790FX - Phenom

[Gary Key]

Just an update -

We will have a short chipset introduction article up shortly on the 790FX and will then follow-up on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday depending on testing results, with the performance numbers on the MSI and Gigabyte boards.

Unfortunately, at the last minute this past week there were some compatibility issues found with the retail versions (locked ratios) of the Phenom and a couple of other 790FX boards we had planned on introducing. Those boards were pulled from the review at the request of the manufacturer who will introduce revised boards within the next week (nothing shipped to retail yet, so no RMA worries). In the meantime, we did receive new retail boards from MSI and Gigabyte so those will be the first ones we look at this week.

Also, we have had a heck of a time getting the Phenoms up to speed and it simply comes down to the BIOS and CPU. The 790FX chipset is proving to be excellent with the Athlon 64 X2 processor range with HT speeds over 485 easily and HTT levels over 2000, not to mention some impressive memory tweak options on a couple of the boards (let's just say that ASUS and DFI have thrown the kitchen sink in, Gigabyte's latest beta is not too bad either for the tweaker). However, these speeds have not been possible with our retail Phenoms (which arrived late Friday) but things are looking up today.

The problem is we just received new BIOS releases today for the retail CPUs and need to retest the boards tonight, plus we also received BIOS updates for a couple of the 690G and 560/570/590 boards that now fully support Phenom just a few minutes ago. We want to get the initial results of these boards into our 790FX launch article (initial results were not pretty with a couple of early alpha/beta releases), otherwise the article might not answer a lot of potential upgrade questions.

I will go into the trials and tribulations in this article but it reminds me a lot of the X38 launch, unless these BIOS releases have really improved since Friday, the boards are not quite Phenom ready for the enthusiast, but are masterful with just about any of the Athlon X2s at this point. Also, the TriFire/QuadFire drivers are just not to the beta stage yet so those results will have to wait until AMD is able to fine tune them some more. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we will have several of the 770x and 790x boards arriving for review.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Thanks for the news Gary. :thumbsup:

Looking forward to the preview.

However any news on nVIDIA's nforce lineup for AM3/2+ socket?

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Thanks for the news Gary. :thumbsup:

Looking forward to the preview.

However any news on nVIDIA's nforce lineup for AM3/2+ socket?

Hi,

NVIDIA will probably launch 780a (AM2+) in early Q1 2008 at this time. ASUS just delivered a BIOS update for the CrossHair board that is suppose to work with Phenom, it will be interesting to see how well the 590SLI holds up 18 months later. This whole launch has been a problem, the 2.4 Phenoms were pulled at the last minute due to the TLB issues and the 2.3s with the fixed ratios acted completely different on the 790FX boards that the unlocked samples. BIOS releases have been coming in hot and heavy today.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Whew. Nice work Gary, thanks.

 

[Gary Key]

Update - Finally got CF working correctly on the MSI board about 10 minutes ago, still have a long ways to go with the gaming benchmarks.

Also, the AOD utility is absolutely superb but we cannot get it to lock in an automatic overclock with either the MSI or Gigabyte board. It ran for over four hours this morning on the MSI board and then locked up, ran for two hours on the Gigabyte board and gave us a 10MHz increase in speed. AMD will probably release us an updated version tonight to work properly with the new BIOS spins we have, do not always believe those marketing videos with Nate.

The major stumbling block today is that our retail 9600 CPU just sucks when it comes to overclocking and we are afraid this will be the norm after a few discussions. We finally got above 2.52GHz after lunch with it. The good news is that the latest BIOS releases are letting us run typical DDR2-800 modules at 3-4-3-6 1T, the bad news is that with the current processor speeds, it really does not matter that much. Also, native DDR2-1066 is still borked with the retail CPUs, might work, might not with the B2 steppings, the BIOS guys are having a heck of time with it.

That being said, if AMD had released the SB700 with the 790FX, we would have one world beating chipset in a lot of ways, its ashame though that for most activities, the 6400+ clocked up a little is a better CPU value than the 9600 at this time, especially for gaming.

Our tests with the early Phenom capable BIOSs on the NV AM2 boards is progressing, our results will be limited but the chipsets are working fine at this point, more a case of board and BIOS design than chipset choice.

 

[Undersea]

Great Gary!

