE IN TAIWAN," but mine has this weird difference. All I can say is until someone can find someone else with a bottom-slot blue UD5, I feel extremely special. Maybe it's an engineering sample or something? Dunno how freegeek could have gotten an engineering sample tho.

[bimmerman]

Was messing around with my computer a bunch yesterday and figured I'd join the party.

 

Rig:

X58 Xeon X5675, OC'd at 4.7 GHz (6 core 12 thread)

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (1.4V CPU Vcore, 1.315 QPI/Vtt, 1.66V Dram for the run)

24GB DDR3-1600, OC'd to 2050 MHz (in triple channel)

Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X

Coolermaster Glacer 240 AIO

also in a case, with a power supply, running on an ssd

 

Results:

116.63 fps

1083 cb multicore

142 cb single core (you can see a bunch of trials of my Xeon and prior i7-950 in the screenshot)

7.61x multiplier

 

I'm pretty happy with the results if I'm honest. Bumping the memory from 1600 to 2000 made a whopping 1pt of difference, so...not bothering to OC that anymore. I think I can break 1100 points if I go nuts on voltage to hit 4.8/4.9 but that seems like asking for melting components.

 

Also attached, for grins, are the firestrike results, albeit at a 200 BCLK instead of 205 (to give the memory controller a bit of a breather). This was a slight OC on the GPU from 1000/1300 to 1100/1400, which bumped scores up by ~300 points or so. Pretty negligible. I can drop the voltages down a LOT for this, so....the 4.6 GHz and 1600 MHz is my normal setup (1.35V CPU Vcore, 1.275V QPI/VTT, 1.5V Dram)

 

Not bad for a computer from the dark ages! Probably going to upgrade GPU and be set for a while, the CPU is holding its own pretty well when OCd.

[bimmerman]

35 minutes ago, panther420 said:

snip

I had issues with my Gigabyte (UD3R) board and that same OCZ 2x3 GB kit, with a stock-clocked i7-950. For one, it never held the 1600MHz speed at all, even when I manually set the timings and the voltage and the memory multiplier. For another, even brand new, I had 2 out of 3 modules not register as existing. After RMA-ing them (in 2010, because I've been using X58 that long), the replacement kit would register all 3 modules but wouldn't hold speed. That sucked, and I left it alone at the 1333 MHz speed for years.

 

Once I had a real job, I replaced the OCZ with a set of '1600' G.Skill ram and that's been surprisingly stable up to 2100 MHz (though, to be honest, zero noticeable difference in synthetics let alone daily use). XMP profile booted right up on all 6x4 GB modules and 1600MHz was dialed in no problem. Manual tinkering got me to 2100 (on the X5675), but again, zero reason to do so unless you hate your memory controller.

 

I'm going to assume you've got your board's BIOS updated prior to installing the Xeon (do that, if not). If that's the case, your issues IMO are due to the ram. DDR3 ram is actually really cheap right now on newegg, so....I recommend you snag some and try that.

 

Turbo vs Standard vs Extreme in the Gigabyte bios, to my understanding and from messing with it a lot yesterday, relates to memory subtimings not slots. I had turbo engaged on all 6 populated slots without issue at XMP profile, while at stupid OC I had to use standard. I haven't tried Extreme since I never noticed any performance gain from manipulating the memory.

[bimmerman]

Also, for grins because this is a Xeon thread-- here's the cinebench from my Kaby Lake mobile Xeon (4c/8t) in my Dell Precision 5520 work laptop. 16 GB ram, Quadro M1200, M.2 PCIE SSD, and the chip will do up to 4 GHz on one core. I think 3.6 is the all-core turbo?

 

 

 

For a laptop that gets 10hrs of battery regularly, this thing is a little beast.

[Xa3phod]

On 12/11/2017 at 3:29 PM, Zando Bob said:

Hmmmm.... I just followed the steps from a YT vid to get my Xeon X5675 to 4.2GHz, it'll go to 4.5, but ARMA crashes for some reason. Basically set everything to as low as possible, then bump the voltages to max and the BLCK to 183-210

You got a link?

