Asus Z9NA-D6C LGA 1356 Xeon - Engineering Sample unlock

[imanz]

/Hello guys,

I am currently running the Asus Z9NA-D6C using the Asus bios version 5204 which can be found here: http://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_W..._Download/

I am using it with two engineering samples of the intel xeon E5-2450 (2.1Ghz 8 core) apperently C1 stepping. I believe the top of the CPU says Intel Confidential QBGG ES 2.1Ghz

Issue: I am having issues with video card support and I believe it to be linked to how old the BIOS is, but I am worried about upgrading and causing the machine to not boot. Could someone take a look at the newest bios released by Asus to determine if this CPU will still work?

Any help would be appreciated!

EDIT: I am able to run a few hardware query commands on my machine running ESXI and have uploaded the file here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fgcbm73ixe5xxl/temp.txt?dl=0

This should give you additional detali about the CPU ID

[imanz]

http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/QB/QBGG.html this CPU is what I am using

[imanz]

Could anyone please take a look? If you could just take a look at the newest bios on the above link and compare it to my version, does the CPU support for ES seem the same? The issue is i just recently modded an nvidia 680 OC into a fully working nvidia grid k2, it boots and works on all my machines as expected but it seems my motherboard bios is very old.. yet I dont want to lose(possibly?) support for my cpu

[ultravy]

Could anyone please take a look? If you could just take a look at the newest bios on the above link and compare it to my version, does the CPU support for ES seem the same? The issue is i just recently modded an nvidia 680 OC into a fully working nvidia grid k2, it boots and works on all my machines as expected but it seems my motherboard bios is very old.. yet I dont want to lose(possibly?) support for my cpu

i dont think you will lose yoor cpu support! if you just looked to cpu support :Intel Xeon E5-2450 (2.1G,L3:20M,8C,95W)
your current bios is only 1 year 2 moths old! is not tooo old!
and what has a gtx680 to do with your current bios?! after you modded the gpu doent boot on this motherboard?!

[imanz]

Could anyone please take a look? If you could just take a look at the newest bios on the above link and compare it to my version, does the CPU support for ES seem the same? The issue is i just recently modded an nvidia 680 OC into a fully working nvidia grid k2, it boots and works on all my machines as expected but it seems my motherboard bios is very old.. yet I dont want to lose(possibly?) support for my cpu

i dont think you will lose yoor cpu support! if you just looked to cpu support :Intel Xeon E5-2450 (2.1G,L3:20M,8C,95W)
your current bios is only 1 year 2 moths old! is not tooo old!
and what has a gtx680 to do with your current bios?! after you modded the gpu doent boot on this motherboard?!

The reason I am worried is because i am using the Intel Xeon E5 you mentioned however it is the Engineering Sample. The specific model/stepping (C1) is the one listed above. I have heard that later revisions of a BIOS will sometimes remove support for older stepping engineering samples as part of optimizations and because they are typically not officially supported anyways. Although you are correct the BIOS is not very old it seems the next BIOS (5305) has specific improvements around video card support, as shown on the linked page above. Here is what it lists:
Improve compatibility for add-on VGAs while 2 CPUs installed.
Improve compatibility for add-on VGAs with Ivy-Bridge CPUs.

The following BIOS release (5401) lists "Improve the system stability" which could also help, but MAY be doing this by removing CPU support for engineering samples as I have seen this on other boards in the past. I truly do not believe the modding of the video card caused the problem because I am able to install the card into my Mac Pro with OS X 10.10 and boot it up without a single problem with the system recognizing it as Nvidia Grid K2, I have also tested this in another older machine with a single i5 CPU. The true end goal is for this GPU to go inside this dual xeon so the video card can work on an ESXI hypervisor. I would really appreciate if someone with more experience working on BIOS mods could unpack my current BIOS (5204) and compare it against the 5305 & 5503 to see if CPU microcode is the same and if all of them support the engineering sample chip I am running. As I mentioned, I don't think this should take much time for someone who knows what they are doing as I can verify the 5204 is currently working perfectly for 2 months with my engineering sample chips.

Thanks for your response!

[ultravy]

Well my MMTool v4.50.0.23 is crashing when i try enter in cpu tab to compare bioses!...

[imanz]

Does anyone happen to have the correct utility to check these configurations?

[imanz]

Bumper! Does anyone have the ability to simply unpack and compare the CPU support of these two BIOS? If you can simply verify the BIOS i am using (listed above) and the newest bios listed on the site has the same CPU support I would greatly appreciate it!