Help: BIOS settings wanted for better performance from a Z170 mobo system

[Pete Dowson 558]

1. You said you have an Asus board. Do you know which one? It will have AiSuite 3. Within AiSuite 3 you will find Five Way Optimisation, unless it's a cheaper board. 5WO will do it all for you, including overclocking your RAM, so it's not necessary to enable the XMP profile. However, you can certainly try the XMP profile afterwards if you desire. My experiences of Five Way Optimisation are here...

 

Ah, thanks for that. My mobo is the ASUS MAXIMUS VIII HERO, and, yes, I did install and use AiSuite 3. I let it get as far as it wanted -- eventually it fails and reverts. I think that was at 4.8. So it left it at 4.7. it was only later, when running FSX or P3D that I got blue screens occasionally, and reverted to 4.5. (I could have gone to 4.6, but I was playing safe -- anything to avoid blue screens!

 

I uninstalled AISuite because I couldn't find any other way of getting it's damned fax coontrol selection graphic off the screen -- even stopping its services loading didn't seem to help!

 

But it is easy enough to reinstall and let it try again.

 

2. TPU 1 and TPU 2 switch on the motherboard. By flipping this switch to TPU 1 you will get 4.4 GHz. By flipping it to TPU 2 you will get 4.6 GHz. Be warned though, it's a one size fits all generic overclock with a voltage that Asus deem will work for most people. It's not 100% guaranteed to be stable for those that have chips requiring very high voltage.

 

 

Hmm. That's interesting. I might try 4.6 that way before installing AIsuite again.

 

3. For manual overclocking it's quite straightforward. Nothing fancy required.

 

Follow the easy Asus guide and you should easily achieve 4.6, perhaps higher. Stress test with ROG RealBench, that's all you need for 100% stability. My UEFI settings aren't really relevant, as there's not much in there that isn't default. What is in there that's not default is no different to the settings that are adjusted in the Asus guide below. Asus auto rules are actually very good these days. So the myriad of settings in the UEFI are mostly fine left on default. 

 

Ah, good. That's a relief then. I might try that too -- first perhaps, after your last statement.

 

Thank you very much! That's a very helpful post! ;-)

 

To all posters:

 

After all the reports and responses above, for which thank you all very much, I have discovered a few more things.

 

I found that my Sisoft Sandra was woefully out of date, so I downloaded the latest version and reran the tests. The results are a bit better:

 

Memory Latency : 19.0ns

Bandwidth Single-threaded, Aggregate Memory Performance : 30.18GB/s

Bandwidth Multi-threaded, Aggregate Memory Performance : 38GB/s

 

I also ran AIDA64 on the recommendation in one of the posts above. That’s different again. It  seems to be giving 44.3GB/s for bandwidth (reading only, but better), but 48.1nS for latency.

 

Now I'm not sure which is okay or whether I've still got a memory bottleneck!

 

Pete

[Luke 782]

When you have two clocks and they disagree, you need a third clock.

 

Cheers!

[martin-w 3,234]

Worth investigating, but I wouldn't be concerned about Sandra's results.

 

I would overclock as far as the silicone lottery and your cooling allows and enjoy the new PC.

 

These benchmarks can scare you into thinking you have a problem when you don't.

[Dougal 165]

If anyone finds a way of keeping Asus AI Suite running, WITHOUT that damn onscreen graphic that Pete referred to, please post it, as I find Asus Fan Xpert brilliant for TOTAL fan and water pump control. MUCH better than Corsair Link.

Nice PC build Pete - almost the same as mine;-)

[simmerhead 885]

Surprised to see a guru like you Pete not making sense of computer stuff - but find it comforting too  

 

ASUS AI Suite used to be terrible - my computer is 5 years old so things might have improved - but I always OC directly from the BIOS. I like to know what's going on with my computer and take the time to learn what all the settings do. 

 

Corsair RAM has mixed reviews, so I wouldn't be surprised if it underperforms. I've been a happy Corsair user myself for years, but will try some more high end stuff in my next build. 

 

With new RAM modules you are advised to test the modules to make sure they function properly. 

[Pete Dowson 558]

If anyone finds a way of keeping Asus AI Suite running, WITHOUT that damn onscreen graphic that Pete referred to, please post it, as I find Asus Fan Xpert brilliant for TOTAL fan and water pump control. MUCH better than Corsair Link.

Nice PC build Pete - almost the same as mine;-)

 

Are your results better than mine? If so, how did you do it, please?

 

 

Surprised to see a guru like you Pete not making sense of computer stuff - but find it comforting too  

 

ASUS AI Suite used to be terrible - my computer is 5 years old so things might have improved - but I always OC directly from the BIOS. I like to know what's going on with my computer and take the time to learn what all the settings do. 

 

Corsair RAM has mixed reviews, so I wouldn't be surprised if it underperforms. I've been a happy Corsair user myself for years, but will try some more high end stuff in my next build. 

 

With new RAM modules you are advised to test the modules to make sure they function properly. 

 

Ah, but I'm a programmer, not a hardware expert. I used to understand the hardware before it got so complicated and full of new terms I don't know.

 

ASUS AI Suite used to be terrible - my computer is 5 years old so things might have improved

 

Actually I just reinstalled it and re-ran it, but changing the strting settings a bit as another poster mentioned above. It went quite well, an it's given my what looks so far to be a stable 4.7GHz. I had to go back into the BIOS and reenable XMP mode again to get the memory speed correct, but apart from that I'm quite happy with it -- except for that non-removeable icon it sticks on the screen!

