Asus Rampage IV Gene BIOS update ... be careful.

[Guest]

BIOS/UEFI updates always make me a little nervous, especially this one.  I hadn't kept up on BIOS updates for Asus Rampage IV Gene, was running old v1305 -- it was working great, good overclock stability so I really didn't have a need.

 

So enters my "need" ... some of the projects I'm working might need Win 8.1.  Now I'm not really a fan of Windows 8.1 ... certainly not from a desktop end user experience, it's very awkward and hides too much (I like to feel I have some control).  But, Win 8.1 does have some threading improvements and overall performance improvements which make it slightly more efficient (especially with HT enabled or more recent processors).  So I need a working Win8.1 boot partition -- might even take the time to test P3D V2 out on it once out.

 

Anyway, I diverge already.  Point of this thread is that before I could move from BIOS v1305 (.ROM files) to 4601 (.CAP) where the UEFI has been improved to support Windows 8.1.  BUT before doing any BIOS/UEFI updates, I was required to installed a ROM to CAP converter.  So now I'm double nervous -- I have everything backed up, but still ... getting one of my development PC's up and running is usually a 2 week process that I would rather NOT have to do.

 

Fortunately to two stage process of .ROM to .CAP and then to .CAP v4601 had only a couple of minor hitches after the update process completely successfully:

 

1.  It forgets which is the Primary Boot device (you'll need to set it manually)

2.  It defaults to an extreme overclock profile of 5.1Ghz??

3.  I couldn't get my old 4.6Ghz or 4.8Ghz OC profiles to boot at all

 

It's not all bad, I was able to boot again but going back to a basic profile (not even the Normal profile works) with all overclocking off and much set to "Auto".  The OC options in v4601 are now even more staggering than before ... I can see I have much reading/experimentation to do over these next few weeks to get myself back to a good working OC.

 

So you've been warned, the v4601 BIOS/UEFI may solve Win8.1 issues and provide some impressive OC potential, but there are a few things to watch out for.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

P.S.   There are also a slew of Intel Chips/Management drivers and new Realtek Audio and SATA drivers that go with this process.  Be sure to update those also.  Happy computing.

 

[alulekk 3]

Hi Rob.

I'm also running this MoBo on Win 8.1 and the latest BIOS.

Curious if you'd mind sharing some of your basic OC settings?

Thanks

[Guest]

Here are the settings I use for 4.8Ghz:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use these at YOUR OWN RISK.  If they cause premature CPU failure, you've been warned.

 

With that said, I've been using these settings for over a year now and they have been solid.  But if you are doing this for P3D V2.2, then overclocking the CPU has little to NO benefit at all ... I've run P3DV2.2 at 3.9 Ghz and 4.8Ghz with a 1 fps difference (and that's most likely just a measurement tolerance issue).  In FSX you'll see a benefit, but not in P3D.  But for other applications like Adobe PP, Cinema4D and anything that renders, you'll see a benefit from the OC.

 

Cheers, Rob.