[Zando_]

12 minutes ago, Xa3phod said:

You got a link?

 

[bimmerman]

This is the guide I used to hit 4.7+ on the X5675, stably.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170425082606/http://www.techreaction.net/2010/09/07/3-step-overclocking-guide-bloomfield-and-gulftown/

 

The techreaction site apparently went down between April and now, so I highly highly highly recommend you save this somehow in case the archived copy goes down.

 

Follow it as methodically as possible (I used an excel sheet on a separate laptop to document EVERY change and ensuing stability), and you will eventually find the limits that your chip and mobo and ram and psu can support. Good luck, happy hunting, and grab a few beers because it'll take a few hours.

[Xa3phod]

Downloaded the whole guide. Thanks.

[i_build_nanosuits]

My gracious workstation from 2010 is equipped with an all mighty Xeon E5620 i don't know what chipset it's on but does this mean i'm also part of the glorious master race? lol

 

 

That thing is terrible BTW...aweful performance, nowhere near as fast as my personal computer.

[asand1]

2 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

My gracious workstation from 2010 is equipped with an all mighty Xeon E5620 i don't know what chipset it's on but does this mean i'm also part of the glorious master race? lol

 

 

That thing is terrible BTW...aweful performance, nowhere near as fast as my personal computer.

Upgrade to a faster one. I imagine there is no overclocking with that mobo?

[panther420]

On 12/18/2017 at 12:46 PM, bimmerman said:

I had issues with my Gigabyte (UD3R) board and that same OCZ 2x3 GB kit, with a stock-clocked i7-950. For one, it never held the 1600MHz speed at all, even when I manually set the timings and the voltage and the memory multiplier. For another, even brand new, I had 2 out of 3 modules not register as existing. After RMA-ing them (in 2010, because I've been using X58 that long), the replacement kit would register all 3 modules but wouldn't hold speed. That sucked, and I left it alone at the 1333 MHz speed for years.

 

Once I had a real job, I replaced the OCZ with a set of '1600' G.Skill ram and that's been surprisingly stable up to 2100 MHz (though, to be honest, zero noticeable difference in synthetics let alone daily use). XMP profile booted right up on all 6x4 GB modules and 1600MHz was dialed in no problem. Manual tinkering got me to 2100 (on the X5675), but again, zero reason to do so unless you hate your memory controller.

 

I'm going to assume you've got your board's BIOS updated prior to installing the Xeon (do that, if not). If that's the case, your issues IMO are due to the ram. DDR3 ram is actually really cheap right now on newegg, so....I recommend you snag some and try that.

 

Turbo vs Standard vs Extreme in the Gigabyte bios, to my understanding and from messing with it a lot yesterday, relates to memory subtimings not slots. I had turbo engaged on all 6 populated slots without issue at XMP profile, while at stupid OC I had to use standard. I haven't tried Extreme since I never noticed any performance gain from manipulating the memory.

Wow, I'm surprised I got such helpful advice. Your response definitely got me on the right track.

 

I will try to ask someone at my local FreeGeek if they're willing to trade one of their 3x2gb kits (ideally 1333, and from gskill would be great like you said) for my 3x2gb kit of ocz gold that I have. I don't see why they wouldn't; the one I'd get out of the trade would actually be worse on paper, but would be better for compatibility reasons.

 

I have updated my bios, and on that note, I don't think there are any other major factors coming into play here. RAM issues are characterized by exactly the things I'm going though right now: confusing errors and failure to boot. RAM issues have to be one of the most daunting and time-consuming errors a PC builder can have the misfortune to come by.

