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ALL your X99 are borked

randyenergy
Level 10
Well, you shouldn't be surprised that you don't know because...
Anyway, from the Rampage V Extreme right down to the lowly ASRock boards.
Not blaming motherboard vendors as this is a communications fail between INTEL, board vendors and memory providers
Simply put, X.M.P is largely broken if not completely broken on all boards. Memory vendors can and do make memory that complies with X.M.P 2.0 and INTEL does validate it, however they only validate the profile not actual operation. So lo and behold you buy shiny new memory, load X.M.P and it doesn't work. Some boards are limited to 2,666MHz DDR4, others 3,200MHz and some 2,800MHz.

I would like to say this is something BIOS updates can fix but it isn't so. What you don't know is that prior to X99, motherboard vendors didn't have memory to test with, memory vendors didn't have motherboards. they can't commit to a production run because there's no memory. The endless cycle. INTEL does provide development boards, however this time it was server boards they provided, so as a motherboard vendor you must essentially work from a Server platform to make a channel\retail board. The speeds validated for the server platform are well, 1600MHz to eventually 3,200MHz. That doesn't mean much if anything at all, because INTEL only stipulates support for 1600 to 2133MHz memory, the dividers for higher memory frequencies are there, but that's pretty much it.

What you'll see is some new boards showing up almost out of the blue. These fix the initial design issues that plagued all boards.
Examples of the new series of fixed* boards are the GIGABYTE Champion series and the single ASUS Sabertooth X99 TUF. Believe it or not the TUF is a better overclocker than the Rampage V Extreme and it'll hit higher everything essentially, including having the ability to run 3400MHz memory out the box, which the RVE and others cannot (save for Champion series).

If you don't care about high speed memory though this won't matter, all boards work fine with 2,400 to 2,666MHz DIMMS.

Behind all the big monies, massive buildings, R&D budgets and technology you can't put wrap your mind around. Thousands of people and millions of man hours, it is just still regular folk like you and I. Since no person is impervious to oversight, no organization is either. It is unfortunate but it is the truth. It is not intentional, but believe it or not the situation was even worse with X79. Hence it was revised mid-life and nobody was the wiser. (PCIe 3.0 support was improved/added). That's how the Rampage IV Black Edition came about, it was a new ME code and all the updates for platform. Some motherboards were technically abandoned on the X79 platform and they could hardly operate at default settings.

Since HEDT are not volume platforms hardly any vendor bothers with investments in them. The odd thing here is that, many of the problems (not mechanical ones but BIOS related) can be fixed within a week with just sitting down and having all the resources poured into them, but it doesn't work like that with technical departments.

Is there no fix for the boards out there already via a BIOS update? XMP would not enable in the BIOS on a Asus X99-E WS even with the switch on the board set to enabled.
That's exactly it. They actually can't be fixed and even if they could. They would not be. Once again you can blame websites for this, because they don't actually test boards as so much as stare at them and write reviews.
It's on so many more boards in the wild you'd not believe it. If the journos don't tell the truth and keep handing out awards, then that sends a message of approval to the vendor techies, thus if you have a problem, you're an isolated case, not a symptom of a real problem.

So can you take motherboard manufacturers to task? You can't really simply because:
1. Your CPU is only certified to operate at 1600 to 2133MHz as per INTEL spec, which it does.
2. The motherboard only stated it supports memory speeds x,y,z via OC and there's a disclaimer about OC claims.
3. What you can do though is call out BS reviews for what they are and make journos account for them. Not aggressively but asking simple things like why is it an entire review of an overclocking motherboard only has CPU overclocking via multiplier and CPU voltage? That tells you nothing about anything. What really matters with X99 is how well X.M.P works, memory tuning, and Uncore. Everything else is entirely CPU sample dependent.
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Nate152
Moderator
I agree with what you're saying, Ram speed/capacity is dependent on the cpu's imc. The maximus v extreme (z-77) supports 32GB and speeds up to 2800MHz but you will need an i7 cpu for any chance of getting that speed and even then it's not guaranteed. My first 3770k could not do 16GB at 2800MHz, kind of disappointing to say the least. if the board says it supports 32GB of 2800MHz ram then intel should make sure all their cpu's can handle 32GB at 2800MHz.

So yeah it's a little misleading and that's why it is called a silicon lottery. But when we shell out money for a cpu we all should win. It is a piece of hardware after all not a ticket and all cpu's should be made more equal. I often wonder why and how the same cpu can vary in voltages when it is identical to the next one.

information was not pertinent to discussion.But the following

Here is a forum discussion about the art of binning Haswell E and is very enlightening

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?35139-The-black-art-of-silicon

The Ramapge ( $540 usd )may have outperformed the Sabertooth ($310 usd) by a couple of hairs and

certainly not enough for the $230 premium over the Sabertooth

Make mine a Sabertooth and $230 usd toward a 5930K

01 Wolverine wrote:
information was not pertinent to discussion.But the following

Here is a forum discussion about the art of binning Haswell E and is very enlightening

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?35139-The-black-art-of-silicon

The Ramapge ( $540 usd )may have outperformed the Sabertooth ($310 usd) by a couple of hairs and

certainly not enough for the $230 premium over the Sabertooth

Make mine a Sabertooth and $230 usd toward a 5930K


In your case, plus 2 years above standard warranty.

I am closing this thread as the OP is not correct about a number of things - the "discussion" has already run its course.

01 Wolverine wrote:
information was not pertinent to discussion.But the following

Here is a forum discussion about the art of binning Haswell E and is very enlightening

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?35139-The-black-art-of-silicon

The Ramapge ( $540 usd )may have outperformed the Sabertooth ($310 usd) by a couple of hairs and

certainly not enough for the $230 premium over the Sabertooth

Make mine a Sabertooth and $230 usd toward a 5930K


The Rampage boards aren't aimed at the c-to-p crowd. They are made for people that care about that last hair of perf over c-to-p ratios.

Raja
Level 13
The R5E outclocks the Sabertooth on memory - you are mistaken.

Intel never intended the higher DRAM ratios to work. They were happy with speeds up to 2666 working under condition. The rest came at the behest of vendors later on and thanks to OC socket.

Korth
Level 14
Future LGA2011-3 processors will likely implement more robust iMC components capable of sustaining higher memory frequencies. Remember that current Haswell-E and Haswell-EP offerings are basically 1st-gen DDR4 attempts. And current DDR4 (along with current JEDEC standards) has not evolved very far towards maximum specifications. X99 motherboards should all perform roughly the same in terms of raw memory throughput, aside from those designed with tradeoffs which sacrifice memory performance or those designed to emphasize memory performance - and even then, real-world performance will not be much affected outside of extremely high DDR4 speeds.
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]

Praz
Level 13
Hello

As you saw fit to post PMs between yourself and employees of ASUS on other forums you are now banned. This should not be an issue since you stated the following

Any of my ASUS/ROG belongings will either be sold, given or thrown into the E-waste