Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

[dejanh]

Hi guys,

I am having lots of major bugs with my new setup. A couple of days ago I bought a brand new GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board to pair with my Core i7 3930K C2 and so far the board has proven not to be able to handle all slots filled with 2133MHz DRAM (same DRAM works in competitors boards). Filling all slots with 2133MHz DRAM results in a boot loop with no POST. Removing 4 slots and going down to just 4 slots used runs fine. Dropping frequency with all 8 slots to 1866MHz works fine. This same DRAM works correctly in a Rampage IV Extreme with the same chip at the rated 2133MHz speed.

More importantly, the board is not capable of overclocking at all. Testing with a known good i7 3930K C2 chip (verified with competitors boards) here are the results of attempting to overclock to 4.4GHz using a 44x multiplier.

1. Disable all Turbo features and all power saving features and set multiplier to 44x.

Expected result: CPU running at 4.4GHz
Actual result: CPU running at 3.2GHz

2. Disable all Turbo features and all power saving features and set multiplier to 45x.

Expected result: CPU running at 4.5GHz
Actual result: CPU running at 3.8GHz at boot only, then at 3.2GHz in Windows.

3. Enable all Turbo features and all power saving features but increase the power envelope to the maximum and set multiplier to 44x.

Expected result: CPU running at 4.4GHz with no throttling except when idle.
Actual result: CPU running at 4.4GHz at idle, and throttling when under load.

4. Enable all Turbo features and disable all power saving features and set multiplier to 44x.

Expected result: CPU running at 4.4GHz with no throttling at all.
Actual result: CPU running at 4.4GHz at idle, and throttling when under load.

5. Enable all Turbo features, set maximum turbo multiplier for each core at 44x and disable all power saving features and set global multiplier to 44x.

Expected result: CPU running at 4.4GHz with no throttling at all.
Actual result: CPU running at 4.4GHz at idle, and throttling when under load.

When the chip starts throttling the BCLK is also not holding perfectly steady at 100MHz but goes down by about 1-2MHz as reported by CPU-Z. Temperatures are under control completely, and the chip itself is cooled by a dedicated HW Labs BI GTX480 radiator and an EK Supreme HF block. Voltages appear not to have any bearing on anything so far which is consistent with the fact that the board is not actually allowing the chip to overclock.

Other users have also reported problems overclocking with this board, and there is at least one other individual with the same symptoms here Review of GIGABYTE's 2nd Gen. X79 Workstation MB: X79S-UP5

Finally, there have been reports of PLL voltage not being adjustable (it is adjustable in UEFI BIOS but the setting is never applied). I have not personally been able to test this as I am not able to overclock at all anyway, but there is another bug that was reported by several people.

Details of my setup:
Intel Core i7 3930K C2 (SROKY), using latest F4n UEFI BIOS (other UEFI BIOS versions exhibit the same problems)
Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI
Mushkin Redline Ridgeback 8x4GB 2133MHz DRAM running at 1866MHz (board limitation when running all 8 slots)
Custom watercooling for the whole system

Can anyone help to resolve these issues. I feel that this board has a tremendous amount of potential, but not being able to overclock at all, and not being able to utilize memory correctly at rates speeds kind of makes any features available pretty insignificant.

[wazza300]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

cpu only throttles with cpu voltage set to normal and using offset

are you raising the cpu thermal limits in the bios? this might throttle the speed due to thermal limits being reached?

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

cpu only throttles with cpu voltage set to normal and using offset

are you raising the cpu thermal limits in the bios? this might throttle the speed due to thermal limits being reached?

Can you please explain the first part of your comment - cpu only throttles with cpu voltage set to normal and using offset - I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by this...I also believe that the voltage was initially set at "Auto" only. This is how I overclock when I just kick things off. I need to see the limits of the board and how the chip is behaving on it. However, since clock is not taking I got nowhere at all.

As for the CPU thermal limits in the BIOS, if you look at my scenarios above, you will notice that I have tried both disabling all thermal management and maxing out the limits to no effect. Even after doing all of that the CPU still throttled.

[wazza300]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

to unlock dvid you have to set the cpu voltage to normal,if you use a fixed voltage the cpu wont throttle at idle,makesure you set 44x or whatever multi and set each turbo limit to the same 44x or whatever multi you want to clock to

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

to unlock dvid you have to set the cpu voltage to normal,if you use a fixed voltage the cpu wont throttle at idle,makesure you set 44x or whatever multi and set each turbo limit to the same 44x or whatever multi you want to clock to

So you are saying that the throttling is due to the fact that I am letting the board use "Auto" for voltage instead of setting it manually?! This, if true, is absolutely nuts. I will definitely test it out tonight if this is what you are saying. Why would the voltage have anything to do with throttling is beyond me though. Can you explain the reasoning behind this or point me to some source where I can read about it? Also, since I am using an unlocked processor (i7 3930K) why do I even need to have "Turbo" enabled? Logically, I should be able to disable it all together, then set the multiplier I want on the chip and have the chip run at that clock. However, if I do this (as you can see in my original post in test scenarios (1) and (2)) the board just either defaults to the stock clock (i.e., 3.2GHz) or worse yet does a bump to 3.8GHz at boot, and then reports as 3.2GHz in Windows.