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, asand1 said:

Upgrade to a faster one. I imagine there is no overclocking with that mobo?

no, it's a workstation it has to be 110% reliable... it's used for work so of course there is no overclocking on that machine

turbo boost is activated though...right now it's boosting to 2.53ghz! it's glorious

[Pasi123]

Just now, i_build_nanosuits said:

no, it's a workstation it has to be 110% reliable... it's used for work so of course there is no overclocking on that machine

turbo boost is activated though...right now it's boosting to 2.53ghz! it's glorious

Why not upgrade to 2x X5680 or similar?

[i_build_nanosuits]

17 minutes ago, Pasi123 said:

Why not upgrade to 2x X5680 or similar?

cause for the work we do it's not worth it the CPU doesn't need to be that powerful, we use a lot of RAM and some CPU but a 4c/8t chip like that is more than enough we work on autocad map and oracle spatial and those softwares use only 1 or 2 cpu threads, and they are bound by the software speed or something cause even on faster machines the work doesnt get done better or faster...simply put, trowing more computer at it doesnt make it go any noticeably faster.

[Ground]

Found a new board, Rampage II Extreme

100€ for the board+i7 920+some fat CPU cooler, seems like a fair deal to me. Gonna wait for it to arrive and see if it can handle my requirements. Power delivery should be solved (my current boards VRM is inadequate for 6 cores above 1.3V, its getting ), but I'll only use it if it can handle similar BCLK to my current board, which is gonna be a close call (my current board handles 250 BCLK (I think I could squeeze 253 out of it, haven't submitted that though), record on the Rampage II is 256...). I have hope though, as nobody has really benched 32nm CPUs on that board, so there might be hope

[kelvinhall05]

How's 3.7GHz stable at not-sure-what-voltage-but-I-didn't-mess-with-it for an i7 950 on an Asus Sabertooth board?

[Xa3phod]

My wife won't let me work on my X5670 rig until I replace the fan on my evo212 because it is too loud. Ordered a new Be quiet fan today. Going to try to overclock the base clock. Also, going to test if I can put more than 24gigs of ram on a Rampage III formula if you use a xeon instead of an I7. Got a set of 1333 DDR3 16 gigs and my already installed 1600 DDR3 16 gigs of ram. Just putting them together for testing sake. Don't really need more than 16gigs.

 

Again, everyone made the Overclock sound simple...wish it were.

[bimmerman]

16 minutes ago, Xa3phod said:

My wife won't let me work on my X5670 rig until I replace the fan on my evo212 because it is too loud. Ordered a new Be quiet fan today. Going to try to overclock the base clock. Also, going to test if I can put more than 24gigs of ram on a Rampage III formula if you use a xeon instead of an I7. Got a set of 1333 DDR3 16 gigs and my already installed 1600 DDR3 16 gigs of ram. Just putting them together for testing sake. Don't really need more than 16gigs.

 

Again, everyone made the Overclock sound simple...wish it were.

It's definitely not simple. Going through the guide I linked took me the better part of a weekend to find a stable setting. Tracking every change I made w/r/t voltages and multipliers and stability in a spreadsheet helped a LOT to narrow it down, so that now I can adjust and tweak things super easily on my own setup. I am intentionally not saying anyone can hit 210 BCLK at 1.25 V and 28 multiplier at 1.3 Vcore, because that's BS and because what worked for me won't necessarily work for anyone else-- the guides provide the methodical approach that yielded the best results in my case.

 

It's far from a casual "oh I increased the multiplier over lunch and hit 4.8 without adjusting voltage lololol" like my buddy did on his 8600k. Then again, we are dicking around with 8 year old hardware because it's interesting and/or cheap and/or we're bored.

 

One thing on the RAM before you get carried away-- I have noticed zero difference in cinebench/firestrike/gaming/general use between 1600 and 2100 MHz ram, other than degraded stability.

[NoxiousOdor]

13 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

One thing on the RAM before you get carried away-- I have noticed zero difference in cinebench/firestrike/gaming/general use between 1600 and 2100 MHz ram, other than degraded stability.

This is actually really good to know, I am planning a big OC project and I was curious if I would need to worry about ram speeds