Originally posted by sammorris:

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It is a bad thing. A BIOS flash very nearly fried one of my CPUs.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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It Auto-set the core voltage to 1.75. This was no bad reading, the CPU was idling at 70ºC.

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Originally posted by theonejrs:

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It's the biggest reason that after I set everything and re-boot, I go right back into the setup and check the voltages in the PC Health section, before it actually runs and can hurt something!

Russ

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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No, it means a case of using proper BIOSes, not betas. Unfortunately for a large majority of boards, and the vast majority of Gigabytes, Beta BIOSes are the only ones that will run new chips properly. Once Gigabyte produce a beta BIOS that works with all new CPUs, they do not final it into a proper release, they leave the beta up, bugs and all. This one nearly cost me £250.
On top of this, it's a pretty well publicised fact that with Asus, you stand to brick your board with half the BIOSes they publish.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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This aside, is it now expected to have to update the BIOS on a board as casually as installing one in the first place? Nobody seems to have considered you shouldn't have to do it.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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For new CPUs, but not for ones the board was designed to work with from the outset! Besides, while a new socket is a pain in the arse, considering how old Socket 775 is, I think it's wise for a new socket. The i7 and i5 don't use the same socket because of their differing functions. Ultimately, the i7 wasn't really an end-user platform, it was more server-grade, as reflected in its performance specifics. The i5 is the more standard fare version of the technology. Considering the confusion of AM2, AM2+ and AM3, for the consumer, I see i5 and i7 being if anything, simpler.

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Quote:

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What confusion? The only thing that's not backwards compatible at the moment is the AM3 only Phenom IIs. There's a remarkably broad range of CPUs that work in AM2 and AM2+. I think AMD has the better idea by far!

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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I had to do a BIOS flash for my 780G board to work with the 7750BE, And Gigabyte is really good about that. All of my Gigabyte boards came with dual BIOS so you can flash back over if you ever get a failure. And checking the settings is something you should ALWAYS DO. You shouldn't have to do it but the fact is YOU DO. That's something I learned to deal with years ago now.

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What confusion? The only thing that's not backwards compatible at the moment is the AM3 only Phenom IIs. There's a remarkably broad range of CPUs that work in AM2 and AM2+. I think AMD has the better idea by far!

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Actually IIRC the AM3 Phenom IIs work in AM2+ boards. The 720 BE is being sold as an AM3 part buty I know someone using one happily on an AM2+ 780G board. It's the AM3 motherboards that aren't backwards compatible.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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I think the i7 was initially designed as a server grade technology, but when Intel saw what ridiculous levels of performance it could offer the gaming and multimedia markets, it was rebranded into what it is now.
The Athlon 64 X2 is what formed the backbone of what transformed my interpretation of PCs as tools into what it is today. The P3 system I first owned, Hawk, amazed me at first, it was a cutting edge system for its time and cost a substantial amount. It was very long in the tooth when it was finally replaced by Eagle in January 2004, however, and for the last year of its use, it was an irritance to work with.
Once I moved to the Athlon XP, my taste for getting the best began to grow, and with limited finances I went about that completely the wrong way. Eagle II, the upgraded basic system which saw the Radeon 9200, stock case with a single 80mm fan and an inWin 250W PSU replaced with an X800 Pro, Superflower case and a Qtec 450W PSU was a disaster, and during the summer before I left for university, it was to be replaced with a system designed to be high performance from the outset, enter RMS-Alexandra, v1.0.
A PC I had designed from the ground up, aesthetics to my taste, amazing performance, and I knew the system inside out as I designed it. No curiosity over strange OEM parts. This was no off the shelf machine, this was like a child. This is exactly how my relationship with PCs has been ever since, and it was this system that caused that. Sentimental yes, ludicrous I suppose, I'd get all sorts of strange looks from people if I went around telling people, yet I bet deep down a few people who post here can relate to what I'm talking about.
The relevance of this to the discussion is that the Athlon 64 (or more specifically, the X2) being my main work CPU was short lived. When the A8N-SLI SE in this PC began to fail after 5 months, the 'experimental' machine I was building to play with overclocking a Core 2, had to become my main system, cue RMS-Alexandra v2.0, complete with, I shudder, a P5N-E SLI which I chose over a GA-965P-DS3 for familiarity reasons with Asus hardware. The X2, and a new board, an A8R-MVP, went into my new file server, RMS-Darkstar, and played second fiddle to the Core 2 until its eventual sale to Greensman after the demise of the A8R-MVP in 2008.

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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AFAIK it's the other way around. The AM3 chips have the DDR2 memory controller to use AM2+ boards. But AM2+ chips don't have the memory controller for DDR3 which keeps them from using AM3 boards.

I'm sure there was an article on this somewhere:

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option...d=9739&Itemid=1

Best I could find at short notice.

Though I could be completely wrong. I'm still using AM2+ remember :P

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