Thanks allot. Please don't forget the Biostar 560!

BTW do you have the Biostar 770 I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It'd be nice if the Abit NF-M2 nView was also included, though I know it's listed as discontinued by Abit and has an older(ish) chipset. Thanks for the updates though . . . as far as overclocking is concerned, do you think the hassles you're having are associated with the TLB bug? And are you getting the same troubles that Anand listed in his review (will clock to 3 ghz easily, but is unstable when fully loaded)?

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Undersea
Great Gary!

Thanks allot. Please don't forget the Biostar 560!

BTW do you have the Biostar 770 I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

Our first NV Phenom BIOS was for the 560 board and it works fine. Biostar will have us a 770 early next week.

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
It'd be nice if the Abit NF-M2 nView was also included, though I know it's listed as discontinued by Abit and has an older(ish) chipset. Thanks for the updates though . . . as far as overclocking is concerned, do you think the hassles you're having are associated with the TLB bug? And are you getting the same troubles that Anand listed in his review (will clock to 3 ghz easily, but is unstable when fully loaded)?

abit is working on BIOS updates at this point. I did ask for one for the NF-M2, no answer from Taiwan yet. My issues are not related to the TLB bug, its just the CPU yields are not that great right now, if AMD says 2.3GHz, its not going to do much more than that. The 2.4 samples are slightly different than the retail units, they are unlocked and were binned for fairly high speeds. Eventually, (when is the question) AMD said we should see greater headroom on the current B2 stepping. Of course, I could have got the runts of the liter from the first retail shipments, but AMD was not surprised with our overclock results.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yow. I was hoping it was only the TLB bug doing this. Oh well, thanks for the heads up anyway, and thanks for bugging Abit about the NF-M2 nView.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not to bother you with petty concerns, but have you tried overclocking your retail X4-9600 with the L3 cache disabled in BIOS (if that's an option)? Also, have you had any trouble with dual-channel memory support?

 

[Undersea]

Man I can't wait for this article or acticles!

Actually I live for this stuff, I hope you write a novel about the concerns and issues.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You and me both.

 

[DrMrLordX]

http://forum.uabit.com/showthread.php?t=130658&page=2

Doesn't look like Abit wants to do a BIOS update on the NF-M2 nView for Phenom compatibility. I guess it's a "drop it in and see if it works" sort of thing. Ugh.

Wish they'd release a beta BIOS or something . . .

 

[can]

This is the thing I was really excited about when ATI and AMD merged, really integrated systems by the two, I'm really excited to see the reviews.

 

[SX2012]

AMD needs to focus on higher IPC, and getting as much efficiency as they can out of their parts now that they make their own CPU's, Chipsets, and Videocards.

 

[Mech0z]

Did this article get published? Haven't seen it yet

 

[smokedturkey]

Man, i have the nview and I'd LOVE to see one work, would be a nice upgrade till a new MB comes that fits my needs.

 

[SX2012]

I cant wait to read all the bad stuff about the motherboard i just bought

 

[LostPassword]

can't wait

 

[Hemi345]

Could all these bios issues be the reason why no one seems to have any 7xx boards? Seems Newegg is the only vendor with some and only from Gigabyte.

Or do you think they're waiting to release them till SB700 is ready and just use that?

 

[Undersea]

Gary anyupdate? You all have published a ton of articles but not the one I've been waiting for

Zipzoom has some boards also.

The biostar 560 newest Phenom bios doesn't like old CPU's. Still waiting on better phenoms or maybe the black edition one.

 

[Undersea]

Hello All,

Any updates on this stuff? I have read a ton of bad things about a bunch of motherboards except the Biostar 560 which isn't really AM2+.

Gary sorry to hear about your troubles good luck and god bless.

 

[Sylvanas]

Sounds like a great article in the works Gary . I have the MSI K9A2 Platinum and I can say that with my 5000+ black edition its a stellar board, however I am a bit hesitant for dropping a Phenom in there anytime soon until BIOS's are worked out, interesting that you said we might expect better results later in the B2 stepping that would be nice for sure.

 

[mondobyte]

I just ordered an MSI K9A2 Platinum for my BE Phenom 9600 (& Zalman CNPS 9700NT) ... Have some nice PC1200 memory for it too ... I'll let you folks know how it goes.