Does Your AMD FX Platform BSOD with Steam? Read This.
Tom's Hardware has reached out to AMD and a few motherboard manufacturers to get an understanding of what looks to be a long stemming issue with its FX processors and Steam games.
You just purchased a new AMD FX processor and a 900-series motherboard. You load up your Steam games and sit down to enjoy hours of gaming when this happens:
Take some solace in the fact that you don't seem to be the only one having this issue with your AMD FX processor. A reader of Tom's Hardware, Scali, brought this problem to our attention. Scali wrote a nice little blog post about this BSOD back in October of 2011, which still seems to be plaguing users to this day. AMD quietly released a KB article that acknowledges the problem and recommends users update their firmwares to the most recent version, or, at minimum, the one listed in the article. AMD lists four platform vendors and links to specific motherboard models and their related BIOS updates.
| Minimum BIOS | Recommended BIOS for AMD FX Platforms | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asus | v1102 or V0901 | Crosshair_V_Formula Sabertooth_990FX | ||
| Gigabyte | Rev F7 | GA-990FXA-UD7 | ||
| MSI | Rev 11.6 | 990FXA-GD80 | ||
| ASRock | Rev 1.5 | 990FX Extreme4 | ||
Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock for feedback on this reported problem with Steam games and the FX processors. AMD states:
"We had identified an issue early on and provided the fix to all motherboard manufacturers. The application was attempting to check a register, which caused the instability. We modified the BIOS to resolve the issue as the most efficient way of providing a solution to users with no degradation in performance. Most motherboards would not have experienced the issue at all as their shipping BIOS would have included the fix."
As represented by the KB article, the fix was not in place for all motherboards prior to the FX launch, prompting the updated firmware roll-out. In addition, AMD says, "We would certainly be interested in knowing any instances where this is not the case, so we could work to resolve that issue for our customers."
Communication coming from the motherboard vendors themselves paints a slightly different picture than AMD's KB story. They confirm that the problem affects all 900-series platforms, and not just the ones listed by AMD. Because the problem involves FX itself, any machine with a Bulldozer-based CPU and without the fix could be impacted. All four vendors assure us that their most recent releases include the necessary fix, recommending all users install the most recent BIOS from their support sites. Is there still a chance you could buy a new motherboard without a fixed firmware? Sure. The manufacturers weren't able to tell us when supply of affected boards will turn over completely.
If you are currently running the latest firmware for your motherboard and are still having issues, or your noticed a performance hit after updating, please let us know in the comments section under this story and we'll pass on your feedback to AMD. Moreover, we will post an update to this piece if we hear anything new!
Update: AMD contacted us after our story went live to clarify that, one, the issue is limited to the Steam engine and does not affect local games or other applications. Secondly, AMD assured us this is not a potentially widespread issue but a long resolved issue through the available update, it’s easily countered with, what AMD says is no impact on performance. AMD is willing to help try to resolve the issue for those who may encounter it for any reason.

The i5-2500K is NOT a cheap CPU. It's not exorbitantly expensive, but there is no way that a $200+ CPU is cheap and most certainly not very cheap. Highly effective, yes, but not cheap.
all mb's have bios problems even with SB or IVB chips. i cant tell you how many times a customer brings in a system that they have tried to build and thinks it has a defective mb, memory slots or gpu when all was needed was the latest bios fixes. asrock gen3 is notorious for this and look at the gigabyte ud3h board didnt certify some memory with IVB, particularly gskill.
it just makes me laugh sometimes, but then again, laughter is good for the soul.
i used to be a big AMD fan, but switch both platforms GPU and CPU cus of AMD just not competing
AMD can't compete in GPU's? LOOL, until the GTX680/670 came out, Nvidia was getting trounced by AMD for the last 5yrs. Get real noober.
1st part, I really doubt Intel has anything to do here..
2nd part AGREED
AGREED... that dude is probably from another planet
all mb's have bios problems even with SB or IVB chips. i cant tell you how many times a customer brings in a system that they have tried to build and thinks it has a defective mb, memory slots or gpu when all was needed was the latest bios fixes. asrock gen3 is notorious for this and look at the gigabyte ud3h board didnt certify some memory with IVB, particularly gskill.
it just makes me laugh sometimes, but then again, laughter is good for the soul.
The 7970 is on-par with the GTX 670 at 2560x1600 and is on-par with or beating the 680 at 5760x1080 and higher resolutions. Other than an occasional driver issue (Nvidia is having them too right now, look up the Kepler stuttering problem if you want to see an example of one of Nvidia's problems), AMD is doing very well. That Nvidia is only slightly more power efficient also keeps them from beating AMD much even in that regard. Nvidia's only significant win is their pricing which is continually undercutting AMD and forcing price drops.
In a few games, the 7970 even beats the 680 even at 2560x1600 (only because of Kepler's VRAM bandwidth bottle-neck. If the 670/680/690 cards had more VRAM bandwidth, they would then never lose at 2560x1600 to the 7970). Of course, don't take my word for it, have a look at what Tom's and Anand had to say and beyond that, the benchmarks themselves:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga/5
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200-5.html
The i5-2500K is NOT a cheap CPU. It's not exorbitantly expensive, but there is no way that a $200+ CPU is cheap and most certainly not very cheap. Highly effective, yes, but not cheap.
Or, you could update your motherboard's BIOS.
Some people were too ignorant to update their BIOS and Tom's wants to know if anyone using a BIOS that is said to have the fix is still experiencing problems and if the fix incurs a performance penalty like the TLB BIOS fixes for the affected Phenoms did.