Intel Xeon Platinum 8273CL Complete Info Guide
- Thread starter dracocephalum
- Start date
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First post - and I am so excited to make it! I have gotten a pair of Intel Xeon Platinum 8273CLs to work in a Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd server by downgrading the BIOS to version 2.1.8! No other mods necessary other than to downgrade BIOS!
I thought I was going to be strung along through a long messaging thread with the eBay seller who sold them to me while trying to get them to honor their word and let me return them within the window. Instead, that led me to some experimentation. You see, I was on BIOS 2.27.0. I like being up to date when possible, but sometimes, old stuff is good. (Like iDRAC9 firmware version 3.30.30.30, the last version that allows us to use raw IPMI commands to manipulate the fan speed directly.)
Post #83 in this thread was especially inspirational. Fortunately, I have had experience digging through Dell's downloads, so I knew how to click into where I could see past versions. Unfortunately, they didn't have 2.1.4 for the R740xd, so I picked the closest one they had - 2.1.8.
ChatGPT is sometimes nice, but sometimes, it leads me down a black hole to nowhere. This time was the latter until I decided I had enough of it. Luckily, I have a dead motherboard (that was dying with random BIOS recoveries at POST but that I killed by doing some soldering practice on it), so I was able to indulge its desires to probe pins to see which pins were needed for the VRM mod.
(It'd be pins 8 and 9 of the primarion PXE1610CDN, silk screen label U40 on the bottom. It's the first IC above J_BP3. And if you look below CPU1 are a row of 3 SMD capacitors, 5 SMD inductors, 5 other kind of ICs then the PXE. Similarly, below CPU2 are 3 capacitors, 5 inductors, 5 other ICs, then the same model PXE. Pins 8 on both PXEs beep in continuity. Don't ask me what test pads go to these pins - I couldn't successfully probe that much! And my eyes are getting too old for that kind of micro work...I'm in my upper 20s in age in hex, unlike when I could actually see little print way better when I was in my 20s in age in decimal.)
It also took me down the rabbit hole of looking at a BIOS dump that I took using an EZP2023+ and seeing the microcode versions of 2.27.0. Unfortunately, it thought the microcode was compatible with 8273CL, even though the BIOS would halt during the BIOS driver loading step of POST, and it would get in a boot loop where it'd go to BIOS drivers and reboot.
It was trying to get me to analyze the Dell BIOS packages, but none of the cap files in the payload were able to be analyzed. So it finally told me that I should flash an old BIOS in my test box, read it with my programmer, dump it to a raw bin, and analyze its microcode. I thought why not just test the CPUs then? So I did, and my first downgrade of BIOS was a charm!!!
Anyway, sometimes ChatGPT does have something useful to say - like after this successful test, grab some output in Linux.
root@r740xd2:~# lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 112
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-111
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
CPU family: 6
Model: 85
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 28
Socket(s): 2
Stepping: 7
CPU(s) scaling MHz: 28%
CPU max MHz: 3700.0000
CPU min MHz: 1000.0000
BogoMIPS: 4400.00
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr
sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_go
od nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm
2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes
xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault epb cat_l3 cdp_l3 ssbd mba ibrs ibpb
stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep b
mi2 erms invpcid cqm mpx rdt_a avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb intel_pt avx512cd
avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_loc
al dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_pkg_req vnmi pku ospke avx512_vnni md_c
lear flush_l1d arch_capabilities
Virtualization features:
Virtualization: VT-x
Caches (sum of all):
L1d: 1.8 MiB (56 instances)
L1i: 1.8 MiB (56 instances)
L2: 56 MiB (56 instances)
L3: 77 MiB (2 instances)
NUMA:
NUMA node(s): 2
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,30,32,34,36,38,40,42,44,46,48,50,52,54,56,58,60,62,64,66,
68,70,72,74,76,78,80,82,84,86,88,90,92,94,96,98,100,102,104,106,108,110
NUMA node1 CPU(s): 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31,33,35,37,39,41,43,45,47,49,51,53,55,57,59,61,63,65,67,
69,71,73,75,77,79,81,83,85,87,89,91,93,95,97,99,101,103,105,107,109,111
Vulnerabilities:
Gather data sampling: Vulnerable
Ghostwrite: Not affected
Indirect target selection: Mitigation; Aligned branch/return thunks
Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: Split huge pages
L1tf: Not affected
Mds: Not affected
Meltdown: Not affected
Mmio stale data: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Old microcode: Not affected
Reg file data sampling: Not affected
Retbleed: Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS
Spec rstack overflow: Not affected
Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Spectre v2: Mitigation; Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS SW sequence; BHI SW loop, KV
M SW loop
Srbds: Not affected
Tsa: Not affected
Tsx async abort: Mitigation; TSX disabled
Vmscape: Mitigation; IBPB before exit to userspace
root@r740xd2:~# grep -m1 -E \
'model name|cpu family|model[[:space:]]|stepping|microcode' \
/proc/cpuinfo
cpu family : 6
root@r740xd2:~# dmesg | grep -i microcode
[ 2.038425] microcode: Current revision: 0x05003901
[ 2.038435] microcode: Updated early from: 0x0500001c
root@r740xd2:~# dmidecode -t processor
# dmidecode 3.6
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.2.0 present.
