Any ASUS MB that can boot from an OCZ PCI SSD?

I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

Nammelo wrote:
I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

You could try checking in the OCZ forums.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...therboard-list

First of all, there is no reason to be extra worried about using
a device like that as a data drive. All you'd need is a Windows driver
for the chip used on the SSD RAID card, to be able to see it in Windows.
For example, one of the OCZ SSD cards, uses a SIL3124, which is an
ordinary Silicon Image RAID controller. You'd be using the Silicon
Image driver, to make it work.

With regard to the BIOS and booting, you need to understand the notion
of add-in BIOS modules.

If you look on the motherboard, there is a BIOS chip. It includes
a main code module, plus it has a limited number of add-in code modules.
For example, you might have an ICH10R Intel Southbridge, and the BIOS
would have an add-in RAID code module to control the ICH10R. There might
be a PXE module for the LAN chip, allowing the motherboard to boot
over the LAN.

Other devices with add-in code modules, would be your video card.
An Nvidia video card might have a 64KB VESA BIOS code module, which
is loaded at boot time. Some Nvidia cards, actually display a text
splash screen, early in the BIOS boot sequence. Seeing that, you know
some code was loaded from the Nvidia card. ATI does something similar,
although I don't know if they include a splash screen with most of
their cards or not. My old ATI card didn't have one, but it did have
a 64KB BIOS chip (because I flash upgraded it once).

Now, there is a limited resource, in the design of the BIOS. On
a desktop BIOS, you have the old 640KB limit. Even though the motherboard
may have 16GB of memory installed in the DIMM slots, the way the architecture
works, there are still times when the environment is limited to 640K (I don't
know all the details on this).

Within that 640KB region of memory, is 128KB reserved for add-in BIOS
modules. From that memory space, comes all the memory used by the
various add-in BIOS modules. Your OCZ card will have a flash BIOS chip
on it, and it will have an Extended INT 0x13 BIOS code module on it,
that gets loaded at POST.

Now, say you have too many code modules, to load all of them. The
128KB is provided on a "first-come-first-serve" basis. RAM is allocated,
as each device on the PCI or PCI Express bus is enumerated. The main
motherboard BIOS probes bus slots sequentially. It will depend on the
layout of the address space, as to whether a PCI Express slot card will
be enumerated before or after some other device on the motherboard.

When you have several RAID controllers, it is possible the last RAID
controller, and the add-in BIOS code module on it, won't get loaded. In
that case, the BIOS cannot "see" the boot drive on the card. It will
not be offered as a boot option. But the card can still have a driver
loaded, once Windows is running, allowing the card or device to be
used for data.

People facing this issue in the past, would turn off some of their
RAID controllers, in an attempt to get the RAID controller they want,
to boot. That is a possible solution, but a wasteful one.

Another way to attack this problem, is look at the "low memory hogs".
Some video cards are better at "shrinking" their low memory needs, better
than others. At least some of the video cards with 64KB ROMs on board,
don't reduce their RAM requirements, after their add-in code has
initialized.

I'm not at all sure, how you determine the low memory requirements of
those codes, or how to manage them. Some server motherboards, may
have an interface in the BIOS setup screen, to display how much of
that memory is in use. But desktop boards don't have such information.

This is where I learned about this topic, copied for your convenience.

*******
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=29994

Formatted for clarity:

Q: Why doesn't the BIOS (Option ROM) for my PCI device show
during boot up?

A: The cause of the problem is that in order to be PC Compatible,
the Option Rom space is limited to 128K. This is true for any
motherboard with PC compatible BIOS'.

In the common configurations, a newer AGP card (such as any
GeForce4) will require 64K of Option Rom space, so you have only
64K of Option Rom space left to work with for other devices.
Many SCSI, NIC (w/ PXE), IDE Raid and etc., can easily use
another 40 to 64K of Option Rom space for their needs.

