PaulH
Bright Spark
So a few days ago I got a random e-mail from a guy who claimed to be from Gigabyte without any words in it... attached was a file called "M79XTDUD4.f9a". It's some sort of new BIOS for my motherboard labelled F9A. Having no idea if this is safe I decide to reply to the e-mail but I've gotten no response since now.
A few days ago I went outside to check the mail hoping that the AMD T-Shirt I won at HardwareCanucks had arrived... nothing. But I did find this really weird envelope with an AMD logo on the top left and the word "Confidential" under it.... this got me really excited. sorry for the blurry image, I had shaky hands after receiving the envelope, was so excited..
There was something bulky inside the envelope so I decided to pry it open with my exacto knife and--OHH MYY---
This is a pic of it already installed. I wasn't going to install it at first until I knew what I was dealing with. I compared the back of this chip with an image on the internet and yep, it's an AM3 chip variant. I had no idea how I was going to run this chip on my mobo, then I remembered Gigabyte sent me that F9A BIOS via email..... oh boy, is this really happening--
Whatever this is, it's different. I don't see the word "Phenom II" on it and it doesn't really look like what AMD chips usually are. The year "2011" being on it excited me, along with the new stepping number. Only the main stepping number was on there and nothing else. The word "Bulldozer" echoed in my head.
There was only one other thing in the envelope and that was a piece of paper that had "Upload pics. Lots of them." written on it. I had no idea what that was all about but I was thinking some sort of go ahead to upload results!?
So I flash the BIOS to F9A on my 1055T, power down, and prepare for an at least hour long fiddle getting my NH-D14 off and on and this new chip in. When I powered on the system, it surprisingly actually made it to Windows!
I open CPU-Z but the model is not recognized. Then I realized I wasn't using the latest version (1.57). Oh boy, I am probably going to get in real big trouble for posting this, but here goes nothing:
First thing that wows me: the 4.2Ghz stock clock. Oh man, I had a feeling the 32nm production process would really give AMD major buttkick in terms of clock speed. Looks like everything is just like what has been said: 8 cores, 8MB L3 cahce, 2MB L2 per module.... among other things I noticed the HT link was working at 2600Mhz; I thought that wouldn't be working on the old 790 chipset. The new AMD logo in CPU-Z looks awesome. Looks like the chip runs at a very low ~1.2V. What does appear to be not working are power saving features and turbo core. Speed is stuck at 4.2Ghz all cores right now. I haven't been back in the BIOS yet though to check the options. Also: lol AMD dropped 3DNow architecture support, or I'm just not seeing it
I decided to run some benchmarks that normally gave Intel the head start first. The quickest one I knew of was PiFast, so I did that first, here's what I got:
also ran SuperPi but I was met with a BSOD mid-run and couldn't take a screenshot; upon reboot I tried SuperPi again and then other benchmarks like MaxxMem but they also resulted in BSOD. Perhaps I have some work to do getting this thing stable...
You heard that right. I'm posting from a PC running a next generation AMD processor! Overclocking results? Coming soon.... if I ever do get this stable!
A few days ago I went outside to check the mail hoping that the AMD T-Shirt I won at HardwareCanucks had arrived... nothing. But I did find this really weird envelope with an AMD logo on the top left and the word "Confidential" under it.... this got me really excited. sorry for the blurry image, I had shaky hands after receiving the envelope, was so excited..
There was something bulky inside the envelope so I decided to pry it open with my exacto knife and--OHH MYY---
This is a pic of it already installed. I wasn't going to install it at first until I knew what I was dealing with. I compared the back of this chip with an image on the internet and yep, it's an AM3 chip variant. I had no idea how I was going to run this chip on my mobo, then I remembered Gigabyte sent me that F9A BIOS via email..... oh boy, is this really happening--
Whatever this is, it's different. I don't see the word "Phenom II" on it and it doesn't really look like what AMD chips usually are. The year "2011" being on it excited me, along with the new stepping number. Only the main stepping number was on there and nothing else. The word "Bulldozer" echoed in my head.
There was only one other thing in the envelope and that was a piece of paper that had "Upload pics. Lots of them." written on it. I had no idea what that was all about but I was thinking some sort of go ahead to upload results!?
So I flash the BIOS to F9A on my 1055T, power down, and prepare for an at least hour long fiddle getting my NH-D14 off and on and this new chip in. When I powered on the system, it surprisingly actually made it to Windows!
I open CPU-Z but the model is not recognized. Then I realized I wasn't using the latest version (1.57). Oh boy, I am probably going to get in real big trouble for posting this, but here goes nothing:
First thing that wows me: the 4.2Ghz stock clock. Oh man, I had a feeling the 32nm production process would really give AMD major buttkick in terms of clock speed. Looks like everything is just like what has been said: 8 cores, 8MB L3 cahce, 2MB L2 per module.... among other things I noticed the HT link was working at 2600Mhz; I thought that wouldn't be working on the old 790 chipset. The new AMD logo in CPU-Z looks awesome. Looks like the chip runs at a very low ~1.2V. What does appear to be not working are power saving features and turbo core. Speed is stuck at 4.2Ghz all cores right now. I haven't been back in the BIOS yet though to check the options. Also: lol AMD dropped 3DNow architecture support, or I'm just not seeing it
I decided to run some benchmarks that normally gave Intel the head start first. The quickest one I knew of was PiFast, so I did that first, here's what I got:
also ran SuperPi but I was met with a BSOD mid-run and couldn't take a screenshot; upon reboot I tried SuperPi again and then other benchmarks like MaxxMem but they also resulted in BSOD. Perhaps I have some work to do getting this thing stable...
You heard that right. I'm posting from a PC running a next generation AMD processor! Overclocking results? Coming soon.... if I ever do get this stable!
