Does Your AMD FX Platform BSOD with Steam? Read This.

[doron]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]and yet you keep responding to them which leads me to believe you are almost as bias about a product then me. add to the fact you blatantly use a dollar sign to abbreviate Microsoft which proves you're bias even more also even if it is MS or steams fault at the end of the day its only one brand of CPU that is affected so what does that tell you?[/citation]

[citation][nom]blppt[/nom]"Here's my rule of thumb😀on't install new firmwares, ESPICIALLY WHEN THE MANUFACTURER WARNS YOU THAT IT MAY KILL THE PRODUCT."But...if you dont, you will never,ever be able to play a steam game again, LOL.Especially with new tech, this is a bad stance to take. Usually as a first adopter to a new mobo chipset or cpu revision, it will take a couple of BIOS updates to iron out the issues with said chipset/cpu. This was unusual in the sense that it took months before you were officially able to launch a steam-CEG game, it took that long for ASUS to get patched Bulldozer microcode into one of their higher-end mobos, the Sabertooth 990FX. Luckily, some intrepid programmer over at xtremesystems (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-276698.html?s=9e12563e206e22a88c9e13f5c0057e1a) took it upon himself to patch the problem himself. I reposted it on Hardocp http://hardforum.com/showpost.php? [...] count=314.[/citation]

A fanboy and a troll walk into a restaurant..

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]and yet you keep responding to them which leads me to believe you are almost as bias about a product then me. add to the fact you blatantly use a dollar sign to abbreviate Microsoft which proves you're bias even more also even if it is MS or steams fault at the end of the day its only one brand of CPU that is affected so what does that tell you?[/citation]

I do everything that I can to give an unbiased analysis of what I'm talking about. Give me one example of me actually being biased and you might have a point. You, however, say that I am biased just because I use a dollar sign when I type M$. Tell me, what have I said that was biased? Believe what you want, but I'm the one with the proof. When M$ makes a service pack that breaks compatibility, then they are the ones at fault because they are the ones who broke preexisting compatibility, not AMD.

 

[kyraiki]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]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.[/citation]

This. While the i5-2500k is a really good CPU and costs less than the 2600k, it is still expensive for most people who are not enthusiasts an/or know little about computers. Recently a friend asked me to help plan a gaming build for him. I told him to spring for the i5. When he saw the price difference compared to, say, an FX-4100, he refused. To many casual users, a processor is a processor; the only difference to them is the price.

 

[kyraiki]

Like it or not, Intel, AMD and Nvidia all have their issues. Nothing is perfect -- Just be thankful that issues like this get resolved.

 

[unksol]

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.

I guess... I mean if you don't know to update your BIOS you shouldn't be building a system... They say in the article there is no performance hit. I guess knowledge is always good and its hard to stick the blame on who should have put it out. AMD. steam. board manufacturers. steam is the most visible for the ignorants but its not steams issue.

we all know bulldozer sucked. Still. an article attacking AMD for a non AMD, BIOS related issue 6 months after it was fixed seems... well.... insane. let's have an article dragging up the Pentium 4 too. I am sure that's current and relevant /sarcasm

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]kyraiki[/nom]This. While the i5-2500k is a really good CPU and costs less than the 2600k, it is still expensive for most people who are not enthusiasts an/or know little about computers. Recently a friend asked me to help plan a gaming build for him. I told him to spring for the i5. When he saw the price difference compared to, say, an FX-4100, he refused. To many casual users, a processor is a processor; the only difference to them is the price.[/citation]
I certainly don't mean any disrespect but I wouldn't use AMD as a benchmark of what a CPU should cost until their CPU's are...well...high performing. ...and from what I've experienced, compared to Intel, they're not. That's not meant to be a slight, its just calling it like I see it. AMD shouldn't have labeled Bulldozer FX, IMO. The original FX processors were great...what we have from them today...is not.

I am not a wealthy man by any means, but I just don't see $200 as anything but inexpensive for a powerful CPU. $600+ is getting expensive to me. See, its all relative.

 

[pwnbroker2]

A Bad Day,
my second rule of thumb mommies should never buy their kiddies pc's only xbox's.

blppt,
0705 was released in august, thats the ver that shipped in december. i had no troubles with steam with that version at least on my bench system. 0901 was available at the first part of december, i flashed it on a bench system, run some tests and then called every customer i sold those too and made appointments to flash those machines(talk about customer service).

on new tech you sometimes have no choice but to do bios updates, not betas, but certified updates. like i said asrock is notorious for it. heck they even shipped boards knowing dang well that IVB would not work on those gen 3 boards without the new bios. people are having to send those boards back to asrock to have them flash them.

ive been in this business for 30 some odd years and i still get a chuckle at some folks on the interweb.

 

[captaincharisma]

I do everything that I can to give an unbiased analysis of what I'm talking about. Give me one example of me actually being biased and you might have a point. You, however, say that I am biased just because I use a dollar sign when I type M$. Tell me, what have I said that was biased? Believe what you want, but I'm the one with the proof. When M$ makes a service pack that breaks compatibility, then they are the ones at fault because they are the ones who broke preexisting compatibility, not AMD.

LOL yea biased AMD fanboi proof.

anyway it still doesnt matter it it is valve or AMD's fault this till hurts AMD just like MS service pack 3 hurt them. if news like this was widespread then AMD would be hurting pretty bad

 

[captaincharisma]

AMD says Steam is the problem. If steam is the problem then would not a steam update fix this problem? Not a bios update?Sound's like AMD is trying to push the blame on to some one.

how bad is it when you have to update your BIOS to make software work

 

[unksol]

It never ceases to amaze me how like light to the flies the Intel and Nvidia users are attracted to something AMD related.

