Any ASUS Prime X370 Pro owners out there ... besides me??

[Keith Myers]

Yes, it does come down to the quality of the IMC silicon for a lot of cases. You might want to actually drop your SoC voltage down from Auto settings. I've seen quite a few posts that with the later BIOS' that reducing the SoC voltage actually improved the chances of getting a higher memory overclock. Something about putting less stress on a weak IMC is better in some cases. Not like it was in the beginning where everyone suggested throwing the SoC right up to the max 1.2V.

Have you been brave in trying any of the most recent BIOS releases? Like the 3401 or 3402 iterations? I'm waiting it out till an official 1.0.7.1 AGESA release and staying put on 3203 BIOS.

 

[Thentilian]

Yes, it does come down to the quality of the IMC silicon for a lot of cases. You might want to actually drop your SoC voltage down from Auto settings. I've seen quite a few posts that with the later BIOS' that reducing the SoC voltage actually improved the chances of getting a higher memory overclock. Something about putting less stress on a weak IMC is better in some cases. Not like it was in the beginning where everyone suggested throwing the SoC right up to the max 1.2V.

Have you been brave in trying any of the most recent BIOS releases? Like the 3401 or 3402 iterations? I'm waiting it out till an official 1.0.7.1 AGESA release and staying put on 3203 BIOS.

I haven't. I'm still on 1201 BIOS. So I did move up from 0810, but 1201 didn't do anything for stability for me. I had thought to move up, but once you go to the 3000 series of BIOS you can't flash back easily?

Also, when I did some of the RAM timings, I realized that I couldn't use the Advanced CBS stuff anymore as the settings called for BSG off and Alt BSG to be turned on. I can't control those anymore unless I go back to 0810, or use a modded BIOS, which I'm not very inclined to do in case I mess the flash up.

I have not tried going lower on the SoC voltage. Sounds counter-intuitive to do so. But I can always give that a try if I go to one of the newer BIOS' anytime soon. Also thought about dropping my OC down to 3.8 and seeing if that would help with a higher RAM OC, but not even sure it's worth it for my usage and hardware. I think my R9 390 is not being bottlnecked in the slightest, even at stock frequencies, so I'm not really sure it's worth all the trouble.

If I had been using a 1070 or 1080 GPU, I think I might see some performance scaling with the FPS of my games. I run with V-sync on anyways, so 60 FPS is all I need. Although, smoothness and stuttering can be minimized or eliminated by taking the time to OC the RAM and CPU, to make sure the GPU is always kept fed enough not to stutter.

Right now I'm actually going to a 3.8Ghz clock and trying to find what voltage I need for that to be stable, then I guess I could mess with the SOC voltage... but what releases are needed for the lower voltage, the 3000 series BIOS?

 

[Keith Myers]

Yes, I hemmed and hawed quite a bit in deciding to move from the 1201 BIOS to the 3203, because you can't go back unless you use the AFUDOS tool. I too am scared of bricking the board with that tool. Lucky for me, there was no penalty in going to 3203. I didn't need any of the exposed parameters in the modded BIOS to achieve my overclocks. The Ryzen DRAM Calculator has proved effective in showing me the required settings for 3333 CL14 FAST on both systems. Though I do have a cold boot issue on the newest 1800X system. Has to go through retraining to boot after pulling the plug on the power supply. I don't have that issue on the 1700X. I think it is because the 3200 kit is just not quite as good as the 3600 kit. Still need to go play with ProcODT on the 1800X board some more and see if I can get rid of the cold boot issue. It's not as if that is a real bother though since all systems are always powered up 24/7. Discovered the issue yesterday when I replaced the three GTX 970's with three new GTX 1070Ti's and updated a roof fan.

 

[Keith Myers]

The anecdotal posts I have read indicate that a good portion of users are able to achieve the same overclocks or next step higher with less voltage. But as you have discovered, after a point, more CPU clock has minimal effect on gaming. There is more advantage to low timings at reasonable memory clocks than just the highest achievable memory clock. 3200 CL12 is faster than 3333 CL14 for example.