Handle 0x0400, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: CPU1
Type: Central Processor
Family: Xeon
Manufacturer: Intel
ID: 57 06 05 00 FF FB EB BF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 85, Stepping 7
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
Voltage: 1.8 V
External Clock: 10400 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 2200 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA2011
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0700
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0701
L3 Cache Handle: 0x0702
Serial Number: Not Specified
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
Core Count: 28
Core Enabled: 28
Thread Count: 56
Characteristics:
64-bit capable
Multi-Core
Hardware Thread
Execute Protection
Enhanced Virtualization
Power/Performance Control
Handle 0x0401, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: CPU2
Type: Central Processor
Family: Xeon
Manufacturer: Intel
ID: 57 06 05 00 FF FB EB BF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 85, Stepping 7
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
Voltage: 1.8 V
External Clock: 10400 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 2200 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA2011
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0703
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0704
L3 Cache Handle: 0x0705
Serial Number: Not Specified
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
Core Count: 28
Core Enabled: 28
Thread Count: 56
Characteristics:
64-bit capable
Multi-Core
Hardware Thread
Execute Protection
Enhanced Virtualization
Power/Performance Control
root@r740xd2:~# journalctl -b -k | grep -Ei \
'microcode|mce|machine check|edac|hardware error'
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC: Ver: 3.0.0
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: microcode: Current revision: 0x05003901
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: microcode: Updated early from: 0x0500001c
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC0: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#0 IMC#0: DEV 0000:3a:0a.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC1: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#0 IMC#1: DEV 0000:3a:0c.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC2: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#1 IMC#0: DEV 0000:ae:0a.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC3: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#1 IMC#1: DEV 0000:ae:0c.0 (INTERRUPT)
I thought I was going to be strung along through a long messaging thread with the eBay seller who sold them to me while trying to get them to honor their word and let me return them within the window. Instead, that led me to some experimentation. You see, I was on BIOS 2.27.0. I like being up to date when possible, but sometimes, old stuff is good. (Like iDRAC9 firmware version 3.30.30.30, the last version that allows us to use raw IPMI commands to manipulate the fan speed directly.)
Post #83 in this thread was especially inspirational. Fortunately, I have had experience digging through Dell's downloads, so I knew how to click into where I could see past versions. Unfortunately, they didn't have 2.1.4 for the R740xd, so I picked the closest one they had - 2.1.8.
ChatGPT is sometimes nice, but sometimes, it leads me down a black hole to nowhere. This time was the latter until I decided I had enough of it. Luckily, I have a dead motherboard (that was dying with random BIOS recoveries at POST but that I killed by doing some soldering practice on it), so I was able to indulge its desires to probe pins to see which pins were needed for the VRM mod.