By design the Option Rom should shrink down to a smaller run time
code after the initialization code has run. For example, some Adaptec
cards will require 32K to initialize. Then they shrink down to
12K at run time; whereas some GeForce4 cards require 64K to initialize
and never release to a smaller amount. Please check with the device
manufacturer for the latest firmware upgrade or ask if they have a
smaller Option Rom available. Again this is a limitation of the
PC compatible specification and not a failure of the motherboard
BIOS itself.
*******

About ten years ago, Asus had a few test reports on their web site, detailing
what add-in cards they'd tested in the motherboard. They no longer make such
reports public, so we don't know how many cards they use for testing.

There have been a few motherboards, where a video card slot wouldn't "accept"
a RAID card. This was fixed, via a BIOS update, once the problem was reported
to Asus. So from that perspective, it is possible for there to be other
issues with the BIOS design. But chances are, now that Asus knows about
that issue, it should be a test case for them, while the motherboard
is still in design. All that is left then, is the "128KB limit", which
to some extent, the user has to manage.

Paul

On 17 Oct 2010 19:17:26 GMT, Nammelo nammelo@mjeldedotcom wrote:

I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

If the device presents a boot rom, it should boot on *any* modern motherboard
- ASUS or otherwise. It's the same paradigm that I've used on even ancient P3
motherboards to boot from SCSI raid and SATA raid cards...

/daytripper

Thank you for a very fast and tutoring reply.


Paul wrote:
Nammelo wrote:
I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the
BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

You could try checking in the OCZ forums.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...therboard-list

First of all, there is no reason to be extra worried about using
a device like that as a data drive. All you'd need is a Windows driver
for the chip used on the SSD RAID card, to be able to see it in Windows.
For example, one of the OCZ SSD cards, uses a SIL3124, which is an
ordinary Silicon Image RAID controller. You'd be using the Silicon
Image driver, to make it work.

With regard to the BIOS and booting, you need to understand the notion
of add-in BIOS modules.

If you look on the motherboard, there is a BIOS chip. It includes
a main code module, plus it has a limited number of add-in code modules.
For example, you might have an ICH10R Intel Southbridge, and the BIOS
would have an add-in RAID code module to control the ICH10R. There might
be a PXE module for the LAN chip, allowing the motherboard to boot
over the LAN.

Other devices with add-in code modules, would be your video card.
An Nvidia video card might have a 64KB VESA BIOS code module, which
is loaded at boot time. Some Nvidia cards, actually display a text
splash screen, early in the BIOS boot sequence. Seeing that, you know
some code was loaded from the Nvidia card. ATI does something similar,
although I don't know if they include a splash screen with most of
their cards or not. My old ATI card didn't have one, but it did have
a 64KB BIOS chip (because I flash upgraded it once).

Now, there is a limited resource, in the design of the BIOS. On
a desktop BIOS, you have the old 640KB limit. Even though the motherboard
may have 16GB of memory installed in the DIMM slots, the way the architecture
works, there are still times when the environment is limited to 640K (I don't
know all the details on this).

Within that 640KB region of memory, is 128KB reserved for add-in BIOS
modules. From that memory space, comes all the memory used by the
various add-in BIOS modules. Your OCZ card will have a flash BIOS chip
on it, and it will have an Extended INT 0x13 BIOS code module on it,
that gets loaded at POST.

Now, say you have too many code modules, to load all of them. The
128KB is provided on a "first-come-first-serve" basis. RAM is allocated,
as each device on the PCI or PCI Express bus is enumerated. The main
motherboard BIOS probes bus slots sequentially. It will depend on the
layout of the address space, as to whether a PCI Express slot card will
be enumerated before or after some other device on the motherboard.

When you have several RAID controllers, it is possible the last RAID
controller, and the add-in BIOS code module on it, won't get loaded. In
that case, the BIOS cannot "see" the boot drive on the card. It will
not be offered as a boot option. But the card can still have a driver
loaded, once Windows is running, allowing the card or device to be
used for data.