 

[Thentilian]

Yes, I hemmed and hawed quite a bit in deciding to move from the 1201 BIOS to the 3203, because you can't go back unless you use the AFUDOS tool. I too am scared of bricking the board with that tool. Lucky for me, there was no penalty in going to 3203. I didn't need any of the exposed parameters in the modded BIOS to achieve my overclocks. The Ryzen DRAM Calculator has proved effective in showing me the required settings for 3333 CL14 FAST on both systems. Though I do have a cold boot issue on the newest 1800X system. Has to go through retraining to boot after pulling the plug on the power supply. I don't have that issue on the 1700X. I think it is because the 3200 kit is just not quite as good as the 3600 kit. Still need to go play with ProcODT on the 1800X board some more and see if I can get rid of the cold boot issue. It's not as if that is a real bother though since all systems are always powered up 24/7. Discovered the issue yesterday when I replaced the three GTX 970's with three new GTX 1070Ti's and updated a roof fan.

The anecdotal posts I have read indicate that a good portion of users are able to achieve the same overclocks or next step higher with less voltage. But as you have discovered, after a point, more CPU clock has minimal effect on gaming. There is more advantage to low timings at reasonable memory clocks than just the highest achievable memory clock. 3200 CL12 is faster than 3333 CL14 for example.

I can't get 3200 to POST at all. I even have tried ramping the RAM OC to help training, by going from 2800 to 2933, to 3066, and 3066 isn't stable either with a bunch of different timings. 2933 seems to be the limit of this RAM kit, or my IMC.

I moved to the 3204 BIOS, as the lower BIOS numbers of old didn't do me much better for overclocks anyways. Might as well move forward. This BIOS doesn't seem to fair any better for overclocks so far. But, I just started tinkering yesterday. I've also lowered my 3.9 OC to 3.8 just to get lower voltage and maybe perhaps memory timings will improve, and time and tinkering will only tell.

I can run 1.35v for 3.8Ghz. Some chips will do 3.8 on much lower voltage, but as I've mentioned before, I think this chip is not nearly as good as the old one was. Too bad for my mess up and I probably didn't even need to exchange my old mobo and CPU. But at the time, it was better safe than sorry.

At some point, I'm going to upgrade to a Zen+ or Zen 2 CPU and get an 8 core, so maybe I'll have better luck with the next piece of silicon. I'm not too worried as my R9 390 doesn't need more RAM speed or CPU frequencies to do it's job. I would be more concerned if I was bottle-necking it, but for me it's just not the case. Only area I would really want the CPU clocked higher is for rendering 3D and video editing.

On another subject, I reinstalled my old copy of 3DS Max 2011. I realized that was the last time I did any 3D rendering and took an old model and did some new renderings, with higher settings since I have a much more powerful CPU than my 965 to render with now. I'll upload one that I did recently.

I tweaked the lighting, and added AO (ambient occlusion) something that was missing in my original renders and made the ground reflective. It added a lot more complexity and took over 4 hours to render.
I hate to think how long my old CPU would of taken to do that render with just 4 cores/threads!

 

[Keith Myers]

Interesting image. I don't know anything about rendering. So how does it actually work? Do you start with some sort of mathematical expression or primitive and then tell the software to extrapolate or develop the image? Or is a render just taking an existing image of less resolution and size and making it more detailed and bigger? As I said, I have no idea of what rendering entails.

 

[Thentilian]

Interesting image. I don't know anything about rendering. So how does it actually work? Do you start with some sort of mathematical expression or primitive and then tell the software to extrapolate or develop the image? Or is a render just taking an existing image of less resolution and size and making it more detailed and bigger? As I said, I have no idea of what rendering entails.

I started with generating a polygonal sphere (3D), then cloned it to make the rest. Then using the material editor I created the materials using chrome as a base so they would reflect light like a mirror. Then I created two glowing colored materials, blue and red. I turned the light gain so high that they would glow white, but still cast their color onto the floor material that I did some adjustments to make it reflective with the material's editor.

There is quite a lot of settings to go through and tinker with. Probably took me 3 days of tinkering before I came up with this formula to get the desired image. Also turned the ambient light off and used only the lights from the materials to illuminate the scene, that's why it's all black in the background.

I've also built other models, like the U.S.S Enterprise (from the original series). I wanted to get back into it with the new CPU, but still have huge render times as I went more aggressive on quality settings to make the image look better and have less grain in them.

EDIT: I should note that this is an old project I had already done before. I just re-visited it with the new CPU so I could render a higher quality image of it, and changed some parameters. I'll add the comparison here... I just don't want to thread-jack too much here and change off-topic too much. The original didn't have a reflective ground and I also did one without ther reflection and improvements.
You can notice graininess in the image of the original. And the new render is much smoother in contrast with ambient occlusion added as well.

 

[Thentilian]

Hmm, this is interesting. Looks like the new BIOS 3204 disables BSG by default and uses BSG alt mode for RAM instead... or maybe it's based on the RAM sticks detected. I'm not entirely sure, but I know with the older BIOS my RAM ran with BSG enabled and BSG alt disabled in standard configuration.

