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Asrock BIOS Guide

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  • Asrock BIOS Guide

    Hi
    Does anyone know where to find a BIOS Guide for Asrock BIOS? Something that goes a bit deeper than what is in the manual.
    Or even a specific guide for the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4?
    I was so smart to flash before saving my settings, I didn't OC but I remember faintly that I worked through the BIOS to set everything like I needed it back than(2.5 years back) but that is all I remember.
    For now I have only adjusted the fan speeds and deactivated onboard audio, serial port, Smart Connect and Rapid Start.Anything else I should check?
    Cheers
    Last edited by ChromeBeauty; 05-09-2015, 10:54 AM.

  • #2
    Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

    It depends what you need and which problem you encounter with default configuration.
    If you are not interested in overclock, may these settings be of your interest:
    (General! Not specific to your board)

    Storage Configuration: AHCI<>IDE
    Boot Logo Show: Enabled<>Disabled
    CPU Fan Speed: Always High<>Automatic
    HDMI Audio: Enabled<>Disabled
    Onboard HD Audio: Enabled<>Disabled
    Onboard Graphics Shared Memory: Auto<>Manually Specified

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    • #3
      Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

      Well for now a problem is the rather low speed of the eSATA port and Intel USB3 ports, I ran a full backup while being connected over the internal SATA3(Intel port) port and the speed when validating was about 173MB/s while its was on 146MB/s over the eSATA port and 145MB/s over the USB3(Intel port) port. That is why I currently run my external backup drive on an internal SATA port via eSATA>SATA cable.

      I wonder what the BIOS setting for the internal ports to eSATA would do, whats it there for?
      And would speed be improved if using the eSATA port and switching the BIOS setting for the shared internal port SATA3_A1 to eSATA?

      Also I have not tried XFastUSB but looking through the web there seems to be not much good to read about it, sometimes even getting a slow down instead a speed up.
      So is there any setting in the BIOS for the USB ports that I should set or not set to achieve more speed?

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      • #4
        Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

        - ASmedia ports are slower than Intel ports and for very fast drives it is sensible.
        - Have you checked AHCI/IDE option in BIOS? AHCI mode may increase your drive speed.
        - Your eSATA port is physically connected to ASmedia chip and it is not changable at all.
        - For USB case, simply don't install XFast utility.
        Last edited by bahram_alinezhad; 05-15-2015, 01:18 PM. Reason: ahci/ide

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        • #5
          Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

          Originally posted by ChromeBeauty View Post
          Well for now a problem is the rather low speed of the eSATA port and Intel USB3 ports, I ran a full backup while being connected over the internal SATA3(Intel port) port and the speed when validating was about 173MB/s while its was on 146MB/s over the eSATA port and 145MB/s over the USB3(Intel port) port. That is why I currently run my external backup drive on an internal SATA port via eSATA>SATA cable.

          I wonder what the BIOS setting for the internal ports to eSATA would do, whats it there for?
          And would speed be improved if using the eSATA port and switching the BIOS setting for the shared internal port SATA3_A1 to eSATA?

          Also I have not tried XFastUSB but looking through the web there seems to be not much good to read about it, sometimes even getting a slow down instead a speed up.
          So is there any setting in the BIOS for the USB ports that I should set or not set to achieve more speed?

          What BIOS setting for "the internal ports to eSATA" are you referring to?

          The speed of you backups also depends on the destination drive, what is it? If it is a so called SATA III HDD, it will never even reach the real world limit of SATA II speeds. For large file sequential transfers with SATA II, that is ~260MB/s, seen only with SSDs.

          The type of file(s) being copied also affect the transfer speed between drives. You can see that with the display that Windows shows during a long file copy between two drives. The Windows 8/8.1 version of that is better, the transfer speed of a folder of randomly sized files and file types varies wildly.

          The ASMedia SATA chipset uses one PCIe 2.0 lane, whose max speed is 5Gb/s. That is not the full 6Gb/s of SATA III, which you will get from the Intel SATA III ports, subject to real world limitations.

          XFast USB changes to a different type of USB protocol, which can be faster. It only works on one USB 3.0 port at a time, and you must disconnect and reconnect the USB 3.0 cable to activate it. Mother board reviews of XFast USB I've seen did show a decent increase in transfer speed, but as always that is limited by real world limitations.

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          • #6
            Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

            Just a minor question, why can't I set the fans 2 & 3 to level 10 in the BIOS? At first I thought I made an error but the highest level I can set is Level 9 in the BIOS but I can set level 10 using ASRock eXtreme Tuner once Windows is up.


            @bahram_alinezhad
            OK ASMedia is slower but SATA2 speeds should still be enough for HDs.
            AHCI is active for the drives, at least for the internal as the external one as I connected when PC is running so I don't now what setting is used in the BIOS for that drive.


            @parsec
            There is a setting under each port that refers to eSATA support or something like that, I have to recheck that.

            HDs have max transfer-rate of about 200-210MB/s so I doubt these are the limiting factor, and as you can see with the speedsmentioned the internal Intel SATA3 port makes 173MB/s while I achieve 146MB/s over the eSATA port and 145MB/s over the USB3(Intel port).

            5Gb/s on the ASMedia SATA chipset would still be roughly 500MB/s in theory, seems more than enough to handle all HDs.

            I will try XFast USB but I had expected that the Intel USB3 ports won't need it, at least AIDA64 lists the connection over them to the external HD as SuperSpeed what is also 5 GBit/s and even with the old, BOT(Bulk Only Transport) protocol ist should reach 250MB/s.

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            • #7
              Re: Asrock BIOS Guide

              By commenting "ASMedia ports are slower than Intel ports", I don't mean only the nominal peak transfer of those ports, however it counts too.
              The performance of a controller comes into many technical details which a company attempts to work on and reach optimum results. Do you remember memory controllers? With a certain memory module and a certain bus speed, different controllers had extremely different performance! Also you can look at benchmarks for SATA controllers: They have different rank in different benchmark programs and different IO methods.
              I remember in a benchmark an AMD sata controller was behind its competitors until last test: Copy and paste from and to the same drive. In this last test the AMD chip was notably ahead of its competitors. It shows that manufacturers may focus on special aspects of a chip performance.
              In my opinion, Intel as the largest manufacturer of CPU is best aware of new features of CPU and makes usage of these new features for optimizing memory, hard controllers *before* other manufacturers, so is always ahead among others.

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