Phenom Exposed! Shipping with flaky 3rd cores. - Page 3

That's normal. How long did it take for the FX chips to move to 90nm?
When AMD moves to a new node, they need at least a couple of steppings to get up to speed.

I've never heard of an NDA that precribes from telling people who you work for, or your tittle, so who is it, and what are you? Where's the plant?

Even when OP's board is the new AM2+ 790X board?

I'm just curious, how did you receive information like this?

EDIT:
Seems like those who are having problems also have Gigabyte board with 790 chipset (790X / 790FX). I'll keep look around if this only happens in Vista w/ Overdrive.

Brisbane has been out for over a year and it isn't showing any signs of ever outpacing Windsor.

Even if it could match the clockspeeds of Windsor, it is actually slower clock for clock (half the cache and slightly higher latency).

wow...this got carried way too far...

It was pointed out on these forums that there might not be much financial incentive for them to offer upgrades for their old boards. Upgrading an old board generates no income, I’m sure they’d rather sell a new board. They’re part of a talented industry that knows how to turn product, and I suspect that any ‘problems’ may be more motivational than technical in nature. I'm reluctant to believe that this is all a BIOS issue.

That is, unless you know something about the mobo industry that I don’t (very well possible ).

So now we just need a test in XP. That way people will stop saying its the OS. I doubt its Vista since Vista just feeds code to the CPU. Its the CPU that sends that back to Vista to say "Hey its not working right".

<pm>

My basic meaning is that Vista puts the thread through a processor and the processor of course processes it. If the program could not be completed it will show as an error. If the error is very bad it results in a BSoD or freeze up or restart.

LMAO

How about AMD Pre-Production Phenom 9600BE X3?

Only difference is that C2D works.

Then that looks like a problem with that first particular Phenom 9600, not a product-wide defect like some have been saying. If all of the Phenoms were crapped up, then swapping in one Phenom 9600 for another would not have made one lick of difference.

How so? I think it's downright hilarious.

No way it's a motherboard problem. Here is a (partial) list of the motherboards which have this problem...

MSI K9A2 Platinum
Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
ASUS M2N-sli Delux (this last one is confirmed to have the latest TLB patch bios)

As MU said, still could be a software (vista) issue. Or a CPU issue. And since somebody reported that people can swap CPUs and get rid of the problem, that pretty much rules out software issue. What else is left?

Thunderbaron was still the best one so far.

AMD 9600 Blue (screen) Edition mate, its all the rage got one yet?

Dont people remember, bigger numbers are better - higher ghz = better, higher cache = better, higher power (consumption) = better, higher blue screen is also better and the main feature, its all the rage.

After doing a rather extensive web search, this seems to not just be related to the phenoms, but there are reports of 4000+ and 6000+ athlons as well that exhibit this 'phenomenon'. (pun intended).

So could this indicate that a minor process failure has finally reared up and has caused major issues with the shrink from 90 mm to 65 mm? I'm no expert here, but from the anecdotal evidence it does seem to be a bit more pervasive than just the phenom line.

the problem can be combination of few factors
like people wrote befor, it isd not only deign, not only manufacturing and not only process.
but it certainly be combination of few factors: marginal design that would be OK with perfect manufactoring and/or testing. the design may be "on the egde" and then with too wide manufactoring variability, there is high percentage of phenoms that have this flow. most are still functioning om stock speed, but fail with small OC. some are failing even on stock speed, and some would fail only with much higher frequencies. in such cases, especially when trying to save the yiled numbers, testing is complicated - if they put the limit too low they will throw away too many good units, if it is too high they will miss some units which crush even on stock frequency. it seems that AMD blew up with this one as well, and put the limit too low.
maybe in later stage at least the testing was improved, and then later phenoms are OK

Speaking of name calling, AMD called their sub-standard processor "Phenom".


Sorry, but I just can't express with words how disgusted I am with AMD utter lack of execution.

Not the Brisbane's too! That thought makes me want to stick with Windsor until 45nm arrives and shows itself to be top notch. For me, it doesn't have to be as fast as Intel, but I want good quality control. Right now, I'd be more inclined to buy a 65nm triple core Phenom than a quad core. I can't see them accidentally disabling a working core and leaving the bad core enabled.

As for names making fun of AMD's Phenom's, that reminds me of the names we called the Pentium 60:

Spentium

Repentium

They're the only ones I can recall offhand. Two things that got people miffed at Intel back then; the errata that wrecked havoc with using the calculator in Windows, and Intel's claim that you'd better buy one anyways because we aren't coming out with anything faster for quite awhile; then they came out with Pentium 75's and Pentium 90's.

AMD and Intel really copy each other's playbooks, both the touchdowns and the fumbles. Imagine what would happen if they both fumbled in the same generation?

Let's hope the B3 Phenom's not only correct the errata, but don't have bad core 2's (unless they're triple core Phenom's with core 2 disabled). Xbit labs reports AMD will be releasing B3's in April:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/d [...] ource.html

They should do so on April 1st, but deliver a winning product. Then the joke would be on everyone who'd thought they'd lost all hope of recovering from a year of fumbling (except for ATI, they've had a good year).

No! not the shaft! anything but the shaft!!! lol

I think people are simplifying things way too much. It could easily be a combination of any number of things ie process, mask, mb.....

What if it only effects Chips that were shot using this Rev of this mask for this layer which are edge die produced between these dates that ran on this tool and were delayed XX minutes or more between these steps and run on 4 layer PCB motherboards with this trace exceeding this length.

Lets be realistic, we are not talking about making a cheeseburger.

fyi when i got mine i had the same problem but it was expected. ive had it happen a couple times before during different upgrades. i always had to reinstall, so i expected to this time as well, and sure enough i did. go figure? you make a drastic change to your system and you have to reinstall. thats fairly typical.

fyi when i got mine i had the same problem but it was expected. ive had it happen a couple times before during different upgrades. i always had to reinstall, so i expected to this time as well, and sure enough i did. go figure? you make a drastic change to your system and you have to reinstall. thats fairly typical.

Yep, and if you can't overclock a "black edition", then all that particular marketing term really means is an attempt to put AMD back in the black. This is worse than Intel's whole Netburst mishegoss, which Intel fans seem to think is just ancient history. What's shown with both situations is how far they go to sell parts that don't cut it and can't be sold on merit.

I'm an AMD fan, but not a fanboy. It's fine if they sell triple cores that have one bad core disabled. That's honesty and meeting a market that might exist, especially as Microsoft has expressed interest in optimizing for odd numbers of cores.

It's not fine if a design issue at 65nm, or a QA issue gets enabled bad cores out into the marketplace, especially if those bad cores aren't on Gateway's but are in "enthusiast" marketed parts. IMHO, this just sounds like a QA issue and I doubt that many black editions have this problem, but the fact that any do is really sad.

I want AMD to succeed, and not just to drive down prices on the Evil Netburst Empire's finally good processors. With a viable AMD, we have competition, innovation and reasonable prices that allow profits to be made by both companies. Without AMD, we have Intel, and I don't want to return to circa 1995 pricing.

Like I said, I'll get two B3 triple cores when they arrive. That's the only 65nm Phenom part I'll trust right now. What I really want are the 45nm parts, but they're some distance off. Still thinking of a Q6600 for my wife, as her graphics and modding would benefit, but both my PC and our kid's would do perfectly well for games with just AMD.

Now all I need is to get that Antec TPQ 850 or 1000 with a 6+2 so I can finally install that MSI factory overclocked 3870x2. ATI's success makes me think that they should have bought AMD instead of the other way around. AMD with ATI suits in charge might just be a viable company.