Anandtech - 780G CPU incompatibilities + 780i/790i data corruption

Dont forget these as wel :X48 test notes:

a) Chipset defaults to tRD values that are excessively loose and are not competitive with NVIDIA’s new 790i. The problem is most MB manufacturers do not allow this to be specifically tuned in the BIOS.

b) DMI interface (x4 PCI-E link) is sloooow….X38/X48 should have been paired with ICH10(R), which will be PCI-E 2.0 compliant on the link interface.

c) Haven’t found an Intel X48 board yet that will handle 8GB of DDR3 properly, even though this is a major bullet for chipset support - board or memory makers? (We need to test this on the Intel DX48BT2 that just arrived.)

d) Chipset runs HOT…might even be hotter than 790i. Intel should have shrunk this thing long ago!

I raed this, and its not good for the mobo makers. They made it really hard to see which cpus work or dont, or not at all. These arent the enthusiasts mobo anyhow, theyll be coming soon

Yeah, especially since its not their fault. They have everything listed properly, but the board makers themselves have it mucked up

Ok, so given these issues, what are some reasonably safe Intel s775 and AMD AM2+ mobos? By "safe," assume latest chips, but only mild overclocking.

Agreed.

Well, the 780G line was really made for low power/HTPC computers, however, it is not acceptable that they did not make the electrical beefy enough to handle these new chips. Oh well, I'll still buy one in a few weeks. I have a short memory and plan on using a < 65W processor w/o OC.

Maybe its because Gigabyte are making the best motherboards now !!!!!

Its either Asus or Gigabyte for me, never experienced any problems with these manufacturers.....

In anycase overclocking a chip by a small amount, can only now hinder AMD.... As their processors have speed issues and overclocking issues anyway. With some cases the Phenom being out classed by a 6400x2....

Im now feeling sympathy towards AMD...

It might as well be their final nail in the coffin for being on their own and IBM buying them out after IBM loosing grounds with their power pc to Apple, I recon IBM has a score to settle.....

Who knows what the next 6 months has install for everyone...

amd ain't gonna die. they'll just lurk in the oem market till they get their enthusiast s4i7 together. same as intel did durring netburst. this is the board makers problem. i wont build another amd system for a good long while, but that's because intel performs that much better for the same price. someday soon i hope enthusiasts will realize what a small, very small percent we are in the market.if you sell 5,000,000 and only make $1.00 each in profit, it's still more than everyone i know makes combined in a year. google "amd dying" for fun some time or "intel kills amd" be sure to note the date the article was written. i found multiple time's since bout 2000 that topic has come up. when you see on fox news hector walking out handcuffed and the official story is amd is closing, then beleive they are dead.

Saying that, I have had a few Saphire Video cards go pop for no reason... One to avoid, Had problems with MSI boards, i try and keep away from them.....I put one in my Quad 6600 and its not happy....
Gonna change it for a Gigabyte motherboard, when i can be arsed...

Asrock motherboards are good too, for the budget end... seem to keep on going... Few troubles with Foxconn. ( Their nforce 4 motherboards were a night mare had five go wrong out of 30)...

Used EVGA, Very impressed although sparse on the manual front but it was one of the first 680i chipsets out...

Epox - yeah ok not much about now though. Used to like QDI but they went pony and had lots of failures so i walked away from them.... Intel motherboards are ok, never failed, but not exciting either....

Are DFI Landparty still around, havent seen one for ages, nore Supermicro motherboards ( in UK anyway ) for that matter.

Have sold Abit motherboards but they have become unreliable of late, hope this aint the trend....

Me too, now that you mention it... Hm.

I can only assume your rant is based upon your anger that it appears most of the 780g Mobos are turning out to be poor selections for enthusiast computers?

I don't believe it's self-evident that simply dropping a CPU at Stock Voltage into a Mobo will fry the Mobo in seconds. I would presume the manufacturers would build in some type of voltage protection regulation.

Even a very small OC of supported CPUs could easily leed to the power consumption of CPUs that are nearly identical except for an extra 100-200Mhz in speed.

The author also stated they are in the midst of a full-fledged review of those mobos.
From what I have seen, this is very useful and very important information to the posters.

I have never seen such issues with other AMD boards with the CPUs pushed well beyond 125w.

