Anandtech - 780G CPU incompatibilities + 780i/790i data corruption

[epsilon84]

This has already been posted in the MB forum but its half dead there, I figure this forum gets a lot more traffic and its pretty much just as relevant since mobos and CPUs go hand in hand...

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3279&p=1

Damn, this looks like some really serious ****!

Apparently 780G mobos with 3 and 4 phase PWMs (which is the majority of them) will literally fry within a few minutes or even seconds when running 125W TDP processors, such as the X2 6400+ or Phenom 9850BE. I guess you could easily achieve the same results by overclocking slower CPUs too... perhaps enthusiasts should avoid this round of 780G mobos unless they run lower TDP CPUs or won't be doing any overclocking.

And if that ain't enough bad news, it appears with the 780i/790i, nVidia still hasn't fully addressed the data corruption problems that occurs during overclocking. The problem seems to occur at around the 400FSB mark with the RAM speed set within a certain range, DDR2 900 - 1200 and DDR3 1600+.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Dont forget these as wel :X48 test notes:

a) Chipset defaults to tRD values that are excessively loose and are not competitive with NVIDIA’s new 790i. The problem is most MB manufacturers do not allow this to be specifically tuned in the BIOS.

b) DMI interface (x4 PCI-E link) is sloooow….X38/X48 should have been paired with ICH10(R), which will be PCI-E 2.0 compliant on the link interface.

c) Haven’t found an Intel X48 board yet that will handle 8GB of DDR3 properly, even though this is a major bullet for chipset support - board or memory makers? (We need to test this on the Intel DX48BT2 that just arrived.)

d) Chipset runs HOT…might even be hotter than 790i. Intel should have shrunk this thing long ago!

I raed this, and its not good for the mobo makers. They made it really hard to see which cpus work or dont, or not at all. These arent the enthusiasts mobo anyhow, theyll be coming soon

 

[Hellboy]

This has already been posted in the MB forum but its half dead there, I figure this forum gets a lot more traffic and its pretty much just as relevant since mobos and CPUs go hand in hand...

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3279&p=1

Damn, this looks like some really serious ****!

Apparently 780G mobos with 3 and 4 phase PWMs (which is the majority of them) will literally fry within a few minutes or even seconds when running 125W TDP processors, such as the X2 6400+ or Phenom 9850BE. I guess you could easily achieve the same results by overclocking slower CPUs too... perhaps enthusiasts should avoid this round of 780G mobos unless they run lower TDP CPUs or won't be doing any overclocking.

And if that ain't enough bad news, it appears with the 780i/790i, nVidia still hasn't fully addressed the data corruption problems that occurs during overclocking. The problem seems to occur at around the 400FSB mark with the RAM speed set within a certain range, DDR2 900 - 1200 and DDR3 1600+.

This now is almost laughable....

Infact its now pathetic and sad, I am laughing...

How many things can go wrong for AMD....... Looks like another bumpy ride of bad news that is unbelievable to say the least.....

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Yeah, especially since its not their fault. They have everything listed properly, but the board makers themselves have it mucked up

 

[epsilon84]

Yeah, especially since its not their fault. They have everything listed properly, but the board makers themselves have it mucked up

Yeah, you can't blame this on AMD, its simply the mobo makers cutting corners to make that extra buck.

 

[Onus]

Ok, so given these issues, what are some reasonably safe Intel s775 and AMD AM2+ mobos? By "safe," assume latest chips, but only mild overclocking.

 

[Hellboy]

Yeah, you can't blame this on AMD, its simply the mobo makers cutting corners to make that extra buck.

Yeah it maybe the motherboard manufacturers fault, but its AMD's problem..

 

[Shadow703793]

Yeah, especially since its not their fault. They have everything listed properly, but the board makers themselves have it mucked up

Agreed.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

According to Anands, the AMDs are yet to arrive. The enthusiast boards that is. As for Intels, they mention the Intel DX48BT2 as a possible correct for some those problems, or at least the mem/gig issue using DDR3

 

[EXT64]

Well, the 780G line was really made for low power/HTPC computers, however, it is not acceptable that they did not make the electrical beefy enough to handle these new chips. Oh well, I'll still buy one in a few weeks. I have a short memory and plan on using a < 65W processor w/o OC.

 

[xx12amanxx]

Im running the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G motherboard with a 125w X2 6000+ just fine and have been for the last 2 month's with zero problem's. Not only that but im also running 2 hardrives and an 8800GT with 6 80mm fan's sometimes running at 100%.