(It'd be pins 8 and 9 of the primarion PXE1610CDN, silk screen label U40 on the bottom. It's the first IC above J_BP3. And if you look below CPU1 are a row of 3 SMD capacitors, 5 SMD inductors, 5 other kind of ICs then the PXE. Similarly, below CPU2 are 3 capacitors, 5 inductors, 5 other ICs, then the same model PXE. Pins 8 on both PXEs beep in continuity. Don't ask me what test pads go to these pins - I couldn't successfully probe that much! And my eyes are getting too old for that kind of micro work...I'm in my upper 20s in age in hex, unlike when I could actually see little print way better when I was in my 20s in age in decimal.)
It also took me down the rabbit hole of looking at a BIOS dump that I took using an EZP2023+ and seeing the microcode versions of 2.27.0. Unfortunately, it thought the microcode was compatible with 8273CL, even though the BIOS would halt during the BIOS driver loading step of POST, and it would get in a boot loop where it'd go to BIOS drivers and reboot.
It was trying to get me to analyze the Dell BIOS packages, but none of the cap files in the payload were able to be analyzed. So it finally told me that I should flash an old BIOS in my test box, read it with my programmer, dump it to a raw bin, and analyze its microcode. I thought why not just test the CPUs then? So I did, and my first downgrade of BIOS was a charm!!!
Anyway, sometimes ChatGPT does have something useful to say - like after this successful test, grab some output in Linux.
root@r740xd2:~# lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 112
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-111
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
CPU family: 6
Model: 85
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 28
Socket(s): 2
Stepping: 7
CPU(s) scaling MHz: 28%
CPU max MHz: 3700.0000
CPU min MHz: 1000.0000
BogoMIPS: 4400.00
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr
sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_go
od nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm
2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes
xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault epb cat_l3 cdp_l3 ssbd mba ibrs ibpb
stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep b
mi2 erms invpcid cqm mpx rdt_a avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb intel_pt avx512cd
avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_loc
al dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_pkg_req vnmi pku ospke avx512_vnni md_c
lear flush_l1d arch_capabilities
Virtualization features:
Virtualization: VT-x
Caches (sum of all):
L1d: 1.8 MiB (56 instances)
L1i: 1.8 MiB (56 instances)
L2: 56 MiB (56 instances)
L3: 77 MiB (2 instances)
NUMA:
NUMA node(s): 2
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,30,32,34,36,38,40,42,44,46,48,50,52,54,56,58,60,62,64,66,
68,70,72,74,76,78,80,82,84,86,88,90,92,94,96,98,100,102,104,106,108,110
NUMA node1 CPU(s): 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31,33,35,37,39,41,43,45,47,49,51,53,55,57,59,61,63,65,67,
69,71,73,75,77,79,81,83,85,87,89,91,93,95,97,99,101,103,105,107,109,111
Vulnerabilities:
Gather data sampling: Vulnerable
Ghostwrite: Not affected
Indirect target selection: Mitigation; Aligned branch/return thunks
Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: Split huge pages
L1tf: Not affected
Mds: Not affected
Meltdown: Not affected
Mmio stale data: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Old microcode: Not affected
Reg file data sampling: Not affected
Retbleed: Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS
Spec rstack overflow: Not affected
Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Spectre v2: Mitigation; Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS SW sequence; BHI SW loop, KV
M SW loop
Srbds: Not affected
Tsa: Not affected
Tsx async abort: Mitigation; TSX disabled
Vmscape: Mitigation; IBPB before exit to userspace
root@r740xd2:~# grep -m1 -E \
'model name|cpu family|model[[:space:]]|stepping|microcode' \
/proc/cpuinfo
cpu family : 6
root@r740xd2:~# dmesg | grep -i microcode
[ 2.038425] microcode: Current revision: 0x05003901
[ 2.038435] microcode: Updated early from: 0x0500001c
root@r740xd2:~# dmidecode -t processor
# dmidecode 3.6
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 3.2.0 present.