People facing this issue in the past, would turn off some of their
RAID controllers, in an attempt to get the RAID controller they want,
to boot. That is a possible solution, but a wasteful one.

Another way to attack this problem, is look at the "low memory hogs".
Some video cards are better at "shrinking" their low memory needs, better
than others. At least some of the video cards with 64KB ROMs on board,
don't reduce their RAM requirements, after their add-in code has
initialized.

I'm not at all sure, how you determine the low memory requirements of
those codes, or how to manage them. Some server motherboards, may
have an interface in the BIOS setup screen, to display how much of
that memory is in use. But desktop boards don't have such information.

This is where I learned about this topic, copied for your convenience.

*******
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=29994

Formatted for clarity:

Q: Why doesn't the BIOS (Option ROM) for my PCI device show
during boot up?

A: The cause of the problem is that in order to be PC Compatible,
the Option Rom space is limited to 128K. This is true for any
motherboard with PC compatible BIOS'.

In the common configurations, a newer AGP card (such as any
GeForce4) will require 64K of Option Rom space, so you have only
64K of Option Rom space left to work with for other devices.
Many SCSI, NIC (w/ PXE), IDE Raid and etc., can easily use
another 40 to 64K of Option Rom space for their needs.

By design the Option Rom should shrink down to a smaller run time
code after the initialization code has run. For example, some Adaptec
cards will require 32K to initialize. Then they shrink down to
12K at run time; whereas some GeForce4 cards require 64K to
initialize
and never release to a smaller amount. Please check with the device
manufacturer for the latest firmware upgrade or ask if they have a
smaller Option Rom available. Again this is a limitation of the
PC compatible specification and not a failure of the motherboard
BIOS itself.
*******

About ten years ago, Asus had a few test reports on their web site, detailing
what add-in cards they'd tested in the motherboard. They no longer make such
reports public, so we don't know how many cards they use for testing.

There have been a few motherboards, where a video card slot wouldn't "accept"
a RAID card. This was fixed, via a BIOS update, once the problem was reported
to Asus. So from that perspective, it is possible for there to be other
issues with the BIOS design. But chances are, now that Asus knows about
that issue, it should be a test case for them, while the motherboard
is still in design. All that is left then, is the "128KB limit", which
to some extent, the user has to manage.

Paul

Tnx. I feel safe now to proceed with the P6T7 mainboard.



daytripper wrote:
On 17 Oct 2010 19:17:26 GMT, Nammelo nammelo@mjeldedotcom wrote:

I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the
BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

If the device presents a boot rom, it should boot on *any* modern motherboard
- ASUS or otherwise. It's the same paradigm that I've used on even ancient P3
motherboards to boot from SCSI raid and SATA raid cards...

/daytripper

On 10/18/2010 3:33 AM, Nammelo wrote:
Tnx. I feel safe now to proceed with the P6T7 mainboard.



wrote:
On 17 Oct 2010 19:17:26 GMT, Nammelonammelo@mjeldedotcom wrote:

I am going to build a new WS, preferrably based on ASUS (I love everything
about them except the speed of their web sites), but I have one big issue to
solve first.
I will use an OCZ PCI4 SSD as boot device. OCZ warns to make sure that the
BM
can boot from PCI before buying one.
I browsed through a few user manuals for ASUS boards, but I cannot find any
info on whiich MBs can actually boot from PCI.

Anybody here have a clue?

regards
Nammelo

If the device presents a boot rom, it should boot on *any* modern motherboard
- ASUS or otherwise. It's the same paradigm that I've used on even ancient P3
motherboards to boot from SCSI raid and SATA raid cards...

/daytripper


For extra security, you may want to buy that MB from a source that has
a friendly return policy. Read the details: Newegg, for example,
sometimes has different return policies for different MBs.
--
Cheers, Bob