Clearly, the Mobo-Makers rushed these systems out the door w/o proper testing.

Errrrrr..... financially !!!

If the platform blows up around AMD processors then they wont sell any.......

Pretty warped view there.



The mobo works with the CPUs (up to 95W) in the OEM low-end target market (i.e. where they are gonna be sold, they work well) - AMD won't have a problem shifting their chipsets - users that go to upgrade will have a problem when they fry their motherboard.

Gigabyte et al need to clearly label what their boards can and cannot do, if they don't, they will find themselves having to provide replacement boards.


Heck, it'll only mean AMD have to provide more chipsets to the likes of Asus, not really bad for them at all.

All I am saying is AMD processors have had a rough begining with the Phenom as it is....

Now regardless of what, or who's fault it is.... This will be another reason AMD will not sell its processor, especially after false promises and the TLB fiasco....

You need a motherboard to make the chip work....Chipsets that can not run it properly is an issue that can not be ignored...

Imagine all pcs with AMD Phenoms and capacitors going pop every minute... In everyones eye AMD will tend to get the blame even if their guilty or not.... no one will build systems on a maybe it wont senario...


I'll bet you Intel are now raising one hand in the air and shouting YES, while doing cartwheels....

I have always felt that AMD have produced the next best thing to Intel ( the best alternative ).

It was other peoples chipsets that let them down...

The issue is not voltage regulation but current draw- that is what it looks to me, given their summaries. If you have a 125 W TDP chip at 1.25 volts Vcore like the Phenoms, it will draw 100 amps full-load. But a 125 W X2 6400+ at 1.40 volts draws 89 amps. The boards fried almost instantly when booting the 125-watt Phenoms but ran a while before the X2 6400+ killed them. This makes sense as electrical components will undergo resistive heating very quickly under an overcurrent condition but handle voltage increases much better: quadratic versus linear.

I do agree that the mobo makers needed to test the high-wattage chips in their boards OR put a disclaimer that their boards do not run 125-watt chips, such as the one J&W put on their 780G boards.

Nah...I just honestly beleive that the article was poorly written and that the author needed to meet a deadline.

After reading the specs and reviews at the release of the 780G chipset, I thought it was quite obvious that that 780G chipset was intended for the low-mid market and not meant for the enthusiast/high/overclocking market...really now, since when has a chipset with integrated video ever held its own int he enthusiast market?

I have an issue with the 780G--AMD won't support the platform with WIndows 2000 drivers this making the onboard video useless.

Most seem to be forgetting 1 simple fact. When the paper for those mobos was written the phrase "supports the latest phenom processors", ment the 9500 & 9600 chips only.
I have a socket A mobo, that states quite clearly on the box "support for the latest AMD chips" It wont even support 133mhz fsb, think it will support phenom?

That would make this article outdated long before it was published. Sad on AnandTech's part if that is the case

I still think that the product pages of these mobos should be updated to include the compatibility issues.

Well that ditches my idea of using a 780G with a 9850BE. Actually, I'd started to have doubts because Deneb is only 9 months away, but back on topic....(sorry!).

Could it be that AMD hinted at this when they recommended a 780G motherboard and one of the upcoming triple core B3's but said that you'd want a 770 or 790 board for a B3 Phenom quad core? As is, the 780G I bought is being used in my 7 year old's PC with an Athlon X2 4200+. Would it work with a 95 watt Phenom at stock? Makes me wonder if they're taking this platform thing too seriously, like you must have a 770 or 790 Crossfire board for a Phenom if you plan on overclocking.

Didn't you read Jaydeejohn's post? Intel mobos have issues too. As far as it goes, you didn't add, what else can go wrong for Nvidia? Don't be such a fanboy. What we need is honesty when mobos are marketed. That's something that AMD, Intel and Nvidia partners all need to do.

I've had mostly good luck with non-Nvidia chipset MSI boards, but bad luck with Nvidia. ECS boards are a no go for me, because they're bundled at Fry's with practically every AMD CPU (except for one B2 Phenom bundle with the ASUS 690G).

At any rate, I check the supported CPU's before ordering a board at Newegg. I don't trust Newegg's specifications page to be totally accurate. I trust the reviews about as much as I do the specifications page.

