That's straight lazy! Thanks for clearing that up though

@Lost_N_BIOS & @barisuraz I've told my contact about PinnaclePI 1006, I get the distinct impression Biostar R&D are completely clueless with a level of arrogance and self righteousness truly unmatched where they think they are gods gift when in reality any other manufacturer R&D is better. Even GB.

EDIT: Forgot to say barisuraz if you haven't tried already or haven't noticed them the memory options unlocked in the PBS menu will help substantially with stabilising high frequency memory clocks.

@ket thank you I hadn't tried them will do when I get home

I thought anyone coming to this thread would be interested in this. @Lost_N_BIOS you'll probably be particularly interested in this. Through the person I am going through (who I cannot fault at all this person has been doing everything in their power to help) I am getting some responses from Biostar R&D. This is their reply to some of the GT7 issues;

"We’ve just updated AGESA Pinncle Pl 1.0.0.4c recently. Because Pinncle Pl 1.0.0.6 doesn’t have critical improvements, so we’ve decided temporarily not update this one. We used RV and SM to test: When DDR4 frequency is less than 2666, you can adjust Cmd2T to 1T/2T normally. When DDR4 frequency is over 2666, then Cmd2T can’t work. Please check it in the operating system, you will find out that it’s still 1T. DDR4 1600, 1866, 2133 and 2400 Speed Bin Tables are valid only when Gear Down Mode is disabled. Gear Down Mode is possible to affect Cmd2. If you need, you can manually disable it."

My response (which may or may not get passed to them in entirity or partial form)

"According to my sources PinnaclePI 1006 provides compatibility improvements that very much comes under the category of critical improvements. Besides that, every other manufacturer will be updating to PinnaclePI 1006 when it has passed their verification stages this I have had confirmed by multiple sources. This level of support is expected in the west, no exceptions. Failure to realise this will see yourselves never making a dent against the likes of Asrock, Asus, MSI or Gigabyte.

Regards the memory the 2T command rate option appears to just be a register value that is read and has no actual influence on switching between the 1T and 2T command rates, this is handled by the [Gear Down] option being enabled or disabled. The system refusing to POST with memory frequencies greater than 2400MHz when Gear Down is disabled is a bug which I have clarified absolutely crystal clear in the document you have recieved from one of your associates. Must I really recite to you every single X370 and X470 motherboard I have reviewed that does not have this problem? I've already told you two of them which should be more than enough to log this problem as a bug.

As you may have already been informed I am a former R&D guy myself from two large global companies. I find Biostar R&D to be highly unprofessional with your manner not wanting to communicate directly with me through email correspondence (Biostar R&D are now the only people I do not have direct line email communication contacts for) with a complete disregard to the customers and a total lack of care for the job you are supposed to be doing. Disgraceful. Now stop making excuses and do your jobs."

Yes, I am doing this to name and shame certain departments of Biostar.

Dang @ket sounds like they gave you more poor copy/paste replies @ post #47
But, your last posts sounds like some progress finally, so maybe things are looking up! Why, at higher speed, would 2T not work, but work OK at slower speed? I'd expect that to be reverse, that doesn't make sense, at least from a stability/ability to run memory stand-point??

Name and shame!

@Lost_N_BIOS yeah their "explanations" are just full of excuses and / or laze, or at the very least inability where they don't know how to fix their own firmware. They even sent a pdf document to me I think their expecting me to fix it. If you wanted to get more technical it could be argued why are they talking about the Command Rate option when I have clearly stated to them the problem is that the [Gear Down] option causes the system to fail to POST above 2400MHz when it is disabled. Gear Down allows the user to forcibly switch between 1T and 2T command rates the slower 2T command rate is generally what people use when aiming for very high memory clocks as it makes stabilising the DRAM easier and if you want to argue the point further it can be pointed out that typically memory SPD data is programmed to operate at a 2T command rate for stability reasons particularly with high frequency XMP profiles. Safe to say the work we have already done on the firmware is likely more advanced than Biostar R&D are capable of doing because thus far most of their replies have either been dumb / nonsensical, or deliberately nonsensical because they don't like being called out. I could argue with them in depth over how stupid their replies are, in fact I think I will. Have you had a chance to look in to the spread spectrum any further yet?

