Threadripper and Memory.

Vince · 18 Jul 2019 at 11:09

@andy_taximan

Hi Mate, I got your trust but for whatever reason the email attached to it doesn't work and for some reason I also can't start a PM convo with you so instead see my response below:

I have 3466 (8 sticks of G.Skill Trident Z B-Die) on a Taichi board it can do 3200 cas 14 but no more fully populated, if I remove 4 sticks then 3600+ seems to be pretty easy. On the X399 Prime I can only do 2933. The trick I found was to push voltage to the SOC where the memory controller is. I think in the bios that should be vddcr soc voltage and is set to .8v stock. Basically I push that towards 1v and set LLC at level 2 or 3. After that I manually set the clock frequency of the memory with really slack timings like cas 20 to get it into windows. From there its all about slight voltage adjustments and stability testing between reboots to tighten up the timings.

8 Pack · 18 Jul 2019 at 19:16

Soc around 1.1 or 1.125v is often needed but again it's not for sure your imc can do it... Or even infinity fabric with dense, high capacity dimms.

andy_taximan · 19 Jul 2019 at 06:32

thanks for the thread/reply
I have the 8pack TEAM GROUP XTREEM " EDITION" 64GB (4X16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHZ QUAD CHANNEL KIT and cant get it to run above 2800 at 1.37v so have a long way to go, hope it will do better as in the blurb it says

Tested and compatible with the newest Intel Kaby Lake platforms & AMD X399 Threadripper

otherwise thats $750 wasted !

andy_taximan · 19 Jul 2019 at 08:42

cpu soc was at 1.035v by default so i upped it to 1.1 and ill try memory increases later, stress testing it on Boinc gives 64 threads a workout.

8 Pack · 19 Jul 2019 at 09:03

The memory will not be at fault. It will be the imc on your cpu. I have run that memory faultlessly many times on 64 and 128gb config. Last week we did around 12 servers with 128gb. One would not do it... Change the cpu and its working fine....

andy_taximan · 19 Jul 2019 at 09:09

Not blaming the memory, I wonder if its the Zenith Extreme Alpha MB , dont think I can just change the Threadripper , can I ? Not really got another £1600 to spare

Vince · 19 Jul 2019 at 09:17

andy_taximan said:
Not blaming the memory, I wonder if its the Zenith Extreme Alpha MB , dont think I can just change the Threadripper , can I ? Not really got another £1600 to spare

Could be the motherboard, as I said above literally nothing I could do would let me get above 2933 on the Asus Prime that I had to use for a while for ESXi as soon as I put the Taichi back in I was instantly back at 3200 no problem. Have you tried backing the timings right off setting the soc and frequency and seeing what happens? As you say its not like you can keep buying £1600 cpu's until you get one with a strong IMC.

andy_taximan · 19 Jul 2019 at 09:34

Vince said:
Could be the motherboard, as I said above literally nothing I could do would let me get above 2933 on the Asus Prime that I had to use for a while for ESXi as soon as I put the Taichi back in I was instantly back at 3200 no problem. Have you tried backing the timings right off setting the soc and frequency and seeing what happens? As you say its not like you can keep buying £1600 cpu's until you get one with a strong IMC.

Ive no idea what your saying other then ive upped the cpu soc from 1.035v to 1.1v

yet to try upping the memory again, will try soon , Anybody want to buy a 2990wx with possibly a weak IMC ? lol going beep...beep.beep

Vince · 20 Jul 2019 at 20:44

andy_taximan said:
Ive no idea what your saying other then ive upped the cpu soc from 1.035v to 1.1v yet to try upping the memory again, will try soon , Anybody want to buy a 2990wx with possibly a weak IMC ? lol going beep...beep.beep

For what it's worth I cant get much faster than this with my memory (all 8 dimms populated) @8pack probably wouldn't be all that impressed but I was surprised it could do it at all given the rated frequency with all dimms populated is 2133 on the 1st gen TR parts. Mine also boost to around 4.25 with OC Mode turned on in the Taichi bios but I don't like how many volts the board throws at the chip so have settled for a less aggressive voltage which results in 3.7 base 4.15 boost, I did this for another thread on quad channel memory performance but will shove it in here as well:

Default soc voltage on my chip is 0.9 but it's a 1st gen, so I up that to 1v I then upped memory and cpu load lines to level 3 in the bios and left the memory at 1.35v. I don't know if these timing can go or could be tighter with my memory, I guess it probably could but i'm not really a pro when it comes to the finer points of memory tuning.

