[HowTo] Get full NVMe Support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS

zazzn · July 24, 2016, 2:40am

@Fernando Well it’s been an amazing struggle and I am victorious!

There were several issues/

First installing the NVME drive would cause the machine not to POST. After exhaustive troubleshooting turns out that it’s actually the G.Skill memory. (Very old 2100 MHZ overclocked ram) removing two Dimms allowed the machine to post, with the P3500 NVME drive, but the machine would hang at the ASUS logo and a make a few beeps here and there then eventually get to a blinking cursor. Turns out the EVGA 780GTX does not like to boot UEFI on this board. Testing with another PCI-E card, allowed the machine to Post, and enter the UEFI bios settings.

The struggle isn’t over yet… I was then able to install windows 10 to the NVME drive, and more importantly BOOT from the NVME drive, however my benchmarks were terrible 200MB a second. Knowing that it was probably due to not obtaining enough PCI-E 2.0 lanes as they are shared I was able to disable some hardware and get up to the max of the 2.0 4x. The card is still bottlenecked because I don’t have enough bandwidth unless I upgrade the motherboard, but I’m having trouble understanding what is eating the lanes and what I will need to disable or stop using once I connect my other 3 SSD sata drives.

For the time being!! THANKS for all the help!

NVMe INTEL SSDPEDMX40_400GB_1GB-20160723-1730.png

davidm71 · July 24, 2016, 2:59am

You should try updating your video bios uefi version. There are instructions on how to on this site. Maybe that might solve your Gtx 780 uefi issues. Wonder what Fernando has to say about your bottleneck. I barely got 50 percent of rated speed on mine. Way to go though!

zazzn · July 24, 2016, 5:27am

So the plot thickens, in an attempt to identify if it’s the BIOS or the Videocard, I installed the card in to my server which has a IVY bridge xeon, and I was able to post in EFI only. So it seems it would probably be an issue with Asus…

@Fernando If I pull the VGA drivers from a newer UEFI bios from ASUS do you think this could help my issue? Is it likely the video card or the UEFI drivers that would cause the video to hang at the splash screen after POST. (only see the ASUS splash screen then nothing happens) sounds like the machine is booting normally though, and when I put the cheap ATI 3450 video card in it does boot to windows without problems on the NVME as I state above.

BTW thank you for the above suggestions @davidm71

davidm71 · July 24, 2016, 6:01am

Was wondering what card did you pull to where? Can you please be a little more specific. Pull video card drivers? You mean the uefi video rom? Yes it’s possible. I use to have an issue posting when I had more than one video card on a Z87 board until I flashed newer uefi vid rom onto an Gtx 770. So maybe it could solve your problem. There’s a guide around here somewhere. Look up Lordkag I think it his project.

Fernando · July 24, 2016, 10:52am

That’s great - congratulations!

The mainboard’s UEFI BIOSes only contain LEGACY modules and maybe additionally EFI modules for on-board Controllers, but not for add-on ones. So you will not find any suitable EFI module (named "GopDriver") for your discrete graphics card within any mainboard BIOS.
The easiest way to find out, if it is the mainboard BIOS of your system or the in-use graphics card, which is responsable for your boot problem, is to temporarily pull out the discrete graphics card and to use the iGPU of your SandyBridge CPU. Before you start the test, you should update the Intel SandyBridge VGA ROM (= LEGACY) and Intel GopDriver (= EFI) of your mainboard BIOS by using the UBU tool. If your mainboard BIOS doesn’t yet contain any "GopDriver" for your SandyBridge CPU, I recommend to insert it.

zazzn · July 25, 2016, 10:14pm

@Fernando It’s the 780GTX, when I install a ATI 3450 that i have in a dell it works. If I set the options for legacy in the BIOS it will actually boot form the UEFI NVME P3700, but still post for the video card. It’s some strange hybrid setting I’m assuming, but true EFI only is probably skewed since it’s such an early board and they haven’t worked out all the kinks before they moved on to a new platform.

As for trying to update the VBios, I won’t bother since I’ve accomplished my goal of booting from my NVME drive and having my 780GTX installed and working. So while not working 100% the way it’s supposed to work, I don’t care because it’s accomplishing the same thing.