Ive had no problem's with system instability and have had no crashes and i play games like Crysis for very long period's of time.


Soo im confused becuase from what they say my board should have melted about a month and a half ago but it has not?

Rubbish

 

[Hellboy]

Im running the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G motherboard with a 125w X2 6000+ just fine and have been for the last 2 month's with zero problem's. Not only that but im also running 2 hardrives and an 8800GT with 6 80mm fan's sometimes running at 100%.

Ive had no problem's with system instability and have had no crashes and i play games like Crysis for very long period's of time.


Soo im confused becuase from what they say my board should have melted about a month and a half ago but it has not?

Rubbish

Maybe its because Gigabyte are making the best motherboards now !!!!!

Its either Asus or Gigabyte for me, never experienced any problems with these manufacturers.....

In anycase overclocking a chip by a small amount, can only now hinder AMD.... As their processors have speed issues and overclocking issues anyway. With some cases the Phenom being out classed by a 6400x2....

Im now feeling sympathy towards AMD...

It might as well be their final nail in the coffin for being on their own and IBM buying them out after IBM loosing grounds with their power pc to Apple, I recon IBM has a score to settle.....

Who knows what the next 6 months has install for everyone...

 

[EXT64]

Interesting. I was going to get Gigabyte anyway. It seemed like they put the most effort into their board.

 

[albundy2]

amd ain't gonna die. they'll just lurk in the oem market till they get their enthusiast s4i7 together. same as intel did durring netburst. this is the board makers problem. i wont build another amd system for a good long while, but that's because intel performs that much better for the same price. someday soon i hope enthusiasts will realize what a small, very small percent we are in the market.if you sell 5,000,000 and only make $1.00 each in profit, it's still more than everyone i know makes combined in a year. google "amd dying" for fun some time or "intel kills amd" be sure to note the date the article was written. i found multiple time's since bout 2000 that topic has come up. when you see on fox news hector walking out handcuffed and the official story is amd is closing, then beleive they are dead.

 

[endyen]

It looks like you need to check with AMD http://products.amd.com/en-us/RecommendedMBFilter.aspx before you buy any board.
Sad isn't it?
AMD will get the flack, even though they have it covered.
To the guy with the X2-6000, while it is a member of the 125w family, it uses less power than that. It may not mean you are safe, so keep your receipt. BTW the mosfets are for the chip only. Other devices on the mobo get thier power directly from the psu. (ie are not affected by the pwm cct)
There are only two boards that AMD says support thr 9850 (or at least that they have tested and qualified) Rather limiting IMHO.

 

[Hellboy]

I'd have to agree, Gigabyte is (currently) the best. Asus is pretty good. MSI has been running 24/7 for 5 years (some mofsets melted but I got them fixed). But peoples DONT BUY SAPPHIRE MOTHERBOARDS. BSODS, BIOS resets, graphics card incompatibilities, evil tech support. For 4 months I had to live with Floppy errors (I don't have one and needed to press F2 to countinue). If I changed anything in BIOS it would keep resetting until I found a solution "write saves to BIOS". Eventually I started having all sorts of incompatibles so I flashed the BIOS.

IT DIED

Had to cross-flash it with a Magic Pro BIOS (same board different colour) to make it work. Oohh not to mention Sapphire manual having really bad grammar and incorrect jumpers in the diagram. In fact by the end of the it I actually phoned Magic-Pro tech support (talk about being disparate). When I phoned Sapphire and asked them why the computer wasn't booting they responded with "Oh the PE-AM2RS690MH's 4 phase power thing can't supply enough power for a 45W processor so it can't boot".

CAN'T SUPPLY ENOUGH POWER TO A 45W PROCESSOR, right............. I believe you............

Now it works alright, kinda. Volume icon is nowhere to be found.

Sapphire = great graphics Sapphire = bad motherboards

Saying that, I have had a few Saphire Video cards go pop for no reason... One to avoid, Had problems with MSI boards, i try and keep away from them.....I put one in my Quad 6600 and its not happy....
Gonna change it for a Gigabyte motherboard, when i can be arsed...

Asrock motherboards are good too, for the budget end... seem to keep on going... Few troubles with Foxconn. ( Their nforce 4 motherboards were a night mare had five go wrong out of 30)...

Used EVGA, Very impressed although sparse on the manual front but it was one of the first 680i chipsets out...

Epox - yeah ok not much about now though. Used to like QDI but they went pony and had lots of failures so i walked away from them.... Intel motherboards are ok, never failed, but not exciting either....

