EX58-UD4P - Incorrect CPU frequency reported after BIOS upgrade

[mateo]

Hi good folks,
I recently upgrade the BIOS on my mobo to F13, the latest stable release (I believe). Previously I was running for a couple years on F9. My processor is a Bloomfield i7 920, 2.66GHz. I never overclocked it or touched the processor or memory settings, just always went with the default.
Now, during post the CPU speed is reported as 2.00GHz, when before it always reported correctly as 2.66GHz.

When I go into Windows 7 (Ultimate) and look at the Device manager, it shows the correct frequency, 2.66. I also looked in Speccy and it reports 2.66 as well.

Is my processor running at the proper frequency? Is this just a 'bug' in the BIOS reporting? Or perhaps I've missed a BIOS setting after flashing the BIOS and something needs to change. I believe I left the Multiple at 15, which was where it was put when I did a "load optimized defaults", as recommended by the manual upon flashing the bios.

Any ideas? Thanks
-Mateo

[wazza300]

thats correct if cpu multi is 15x,15x133=1995mhz

set the cpu multi to 21x or 20x if 21 isnt available,make sure intel turbo boost is enabled,then it should report correct speed

[Acebmxer]

When flashing did you uncheck the box to keep dmi pool data?

You can check the things wazza has suggested, but if you feel you may have missed a step or two while flashing it would not hurt to reflash again this time doing it the correct way.

1. Load Optimized Defaults
2. Press F10 to save and reboot.
3. Enter bios and then press F8 for q-flash
4. Uncheck the option to keep DMI Pool Data.
5. Falsh the bios.
6. Shut down or restart.
7. Enter bios and load Optimized Defaults
8. Press F10 to save and reboot.
9. Enter bios and make only needed changes like Dram spd, timings, and voltages. Also set hdd to AHCI or raid which ever you had set when installing windows.
10 Press F10 to save and reboot.
11 Enter bios (last time unless overclocking) set HDD boot order to your correct boot drive.
12 Press F10 and save and reboot. This time let it boot into windows. At this point if you want to overclock you can do so.

@step 9 I would check to make sure the cpu is set to correct speed.

[mateo]

Thank for the quick responses, this board is great.

So wazza, should I assume the the Optimized Defaults somehow automatically underclocks my processor? I wonder why that would be the case, if true, and why it wouldn't just set it to the advertised, rated speed of the processor.

Ace- should I flash down to F9 and then flash up again to F13 with your process, or just F13 over the current F13? I don't recall if I unchecked keep dmi pool data.

If I did go ahead and changed the multiplier, would that constitute overclocking? Would I expect lessened life or more wear and tear on the processor in the long term?

Thanks again guys.

[wazza300]

its probably a bios bug with that bios? idk but 15x isnt the normal cpu multi,its 21x,it will be normal to set it to that and it wont hurt the cpu at all

[Acebmxer]

I would reflash F13 first and see if it was because a bad flash if the problem still persist then flash back to F9.

A i7-920 default is 20x multi turbo puts it up to 21x. Both my X58A-UD5 and X58A-OC both set cpu to 20x with turbo enabled when Optimized defaults is selected or after flash. The only time I have seen it drop my cpu multi was when loading XMP memory profile it set cpu multi to 19x but a quick change to 20x fixed that issue.

Setting cpu multi to 20x + turbo should result in 21x or you can set cpu multi to 21x with turbo enabled. Disable turbo and it will max at 20x.

[mateo]

Thanks again for the guidance. I reloaded optimized defaults again, rebooted and it came up with the multiplier at 20. No need to flash the bios again. Then I tweaked what I needed to (boot device order, AHCI, a couple other things) and it was back to normal.