Beta BIOS and FX-6300 upgrade on Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H - safe?

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Blubberto

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Sep 27, 2014
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Hey all. I have a Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H revision 2.1, which is an AM3 board that does not officially support Bulldozer/Piledriver CPUs. I have looked for an upgrade to my current Athlon II X2 260.

I was considering an FX-6300 as an alternative or even a stopgap to waiting for the right Haswell/Broadwell CPU deal to come along (already committed to lots of DDR3 RAM, so don't really want a Skylake or Haswell-E). Can't find good quad-core Phenoms for less than $60, even used, so I thought the FX-6300 would be great for $100 if it would work.

Some beta BIOS versions have been released (version FGF and later FGH) that were meant to add AM3+ support for my motherboard, but were later removed from the Gigabyte website. I am having trouble figuring out why, other than a few posts on the Gigabyte forums where people lost sound functionality or other hardware issues.

My question is since information on these beta BIOS files is so sparse, is it safe to upgrade and try the FX-6300? (Additionally, the only FGH BIOS file I can find is in German - does that affect my BIOS after installation?)

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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amdfangirl
I have a 880GMA-USB3.

Don't install the beta BIOS.

Gigabyte doesn't recommend you use it.

They never really confirmed to what level the Beta BIOS support had for the Piledriver CPUs.

For my board it was supposedly supported by the same BIOS revision as the one which supported the AM3+ Bulldozer CPUs, which still makes no sense because they released the BIOS a year before Piledriver came out.

Don't wate your money. Save a little bit more and get a nice Core i5 4590. With a H81 chipset if you don't want to overclock. That's about $260 or twice as much as a FX-6300 ($130), give or take. It's also about twice as fast, and consumes less energy so it's worth it.
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Paul NZ

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Sep 15, 2014
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I wouldnt use a beta BIOS. These can be buggy.

Used a beta BIOS on an ASUS mobo once. It kept looping / restarting after the post screen.

And in the end it corrupted itself. I had to reflash back to the previous BIOS to fix it.

Lucky the mobo supports Crashfree BIOS. Otherwise it would have been bricked
 
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amdfangirl

amdfangirl

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Apr 7, 2008
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I have a 880GMA-USB3.

Don't install the beta BIOS.

Gigabyte doesn't recommend you use it.

They never really confirmed to what level the Beta BIOS support had for the Piledriver CPUs.

For my board it was supposedly supported by the same BIOS revision as the one which supported the AM3+ Bulldozer CPUs, which still makes no sense because they released the BIOS a year before Piledriver came out.

Don't wate your money. Save a little bit more and get a nice Core i5 4590. With a H81 chipset if you don't want to overclock. That's about $260 or twice as much as a FX-6300 ($130), give or take. It's also about twice as fast, and consumes less energy so it's worth it.
 
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