Gigabyte X570 I

[MrPils]

I waited nearly 3 weeks to get the X570i expecting a nice quality of life improvement over the B450i/3600 in my media pc. At the moment I'm feeling pretty sick about it, this bios seems utter trash. Anyone else running this board with any advice for me?

I just cant get my head round it, there's sometimes 2 or 3 places to set the same thing, some override others, some don't seem to work at all unless other values are at auto - its a total mess. Why can i set every memory timing in two separate places? Why can I only set fabric voltage from a sub menu 6 deep that's not even in the tweaking section? If this is the improved Gigabyte bios layout they talked about for x570 then its a joke.

Its way less stable when overclocking than my B450i, memory overclocking isn't going well at all with frequent post failures above 3466mhz which the board then helpfully clears cmos for instead of just retrying training. 3866mhz 1:1 is stable on the b450i with the same timings and voltages. I'm also finding its slower in multicore testing by about 8% but about 5% faster single core (R20 5080 multicore 517 single core 9.84x efficiency).

Its way more aggressive with vcore and doesn't like to idle nearly as much as the B450i, idle power usage is double. I've gone through and set as many voltages to "normal" as possible, but nothing seems to get the aggressive boosting under control.

I'm on the shipping F3 bios (1.0.0.3) at the moment as the newer F4h bios (1.0.0.3ab) is still beta, I wanted to test with a stable release first. Ill try the beta tonight and over the weekend, but at this rate I'm really feeling like ebaying it and getting another MSI B450i as its literally half the price and so easy to use in comparison its like night and day.


I've swapped the cpu and memory sticks about between the systems, its definitely this board that's triggering me at the moment. Hopefully I'm just missing something simple as the board itself feels really high quality.

Thanks in advance for any comments/advice/moral support...




Disclaimer - I'm moving to AMD from Intel throughout (z87 itx system and 3 x99 setups, R5E, MSI Godlike and GB SOC) and have pretty much zero AMD experience in the last 10 years. Everything is watercooled and pushed hard but stable, I'm old school and do all my setup in bios, no apps.

 

[MrPils]

Thanks for the response .

I'm familiar with being able to set stick independently (I have an FX990 UD5 and an X99 SOC both from Gigabyte that I can do this on), it's not the case here. I'll try to explain the memory timings specifically...

In the Tweaking section of bios you can set all your overclocking and tweaking parameters (including memory timings) except VDDG - Infinity Fabric voltage. My 3600 really likes this set at 0.975v and the 3800x seems to respond well to this as well. To set VDDG voltage you have to leave the tweaking section and go to the Advanced section of bios, drill down through the sub menus in the AMD overclocking section to the DRAM Configuration sub menu within and enable overclocking mode for the dram controller. This then allows the vddg voltage to be set from a completely different sub section next to the AMD overclocking section called "XFR overclocking". This is the only place the voltage appears, and from memory the only voltage that appears on this page within a muddle of other non voltage related settings. However, you won't have realised that setting AMD overclocking mode to enabled under DRAM configuration also opens up a "timings overclocking" section, which is on another sub menu page and contains every setting from DRAM timings in the tweaking section. Confusingly these don't change to match what you set in the tweaking section, they stay at auto unless changed here. Even more confusingly they override any timings you have set in the Tweaking section (with its auto or manually set values), even if you are running XMP enabled and full auto it overrides with its own board values (2133mhz JEDEC spd i think). This would be easier to explain with screenshots or a video, but I'm stuck at work. I've tried to describe as clearly as possible, but it literally is that confusing. You suddenly find a whole new sub section in bios with exactly the same settings as in the main sections, but under certain conditions these override the main settings. Auto for a timing in one section is not the same value as Auto in the other.

I have the advantage that my hardware is all the same, I'm swapping cpu's between the boards. The memory is a really good quad channel samsung b-die 4 x 16gb kit I used for years in my R5E. 3733mhz 16-16-16-16-32-1T @ 1.39v, 3866mhz @ 1.42v same timings stable on the B450i. Power supplies both EVGA 850 G+, MSI 1080ti in one, Gigabyte 1070 in another. I use USB for sound, and have wifi, bluetooth and pretty much everything else switched off. Both run a single m.2 nvme drive only, one is a 1tb samsung 970 evo, the other a 512gb corsair MP510. They're similar enough I can swap the hard drives (windows installs) between them without issue, which is kind of the intention (I have everything broadly compatible with everything else at home as it really helps troubleshooting).

 

[MrPils]

My 6 year old could've written a better bios in crayon on the dog's back. Its just shocking, I'm actually getting annoyed just thinking about messing with it some more. Finding the limits of new hardware is usually fun, when the limit is the user's patience with the incoherent bios its a real let down. Especially when a last generation mid range board can completely show up the latest and greatest at twice the price (comparing ITX formats).

I admit I'm throwing toys, but I swear i could fix a lot of this myself in 10 minutes with a bios editor (not that the public are allowed such things anymore), which is what is making it so infuriating. I shouldn't need to disable ddr power down mode mode in 3 different places or navigate to totally separate sections of bios to change related settings and options. There shouldn't be entire duplicated pages that don't reflect the changes made to each other or give any indication which has precedence.

