X670E Ace Bios Problems

[BiscuitBomber]

Hardware:
Processor: 7950X
Motherboard: MSI X670E Ace
GPU: EVGA 3080 TI FTW3
MEMORY: G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB Series AMD EXPO 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000 (PC5 48000)
PSU: EVGA 1000W P6
Cooler: 360 Phanteks AIO MPH

After updating my BIOS today on my PC. When booting up I was getting BIOS Code A6 and the RAM light was staying Amber. This didn't occur on the previous BIOS 7D69v13. I attempted to clear CMOS but same issue. I ended up downgrading my BIOS back to 7D69v13. I opened a ticket with MSI, but just a heads up in case anyone else runs into this. Before 7D69v142 I had zero issues with RAM and bootup problems.


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EDIT Title
Alan J T

 

[Michele P]

2 problems already identified

1) if you don't install the chipset drivers from scratch you end up with an unidentified device. Must reinstall the driver again.... Now the device is recognized, idk what it was

2) the marvel lan seems to have from time to time 5 seconds of slugginesh, need to investigate that *but it's clear because every browser activity hangs and I see the ping to the router spiking for a few secs. I don't know if the drivers reinstall will address this....
if you are testing the new bios pls keep a powershell window open with the command
ping "iprouter" -t

and see if you notice something unusual, thx

 

[spud]

I had this "unknown device" issue too, I reinstalled the driver without uninstalling and so far it seems fine.
I've not seen the NIC issue, I'm linked at 10gbps and am using driver 3.1.6.0 with power efficient ethernet disabled (under advanced for the device in device manager)

Also, the timings automatically pulled in for my memory set are very nice (edit - for an automatic config), and work well - I reduced the voltage for vdd etc to 1.35 and everything else looked great.

 

[Michele P]

I've not seen the NIC issue, I'm linked at 10gbps and am using driver 3.1.6.0 with power efficient ethernet disabled (under advanced for the device in device manager)

pls leave it for a while when you can
maybe it was something caused by the unknow device, and solved with the chipsed driver reinstall


after the unknow device has disappeared now the ping to the router seems fine again (finger crossed)
before i spiked around 1000-5000ms for 5 seconds

now it just spikes only during high traffic activity and around 10ms max.... nothing to worry about I think (never checked before but should be normal behaviour I think)

It was not normal to have spikes of 5 seconds ping before, without any reasons at all

 

[spud]

pls leave it for a while when you can
maybe it was something caused by the unknow device, and solved with the chipsed driver reinstall


after the unknow device has disappeared now the ping to the router seems fine again (finger crossed)
before i spiked around 1000-5000ms for 5 seconds

now it just spikes only during high traffic activity and around 10ms max.... nothing to worry about I think (never checked before but should be normal behaviour I think)

It was not normal to have spikes of 5 seconds ping before, without any reasons at all

What's your uptime? I'm looking at 2 hours without issue so far

 

[Michele P]

I dont have problems of stability, tested many editing software since the flash, and few games too
last reboot was after the chipset driver installation, so about 2/3 hours ago?

just this weird thing on the NIC
can't solve, it started doing the same spikes again

 

[spud]

Apologies for being unclear, I mean to understand how long do I need to wait before I can expect to see the problem happening?
Did you do something specific?
edit: What version drivers are you using? Have you disabled power efficient ethernet?

 

[Michele P]

ah, it happens sporadically, sometimes in 10 mins,
sometimes after 30

it just a progressive increase in the ping that lasts for about 5/10 seconds (with ping up to 5000ms sometimes)
then it returns normal
there's no loss of connection (event viewer doesn't show any aqnic loss of signal event)

could also be something else, recently the router got a firmware update too, but it's strange I noticed the thing only today after the mb bios update

I will try to make a screenshot later

 

[spud]

I don't have the same issue, and my inclination is that this is something driver related (particularly if there are no other symptoms)
Do you think you'd have the same issue if you were to ping another device internal to the network which does not touch your IP gateway?

 

[Michele P]

Do you think you'd have the same issue if you were to ping another device internal to the network which does not touch your IP gateway?

yes I tried to ping the nas running on my raspberry pi
it didnt' go as high as the router ping but sure it felt something at the same time

PS: if you want to ping different things in windows with timestamps this is the command
ping -t 192.168.178.1 | ForEach-Object { "{0} - {1}" -f (Get-Date), $_ }

this way if there's a spike in the router at hour X, I can see what happened at the nas ping at the same time

 

[spud]

Love that powershell snippet, very cool
Are you physically connecting through that router in order to reach your raspberry pi? or is there a switch involved too?

