A8V Deluxe: ECC options removed from latest BIOS!

[Christian Busch]

Hello,

I just bought an A8V Deluxe because of it's ECC capabilities (it shall
be used to do some very light server tasks).
The original BIOS version on it was 1010, which offered many options
for ECC operation (like scrubbing, chip kill and so on). Because I
bought an AMD 64 with the latest Venice core, I flashed the BIOS to
version 1014, which is the first one to fully support this CPU as per
Asus online support database.
But I was really annoyed when I had to find out that Asus removed all
the nice ECC options in each of the later BIOS versions. The ECC menu
always leads to a blank screen with no options! What's the reason for
this nonsense?
Asus is supposed to be a manufacturer producing for professionals, but
with these advanced options removed from the BIOS I can instead buy
crap like MSI or Epox, which are cheaper anyway...
I hope that this group is read by some Asus representative who gets
the responsible BIOS programmer's a** kicked for this stupidity and
this nonsense fixed asap!

Regards

Christian

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Hello,

I just bought an A8V Deluxe because of it's ECC capabilities (it shall
be used to do some very light server tasks).
The original BIOS version on it was 1010, which offered many options for
ECC operation (like scrubbing, chip kill and so on). Because I bought an
AMD 64 with the latest Venice core, I flashed the BIOS to version 1014,
which is the first one to fully support this CPU as per Asus online
support database.
But I was really annoyed when I had to find out that Asus removed all
the nice ECC options in each of the later BIOS versions. The ECC menu
always leads to a blank screen with no options! What's the reason for
this nonsense?
Asus is supposed to be a manufacturer producing for professionals, but
with these advanced options removed from the BIOS I can instead buy crap
like MSI or Epox, which are cheaper anyway...
I hope that this group is read by some Asus representative who gets the
responsible BIOS programmer's a** kicked for this stupidity and this
nonsense fixed asap!

Regards

Christian

Have you actually checked that the Venice core supports ECC?. On the
AMD64, the motherboard does not provide ECC support, it is done by the
processor itself, which contains the memory controller. Some of the chips
not only provide it, but require it, while some of the other cores
(particularly those aimed at the 'home' market), don't provide this
ability (since it involves a slight timing cost). I haven't looked at the
Venice data sheets in this regard, but I'd suspect this feature might not
exist on this core.

Best Wishes

 

[Paul]

Hello,

I just bought an A8V Deluxe because of it's ECC capabilities (it shall
be used to do some very light server tasks).
The original BIOS version on it was 1010, which offered many options
for ECC operation (like scrubbing, chip kill and so on). Because I
bought an AMD 64 with the latest Venice core, I flashed the BIOS to
version 1014, which is the first one to fully support this CPU as per
Asus online support database.
But I was really annoyed when I had to find out that Asus removed all
the nice ECC options in each of the later BIOS versions. The ECC menu
always leads to a blank screen with no options! What's the reason for
this nonsense?
Asus is supposed to be a manufacturer producing for professionals, but
with these advanced options removed from the BIOS I can instead buy
crap like MSI or Epox, which are cheaper anyway...
I hope that this group is read by some Asus representative who gets
the responsible BIOS programmer's a** kicked for this stupidity and
this nonsense fixed asap!

Regards

Christian

Rest assured that no one at Asus reads this newsgroup
They don't even read the posts on their own forums.

There was one poster here, who would on occasion, notice significant
trends with a particular motherboard. That guy had a couple email
contacts inside Asus, and he would report to Asus, the customers
problems. That is about the limit, for info in this newsgroup
getting to Asus.

Your best option, is to phone Asus tech support. That will be
a toll call, as they don't have 1-800 service. If you wish to
reduce the cost of the call to you, _somewhere_ on the Asus
web site, you can fill out the details of your problem on a
web form and submit it. You will get a trouble ticket number
back in response. Then, when you phone Asus at your expense,
you tell them the trouble ticket number, and the tech support
can bring your report up on their screen. That will reduce the
time wasted collecting such info as your name and phone
number etc.

In terms of the BIOS design and support, you have to realize that
the people responsible for the BIOS, change through the life of
the product. For about the first five releases, the development
people seem to have a direct hand in preparing and repairing
BIOS problems. BIOS numbers much higher than that, or BIOS
whose only release info is "support new CPU", seem to be done
by amateurs. There have been several motherboards in the past,
where high release number BIOS were bad. There was a couple
BIOS released _in a row_ for A7N8X family that were bad, and
were removed from download. The implication is that the testing
and quality control is slack, after the initial push to finish
the BIOS is over. This observation is one of the reasons I
do not upgrade my "high BIOS number" motherboard BIOS to even
higher version numbers, due to the danger of downloading a dud.