I'm playing it safe, I am so waiting for Deneb. 45nm has to be 65 watts and stock should equal anything the 9850BE can manage. By then, AM3 will be out too. I'm sorry I recommended a 780G with a 9850BE as the best budget solution allowing for upgrade to Deneb. It looks like the current crop of boards can't handle it.

What a bunch of alarmists, ya'll are.

If you guys had actually read the WHOLE article like I did yesterday, in the first few sentences this issue is described as NOT being a 780G only issue or even a board specific problem. This can also happen to an Intel board just as easilty as an AMD that is using a 3 or 4 phase board and someone tries to use a high TDP watt chip if it is not officially supported. The keyword not supported.

The main issue is most low budget boards are not really designed to support high watt chips, especially in overclock and that goes for Intel boards as well.

You get what you pay for folks, nothing new there. Move along people nothing to see here.

Um check again buddy. Support for Windows 2K is supposed to go up until 2010. Look here.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/l [...] fault.mspx

and here

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifecycle

Well, it looks like there may be an update to that article. The link is up on Anandtech, but it was dead last I checked. Maybe some of this will be cleared up.

I only labled you a fanboy because you jumped on AMD when it's not the chipset's fault. It's the motherboard manufacturer's support. It's a worse issue than the AM2 board upgrade path snafu. After all, a board manufacturer is not obligated to bring out a new bios to support a new CPU that arrives a year later on that socket.

They should be obligated to allow for the necessary voltage to support high end AMD CPU's scheduled to arrive within 30 days of the board's release. After all, 770 and 790 boards support 125 watt X2's and Phenom's, you'd expect a newer 780G to do so right out of the box. Since this isn't a bios issue, but a voltage issue, it can't be fixed on existing boards. So, some people found out the hard way.

Besides, you ignored issues with Intel and Nvidia boards, while jumping on the 'AMD did it again' bandwagon.

As far as it goes, I have a love/hate relationship with AMD and a bit of mild disdain for Intel's business practices. If I wait for Deneb, I just might go Nehalem instead. After all, I'm getting over my issues with Intel's past OEM rebate program.

Do you not see any factual problems with your post? Did you think for a minute past 'pounce on AMD' before you posted? Unless your reading comprehension's a disabling factor, it sounds like bias towards AMD to me. What does that make you but a fan of bashing AMD, even if you're not a fan of Intel?

Now, if there had been chipset limitations, then I'd be agreeing with you. That's simply not the case.

We aren't slamming the 780G chipset, we're slamming the motherboard manufacturers whose marketing leads people to believe they can put the latest Phenom's in at stock.

A 780G is a new board that came out a month before B3 Phenom's. The naming convention puts it in the same category as the 770 and 790. When I finally checked AMD's recommended boards for the 9850BE on their website, I found the list to be rather short, consisting of one MSI and one ASUS 790FX. It's all in how the manufacturer's want to save money that they skimped on the 780G's.

AMD recommended the 780G in press conferences for use with triple cores and did recommend a 790 for a B3 quad, so I'll be curious to see whether the 8750 triple core is 95 watts or not. At any rate, though this board's great for an HTPC (I want an HTPC later this year with a 9150 and a Blu-ray drive), it's also a budget board like my wife's 690G or my 690V.

So, the 780G boards (not the chipset) issues relate to voltages, to not being able to handle 125 watt AMD CPU's at stock. It's not an overclocking issue at all.

I will agree with you there. But I don't see so many people bashing the board as much as they are questioning the details on the manufactuers websites. Some state support for the "Latest Phenom Prcoessors" and the 780G was released withing the same time era as the B3 stepping chips.

This leads to the beliefe that there will be people out there that will just go on newegg.com or whatever and see this and that it does in fact support Phenom (normally no specific models are listed on these sites) and not look at the specific model support on the manus site. Of course a smart builder will check that but not everyone does.

Then this will lead to blown mobos and people complaining about how the mobo is crap and so on. Its like throwning a Q6600 into a G31 chipset, which normally wont support it, and it blowing and getting bad reviews from people even though the board may be decent for an HTPC like this one.

In the end, its sad to see how a good chipset can be limited in choice. But at least it will make a decent HTPC for those wanting it, as long as they stay away from the 125w TDP chips right?