[wazza300]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

So you are saying that the throttling is due to the fact that I am letting the board use "Auto" for voltage instead of setting it manually?! This, if true, is absolutely nuts. I will definitely test it out tonight if this is what you are saying. Why would the voltage have anything to do with throttling is beyond me though. Can you explain the reasoning behind this or point me to some source where I can read about it? Also, since I am using an unlocked processor (i7 3930K) why do I even need to have "Turbo" enabled? Logically, I should be able to disable it all together, then set the multiplier I want on the chip and have the chip run at that clock. However, if I do this (as you can see in my original post in test scenarios (1) and (2)) the board just either defaults to the stock clock (i.e., 3.2GHz) or worse yet does a bump to 3.8GHz at boot, and then reports as 3.2GHz in Windows.

it could be,auto isnt advised anyway when overclocking just set normal and add axtra voltage at load with dvid,as for ram it could be bios issue,ive managed to run mine at 2133mhz fine with new bios(different model mb )

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

Alright, I will test out this scenario tonight as well, but I have a feeling that we'll just end up ruling out yet another possibility. I will report back with my results. As for the memory, I am convinced it is the UEFI BIOS that is causing a problem since dumping 4 sticks makes it possible to run 2133MHz without a single adjustment to voltage, whether it be DRAM, IMC, or VTT. In all, I am pretty sure that all of these issues are a result of broken UEFI BIOS implementation, for the throttling/incorrect clock being set I am inclined to think that it is broken Turbo and TDP limiter, and for the memory, the timings are busted.

[wazza300]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

It's usually needing more dram voltage with 16gb,1.5-1.65v and maybe one/two clicks more qpi/vtt voltage

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

It's usually needing more dram voltage with 16gb,1.5-1.65v and maybe one/two clicks more qpi/vtt voltage

Like I said, no problems running 16GB, it's 32GB where the board chokes because of bad implementation of the UEFI BIOS. No amount of voltage helps, though cranking it big time and really loosening the timings will at least allow the board to POST, but then it fails. Going back to the main problem however...I just posted this update on OCN, but this is definitely a good spot for it.

I have done some more extensive testing now (tried everything on manual too to no effect) and I am convinced that the TDP limiter of some sort is kicking in causing the processor to downclock. How did I determine that? Read on and keep in mind all tests were done with the chip clocked to 4.4GHz (100MHz x 44), all throttling and power control set to disabled in the BIOS, all C-states disabled in the BIOS as well (I tried with stuff enabled too and the behavior is the same).

First I ran Cinebench, and the clock does not flinch at all. It stays solid at 4.4GHz for the whole run and the results correspond to it (~12.5pts at 4.4GHz). This is consistent with Cinebench load which is not that high computationally even though usage is at 100%.

Next I ran LinX and set the memory to use to approximately ~5GB in one test and at full 32GB in the second test and then monitored the load. While the memory is filling up the clock is solid at 4.4GHz. As soon as the memory is all loaded and high computational load kicks in, the throttling starts. The time before the throttling kicks in exactly corresponds to the second when the LinX process changes from loading data into memory to performing calculations.

Ok, at this point things are really pointing towards a TDP limitation of some sort, but I decided to test further so I decided to do an even more controlled test.

I loaded up Prime95 and limited the number of threads to 4. No throttling as you can see below.



Then I decided to set the number of threads to 8. Throttling starts, but it is not quite so aggressive yet as you can see below.



Finally, I decided to go all out with 12 threads. Not only is the throttling kicking in majorly, but it is pretty much constantly throttling the chip as you can see below and very aggressively too.



For the record, I have seen this behavior before...a long time ago when the first Nehalem chips came out. Asus botched their implementation of the Turbo feature and TDP limits. That is why this tool came out i7 Turbo - Tool to test for Turbo throttling [Archive] - XtremeSystems Forums after I and a few others worked with Asus to get the issue resolved (initially in that case I was also convinced that there was no problem and that everything worked "as designed"). In that case things were a bit better because even though the chip would throttle when using Turbo and exceeding TDP threshold at least fixed multipliers worked with Turbo disabled and were unaffected by the TDP limit. In this case we do not have any recourse. In fact, fixed multipliers without Turbo enabled do not even work on this board at all. The board always just defaults to running the chip at 3.2GHz if Turbo is disabled which is so plain-as-day majorly broken it is almost comical. The good thing about this problem however is that it is something very specific and as such it is something that Gigabyte should be able to fix faster than they can diagnose and fix the Turbo throttling issue.

For some more reading see the following thread on XS Asus P6T / Rampage II Extreme: no "CPU VR Current Override" ???

Eventually, in that case Asus added a fix for the TDP limit issue in BIOS 1104 and everything was resolved. No more throttling at all.

