# Alderlake and Z690



## larshenrikoern (Sep 17, 2022)

Hi

I recently got a new nice computer with a I7-12700K, ASUS Prime Z690-P D4 Motherboard, 64 gb ram. It took a lot of effort to get FreeBSD 13.1 installed and running. 

1) Boot and install is only possible in CSM legacy mode. 

2) Network. The network card RTL8125 is first supported after install via ports

3) The system was unstable, and got massive disk corruption over and over until I disabled the p-cores.

Now the system is running and stable.

Does anyone have suggestions ???

I feel that some of this should have been mentioned in the release notes or eratta. I am sure that these "problems" will arrive over and over if not documented. And stop new users from using FreeBSD. It took me almost two weeks to get these things sorted out


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## larshenrikoern (Sep 17, 2022)

I forgot to mention that I reused my old Nvidia GTX-1080 graphics card. So no graphics problem


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## larshenrikoern (Oct 29, 2022)

Hi

And now an update on my woes with the system. To get the system stable I became aware of that Asus by default did overclck the system. By removing ASUS optimizations in the bios (Setting power limit to enforced, Disable Intel adaptive boost, wich alderlke btw does not support, and setting XMP I and downclock the ram to 2933 I got a base there. Shame on ASUS for that

And then remove all powersaving (powerd from rc.conf and machdep.hwpstate_pkg_ctrl=0 from loader conf) The system is now completely stable. It is even almost stable with the p-cores enabled, but crashes under heavy load. So I have left them off for now although the cpu temp is much lower when enabled.

If anyone know the state of things in stable (or if it is much improves in Freebsd 14) I will be glad to hear about it. I might then consider moving on to the next base (currently still on 13.1)


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## acheron (Oct 30, 2022)

Take that with a grain of salt but I think there are some problems with 13.1 and alderlake processor, can you try on -current (I think it's fixed here)?
See https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-current/2022-August/002464.html


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## VladiBG (Oct 30, 2022)

Intel ABT is supported only on i9 K,KF processors after 11th gen.


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## larshenrikoern (Oct 30, 2022)

VladiBG said:


> Intel ABT is supported only on i9 K,KF processors after 11th gen.


Thank you for the answers 

And I am using 12700K. So should be fixed. 

Is UEFI boot fixed for ASUS now in -current ?? . If so I might try out -current. If that is working I will have an installation that I can just keep upgrading, when new releases and features is ready. My current install is quite stable and working allright. But getting UEFI gives some improvements regarding console operation as far I know. So when that is ready I will definitely try out with a new install.


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## Jose (Oct 31, 2022)

larshenrikoern said:


> And I am using 12700K. So should be fixed.


That is an i*7* chip, not an i*9* chip, as VladiBG said.








						Alder Lake - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				





larshenrikoern said:


> Is UEFI boot fixed for ASUS now in -current ??


The ASUS firmware has nothing to do with -current. It comes from ASUS, and you flash your board with it regardless of the OS you plan to run. Freebsd -current might have other fixes for P-cores and such. That part was not clear to me.


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## larshenrikoern (Oct 31, 2022)

Jose said:


> That is an i*7* chip, not an i*9* chip, as VladiBG said.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you.

The ASUS bios does automatically enable Intel adaptive boost on my system. And all other AlderLake systems as far I know. My best source on all this is https://skatterbencher.com/2021/11/04/alder-lake-overclocking-whats-new/. And they specific mention that IAB is not supported.

I do of course know that the bios comes from the motherboard vendor. But there have been mentioning of specific issues with ASUS and uefi around these forums. I have been testing recent versions of 13-Stable. UEFI not working there. But bios boot does work.

It is a bit difficult to follow the changes in Current, but I look in the git repository. And not much seems to happen since february mentioning AlderLake But other changes might have an impact. My resistence to using current is that there are no support and discussion around here in these forums, as this is forbidden


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## larshenrikoern (Nov 13, 2022)

An update on this

I had a ram problem. My ram 4 sticks shoved up to not be one set of four paired ddr4-3200 as I had ordered for the machine, but two sets of two sticks each. So I have found the timings for a similar set with four modules. It is a set of four modules ddr4-2666 running at 1,2w. I have set the timings and spped for my modules accordingly. And for the last 4 days the system has been completely stable at bios defaults. The only things I have changed (except for timings and speed of the ram) is legacy boot only, and p-cores disabled

I have also learned to have an eye on tops laundry number. If it grows to a very high number I know there are memory problems. Now it is mostly below 60M. Before ir could grow to 11-12 GB.


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## smithi (Nov 14, 2022)

larshenrikoern said:


> It is a bit difficult to follow the changes in Current, but I look in the git repository. And not much seems to happen since february mentioning AlderLake But other changes might have an impact. My resistence to using current is that there are no support and discussion around here in these forums, as this is forbidden



No support?



			freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org
		


Looks moderately busy from here, though I'm not there.

You're expected to follow the list if running it, but anyone else can too.  Try browsing.

The mailing  lists are orders of magnitude less uptight.


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## larshenrikoern (Nov 14, 2022)

smithi said:


> No support?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you for the advise

But as my system is stable with the fore mentioned limitations, there is no reason to upgrade to current. And as far I know the problems with alderlake is not yet solved i current. So no reason either   

I did see vm.pmap.pcid_enabled=0 should be a workaround with E-cores enabled. But it has other problems. Limiting context switching does make some userspace program unstable. Ntt what I want.


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## larshenrikoern (Nov 15, 2022)

In the current mailing list there was a mentioning of a patch by Konstantin Belousov for making Alderlake working. So there is hope that  it might be full support sooner or later, at least in 14_._


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