Request for bulk BIOS updates from Gigabyte/Aorus.
Request for bulk BIOS updates from Gigabyte/Aorus.
Hello everyone, I have a big request today. I wasn’t sure where to post, but if there’s another forum or site I should check, let me know. I’ve been tweaking every BIOS setting to boost performance. Most of them won’t make much difference, but I want to understand what they do and how to adjust them properly. I own a Gigabyte Z690 UD DDR4 system and have recorded all the settings I can find online—nothing reliable seems trustworthy. I wish I had an MSI. Please share what I should do for top gaming performance (ignoring latency), or what each setting actually does. I’m open to advice, even if it means not changing anything.
For reference:
- Specs: Gigabyte Z690 UD DDR4 RAM, Patriot Viper Steel 2x16GB 3600MHz DDR4, i5-12600K CPU, Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti, 12GB Gaming SSD, Samsung 790 EVO 2TB, Windows 11.
- I’m curious about overclocking or undervolting and need explanations for the BIOS changes.
I'll answer some of these, but there are a lot of these that you really should just ignore unless you have a reason to adjust them. Plus the last Gigabyte board I did anything with was on Bulldozer, so their naming schemes have changed a bit. Still, most of them are pretty universal. CPU settings: P-Cores and E-Cores are referring to the heterogeneous architecture of the 12th gen chips. You can disable the E cores if they cause issues, but for the most part don't touch this unless you know what you're doing. CPU Upgrade is (I'm assuming) an auto overclocking utility from Gigabyte. These are usually broken. Do not touch this. BCLK (base clock) is the frequency that the cache, CPU frequency, and memory frequency is based on. It's used for extreme overclocking mainly. You can touch this but there's very little point. Ring ratio - the frequency at which the cores interact with each other, multiplied by the base clock to get the frequency it runs at IGP ratio - iGPU frequency after being multiplied by the baseclock, you can touch it but it's kinda pointless Speed-Shift - disable if you wanna lock the CPU at a certain frequency. Everything else I'd just pretend doesn't exist. Memory settings: Memory multiplier - depending on the board this can mean two things, either the actual memory frequency or the memory reference frequency (100MHz or 133MHz). If it's the reference clock, usually your best bet is to just set this to 133MHz since it tends to be more stable, but it may be different with Alder Lake. Gear Mode - Gear 1 has much better latency, Gear 2 is for if you need a ton of frequency. For a gaming system, leave it in gear 1. The rest is gigabyte specific nomenclature and odds are not worth touching. Voltage: Vcore voltage mode - offset or fixed. basically do you want to add/subtract voltage from what the CPU was already running, or just have it run at one amount all the time. Usually fixed is more stable. VCore - CPU voltage VCCSA - system agent voltage, more usually results in better memory overclocking with good sticks, though keep it under 1.4V VCCIN - the voltage going into the CPU's integrated voltage controller. Usually you just leave this on auto. DRAM vddq - used for extreme memory overclocks not suitable for day to day - do not touch. DRAM training voltage - the voltage at which the memory tries to boot at (not what it actually runs at). Odds are you'll never need to touch this. DRAM terminations - can help with memory stability in some instances, not usually worth the effort. VCore Load Line - affects the amount of VDroop and how stable the output voltage is. There's a setting where the VRM is optimal, usually 75% of the total VDroop allowed, but it's very much dependent on the motherboard. Everything else should only be touched if you're doing more extreme overclocking. For daily they're basically pointless. All of the other settings do not affect performance and you shouldn't really touch unless you know you need that setting. Above 4G decoding needs to be enabled in order to enable Resizeable BAR (which can help performance) but that's not particularly necessary. Everything else you can ignore unless you know you need it.