Fernando · July 25, 2016, 11:14pm

Yes, the P67 chipsets were the first and have only very limited UEFI support. So it will be difficult to run your system in "clean" UEFI mode (CSM disabled).
Nevertheless it should be possible to install the OS in UEFI mode onto the NVMe SSD and to boot off it even when the 780GTX graphics card is in-use.
What you need are the appropriate BIOS settings within the "BOOT" section (UEFI support for the NVMe SSD, but LEGACY support for the Graphics card).

0ME · July 26, 2016, 4:14pm

Hi,

I’ve been struggling to get the Samsung 950 PROs to work on my Asus RIVE with a 4960X i7 chip.

I have the following devices in my PCIe
- Slot 1: Primary GTX Titan
- Slot 2: Angelbird PX1 with 950 PRO
- Slot 4: Secondary GTX Titan
- Slot 6: Angelbird PX1 with 950 PRO

According to the manual this should give the first GPU 16 lanes and the rest 8 lanes.

I unplugged my other SSDs before proceeding.

I tried the all the following:
- Original 4901 bios with CMS compatibility mode on and legacy boot settings
- Original 4901 bios with the NVMe files added as listed by OP
- Original 4901 bios with NVMe modules extracted from newer ASUS board
- Other NVMe bios I found on ROG forums

I created a Windows install USB and start it as UEFI device. First I created the USB with the Windows media tool. Then I tried a Rufus version but it made no difference.
I have put CSM off and ON, with and without UEFI device preferences…

Widows install is not seeing the 950 disks. I tried removing 1 disk and only playing with 1 disk but no joy either. Each time I also ran diskpart to check the disks, but it only found the USB drive.

In the BIOS I can see the PCIe lanes and I put them to all Version 3.0
When I look at the indicator lights for the PCIe lanes on the board (next to the PCIe x16 Lane switches) I see only 2 lights on for the lanes of the GPUs.

On a wild guess that the manual was perhaps incomplete I slid the sliders for the last 3 PCIe x16 lane switches off. Reasoning was that this might force the 2nd graphics card into 8x mode, but that did nothing. I did notice that with the switches off all the boards are still powered.

So I am not sure if the BIOS is even seeing the 950s and lost on what to try next.

Any suggestions?

Fernando · July 26, 2016, 6:54pm

@0ME :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

Are you sure, that there are enough PCIe lanes available for your 2 Samsung 950 Pro SSDs?
Have you already tried to temporarily remove both graphic cards and to use the Intel iGPU just for the initial steps?
Do you want to create a RAID0 array with the 2 Samsung 950 Pro SSDs as members? If yes, the first step would be to enter the BIOS and to create the array from within the "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" RAID Utility.

According to the start post of this thread you should only insert 1 single NVMe module named NVMeExpressDxE (either uncompressed or compressed) and not several files.
Which were the different NVMe modules you have inserted?

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

0ME · July 26, 2016, 8:30pm

According to the board manual you get 16/8/8/8 lanes, which should be enough. The CPU has 40 lanes so I expect this to be ok.

That would be the plan but the RAID utility doesn’t show them either.

My mistake, I only added 1, the uncompressed one and flashed it with the flashback method.

Fernando · July 26, 2016, 9:31pm

That would be the plan but the RAID utility doesn’t show them either.

AFAIK only Intel Z170 and X99 Chipsets do support the RAID0 feature with 2 or more NVMe SSDs using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Additionally you need to use an Intel RAID driver from v14.6.x.x.xxxx up.
For details please look this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhB7K13SXZ0
Which Intel RAID ROM/EFI RaidDriver module versions are within your mainboard BIOS?

0ME · July 27, 2016, 11:19am

That would suck

I started using the Bolts4brekfast RIVE NVMe test BIOS and it has a newer version of the Intel raid driver.

I would park the RAID part for now. I just want one to work. At least that should work.

Does anybody have a 950 PRO running on a RIVE with graphics cards in SLI?
What slots did you use?
Did you do anything else?

Thanks!

@Fernando Thanks for your time and the effort to put this great site up.