I understand now why there are no web reviews of the only currently available ITX x570. Gigabyte would be suicidal sending this out for review with the bios as it is now/was at release. F4h beta may resolve all this, sounds like hoping for unicorns farting rainbows.

 

[MrPils]

I found out that undervolting VDDG helped stability by mistake - I read an old ryzen guide and on first gen default was 0.95v so I set that and started overclocking thinking I was forcing default volts (incase the Auto setting went on one as the MSI doesnt have a "normal" option). During the course I found that my 3600 didnt respond to any voltage increase above 0.975 vDDG - infact it made it less stable at high IF clock and I got weird USB errors. My 3600 likes 1.05v SOC / 0.975v for VDDG, My 3800x prefers a bit more SOC (1.1ish) but seems to want the same ballpark VDDG. Neither chip will pass memory training with VDDG above 1v at 3800mhz 1:1, default is 1.05v. All testing on the b450i so far of course...

 

[MrPils]

Quick update - found another place I can set VDDG without having to enable the thing that turns the memory timings override on, so finally made progress. Also the board overvolts vddr by nearly 0.06v. Ive been into windows at 3733, but it crashed then refused to post and cleared cmos itself. Im now testing 3600 which seems stable at XMP. If it cant go over 3600 ill have to see how it reacts to tightening timings. The MSI sucks at that.

Feeling a bit more positive now some progress has been made...

 

[MrPils]

If you have the ability to flash the bios on the b450i (no flashback, old cpu required) then without any question or doubt the MSI is a much better buy. The only things the x570i offers over the b450i is usb 3.1 gen 2 ports, pcie4, better onboard audio and saving bios profiles. Its twice the price basically (tho the MSI seems to have gone up £20 in the last 3 or 4 weeks), if you need pcie4 go for it, but otherwise honestly avoid. The extra £100 would be far better spent elsewhere.

EDIT - Also 2 x m.2 on the x570 compared to 1 x m.2 on the b450i.

 

[MrPils]

Tips for this board on F3 bios...

Save a profile straight away and as you work. A failed oc resets cmos automatically. Loading last known good values does not load all values from all pages in bios, a lot of the AMD and XFR settings are not saved/restored meaning you probably wont post.
You cant dock anything behind an "I agree" or "Accept" notification in bios (parts of XFR and AMD OC sections) using the insert key to the Favorties page even though it allows you. After restart its gone from the Favorites page.
VDDR overvolts by up to .07v depending what you manually set (Higher manual voltage = higher overvolt too, 1.2v=1.24v, 1.35v=1.4v, 1.45v=1.52v).
Dont use Auto vddg, it goes way too high and limits your oc (Sets Manual 1100mv under XFR overclocking section above 29.33x memory ratio).
VDDG must be set in two places - in the AMD overclocking section and in the XFR overclocking section. Set both to manual and stay at least 50mv under VSOC voltage.
To set 1:1 you need to set memory multiplier under the tweaking section, Infinity fabric ratio to 1/2 memory multi x100 in the AMD Overclocking > Infinity Fabric Ratio menu, and set both 1:1 uclock mode and set uclk to 1/2 memory multi x100 under XFR overclocking.*
Core and PPT overrides dont work, PBO doesnt exceed these when set to enabled. 105w package is a hard limit so far for me on F3 unless custom PBO overrides this (untested so far).
Be careful what you set in the AMD overclocking section, especially leave the memory overclocking menu item at Auto, do not enable it. This will override all your dram timings set on the tweaking page and half the values are in hex. I guess this section will be removed or refined in future bioses.


*There are actually 3 clock domains (memory speed, memory controller speed and Infinity fabric speed). CPUz shows you memory controller speed on the memory tab as NB Frequency and not Infinity Fabric speed. So far ive only seen Infinity Fabric speed displayed in Ryzen Master. I didnt know Fabric speed was different to UCLK, so until I stumbled on the IF ratio setting under the AMD overclocking section I had no idea about it. Auto on this setting is 1:1 up to 3600mhz and 1:2 thereafter. You can force an async IF while keeping uclk and mclk in sync but performance takes a big hit. Likewise all three can run async but performance is just bad and stability is tricky too.


I'll edit in more as I figure things out.

 

[MrPils]

Yeah definitely. I never realised there were 3 clock domains to synchronise though, everywhere mentions 1:1 when really it should be 1:1:1. Also the tendency to show the DDR speed in terms of multiplier is misleading as well. "3600mhz" memory runs at 18 x 100 x 2 for 3600mhz. It does not run at 36 x 100. This introduces confusion with the idea of 1:1:1 clock domains, even though incorrect it would be clearer to the end user to call it 2:1:1 due to incorrect labelling elsewhere thats already in common use.
TLDR - Memory at 3600mhz with UCLK and FCLK at 1800mhz is actually 1:1:1 ratio.