Are DFI Landparty still around, havent seen one for ages, nore Supermicro motherboards ( in UK anyway ) for that matter.

Have sold Abit motherboards but they have become unreliable of late, hope this aint the trend....

 

[Amiga500]

Yeah it maybe the motherboard manufacturers fault, but its AMD's problem..

How do you work that out?



The mobo manuf's have to clearly list the power rating of their boards. Then the "problem" (which is really one of poor technical manuals and listing) is solved.




It will be Gigabyte, Asus, MSI etc boards dying, not AMD processors.

 

[snarfies1]

Saying that, I have had a few Saphire Video cards go pop for now reason...

Me too, now that you mention it... Hm.

 

[chunkymonster]

Actually, I think it's us, the readers, that should be "mad as hell...and (are) not going to take it anymore" for wasting our time reading that article. That has to be one of the worst so called "reviews" I have EVER read. Really poorly done and offering the reader no new information or fresh insight into the 780G mobos.

Our normal course of testing has us installing a wide variety of processors in each board, regardless of the target market....Granted, it will probably be rare that a user will purchase a 9850BE to run on this platform...

Regardless of the target market? WTF?! C'mon, might as well have wrote they were going to use a hammer to ensure the processor is firmly seated in the socket.

In fact, it is not strictly a board problem either, but rather a design issue...The vast majority of the 780G boards have a three-phase or four-phase PWM circuitry design. These designs are completely acceptable for the 45W, 65W, 89W, and 95W TDP rated processors; however, drop in a 125W TDP processor such as the Phenom 9850e or 6400+ X2 and you are asking for trouble.

This is reason enough to call this article complete garbage and ignore any conclusions. He might of well have written, "we're going to install a processor we know for a fact will not work just to see what happens and then tell you about how we knew it would not work." What's ironic is that the author goes on to write just that, but much more diplomatically...

Although we were testing with a Phenom processor, that does not mean the manufacturer had qualified the board with this particular CPU

What a load of crap....

What did we learn? Do not trust the product information and specification pages in the vast majority of cases. The CPU support pages tell the real story - some better than others, but in all cases the 125W TDP processors are not supported by the current 780G motherboards

What's really sad, is that this guy fried some mobos to "report" out on something that he knew would happen all along. DUH!!!

It is difficult to understand the point of the article. If the intent of this article whas to "enlighten" the reader about the need to read the mobo's CPU support list or if it was to highlight compatibility issues, the author and article fail miserably in both instances.

Sad, sad, sad...and some poeple call that journalism? Puh-leez...

 

[zenmaster]

Actually, I think it's us, the readers, that should be "mad as hell...and (are) not going to take it anymore" for wasting our time reading that article. That has to be one of the worst so called "reviews" I have EVER read. Really poorly done and offering the reader no new information or fresh insight into the 780G mobos.

Regardless of the target market? WTF?! C'mon, might as well have wrote they were going to use a hammer to ensure the processor is firmly seated in the socket.

This is reason enough to call this article complete garbage and ignore any conclusions. He might of well have written, "we're going to install a processor we know for a fact will not work just to see what happens and then tell you about how we knew it would not work." What's ironic is that the author goes on to write just that, but much more diplomatically...

What a load of crap....

What's really sad, is that this guy fried some mobos to "report" out on something that he knew would happen all along. DUH!!!

It is difficult to understand the point of the article. If the intent of this article whas to "enlighten" the reader about the need to read the mobo's CPU support list or if it was to highlight compatibility issues, the author and article fail miserably in both instances.

Sad, sad, sad...and some poeple call that journalism? Puh-leez...

I can only assume your rant is based upon your anger that it appears most of the 780g Mobos are turning out to be poor selections for enthusiast computers?

I don't believe it's self-evident that simply dropping a CPU at Stock Voltage into a Mobo will fry the Mobo in seconds. I would presume the manufacturers would build in some type of voltage protection regulation.

Even a very small OC of supported CPUs could easily leed to the power consumption of CPUs that are nearly identical except for an extra 100-200Mhz in speed.

The author also stated they are in the midst of a full-fledged review of those mobos.
From what I have seen, this is very useful and very important information to the posters.

I have never seen such issues with other AMD boards with the CPUs pushed well beyond 125w.

Clearly, the Mobo-Makers rushed these systems out the door w/o proper testing.

