So Far... So Good

[gundersausage]

Hm, I wish some people would make their own forum where they can yell at each other, instead of writing PAGES of BS.

Hopefully, some MOD will make this thread nice and On-topic again

*************

I think Phenom will be pretty good, but it needs time. And we need decent reviews!

You've gotten decent reviews.. you just didn't get the results you wanted

[Skratch]

Im waiting for a decent board and I will end up building a decent AMD rig soon.I am kinda biased towards Asus,but I have no clue whats good for the AMD side of boards.

Just for reference I have gunder on ignore too so people dont think Im a AMD troll,I have a e6600 and a q6600 so I don't know what that guys problem was.

I am honestly thinking about building the rig,Im just waiting it out untill they fix all the little bios bugs.

[KTE]

Same boat as me Skratch. Their boards will have problems yet for sure, especially older AM2 boards and you have Nvidia boards releasing soon anyway as well as the prices will prolly decrease as soon as stock increases & demand falls a little.

[Movieman]

Reluctantly puts on Mod hat:
To Gundersausage and Skratch:
Will you two guys grow up and give this crap a break?
Reread your posts and it sounds like two little kids moaning at one another.
C'mon guys, this is XtremeSystems not RomperRoom for preschoolers.

[KTE]

Haha LOL!

Who's this with a Phenom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_q_9a4zDps

[akaBruno]

It's kinda funny, like... Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butt-head, gundersausage and Skratch.

[Movieman]

Actually we were calling each other children.. which is what you just did as well

In fact everyone that chose to complain about trolling did so by name calling, no differently to what Skratch and I were doing..

So hypocrisy aside.. I guess we all agree

Then I will rephrase it in a different manner:
Stop this crap immediately.
Done.

[Movieman]

If you are going to delete my reply to Akabruno but leave his pointless and off topic flame then you may as well give up any pretense of moderation

You are the one that seems unwilling to stop even when asked by a moderator. I am removing your posts from this thread and asking that you be given a vacation from Xs so that you have time to rethink your thought process.
I'm not here to waste my time in an endless back and forth with you nor am I here to take your sarcasm.
I'm now asking that you stop posting in this thread.

[Movieman]

Gentlemen:
This thread will be closed for a short period of time until I can get an admin in here to remove a persons account from XS.
Thanks for your understanding.

[Movieman]

Thread reopened.
My apologies for the interuption.

[Nazu]

Props for Movieman Some people just don't know when to stop...

I think that getting Phenom if you have a older AM2 mobo isn't that wise. Seems like no manufacturer has a bios that's mature enough to take 'full' advantage of the Phenom's performance. Even if the bios is good there's still that fact that Phenom is going the slower on the older chipsets because they can't benefit from the features that Phenom has (HyperTransport 3.0 and the power saving features for example).
If somebody insist on AMD the wisest choice would probably be getting a 790FX mobo and 9500 Phenom. But I think many will skip these Phenoms and wait for the better revision that shows better oc potential (atleast I hope that there will be a new revision like that).

[KTE]

Thanks a lot on ALL our behalfs Dave.

Anyone tried changing X4 multi through overdrive yet? Macci, if you're reading, will this feature work on retail X4's on AM2 and AM2+ boards?

[DoubleZero]

Thanks a lot on ALL our behalfs Dave.

+1

Anyone tried changing X4 multi through overdrive yet? Macci, if you're reading, will this feature work on retail X4's on AM2 and AM2+ boards?

Probably only in the black editions, and in AM2+ boards.

[akaBruno]

Yea... heheheh Old Gundersausage needs to take his Ron Jeremy act elsewhere for a long lolng while.

[Movieman]

Yea... heheheh Old Gundersausage needs to take his Ron Jeremy act elswhere for a long lolng while.

Please, lets forget him and get this back to the topic.
He won't be posting here for awhile..

[freeloader]

IM in the middle of moving my computer to another room so I needed something to let me losen up a little before work in the AM,I have been busy all night with this setup.

well here it is bro...now lets see you value setup.

Looks like a typical nerd workstation!

[mstp2009]

A MESSY nerd's workstation.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

[kazgirl]

Glad to see things are getting back on track it sort of deterred me from posting for a while..... anyway getting back to the subject, I've e-mailed ASUS support to ask them for clarification on the BIOS v1503 whether it is actually a Phenom supporting BIOS, and highlighting the problems I'm having, and asking if they have any newer BIOS release due to be released anytime soon.......got the automated reply backs saying they will respond wihtin 48hours......nothing so far....

I'm wondering what could be possible causes for the problems, and was wondering...... if the IMC and NB voltage being linked on the Phenom is a possible cause..... as both issues that I'm having seem to involve both the RAM and the GFX performance..... Does anyone think theres any plausability to this theory...???

At least I seem to recall reading somehwere that the NB and IMC voltages were linked to one another.

So as the the IMC on the Phenom and with AM2+ mobo has a seperate power plane to the CPU, but with AM2 the CPU + IMC share the same power plane, could this be causing some kind of compatabilty issue with the CPU, IMC + NB power planes on an AM2 mobo, thats causing complications for the BIOS coding..... and therefore affecting the Memory and graphics performance.....?????????

