hi
ok....can anyone clear up some question i have on bios updates?
i have a msi k9a2 motherboard am2+ 790fx chipset with an phenom 9500 processor,
if i update the bios .i understand this fixes the bug that can occur on these processors ,with a percentage decrease.
but what if i change processor to a 6400 will this latest bios update also affect the perfomance of this processor or not.
i dont overclock or anything like that.....phenom seems ok as it is .....is it best to leave bios update untill i get any problems. thanks kaka

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msi k9a2 Platinum
Bios 1.8
Phenon 940 be
Radeon HD3870
500 g h/d
4 gig 8oo ram
vista home premium 32

There is an old saying: if it ain't broken don't try to fix it...which is a wise thing. Why would you like to "fix" to something you don't know would even give you better performance or even do any good?

From my point as user I would stay away to do too many switches of CPU as there are always a risk that you can twist/bend those fragile pin beneath CPU. If your Phenom work then I see no point at going back, except if it is too slow to do what you need to do or have problem with stability. Do have any reason to back to dual core?

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Abit AT8-32X (Xpress3200)/Athlon64 X2 4200+@stock/Corsair VS 2GB/Samsung SATA II 2x 250 GB/Club3D X1950XT GDDR3 256MB+ PowerColor Theatre 550 pro (PCIe x1)

it's a fair question if he plans on eventually upgrading his mobo and maybe wants an older AMD chip for a back up computer or hand me down.

The answer to his question I believe is no, it should not effect the K8 chips performance. since the bug has to do with the Phenom's TLB and L3 cache, something the K8's don't have.

I did never say it was not a legit question, but there is always a risk in switching between CPU and if you had use search on this site you would see how many that have damaged their CPU from the first socket A until now just because they wanted to try out something.

My point was to reduce that kind of unnecessary switching between CPU back and forth.

The second problem I have with your first and only post on this site are that you don't show any respect and just throw out some speculation about K10 have L3 cache and K8 do not and from that point draw a conclusion that it will not effect Athlon64 X2 6400+. We don't know for sure as there are really not many that have tested this yet and what is theoretical possible is not always what happen in real situation.

Here is an example of what can happen: hardwarejunky



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kakasnarta: I suggest you talk with kazgirl on this site. She have experience with both Phenom and Athlon64 X2 6400+ and she could tell you how this work in real world from her own experience.

Kazgiirl
profile - look at the top (for a link) and you will be able to see all her post, especially when she try to overclock her ASUS MB.

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Abit AT8-32X (Xpress3200)/Athlon64 X2 4200+@stock/Corsair VS 2GB/Samsung SATA II 2x 250 GB/Club3D X1950XT GDDR3 256MB+ PowerColor Theatre 550 pro (PCIe x1)

Edited: 12/15/2007 at 09:46 PM by blizard

respect to whom? my first post here because frankly i usually post on many other more populated and respected forums, but i'm always looking for more opinions and specifically came here because I think my next processor may be a phenom. But you still haven't answered the OP's question but have instead saw fit to lecture both him and me. You have provided one ancillary post from someone who has 5 posts (doesn't that make his thoughts worthless too, if we're going to judge e-peen by post count?). Bios flashes are ALWAYS risky, no matter what you're flashing, and I think everyone that knows how to actually flash a bios also knows that there is inherent risk. That wasn't the question at hand. The question at hand is would the performance decrease from a successful bios flash for the K10 errata, affect performance in K8 chips? And so far I seem to be the only one who has provided any response, while you had decided to lecture someone who, despite their measely two posts on the AMD forums, is trying to actually answer the OP's question.

Bottom line, if you want some sort of respect (and I'm still not sure why I was supposed to salute you for not answering the OP's question), then earn it. Don't expect it because you have a high post count on an unpopulated forum. If this thread is any indication, they are probably filled with more non-helpful replies and lecturing due to e-peen post flexing.

Edited: 12/16/2007 at 01:34 AM by gFiz

Hi Kakasnarta,

Not to get embroiled in this argument that seems to be developing, but in my experience, the early BIOS' that have been released offering support for Phenom are problematic, in particular it seems that there are issues surrounding HT implementation, I'm not sure if this is due to the difference between HT 3.0 compatability with Phenom, over the older standard of HT used by K8 CPU's...

I've found that when changing from the phenom (K10) back to the 6400+ (K8) that the problems experienced with Phenom were still evident when using the 6400+ and that the only fix for this was to flash back to an earlier more mature BIOS.

In my case I had to flash back to a BIOS without Phenom support to restore my system back to its previous optimal settings.

So whilst theoretically there shouldnt be any perfromance hit between using a K8 with a Phenom supporting BIOS, it seems that at the moment at least, that the early release Phenom BIOS' are limiting both K10 and K8 CPU's.

Once BIOS support improves with time, then these problems shouldn't occur, but thats not to say they won't, it will depend on the individual BIOS....

As tends to be the case its a case of trying and seeing, but as I say in my case, I found that my system took quite a performance hit, with Phenom installed and that performance didn't improve with the 6400+ installed until the BIOS was restored to a non-K10 supporting BIOS.

I'm sorry that its not a definite answer, but its not really a question that can be given a definite yes or no answer due to the number of variables involved.

Anyway hope it helps a little....

Kaz

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