I was messing with RAM timings again with the Ryzen RAM calc, and again it doesn't like the timings that it gives. I keep using 14-16-16-16-31-47 with the best results. I have it up to 3066 with 1.425v on RAM, but have yet to see how stable it is. I'm also using 1.03125v for SOC, which is LOWER than what I had to use before... but again, I haven't tested stability. It POSTs and boots to windows very fast and seems to work for things like web browsing and writing this.

Here is a cap of RTC with my timings and clock:

 

[DaveB]

Why not just get some Samsung B-die memory and be done with it? I had trouble with Corsair Vengeance with every X370 and B350 motherboard I played with (Asus, ASRock, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI) but the Samsung B-Die ran at 3200 CL14 the first try at the XMP settings with my former Biostar X370 and my current Gigabyte B350. Plus I sold my Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 for the same price I paid for the G.Skill DDR4-3200. The Corsair ran great with my Z370 though, it just isn't the best for Ryzen.

 

[Thentilian]

- - - Updated - - -

Why not just get some Samsung B-die memory and be done with it? I had trouble with Corsair Vengeance with every X370 and B350 motherboard I played with (Asus, ASRock, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI) but the Samsung B-Die ran at 3200 CL14 the first try at the XMP settings with my former Biostar X370 and my current Gigabyte B350. Plus I sold my Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 for the same price I paid for the G.Skill DDR4-3200. The Corsair ran great with my Z370 though, it just isn't the best for Ryzen.

I would, at a point when RAM isn't insanely expensive. I refuse to overpay for RAM at the moment. And it's more of a tinkering to see what I can push out of the Hynix M-die. From what the Ryzen RAM Calc program says, a die quality of 82% should achieve around 2800+, I'm already stable at 2933, so it's doing better than a lot of kits.

Odd thing was, I ran OCCT linpacks with 90% memory for 10 minutes... doesn't sound very long, but every other time that test has passed, I've been ok. Even ran IBT with 12024MB custom load, and it passed with 3066 speed. But, when I went to play two different games, WHAM, both crashed fairly fast, but the RAM was stable for everything else I was doing. I've never encountered such oddities when overclocking anything.

I think I can only attribute this change in the stability due to the latest BIOS using BSG alt, rather than BSG by default. Because I ran OCCT and IBT they would crash, but games would work ok.

So, basically it appears this kit just won't do 3066 stable, at least without trying some of the modded BIOS out there that have more voltage controls enabled to perhaps fill a memory gap this kit might be suffering from with the current set up I have. Or, perhaps it's a crummy IMC on my chip. Hard to tell without another RAM kit to test.

Even if I sold this 2400 kit off, it wouldn't cover the cost of new RAM, and as I said before, I'll just wait til RAM pricing is back to sane levels. As it is, 2933 only seems to net me better latency with memory and doesn't really improve gaming performance with my R9 390. I believe it's just not good enough to need that extra bit of RAM performance that a 1080 or 1070 might require to push more FPS.

As far as anything else, the system boots noticeably quicker, and other apps seem to be just a bit more snappy, but that could also be placebo effect without doing some real tests. Memory bandwidth tests higher of course. From 37MB/s to 45MB/s roughly. It's a tangible number, but means very little it seems.

 

[DaveB]

- - - Updated - - -I would, at a point when RAM isn't insanely expensive. I refuse to overpay for RAM at the moment.

I think you're missing the point which is that while you may overpay for your new RAM, someone will also overpay to buy your old RAM. So it's a wash and the overpaying is only in your head. I bought my TridentZ for exactly the same price as I sold my Corsair for - I actually sold the Corsair for $70 more than I paid for it back in March. It just seems that you've been struggling with memory settings for months and why not play with memory that's better suited for your Ryzen setup?

But you're free to do as you wish of course.

 

[||Console||]

I would not even thinking of using a Ryzen system with out samsung b-die . With the way infinity fabric works you wan't @ least 3200mhz (the lucky few who hit 3600 see nice results ) .

 

[Keith Myers]

The BGS and BGSa have to be opposites of each other by law. The newest BIOS' just set BGS off since that is what is needed to overclock.

You might want to try loosening tCWL from 14 to 15 and then try tightening up the other secondary timings to 14. Also try bumping up VDDP from 0.900V to 0.950V.