 

[Michele P]

PC -> ROUTER <- Pi5(NAS)

yeh, cool (thanks AI XD)
if you can't see the problem for now just don't stress too much

But if you notice weird connection issues after the bios update, check for this potential NIC problem

this is how I am testing right now (using the command posted before)
PC-Router on the left
PC-Pi5(NAS) on the right
I suppose if I see very high ping on the left but only slight variation on the right it should mean the nic is fine
But if I see very high spikes on both sides we can't say prove anything: could be either the router or the NIC
Router is a also bit old, time to change the poor boy

 

[skitu157502df]

About the unknown device. I have that, too. I saw an article today where it is mentioned:
Quote: "Note however that after updating to AGESA 1.2.0.3 or newer, you might see an ‘Unknown Device’ in Device Manager. To fix this, install the AMD Application Compatibility Database driver from the chipset driver package. Once done, you should instead see ‘AMD Application Compatibility Database’."
Source: Article called "MSI claims its motherboards can give Ryzen 9 9950X3D a 14.5% performance boost" on a site called club386

They describe this new driver as: " The latest chipset driver (v7.01.08.129 or higher) includes AMD’s Application Compatibility Database driver which can boost performance in certain games when paired with AGESA 1.2.0.3 BIOS or newer."

Another site describes this new driver as: "The new chipset driver also brings a new "AMD Application Compatibility Database Driver" which may help improve application compatibility and system stability across Windows 11 and Windows 10."

 

[Michele P]

regarding the chipset drivers, every time you install the drivers check summary afterwards
While the unknown device was resolved with a reinstall of the driver, in my case I also noticed a couple strange things...
This is the summary file, as it should be:

AMD Chipset Software Install Summary

Name : AMD I2C Driver
Version : 1.2.0.126
Install : Success

Name : AMD GPIO Driver (for Promontory)
Version : 3.0.3.0
Install : Success

Name : AMD PPM Provisioning File Driver
Version : 8.0.0.48
Install : Success

Name : AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer Driver
Version : 1.0.0.10
Install : Success

Name : AMD Application Compatibility Database Driver
Version : 1.0.0.3
Install : Success

Name : AMD PCI Device Driver
Version : 1.0.0.90
Install : Success

Name : AMD PSP Driver
Version : 5.38.0.0
Install : Success

Name : AMD SMBus Driver
Version : 5.12.0.44
Install : Success

Name : AMD GPIO Driver
Version : 2.2.0.134
Install : Success

In my case I had two failed drivers
AMD SMBus Driver and AMD PCI Device Driver

Those 2 drivers didn't install correctly, maybe because I had a newer file on my system (but with a lower release number, if that makes sense)
For example the SMSbus installed on my system was 2.0.0.21, but 5.12.0.44 installation failed when reading the summary

So I decided to do a better clean job:
removed the amd chipset drivers first
then I used the driver store utility https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer to force uninstall the 2.0.0.21 version from the system

Then reinstalled everything, and as you can see everything installed successfully this time

 

[sblantipodi]

Using latest 1.2.0.3
I upgraded the system in signature with a 9950X3D and a RTX5090

Windows hangs on boot during the loading screen.
If I try to install windows with a USB key it hangs in the very beginning of the installation part when it searches for disks.

Problem is really similar to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/s/K54zAbbN8V

 

[sblantipodi]

ok I confirm that the problem is in 9950X3D, with the 7950X3D it works like a charm.
is 9950X3D "uncompatible" with the latest BIOS for my MSI X670E ACE or it's just a bad CPU?

 

[Michele P]

try to force gen 4 on the pcie instead of auto?
those lanes are controlled by the cpu: new cpu may cause new problems (bad cpu or a compatibility bug that needs addressing, both plausible)
you can also play with csm/secure boot features, but I don't think this is the problem.
The disk detected in bios, right?

btw, I fixed my problems with the NIC after the recent bios update (it was something bizarre involving dyndns service failure)
Tested a couple days playing a lot with Apollo/Moonlight on my tv.... not a single buffer event in hours of remote playing, so the nic should be perfectly fine.
No crashes or sudden reboots

 

[sblantipodi]

try to force gen 4 on the pcie instead of auto?
those lanes are controlled by the cpu: new cpu may cause new problems (bad cpu or a compatibility bug that needs addressing, both plausible)
you can also play with csm/secure boot features, but I don't think this is the problem.
The disk detected in bios, right?

I tried pcie4 with no luck.
I tried CSM / secure boot off with no luck

Disks are recognized in bios yes.
Switching to old CPU solved all the problems..damn

 

[Michele P]

uhm I see in that reddit thread many changed the cpu 9950x3d and solved the problem
A lot of different boards affected, asrock and asus too
I'm thinking about a possible early batches problem
Are you using only 1 disk and the slot beside the ram?
Try another slot

Other things to test that come to my mind:
try a different windows iso
maybe a simply customized one with rufus, with the hardware requirements removed (TPM)
a different windows build? you trying to install 24h2? go back to previous one or viceversa.

But looking at all the people that solved with cpu swap, a hardware cpu problem doesn't seem so unlikely

 

[SoniC]

You might also want to seek for an updated VBIOS. Most of the problems are on the NV side... Soooo freaking much issues with the 5xxx series I saw only with Fermi....

 

[xeizoo]

ok I confirm that the problem is in 9950X3D, with the 7950X3D it works like a charm.
is 9950X3D "uncompatible" with the latest BIOS for my MSI X670E ACE or it's just a bad CPU?

I switched from a 7950X to a 9950X3D, it turns out the 9950X3D likes totally different memory settings even with the same RAM. I ended up resetting bios several times and finally found memory settings that worked with 9950X3D, since then I''ve changed memory and it works like a charm now and the old memory likes the old settings on another board. I haven't reinstalled, but I cleaned Windows a bit.