In terms of technical info about the processor and where to look
for the settings, doc 26094 from AMD, covers the register map of
the Athlon64/Opteron processors. You can use the info in this
document, to see whether the processor supports ECC or scrubbing.
I don't see a reason for AMD to be removing this, as both socket
754 and 939 have provision for ECC, and there is no real saving
for them to remove it.

Perhaps you can construct a workaround, until the amateur BIOS
support people can stumble on how they broke the BIOS

Northbridge capabilities - pg.164. Also has info on scrubbing.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26094.PDF

(WPCREDIT and A64tweaker mentioned. It is possible you could use
WPCREDIT in the "Windows world" to emulate the ECC enable script
in the "Linux world" below. A number of calls to WPCREDIT could
give you the equivalent of "setpci" in the Linux world. With
appropriate time delays between executing each instance...)
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37345

Checking settings in the "Linux world"
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.c..._frm/thread/c691015dfa1341e5/b6f042567b3c0639

Same author donated ECC enable script for "Linux world"
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.c..._frm/thread/fb6e50e2a3dbd4f3/05f5a836792ac9a7

ECC scripts from Jaakko Hyvätti :
http://hyvatti.iki.fi/~jaakko/sw/

Tell us what you cook up
Paul

 

[Bob Knowlden]

This is a question, not a statement.

Do you have ECC RAM installed?

I'm not sure what the newest version of the BIOS is covered by the latest
downloadable version of the manual (E1878, for US English, dated January
2005), but it continues to list a number of ECC options. It claims that the
options are only available when the Master ECC enable is on. I believe that
ECC can't be enabled unless ECC RAM is detected.

I have no ECC RAM, so I won't volunteer to conduct the experiment.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Christian Busch]

Roger Hamlett wrote:

Hi Roger!

Have you actually checked that the Venice core supports ECC?

Yes, I guess Venice supports ECC. At least I haven't found anything
else on the web, and the menus are there in BIOS version 1010!

Thanks

Christian

 

[Christian Busch]

Paul wrote:

Hi Paul!

Rest assured that no one at Asus reads this newsgroup
They don't even read the posts on their own forums.

Mmmh, that's what I already feared...

In terms of the BIOS design and support, you have to realize that
the people responsible for the BIOS, change through the life of
the product. For about the first five releases, the development
people seem to have a direct hand in preparing and repairing
BIOS problems. BIOS numbers much higher than that, or BIOS
whose only release info is "support new CPU", seem to be done
by amateurs. There have been several motherboards in the past,
where high release number BIOS were bad. There was a couple
BIOS released _in a row_ for A7N8X family that were bad, and
were removed from download. The implication is that the testing
and quality control is slack, after the initial push to finish
the BIOS is over. This observation is one of the reasons I
do not upgrade my "high BIOS number" motherboard BIOS to even
higher version numbers, due to the danger of downloading a dud.

O tempora, o mores! Some years ago you could even flash the last,
end-of-life beta BIOS provided by Asus and still benefit from the
upgrade, and now you should better stick with a pre-final release?
This renders my usual strategy useless only to buy hardware near
end-of-production because of its superior maturity...

Perhaps you can construct a workaround, until the amateur BIOS
support people can stumble on how they broke the BIOS

I tried to fiddle about with AMIBCP to repair the BIOS, but no use,
the menu is still invisible...

ECC scripts from Jaakko Hyvätti :
http://hyvatti.iki.fi/~jaakko/sw/

Oh, yes, I should have remembered the thread and these scripts...
Thanks for reminding me!

Tell us what you cook up

Sorry that I have to disappoint you, but the machine is already in
service, and since Memtest86 reported ECC working (obviously the
default in the crippled BIOS - at least they managed that; but
scrubbing seems to be disabled nonetheless) I decided to be satisfied
with that and perhaps give the next BIOS release a try. But thank you
very much for all the info!

Regards

Christian

 

[Christian Busch]

Bob Knowlden wrote:

Hi Bob!

Do you have ECC RAM installed?

Yes, definitely! It is high quality Infineon brand ECC RAM, and the
menus are visible in BIOS version 1010!

Thanks

Christian

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Roger Hamlett wrote:

Hi Roger!


Yes, I guess Venice supports ECC. At least I haven't found anything else
on the web, and the menus are there in BIOS version 1010!

Thanks

Christian

I got 'worried', because you talked as if you had upgraded the BIOS to add
support for the Venice core, and when this was down found the option was
disabled.

Best Wishes