Z390 Taichi / ASRock Board users: Resized BAR bioses available for testing. Z390 Taichi featured. PM me for details.

[R-T-B]

I have an experimental bios mod for this board that forces the PCIe BAR from 256MBs to 2048MBs, I'm curious of the following and need testers:

1.) Does this help performance? Is it similar to or perhaps even recognized as "AMD SAM support?" This isn't technically a resizable BAR, but it is a much larger one, and I'm curious if it's what AMD is doing behind the marketing talk.

2.) How do NVIDIA cards handle this? Do they work? Do they benefit?

EDIT: After a brief test I can say nvidia cards work with this, benefit is... uncertain as of now. Need benches.

Testers wanted. Please post if you can help, and I'll provide binaries via PM.

If you have another Z390 ASRock board, I may be able to port this function as well.

Contact me in that event as well.

Reason I am posting this here is: I used to bios mod here for this board to remove the ME, so I'm hoping some of those users are still floating around here.

 

[CyberCT]

Have you tried this on your motherboard? Does it work? I have the As Rock Z390 Gaming 9 motherboard. I don't know what "ME" is and would have to research it.

 

[R-T-B]

Have you tried this on your motherboard? Does it work? I have the As Rock Z390 Gaming 9 motherboard. I don't know what "ME" is and would have to research it.

Intel Management engine, I disable it in all my bios builds for security reaaons. It provides the software TPM but is a major target for future (and even some present) firmware hacks, so I am politically and ethically opposed to it. Obviously these builds no longer provide the TPM as such, but few softwares (if any?) require/use it. TPM is mostly a dead idea for DRM.

Yes I am running it, on an nvidia card (RTX 2080 Super) though with very small (within marhin of error) gains so far. Looking for more diverse user benches though. I can probably target that board. Would you like to have me attempt a build for you to test?

It's decently low risk, but with any mod bios, there is a small chance of a brick. Didn't brick mine though, and if it did brick yours, I own a hardware flasher and would do everything in my power to help for free, FWIW.

 

[purplekaycee]

Can't find this mobo to buy anywhere

 

[R-T-B]

Can't find this mobo to buy anywhere

Basically any Z390 asrock can be supported if you are buying one for this mod, but you are more likely to get proper (ie official) support on a newer board really. Z490 etc.

 

[purplekaycee]

Basically any Z390 asrock can be supported if you are buying one for this mod, but you are more likely to get proper (ie official) support on a newer board really. Z490 etc.

Is it worth getting the z490 @ this point?
What's the difference I would get when gaming on a i910900k vs a i99900k?

 

[R-T-B]

Is it worth getting the z490 @ this point?
What's the difference I would get when gaming on a i910900k vs a i99900k?

Difference in performance is minor, basically 8 cores vs. 10 of similar speed. Very multithreaded apps would benefit most.

Board advice should probably be a seperate thread from this though.

 

[EnduringDev]

What is the performance increase for this bios for you?

 

[W1zzard]

How do NVIDIA cards handle this? Do they work? Do they benefit?

It needs driver support and ideally per-game optimization, NVIDIA has neither at this time

 

[R-T-B]

What is the performance increase for this bios for you?

Minimal if anything. I'm using nvidia right now though and I'm thinking w1zzard is spot on it: needs support.

The card driver does work with a 2GB BAR but I have yet to bench a benefit.

 

[Microvoltio]

Tengo la Asrock Z390 Taichi, Intel I7- 9700K, Grafica Sapphire Nitro + Radeon Vega 64, NVME M.2 Samsung 970 pro, ¿tendria algun beneficio?

 

[bug]

Tengo la Asrock Z390 Taichi, Intel I7- 9700K, Grafica Sapphire Nitro + Radeon Vega 64, NVME M.2 Samsung 970 pro, ¿tendria algun beneficio?

No benefit, neither of those cards can handle resizable BAR. Lo siento.

 

[R-T-B]

No benefit, neither of those cards can handle resizable BAR. Lo siento.

It's not likely it will do anything at all, but given I have yet to get AMD results at all, I could still send him a bios if he wants. Instructions would be by google translate though, which adds risk.

 

[80251]

I have an Asrock Taichi z390 and a 1080Ti would your BIOS make any possible difference for me?
Kudos to disabling Intel's ME -- it's not a feature for end users, but maybe a back door for government agencies et. al.?

 

[Zmon]

I have an Asrock Taichi z390 and a 1080Ti would your BIOS make any possible difference for me?
Kudos to disabling Intel's ME -- it's not a feature for end users, but maybe a back door for government agencies et. al.?

As others have mentioned, no. Until Nvidia introduces driver support for resizable BAR/SAM, it's functionally pointless. If you had an AMD GPU though, you could utilize it.

 

[80251]

I thought AMD had restricted the use of resizable BAR not only to their video cards but to specific AMD CPU's (the latest Zen3's?).

 

[R-T-B]

I thought AMD had restricted the use of resizable BAR not only to their video cards but to specific AMD CPU's (the latest Zen3's?).

It's a PCIe spec, so no. People are already using it on Z490.

Something to keep in mind is this isn't really a "resizable" BAR, it just enlarges it to a massive size. I'm unsure if it's the same as what AMD is doing or not.

 

[OneMoar]

feeling cute may decide to brick my board later
fire away @R-T-B

ASRock > Z390 Phantom Gaming 4

Supports HDMI 1.4 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096x2160) @ 30Hz; 10 Power Phase Design; Supports DDR4 4300MHz+ (OC); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 3 PCIe 3.0 x1, 1 M.2 Key E for WiFi; AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™; Graphics Output Options: HDMI, DVI-D, D-Sub; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC892...

www.asrock.com

if I understand it correctly shouldn't the bar size be set to something as large as possible but can still be transferred in a entire clock cycle ? But not so large as it adds a bunch of overhead by reading memory thats not needed hence the dynamic part of it surely there is some global improvement to be had simply by bumping the default value a bit

is it possible to patch in a menu to allow the user to set the bar size much like the agp aperture size

 

[R-T-B]

is it possible to patch in a menu to allow the user to set the bar size much like the agp aperture size

On higher end ASRock boards, very rarely (though I always try). The best I can usually do is patch the UEFI optimized/failsafe defaults, so restoring them operates in big/standard BAR mode depending on which you restore. Actually adding menu entries is tricky.

Will look at your board after Christmas.

 

[OneMoar]

Dank no rush at all happy holidays

 

[ConsciousCoolie]

Hey, I just posted a question about this same topic on Reddit not too long ago. I have an asrock z390 phantom gaming itx board with an i9-9900k with an rtx 3090. I would love to be able to test this out. Would this MB be able to run this custom bios?

 

[R-T-B]

Oh sorry nearly forgot about this.

After testing this does not work, so no more builds, unfortunately. I will update if I find another way.

 

[OneMoar]

???????? not work at all or not performance improvement
a side note that this method will increase the amount of 'hardware reserved' memory in windows

 

[R-T-B]

???????? not work at all or not performance improvement
a side note that this method will increase the amount of 'hardware reserved' memory in windows

Was not recognized as SAM support, and no performance gain.

 

[OneMoar]

of course but simply increasing the bar should provide SOME improvement the bar size does not require the gpu to be aware of if thats only required for adaptive schemes such as SAM
intel spec says bar-0 default is 256MB I don't think you would ever want more then 1GB 512MB should provide some improvement without the potential hit you can get in some applications