Surprised they sent you a PDF, was that them being helpful I mean can it actually help you fix something, or was that them trying to act helpful when they know it wont help? If you can use it to fix things, fix it and then tell them you fixed, but abruptly end the discussion there and leave them hanging, to see if they return to ask you how to fix

What is this gear down anyway, a name for something other boards have, or something only they use and it only does what you mentioned above? Surely it can't be for 1T/2T only, that's it's own setting correct?
I thought maybe it's the 100/133 memory multi option each time you mentioned it, but always forgot to check in BIOS if that was also still there separately.

On Spread spectrum, I thought we had to give up on that due to always breaking the IFR output? I know I can enable or disable it my way, without breaking the IFR output, but unsure about making it visible to user (I forget how it looked).
Or was that one of the ones we had to insert or not use since it's not there already? I'll look in there again tonight *Edit - Ohh yes, I see, this is one that's in the BIOS Setup module, but not in IFR output nor shows up in AMIBCP. Sorry, I don't know what we can do there other than what we already tried that breaks the IFR

@Lost_N_BIOS I haven't looked at the pdf but the quick glance I gave at the title isn't anything that helpful just standard JEDEC stuff heres the link if you want to take a look DDR4 Rev. B spec. As for Gear Down, the simple way to explain it is think of it as the AMD option for Command Rate, the actual Cmd2T option in AMD firmware is just present as a register value to correctly identify 1T and 2T in applications like CPU-Z it does not actually affect Command Rate.

Interesting, so does that apply to all AM4 BIOS, the 1T/2T stuff you mentioned? I see at the DDR4 JEDEC link, "Geardown Mode - This mode allows the DRAM to adjust its internal clock to ½ mode or ¼ mode operation. Not supported for data rates below 2666MT/s. Gear Down mode is only supported during initialization and self refresh exit. The B spec gives more clarity and definition." So looks like this is DDR4 specific, even for Intel too? So GearDown is not a Biostar thing, but JEDEC standard thing.

@Lost_N_BIOS I've never seen Gear Down on intel boards though it is amusing that the very thing Biostar try and make their excuses with the very same document specifically states Gear Down is for use above 2666 where with Biostar the board refuses to POST at anything above 2400 when Gear Down is disabled (2T).

I wonder why, not on Intel? Maybe Intel better handles actual 1T/2T? That page seemed to make it sound like it applied to "DDR4" in general though.
And yes, I thought that was backwards what Biostar was saying too you vs what they linked you to read??? You will have to link them to that, return the link back, and tell them to study it again

@Lost_N_BIOS yeah after I pointed those things out to Biostar they want me to try to work more directly with R&D (again). I somewhat had enough of the rubbish R&D were feeding so I outright told my contact one of my former R&D positions was for Mushkin Memory and after explaining in a reply addressed to R&D how Command Rates are supposed to work and what the JEDEC standard is for them, they seem to have been somewhat humbled. I'll try with them once more, but after this if their level of incompetence remains I'm going to have to simply wash my hands of all this its taking up far too much of my time having to hold their hand and explain things to them they should know. Naturally, I'll also add editorial notes to the reviews here and on XS for the X370 GT7 I reviewed as well, that editorial note will not be complimentary unless Biostar R&D actually start doing something and not one excuse after another.

Ohh, so now they want your help, and want to talk directly? at least that's progress finally! I bet they thought you were some semi-skilled noob, so were trying to blow you off and get you to calm down so they could let the errors slide.
Have you shown them some of your other reviews and technical discussions, of course they probably don't care, but maybe someone will take a peek and see you know what you're talking about.

@Lost_N_BIOS, still not directly but rather semi-direct as they still want me to go through their crap esupport system rather than giving me a direct email to R&D (Biostar are the only ones now I don't have a direct email to R&D for, or any kind of internal communication for that matter). They have already seen the GT7 review so I won't go to the effort of providing links to other reviews I've written... yet. This is last chance saloon for Biostar, they do something this time or I'll be putting a PSA out to the thousands of people who follow what I do, from there I'll let the domino effect take over.

That's lame! You're helping them figure out issues by fixing yourself, and even if they don't see it in that way, you're also directly pointing out good issues to solve to them, yet they don't want email contact with you.
I'm sure they're well aware of what being put on forum blast can do, to help or hurt, hopefully they start being nicer and more communicative.