andy_taximan · 21 Jul 2019 at 01:35

Heres mine, I need to get somebody to look at my system, spent far too long trying to get it right

Vince · 21 Jul 2019 at 11:48

andy_taximan said:
Heres mine, I need to get somebody to look at my system, spent far too long trying to get it right

Its surprising how much better Zen+ is over Zen on memory and latency, even at the slower command rate and frequency yours it giving good numbers. I'll try and have a look through your boards manual and see if I can tell you exactly what to change to see if we can get kicking at higher ram speeds. I find with my chip its incredibly easy to get the ram at almost any speed and boot. What was not so easy was getting it perfectly stable.

Edit: Cant find any good pics of all the bios settings in the extreme tweaker menu of the bios. can you get some pics? Specifically some with dram timing control and other menus expanded.

andy_taximan · 21 Jul 2019 at 13:06

Vince said:
Its surprising how much better Zen+ is over Zen on memory and latency, even at the slower command rate and frequency yours it giving good numbers. I'll try and have a look through your boards manual and see if I can tell you exactly what to change to see if we can get kicking at higher ram speeds. I find with my chip its incredibly easy to get the ram at almost any speed and boot. What was not so easy was getting it perfectly stable.

Edit: Cant find any good pics of all the bios settings in the extreme tweaker menu of the bios. can you get some pics? Specifically some with dram timing control and other menus expanded.

Ill do a video and show all the bios

https://youtu.be/oR6MZDRejj4 Linus better watch out !

andy_taximan · 21 Jul 2019 at 22:27

Think i have sorted it by myself

Using 1 stick of memory and removed m.2 from dim.2 slot and using a ssd with Linux and im running stable @3000 woooo , time to try replacing the other sticks but its running boinc faster already

(or it might be my imagination lol)

Poor old 8pack and all the memory problems people are having that aren't his fault , sure have to do some work with AMD

FFS spoke to soon, no way will all 4 sticks run above 2800 , close to despair here, its the damn Zenith im sure, as soon as you change anything it goes through the training then after the single beep it comes up with "press f1 to enter setup, your memory setting have been reset due to failure to boot" You have to go into bios or it will boot at 2400 and round and round in circles we go.
So single 16gig stick @3000 or 64gig at 2800 .

andy_taximan · 22 Jul 2019 at 10:57

OK well I am shocked, such a simple fix to get running @3200Mhz , anybody want to guess before I give away the secret?

Nutella33 · 22 Jul 2019 at 11:28

putting the sticks in properly? little nudge on the boot voltage?

andy_taximan · 22 Jul 2019 at 12:35

Nutella33 said:
putting the sticks in properly? little nudge on the boot voltage?

Ha tried that so many times, nope I want back to bios 0405 , its not perfect but at least it lets you run memory at the right settings without bleeping at you and resetting the timings back to 2400

Vince · 22 Jul 2019 at 17:19

andy_taximan said:
Ha tried that so many times, nope I want back to bios 0405 , its not perfect but at least it lets you run memory at the right settings without bleeping at you and resetting the timings back to 2400

Damn board. Funny as the bios on the 399 prime was total junk and memory was impossible to fiddle with. My favourite 399 board by a long shot now esxi stuff is fixed has to be the taichi. I recon though that with the right bios tweaks to manual oc mode, setting ram agencies manually, voltages with a 100mv offset etc will get all of the sticks running stable.

arc@css · 22 Jul 2019 at 17:42

I think that's the first 2990 I've seen on here. That's a beast of a system!

andy_taximan · 23 Jul 2019 at 00:20

arc@css said:
I think that's the first 2990 I've seen on here. That's a beast of a system!

I Peed everybody off on the cinebench20 thread lol, hammered it with first try, multi thread tho its slow single core
Waiting to hear back from Asus about the bios , expect they are a bit busy
Ive settled on running it like a fast new car in the uk, limited to 70 and cant get above 50 most of the time lol

arc@css · 23 Jul 2019 at 00:23

andy_taximan said:
I Peed everybody off on the cinebench20 thread lol, hammered it with first try, multi thread tho its slow single core

I take it you use it for applications other than games (though I bet it still would deliver in that regard anyway)? I expect its single-core speed is still pretty decent, all considered.

Btw, what's the highest clock speed for one of the cores? 4.2Ghz?