Handle 0x0400, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: CPU1
Type: Central Processor
Family: Xeon
Manufacturer: Intel
ID: 57 06 05 00 FF FB EB BF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 85, Stepping 7
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
Voltage: 1.8 V
External Clock: 10400 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 2200 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA2011
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0700
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0701
L3 Cache Handle: 0x0702
Serial Number: Not Specified
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
Core Count: 28
Core Enabled: 28
Thread Count: 56
Characteristics:
64-bit capable
Multi-Core
Hardware Thread
Execute Protection
Enhanced Virtualization
Power/Performance Control
Handle 0x0401, DMI type 4, 48 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: CPU2
Type: Central Processor
Family: Xeon
Manufacturer: Intel
ID: 57 06 05 00 FF FB EB BF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 85, Stepping 7
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8273CL CPU @ 2.20GHz
Voltage: 1.8 V
External Clock: 10400 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 2200 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA2011
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0703
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0704
L3 Cache Handle: 0x0705
Serial Number: Not Specified
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
Core Count: 28
Core Enabled: 28
Thread Count: 56
Characteristics:
64-bit capable
Multi-Core
Hardware Thread
Execute Protection
Enhanced Virtualization
Power/Performance Control
root@r740xd2:~# journalctl -b -k | grep -Ei \
'microcode|mce|machine check|edac|hardware error'
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC: Ver: 3.0.0
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: microcode: Current revision: 0x05003901
Jul 10 13:25:38 r740xd2 kernel: microcode: Updated early from: 0x0500001c
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC0: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#0 IMC#0: DEV 0000:3a:0a.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC1: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#0 IMC#1: DEV 0000:3a:0c.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC2: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#1 IMC#0: DEV 0000:ae:0a.0 (INTERRUPT)
Jul 10 13:25:39 r740xd2 kernel: EDAC MC3: Giving out device to module skx_edac controller Skylake Socket#1 IMC#1: DEV 0000:ae:0c.0 (INTERRUPT)
Attachments
Dell EMC Server PowerEdge BIOS R740/R740xd/R640/R940/Precision 7920 Rack Workstation Version 2.1.8 | Driver Details | Dell US
2.1.6 changed microcodes but 2.1.7 / 2.1.8 not.
• Updated the Processor Microcode to version 0x5A for Intel® Xeon® Processor Scalable Family.
• Updated the Processor Microcode to version 0x1C for second generation Intel® Xeon Processor Scalable Family.
Well my t640 got bricked while flashing the bios, I made a thread if you have any ideas
can happen any time. corrupt BIOS chip. downgrade to far (try smaller steps)
init. after BIOS udate takes much longer. one or more auto restarts is normal.
Thanks!
So I suppose if I were to want to poke the bear, I could look through the release notes for later versions and make sure the microcode doesn't get upgraded past 0x1C on second generation? Or I wonder if there is some other reason why 2.27.0 would have gotten me into a POST loop.
Not that I want to poke the bear - just curious.
yes.
some systems work with 8273CL and newer microcode(some cpu internal is special), but you can't change Dell BIOS.
I do have some disappointing news about running these 8273CLs in the R740xd. Unfortunately, that BIOS version required - 2.1.8 - is too early to support Intel Optane PMem 100 series.
Upgrading to 2.2.10 or 2.2.11 in an attempt to gain that support led to BIOS halting, since 2.2.10 introduced new microcode. 2.2.11 release notes mention initial support for DCPMM being an enhancement, but unfortunately, it includes the 2.2.10 microcode.
Since I knew I could downgrade, I gave an upgrade the old college try to see if I could get my PMem to work. I wasn't hopeful, but I didn't want to ignore the possibility that it could work. Well, the system BIOS halted when loading BIOS drivers. So 2.1.8 - and no later - it is in the R740xd.
Upgrading to 2.2.10 or 2.2.11 in an attempt to gain that support led to BIOS halting, since 2.2.10 introduced new microcode. 2.2.11 release notes mention initial support for DCPMM being an enhancement, but unfortunately, it includes the 2.2.10 microcode.
Since I knew I could downgrade, I gave an upgrade the old college try to see if I could get my PMem to work. I wasn't hopeful, but I didn't want to ignore the possibility that it could work. Well, the system BIOS halted when loading BIOS drivers. So 2.1.8 - and no later - it is in the R740xd.