Fernando · July 27, 2016, 12:10pm

The Forum member LocutusEstBorg has an ASUS Rampage IV Formula and reported >here<, that he was able to boot off the Samsung 950 Pro after having inserted the related NVMe modules, which he previously had extracted from an ASUS Rampage V Extreme BIOS.
Since I am not sure, whether he will read your request, you should send him a PM.

mobie997 · July 27, 2016, 1:35pm

Can anyone help on mod Bios for M7i with XG3?
I tried use flashback to flash an mod bios, the light just blinking few sec and nothing happen
Tried with 4 USB storage and 3 SD card with reader all fail

Fernando · July 27, 2016, 4:55pm

@mobie997 :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

Can you please explain what M7i means? I don’t have the time for a Google search.
Which is the exact model name?

You should use a FAT32 formatted USB Flash Drive and not an SD card.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

mobie997 · July 27, 2016, 5:24pm

ASUS MAXIMUS VII IMPACT
The seller tell me XG3 not work on Z97, only for X99 or 150 Z170
so i want new bios for XG3 (same as OCZ RD400)
i tried both FAT16/32 USB Drive and SD card

Fernando · July 27, 2016, 9:30pm

Since all BIOSes for your ASUS mainboard since April 2015 do support NVMe, I have no idea what has to be modified to get full support for the Toshiba XG3 NVMe SSD for your special mainboard.
Regarding the usage of the USB Flashback feature I recommend to read ASUS’s guide (don’t forget to rename the modded BIOS according ASUS’s USB Flashback rules).

0ME · July 28, 2016, 1:40am

Sent @LocutusEstBorg a PM and he was very helpful. Now I have both drives working. Sadly only in software RAID-0 in Windows 10, but it’s better than nothing.

Still getting somewhat strange benchmarks however (Benchmark SS) but that will be for another day.

Fernando · July 28, 2016, 9:02am

It is fine, that you got them working.
Please tell us how you managed it.
Questions:
1. Did you insert additional NVMe module(s) into the mainboard BIOS besides the one, whch is recommended within he start post?
2. Where did you get it/them?

0ME · July 28, 2016, 2:13pm

It is fine, that you got them working.
Please tell us how you managed it.
Questions:
1. Did you insert additional NVMe module(s) into the mainboard BIOS besides the one, which is recommended within he start post?
2. Where did you get it/them?

Sorry, it was late when I wrote the previous post.

I used the BOLTS4BREKFAST one first (ASUS Forum), but it also worked with the BIOS I made where I added your NVMe uncompressed file to the last official BIOS (4901). So the instructions on the first post work. The main problem was that I was an idiot

The discussion with LocutusEstBorg confirmed the 950 PROs should work in any slot of the RIVE board, even in combination with 2 GPUs.

So I had a hard look at the cards again and I discovered I had been an idiot. I am using two Angelbird PX1s to mount the drives and I had not slotted the drives hard enough in their socket. It seems they really have to make a click/crunch noise shudder to slot properly into place. Being consistent I was too careful with both drives, which is why neither worked.
Anyway, once the drives were seated properly they were picked up immediately.

So sorry to have wasted your time with something stupid as a poorly seated drive.

Now I have them as a Windows RAID 0. The CPU is not stressed by them during the benchmarks, so that part is cool.
I followed your guides for setting up raid etc… upgraded the drivers etc.
Still curious why the 4KQ32 scores are rather low for the drive but will dig into that, it is not the purpose of this discussion.

Now I can continue my quest to have them running as RAID 0 in BIOS (keep on dreaming, I know).

Anyway if people don’t care that much about Windows boot times (like me), it still gives you a blazing fast drive!

I can confirm you can fit 2 Samsung 950 PRO in a RIVE next to 2 GPUs and use them in Windows as a Windows RAID 0.
The Samsung tool confirms they both are running PCIe 3.0 and each have 8 lanes available. Downside is that my second Titan now only has 8 lanes instead of 16 but I doubt I will notice that.
(Note that I have 4960x i7 which has 40 PCIe lanes, if you have a 24 lane CPU in your RIVE you will probably not get this working)