AMD Motherboards: Processor Support
by Wesley Fink on June 28, 2005 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Updating DC BIOS & Revision E Memory
Updating BIOS for Dual Core with an x2 ProcessorThis brings up the nagging question that is always asked when BIOS upgrades are required for certain CPUs. What do you do if you have a board that needs a BIOS upgrade for dual-core and you only have a dual-core chip? We asked AMD this question and got the following reply:
"If the BIOS you are working with (original BIOS in the board) supports a rev E single core (AKA... 90nm as most new boards should), it will allow you to flash the BIOS to a BIOS that supports rev E dual core. In my experience, a DC processor with single core rev E support will run fine, but only as a single core. If the BIOS doesn't support rev E (In other words, you may have a good board, but the BIOS is pretty old), you will likely need to install a pre-rev E (AKA-130nm) AMD processor to flash the BIOS.
I'm told that if a customer can't flash their BIOS, many mobo vendors will mail out the BIOS chip to them (if it's not soldered down, obviously)"
Revision E Memory Controller PLUS 4 Dimms =
The memory timings, in the end, are controlled by the memory controller, and in the case of Athlon 64 that memory controller is on the processor. We had already been told by AMD that Rev. E would feature a new and improved memory controller. In fact for months prior to the release of the new Revision E Athlon 64 processors (Venice, San Diego, Toledo) we have been hearing that the new memory controller on the Rev. E chips would allow the use of 4 dimms at the faster 1T Command Rate.
With the 4200+ x2 in our DFI LANParty nForce4 SLI test bed with a working dual-core BIOS (6/23/05) we tried 4 matched PC3200 OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 dimms. Four double-sided (or double- bank) dimms STILL require a 2T command rate in this configuration, so the limitation stills remains. Four DS Dimms in a Rev. E still need a Command Rate of 2.
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DEMO24 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
I know someone with a venice chip, and 4 gigs of ram in a DFI SLI-dr board and hes running 1T. I dunno why yours doesn't work for you. There are specific BIOS dates in the 5/10 form for different kinds of memory. Maybe that would fix it.KeithDust2000 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Wesley, I mean why are there no benchmarks availableusing the new capabilities? I´m very interested in that!
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
#24 - The FX57 is also 90mm Rev. E. We mention several times in this article that the new Rev. E memory controller adds additional asynchronous memory speeds to DDR500. This is not just a feature of FX57, but applies to all Rev. E processors including x2.The BIOS has to implement the new programming for the additional memory ratios to be available in BIOS.
KeithDust2000 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Hi Wesley! What´s up with the 533Mhz Memory support included in the FX-57?"The shift to the 90-nm SOI process also means that the FX-57 differs in some small ways from the FX-55. Originally, the FX-55 supported just DDR-400 speeds; the FX-57's memory controller now will interface with DDR-533, and has some other small improvements, Seckler said."
http://www.extremenano.com/article/AMD+Ponders+Dua...
No one seems to be covering that!?!
KeithDust2000 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
testOldDummy - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
nice article, just a good general roundup of topics. well doneMyrandex - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
My motherboard has X2 support but it isn't listed. It is the Giga-Byte K8N Ultra SLi. From the Giga-byte website:F3 2005/6/28
Support Athlon 64x2 dual core CPU
Googer - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Thanks Wes,I have been looking for an article like this one for little while now.
matthewfoley - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
supposedly there is a beta bios out for the MSI K8N neo2 Platinum that has dual core support...http://www.lejabeach.com/MSIK8N/7025nms19B5.zip
matthewfoley - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
This is an interesting thread on the nF3 dual core topic...http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...