 

[homerdog]

@ chunkymonster: I think the point of the article was that the product information and specifications for these motherboards was, for the most part, misleading. It wasn't made clear on the specifications pages that installing a 9850e would fry the motherboard. In fact, in some cases it wasn't even mentioned that said processor wasn't supported. In the case of the ECS board, it is implied that the 9850e is supported: ECSA780GM-A (V1.0)

The A780GM-A is ECS Black Series platform based on the best combination of the new AMD 780G and SB700 chipset plus support for the latest Phenom quad core processors up to HT 5200 MT/s with Hyper Transport 3.0 technology links and integrated DDR2 1066* memory controller on the latest AM2+ platform.

This is an outright lie unless you somehow don't define the 9850e as one of the "latest Phenom quad core processors."

Sure, this isn't AMD's fault, but as it has been stated before, it is a problem that they will have to deal with.

 

[Hellboy]

How do you work that out?



The mobo manuf's have to clearly list the power rating of their boards. Then the "problem" (which is really one of poor technical manuals and listing) is solved.




It will be Gigabyte, Asus, MSI etc boards dying, not AMD processors.

Errrrrr..... financially !!!

If the platform blows up around AMD processors then they wont sell any.......

 

[jimmysmitty]

@ chunkymonster: I think the point of the article was that the product information and specifications for these motherboards was, for the most part, misleading. It wasn't made clear on the specifications pages that installing a 9850e would fry the motherboard. In fact, in some cases it wasn't even mentioned that said processor wasn't supported. In the case of the ECS board, it is implied that the 9850e is supported: ECSA780GM-A (V1.0)

The A780GM-A is ECS Black Series platform based on the best combination of the new AMD 780G and SB700 chipset plus support for the latest Phenom quad core processors up to HT 5200 MT/s with Hyper Transport 3.0 technology links and integrated DDR2 1066* memory controller on the latest AM2+ platform.

This is an outright lie unless you somehow don't define the 9850e as one of the "latest Phenom quad core processors."

Sure, this isn't AMD's fault, but as it has been stated before, it is a problem that they will have to deal with.

I agree tyhat chunkymonster goes too far to protect AMD and or the mobo makers but one thing is wrong with your post. Now you are right that what they state is a lie. Support for the latest Phenoms is a lie. But their CPU support page does not list the 9850BE as a supported chip.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Support/CPU_Support_Model.aspx?detailid=866&MenuID=69&LanID=0

But still some people don't look or care and kaboom. Caps go off.

 

[Amiga500]

Errrrrr..... financially !!!

If the platform blows up around AMD processors then they wont sell any.......Duh.... Geddit

Pretty warped view there.



The mobo works with the CPUs (up to 95W) in the OEM low-end target market (i.e. where they are gonna be sold, they work well) - AMD won't have a problem shifting their chipsets - users that go to upgrade will have a problem when they fry their motherboard.

Gigabyte et al need to clearly label what their boards can and cannot do, if they don't, they will find themselves having to provide replacement boards.


Heck, it'll only mean AMD have to provide more chipsets to the likes of Asus, not really bad for them at all.

 

[homerdog]

I agree tyhat chunkymonster goes too far to protect AMD and or the mobo makers but one thing is wrong with your post. Now you are right that what they state is a lie. Support for the latest Phenoms is a lie. But their CPU support page does not list the 9850BE as a supported chip.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Support/CPU_Support_Model.aspx?detailid=866&MenuID=69&LanID=0

But still some people don't look or care and kaboom. Caps go off.

True, but it sure is misleading to claim support for the latest Phenom quad core processors when in reality this is not the case. A little * on the product page noting that processors with a 125W TDP are not supported would be a simple fix.

Something tells me that if the manufacturers had known their boards would fry when paired with a 9850e they would have worded their processor support claims a bit differently. RMAs are not good for anybody.

Switching gears here. Given AMD's inability to compete performance wise with Core2, they are forced to sell their extreme edition CPUs (at least power consumption wise) at a price point that is generally reserved for the "mid-high end." While it may be true that a QX9770 won't run on a G33 motherboard, the odds of somebody pairing a >$1200 processor with an entry level motherboard are very low. It is far more likely that someone would pair a ~$250 9850e with a ~$100 780G.

So now I see three ways to fix this:
1) As I suggested above, update the 780G product pages to reflect their inability to cope with 125W processors. This is the easy and most likely fix.

2) Improve the MOSFETs on 780G motherboards. This is more desirable in my eyes than 1, but unlikely due to the increased costs associated with it.

3) The ultimate solution, AMD gets its manufacturing process under control and no longer requires 125W for a $250 processor