You will also likely wait almost a full year for RAM prices to normalize back to prices of the last year or early this year, if ever. Depends on how fast the manufacturers bring new production online as they say they are going to do. If they actually do that is. There is a investigation by the Chinese authorities into the manufacturers for pricing collusion currently. They were guilty and got caught last time. Will be interesting to see what comes out this action this time.

 

[Keith Myers]

Anybody try the new 3404 BIOS with the AGESA 1.0.0.7.1 revision level?
[Edit] I recently updated to the new AGESA 1.0.0.0a release or ASUS BIOS 3803. New memory dividers in 66Mhz increments. No performance advantages or disadvantages seen so far.

 

[Thentilian]

Anybody try the new 3404 BIOS with the AGESA 1.0.0.7.1 revision level?
[Edit] I recently updated to the new AGESA 1.0.0.0a release or ASUS BIOS 3803. New memory dividers in 66Mhz increments. No performance advantages or disadvantages seen so far.

3803 I seem to lose a bit on my max OC of 2933 on the RAM. I can only get to 2866 now. I was hoping to hit a bit higher, but doesn't appear that's gonna happen.

I think you're missing the point which is that while you may overpay for your new RAM, someone will also overpay to buy your old RAM. So it's a wash and the overpaying is only in your head. I bought my TridentZ for exactly the same price as I sold my Corsair for - I actually sold the Corsair for $70 more than I paid for it back in March. It just seems that you've been struggling with memory settings for months and why not play with memory that's better suited for your Ryzen setup?

But you're free to do as you wish of course.

My RAM is currently listed on Newegg for 190 new, so I'd probably be able to sell them for 150 or so on eBay. Which would be well more than they were bought for when I got a hold of them. So, I get what you are saying, I just don't have the cash to buy the new RAM first. I suppose I could sell my RAM then buy new ones, but that'd leave me with an unknown amount of down-time on my PC. If I had some other DDR4 laying around it wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[DaveB]

My RAM is currently listed on Newegg for 190 new, so I'd probably be able to sell them for 150 or so on eBay. Which would be well more than they were bought for when I got a hold of them. So, I get what you are saying, I just don't have the cash to buy the new RAM first. I suppose I could sell my RAM then buy new ones, but that'd leave me with an unknown amount of down-time on my PC. If I had some other DDR4 laying around it wouldn't be a big deal.

That's what credit cards are for. If you buy your new RAM right after your monthly billing cycle closes, you'll have about 45 days to sell your old RAM before the bill is due.

 

[Thentilian]

That's what credit cards are for. If you buy your new RAM right after your monthly billing cycle closes, you'll have about 45 days to sell your old RAM before the bill is due.

I don't have CC's.

I did however managed to regain my 2933 OC and managed to hit 3066, but didn't find stable settings for it. Turns out the altBSG is turned on automatically now in the BIOS, something I wasn't aware it was doing and my RAM no longer liked the ProcODT setting of 60 ohms that I had used every single time to hit 2933, it now prefers 68 Ohm setting.

I've managed hit 2933 with 1.39v and 1.05v SOC. I think I might be able to go a smidge lower with the voltage, but since I'm not really pushing it much higher than the 1.36v it took to hit 2800, I'm not too worried and the RAM kit gets warm, but not hot. The front fans are pretty close to the RAM kits so they get a decent amount of airflow over them in the case I'm using now.

At this point, I can wait for better RAM, as my GPU doesn't really seem to give much more FPS anyways. That should be the next thing I upgrade... if GPU prices and my cash flow improve enough to entertain that upgrade.

 

[DaveB]

I don't have CC's.

You really should have at least one. I always pay off the balance, so no interest. Without one, what do you do when an unexpected expense comes up?

 

[Keith Myers]

No CC - - No credit history

You really should have at least one. I always pay off the balance, so no interest. Without one, what do you do when an unexpected expense comes up?

Plus, with no credit card, you have no credit history. How are you to buy a car or home without a credit score?

 

[Thentilian]

You really should have at least one. I always pay off the balance, so no interest. Without one, what do you do when an unexpected expense comes up?

Plus, with no credit card, you have no credit history. How are you to buy a car or home without a credit score?

I'm well aware that not having a credit history can affect being able to buy things like a home or car. Currently, I'm more concerned about finding stable income, then I'll worry about credit.

Anyhow, back on topic... Does anyone know what key differences there is between BIOS 3803 and 3203? Asus mentions AGESA codes, but it seems the 3803 that I'm using has a number that's lower than the AGESA code in 3203. Since Asus doesn't seem to want to publish in depth notes on this, makes it hard to determine what version is best for Ryzen, versus Raven Ridge.