Quote Originally Posted by justapost View Post
Keithlm had a corrupted bios after running sandra.
PLEASE NOTE: That turned out to be "Sandra was running when my Phenom blew up" and it was not the BIOS.

I thought it was the BIOS at the time. I didn't have another AM2 chip to put into the socket to test it out... so I RMA'ed it to Newegg. After waiting 4 days for shipping, Newegg received it but they were out of the M2R model; so they just refunded what I paid.

I found a local place that had the Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 for the same price as Newegg. I picked that up yesterday. I had NO JOY with the Phenom. It is fried... so another RMA to Newegg for replacement. In the meanwhile I picked up a 4800+ to use for the 2 weeks or so that I'm waiting for the RMA. Yet more money. <sigh> OTOH: It is nice to have a 2.5Ghz dual core CPU so I can compare benchmarks against the Phenom. X2 versus X4 at the same clock.

DFI BONUSES: I like some of the features of the DFI board a lot better. Sound on the DFI is a Realtek ALC885 instead of the ALC889A. (Thus DFI has better quality.) Plus the DFI has a better chipset cooler, maybe a better voltage regulation, 2 network cards, and a socketed bios chip. The only thing Gigabyte has I like is the "idea" of the dual bios and the "Q-Flash". ALSO: It has a parallel printer port! MAJOR BONUS! I can resurect my Epson FX-80+. Or NOT.

I will probably end up buying a new DFI board in the future; It will be whatever replaces the M2R since I'm now not in a hurry.