 

I reran the benchmarks and got further improved results. Still not sure whether that's it though, r whether I've still got something wrong.

 

With new RAM modules you are advised to test the modules to make sure they function properly. 

 

The supplier is supposed to do that! I think they did.

 

Regards

Pete

 

P.S New benchmark results (at 4.7GHz and 3200 MHz RAM):

 

Sandra

  memory benchmark multi-threaded:    37.8 GB/s

  memory benchmark single-threaded:  30.2 GB/s

  memory latency:                                  18.8 nS

 

AIDA64

  memory benchmark (read):                 44.4 GB/s

  latency                                                 47.7 nS

 

For latency they surely must be measuring different things?

 

[lodestar 186]

Hi Pete, there is a simple intel tool i use to check memory bandwith and latency, no installation needed https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intelr-memory-latency-checker#download

 

For overclocking, i wouldn't use asus tools. OC was stable, but utility was setting Vcore to high - far more then needed, and well over the limits for my CPU. Maybe that changed in new versions, i didn't tried it for more then 4 years. I would go with this metod https://rog.asus.com/articles/guides/guide-overclocking-core-i7-6700k-on-the-maximus-viii-extreme/

 

Some useful info on CPU / troubleshooting:   http://www.overclock.net/t/1570313/skylake-overclocking-guide-with-statistics  (i would check general recommendations(for voltages and bios settings)here, no need for extreme stress testing, Real Bench is just enough).

 

Hope this helps

[simmerhead 885]

 

The supplier is supposed to do that! I think they did.

 

Regards

Pete

 

I'd be surprised if they took the time. It takes a while... 

[lodestar 186]

I'd be surprised if they took the time. It takes a while... 

Agree. My supplier has done many things wrong, like GPU in wrong slot(lower performance). After i checked / reconnected everything, even my temps went 20c lower becouse of cable management and airflow  :smile:

[westman 257]

Hi Pete

Run some different memconfigs , only run Aida64

Run a Asus Extreme VIII all tests at 4.7ghz

Not now if it help

My eng is very bad but the screen talk for itself.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dz0owf6q7gjskbl/aida-6700.png?dl=0

[Dougal 165]

 

 

Are your results better than mine? If so, how did you do it, please?

 

Hi Pete

Although i have AI Suite installed, I don't use it for overclocking, so can't really compare.  I only some of its other features like Fan Xpert

 

I currently have my cpu at 4.8ghz and have XMP on profile No.1 (the only one in the Corsair RAM;-)

 

The EUFI BIOS looks a little frightening when first looking, but I found only 2 or possibly three changes need to be made.

[lownslo 592]

Hi Pete

Run some different memconfigs , only run Aida64

Run a Asus Extreme VIII all tests at 4.7ghz

Not now if it help

My eng is very bad but the screen talk for itself.

Nice comparison, Hasse. Should be very useful for Pete and anybody with a rig similar to his.

 

Greg

[Pete Dowson 558]

Hi Pete, there is a simple intel tool i use to check memory bandwith and latency, no installation needed https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intelr-memory-latency-checker#download

 

Hmm. It looks interesting though rather technical. Not sure I'll understand the things that seems to display. there's a lot of them!

 

I was really only looking for 1 figure for bandwidth and one for latency, and then only because it was suggested I should check them, and when I did and showed them it was further suggested that I need to try to do something about improving them before messing more with Prepar3D to get rid of the stutters and hesitations.

 

Unfortunately, whilst various things like more overclocking and better memory settings have improved the original figures, this seems not enough.

 

For overclocking, i wouldn't use asus tools. OC was stable, but utility was setting Vcore to high - far more then needed, and well over the limits for my CPU. Maybe that changed in new versions, i didn't tried it for more then 4 years. I would go with this metod https://rog.asus.com...s-viii-extreme/

 

 

 

I looked at that, but thought I'd try the utomtic method again first. This time, because I think of different choices made before starting it, it seems to have done very well -- and even the temperatures seem fine. I can't manage 4.8 like you, but 4.7 was more than before. The only thing it did wrong was reset the XMP option so my memory was back to 2933 instead of 3200 where it should be. I've rectified that anyway now.

 

Hope this helps

 

 

Yes, thanks. At least it is interesting. I still would love to know what bandwidth and latency figures you managed to get, though for comparison I suppose they'd need to be from the same tool -- i.e. Sandra or AIDA64, or the one you just pointed me to if you also tel me which figures I should look at or what parameters I should use.

 

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete

Run some different memconfigs , only run Aida64

Run a Asus Extreme VIII all tests at 4.7ghz

Not now if it help

My eng is very bad but the screen talk for itself.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dz0owf6q7gjskbl/aida-6700.png?dl=0

 

 

Thank you! I see you have the full version of AIDA64. Might be useful too.

 

Gives me more to think about! ...

 

Regards

Pete

[gboz 157]

think you mean ns (nano-seconds) not ms (milli-seconds) ... RAM access measured in ms would be extremely slow.  Are you sure you're testing memory bandwidth and not something else?

 

Sorry Rob meant nano seconds of course.

So getting close to exact same values as martin-w.

 

gb.

[vortex681 806]

 

The EUFI BIOS looks a little frightening when first looking, but I found only 2 or possibly three changes need to be made.

What were they?