Test Report: MSI Z77A-GD65

[wfj]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

 

[Going Bald]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

How did you get the modded BIOS to work? I tried several times with one samisnake supplied and all I got was a "This Bios is corrupt and may cause the board not to boot" or something along those lines - don't remember the exact wording off the top of my head.
Working with toleda to get the ALC898 working - haven't had time to work with it this week yet (8 + 4 OT is getting to me, be glad to finish this project so I can play again )
Have found that using the onboard HD3000 gfx and updating to 10.7.3 works well, but updating to iTunes 10.6.1 for some reason causes a DRMStatus warning at boot and the screen becomes unreadable - will post a pic after work.
Oddly enough, installing the Asus GT520 silent gfx cards, it loads the NVDHAL100 kext and the screen comes up, no problems, so maybe an iMac or Mac Mini system definition would allow the HD3000 to work where the Mac Pro 3.0 deffinition gives a bad screen and locks up.
When I get a chance, I will do a IOReg dump and post a pic of the exception errors I am getting with AppleHDA.

 

[samisnake]

@going bald, it might have been due to adding it as an attachment to you.
http://bios.zmac.net/msi/E7751IMS_modified.zip
try that instead

 

[brycv]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

That's interesting. I had exactly the opposite experience. On my Asus P8B WS with the modded BIOS, I had more P-states than I now see with the Sabertooth Z77. Both were tested using exactly the same processor (Core i7 2700K) and even the exact same install (moved SSD to Sabertooth Z77).

 

[wfj]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

How did you get the modded BIOS to work? I tried several times with one samisnake supplied and all I got was a "This Bios is corrupt and may cause the board not to boot" or something along those lines - don't remember the exact wording off the top of my head.
Working with toleda to get the ALC898 working - haven't had time to work with it this week yet (8 + 4 OT is getting to me, be glad to finish this project so I can play again )
Have found that using the onboard HD3000 gfx and updating to 10.7.3 works well, but updating to iTunes 10.6.1 for some reason causes a DRMStatus warning at boot and the screen becomes unreadable - will post a pic after work.
Oddly enough, installing the Asus GT520 silent gfx cards, it loads the NVDHAL100 kext and the screen comes up, no problems, so maybe an iMac or Mac Mini system definition would allow the HD3000 to work where the Mac Pro 3.0 deffinition gives a bad screen and locks up.
When I get a chance, I will do a IOReg dump and post a pic of the exception errors I am getting with AppleHDA.

For the BIOS, make sure and rename the file so that it matches the corresponding one from MSI. I wasn't able to flash until I did that...kept telling me there was no file to flash with on the USB drive.

So you don't get the "waiting for DSMOS" delay at bootup?

 

[wfj]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

That's interesting. I had exactly the opposite experience. On my Asus P8B WS with the modded BIOS, I had more P-states than I now see with the Sabertooth Z77. Both were tested using exactly the same processor (Core i7 2700K) and even the exact same install (moved SSD to Sabertooth Z77).

I let it run for quite awhile and only saw about 6. With speedstepper, it didn't take very long to expose 9.

 

[brycv]

Modded BIOS works. For some reason I don't get as many p-states as I saw with the speedstepper patch.

That's interesting. I had exactly the opposite experience. On my Asus P8B WS with the modded BIOS, I had more P-states than I now see with the Sabertooth Z77. Both were tested using exactly the same processor (Core i7 2700K) and even the exact same install (moved SSD to Sabertooth Z77).

I let it run for quite awhile and only saw about 6. With speedstepper, it didn't take very long to expose 9.

In any case, SpeedStep appears to be working fine. I have had it where I don't see very many P-states for along time based on what I'm doing. It all depends I suppose.

On another note, I am getting those same errors with AppleIntelE1000e.kext in kernel.log. I'll have to start reverting versions and see what happens as well. It's interesting to me that I have noticed no issues at all even though I have the errors.

 

[wfj]

Try the one released on 4/14. That fixed the errors in the console and sleep still works...

 

[brycv]

Try the one released on 4/14. That fixed the errors in the console and sleep still works...

Will do. I was running with that one for a few days and had no issues. Then upgraded to the 04/21 and apparently was having the errors and didn''t know it until this morning.

 

[brycv]

I installed hnak's E1000 driver from April 14 and it works perfectly with no errors in my kernel.log. I tried putting my Sabertooth Z77 system to sleep for the first time after installing the driver and everything worked perfectly including on wake. I was surprised.

This is with multiple drives on the Z77 SATA ports, multiple drives on the ASMedia ASM1061 SATA ports using 3rd_Party_eSATA (I think that's what it's called), and several USB flash drives plugged in. I also had several keyboards and a couple of mice plugged in and everything came right up perfectly. Thanks for the suggestion on the April 14 version.