Just my theory on it anyway.....!!!!!!

[akaBruno]

Kaz... I think that you lost most of us a long time ago...

[knightwolf654]

so the cpu score is high yet the graphics are laggin behind due to bios and chipset problems. did you try any other versions?

[freeloader]

Has anyone else wondered why the L3 cache on the Phenom doesn't run at full core speed? I'm curious to see what type of performance increase can be had by running the L3 cache at full CPU speed.

[64dragon]

kazgirl, thanks for posting the pics. the phenom ht is supposed to be 3600 but since your running it on an am2 board not an am2+ its only running at 2000. this could be causing some or most of the issue with the pci-e bus. hopefully another new bios will come out soon so you can take it off default and lower the multi and increase the htt/fsb and leave the ht multi at 5 allowing the ht bus to OC. imo its pointless to try comparing a cpu @ 2.2 with one at 3.5 however in the cpu tests the phenom did do better

[cegras]

To be honest, I've had great expectations for the phenom, partly because of their claims of really low power consumption / low idle heat.

That was what disappointed me the most.

[kazgirl]

so the cpu score is high yet the graphics are laggin behind due to bios and chipset problems. did you try any other versions?

This is the only BIOS available for the M2N32SLI at the moment, its the latest one released this week, I don't think any previous BIOS will have Phenom support of any kind..... I'm hoping that ASUS will get a new BIOS in the near furure, stil waiting for a reply from them though....

kazgirl, thanks for posting the pics. the phenom ht is supposed to be 3600 but since your running it on an am2 board not an am2+ its only running at 2000. this could be causing some or most of the issue with the pci-e bus. hopefully another new bios will come out soon so you can take it off default and lower the multi and increase the htt/fsb and leave the ht multi at 5 allowing the ht bus to OC. imo its pointless to try comparing a cpu @ 2.2 with one at 3.5 however in the cpu tests the phenom did do better

Hi dragon, well in the BIOS the HT default multi is x5, but whereas with the X2 6400+ installed there are 3 different HT Multis available to change, i.e. NB, SB, and NB>CPU, with the Phenom installed there is only a single global HT Multi available for changing, which does sort of make sense as I always used to have all 3 before at the same setting anyway....


About the whole power thing I mentioned above, we all know that one of the benefits of the AM2+ is the split power planes for the IMC and CPU right, which is different to the AM2 which has just the one power plane for the whole CPU including the IMC....

Which is where you see the extra VRM's on an AM2+ mobo, you have the usual VRM's for the CPU power supply and the new VRM's for the IMC.

So apparently AM2+ now uses 1 power plane for the CPU and 1 for the IMC, and the NB is somehow linked to the IMC (I cant remember right now if its the speed thats linked or the voltage or power - I'll try to see what i can find out about this - or if someone already knows perhaps they can reply)

We know that the NB is responsible for keeping the CPU fed with the data from the GFX cards etc.....

So anyway at the moment it seems that my CPU is working correctly hence the increase in the CPU scores in 3DM06, but that the GFX performance has been drastically reduced.... suggesting an issue with the NB>CPU Link

Now I knew to expect a drop due to the different CPU speeds i.e. 3520Mhz on the X2 6400+ and 2200MHz on the X4 9500, but it seems to me that the drop is way more than it should be...... so IMO this indicates a problem with the HT/PCI-E performance, which is of course run via the NB > CPU Link right....

In addittion to this it seems that any attempt to get my RAM to run at its rated setting via the SLI Profiles, which of course involves changing the vdimm for the RAM from the JEDEC standard 1.8v to 2.2v/2.3v.... causes the PC to fail to POST.....

OK so given the new architechture of the AM2+ Phenom, and the afore mentioned issues about the whole power planes, well the 3 main components affected by the whole power plane issue are the CPU, IMC and NB.....

Which it appears are the exact components which are limiting the performance of my PC with the Phenom installed on an AM2 mobo.....

So I'm just wondering if there are bigger issues with the whole backward compatability of Phenom AM2+ and AM2, than has previosuly been mentioned..... due to the whole split power planes thing...or NB and IMC link... and whether this can or can't be overcome by a newer BIOS...... ????

It just seems too much of a co-incidence IMO that the 3 components primarily affected by the changes are the same 3 components that seem to be the cause of the dramatic drop in performance with Quad core on an AM2 mobo over a Dual Core on the same AM2 mobo

[informal]

Has anyone else wondered why the L3 cache on the Phenom doesn't run at full core speed? I'm curious to see what type of performance increase can be had by running the L3 cache at full CPU speed.

My bet is that they tried to lower the power consumption even more,but this affected the L3 and mem. latency greatly...I guess if someone could manage to run NB @core clocks or even @higher than core clocks,we could see a noce boost for Phenom,since the L3 latency would drop like a rock and mem. bandwidth would go much higher(no matter in what "mode"-ganged or unganged).
Let's hope that TLB bug in L3 doesn't stop us from going higher with the NB(since it's integral part of NB and runs at the same clocks and @ the same power plane)