I really hope that this is useful information to bring forward. This should be an easy problem to fix, and for that matter even reproduce. Fire up latest CPU-Z then just grab a Version 1.0 GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board, plop in an i7 3930K SROKY, crank the multiplier to 44x, then boot Windows 7 (or Windows 8) and run 64-bit version of Prime95 Blend with all cores/threads used (in this case 12), then watch the board throttle. It will do it like clockwork. The other one is even easier. Disable all turbo and power management features, then set the multiplier to 44x and watch the CPU load up at measly 3.2GHz as though no adjustments to the clock speed were made.

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

Anyone from Gigabyte planning to reply to this thread? I have also submitted a support query 2 days ago via their official support website and no reply to that one either. What gives?

[Acebmxer]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

What are you using for a cpu cooler? Have you check the mount on it? Reaply thermal paste? Do you have a fan blowing vrms?

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

What are you using for a cpu cooler? Have you check the mount on it? Reaply thermal paste? Do you have a fan blowing vrms?

Dedicated HW Labs BI GTX480 for the CPU with an EK Supreme HF block. Thermal interface is Indigo Xtreme, and the temperatures are under control, at least on the CPU. The VRM I did not measure but I "felt" the heatsink by hand and it is basically cold (lukewarm). I have a 120mm fan blowing over the VRM too. Also, the VRM on this board is rated for 135C, and there is no way that I am running even close to that. I will however try to get an actual measurement of the VRM temperatures just to completely eliminate that as the issue that is triggering a TDP limiter.

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

Dedicated HW Labs BI GTX480 for the CPU with an EK Supreme HF block. Thermal interface is Indigo Xtreme, and the temperatures are under control, at least on the CPU. The VRM I did not measure but I "felt" the heatsink by hand and it is basically cold (lukewarm). I have a 120mm fan blowing over the VRM too. Also, the VRM on this board is rated for 135C, and there is no way that I am running even close to that. I will however try to get an actual measurement of the VRM temperatures just to completely eliminate that as the issue that is triggering a TDP limiter.

I just finished running tests on the VRM temperatures. I hooked up my DT301 with a K-type probe to the base of the VRM heatsink. I realize that this is not right on the VRM, but in order to get in there I would have to remove the whole board and remove the heatsink, which I have no plans of doing. I made sure to put the probe in an area with obstructed airflow (behind the 8-pin CPU connector) and then I ran a 10 minute Prime95 Blend test with the chip at default with Turbo enabled. Peak VRM temperatures measured at heatsink base were at 30.5C. Let's say that by some odd chance the VRM is 15C hotter than the heatsink, that would put it at 45.5C. Next, without moving the probe or anything, I ran a 10 minute test at 4.4GHz (of course, it's not really 4.4GHz since the board is immediately throttling when I load it with Prime95 Blend). After 10 minutes, the peak VRM temperatures measured at the base of the heatsink were 33.3C. Again, let's say that the actual temperatures of the VRM if I could put the probe directly on one of them are 15C more, that puts the VRM temperature at 48.3C measured on the VRM. Heck, if they were 30C more measured directly at the VRM itself, that still puts the VRM no higher than 63.3C. That's nothing for this type of high-end VRM

The other guy (Blameless on OCN) who is reporting the same type of problem as me and is already talking to Gigabyte is now getting the "it's the CPU" runaround What's the chance of having two defective CPUs both exhibiting identical symptoms and both on this board (hint, the answer is "no chance" )? I'm not buying that even for a second. This is not to even mention that both his CPU and my CPU are randomly sampled and they both check out just fine when overclocking on competitors boards (in my case RIVE).

Stock clock VRM temps...


4.4GHz overclock VRM temps (throttling was active during this time)...

[dejanh]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

I decided to run one more test, this time with an old tool called Arena (chess simulation), using a Toga II engine capable of loading 8 threads at the same time. I used this program before to diagnose the OCP/TDP limitation problem on the Asus R2E board I mentioned earlier. Basically, if OCP/TDP limit is what is causing the throttling, then this tool will not cause throttling to occur. It loads the CPU at 100% workload, but the workload is not power-intensive and does not draw a large amount of current like the workload that is simulated with LinX for example. After running the tool for 12 minutes and counting at 4.6GHz, well, see for yourself...no throttling occurs.



I'm 100% certain that this is OCP/TDP throttling that's going on. As for the other issue that results in CPU multiplier simply having no effect when Turbo is disabled, well, I'm not sure certain why that is... Anyway, the main thing is to get the throttling to stop, after that we can look at other issues (i.e., not being able to apply multipliers without Turbo being enabled).

[boondocks]

Re: Major problems with the Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI board

Sorry I can't help with that board but,
Didn't the UP5 user thread get deleted on OCN? I was checking it out and one day it was gone. I was going to buy this board but decided against it.
Supposedly at one point Gigabyte put some LLC limitations in the bios after some jokers managed to burn up a board, don't know what has changed since then, I lost my link to the article.