It is universally accepted that BD was not all it can be, but Bulldozer is redundant soon and paper talk on PD is that it is looking rather good, new radical architectures are almost certain to run into teething issues, and this is the case here.

As for the GPU's, I had been a Nvidia fan for a very long time and honestly apart from the GTX 580 Nvidia have not done a thing over AMD/ATI since the 8800 days, as for the HD 7900 vs 670/680 I think you will find the 6month older lower clocked 7900's aptly stack up to the by standards power hungry Keplers, oh and the ghz edition 7900/7870 cards are out soon, that will more than redress the balance.

Totally with this. Bulldozer is behind. new architechture. power issues. we all know. it can hang for average users but not for "us". but tech is merging. GPGPU compute will play major roles. and bulldozer has legs to grow supporting that.

look at the budgets though. even when AMD was kicking Intel's butt they were way behind with resources. we all need AMD. they pushed the envelope. only guys in the game before arm. and when they were beating Intel to a pulp in performance despite Intel's illegal actions no one knew or bought except the builders who knew better. so they got screwed

I am no fanboy. AMD has always been the best value before so I went with them. now I need to recommend i5s. of course I hope AMD comes back swinging. we all should.

And with GPUs... you are kidding right? nvidia is 6 months late to the game. all their advantages are due to auto overclocking and crippling gpgpu compute. AMD releases a real series improvement. nvidia scrapes the bottom of the barrel to push out GK104. fan boys go nuts say where is 110, its held and ready cause AMD Sucks. nevermind AMD cards actually overclock with ease, are the same performance, have gpgpu compute, and have 150 bucks in free games... their mistake was playing it safe. not doing more aggressive binning and higher stock clocks when they had a 3 month lead.

and then we find out GK110 wont be available till 2013 because nvidia can't make it work and has to shove a 104 into the "pro" space to hold them over... the 8000s will be out by then....

 

[unksol]

this and how MS had to make a fix for AMD cpu's because it killed windows XP systems after installing service pack 3.

oh and last time i checked there is still some RISK when upgrading the BIOS.

LMFAO. you do know the same was done with Intel hyperthreading? new hardware needs new Software. and really anyone using XP is a joke at this point. and there's been no real risk with updating firmware for oh... 15+ years....

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]LOL yea biased AMD fanboi proof.anyway it still doesnt matter it it is valve or AMD's fault this till hurts AMD just like MS service pack 3 hurt them. if news like this was widespread then AMD would be hurting pretty bad[/citation]

Any proof? I told it how it is. You still have not given any proof other than your as of yet unfounded opinion. Who it hurts isn't the point, it's not AMD's fault and regardless of that, AMD fixed the problem. That motherboard manufacturers didn't install the fix on every AM3+ motherboard prior to shipping them is their fault and it reflects poorly on them, not AMD. You were trying to blame AMD for something that is not even their fault anymore.

Besides, I generally recommend Intel over AMD, so how could I be an AMD fanboy? You just a troll who can't even back up your claims.

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]how bad is it when you have to update your BIOS to make software work[/citation]

You have to do the same thing on a lot of Intel boards to get Ivy CPUs to work on them. These problems are all the fault of the motherboard manufacturers.

 

[unksol]

Here's my rule of thumb:

Don't install new firmwares, ESPICIALLY WHEN THE MANUFACTURER WARNS YOU THAT IT MAY KILL THE PRODUCT.

I bricked a Treadnet wireless router when I attempted to update it through Ethernet. There's a reason why my mom doesn't trust me with computers, even though her laptop is still using the vanilla Windows xp, McAfee OAS that hasn't be updated since 2009, and Flash 8.

Wow. that's... sad. I guess your mom was right. the level of ineptitude is stagering. she should really go to a local shop that can take care of her system since you cant

 

[94_xj]

[citation][nom]sarinaide[/nom]I... as for the HD 7900 vs 670/680 I think you will find the 6month older lower clocked 7900's aptly stack up to the by standards power hungry Keplers, oh and the ghz edition 7900/7870 cards are out soon, that will more than redress the balance.[/citation]

The power hungry Keplers? The 680 has a lower TDP than the 7970.

 

[silverblue]

The Phenom TLB bug, in the main, generally only affected people using virtualisation (though not solely limited to that). Additionally, the Linux patch resulted in a very small performance loss.

As most people here seem to be gamers, would disabling the fix actually cause any heartache?

CPUs have bugs, some larger than others.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]94_xj[/nom]The power hungry Keplers? The 680 has a lower TDP than the 7970.[/citation]

TDP does not translate directly into power consumption. The 680 uses a little less power than the 7970, but the difference is actually less than the difference in TDP. So yes, the 680 uses less power, but referring to TDP as proof is misguided and can be wrong. For example, the GTX 580 has a 244w TDP and the Radeon 6970 has a 250w TDP, yet the 6970 uses less power than the GTX 580, despite the 6970 having the higher TDP. The 7970 also has a roughly 250w TDP, yet also uses less power than the GTX 580.

 

[Sahand-Tabriz]

I have the same problem with my ASUS n61jq laptop (core i7 720) when using uTorrent application and having more than two torrents downloading... :-? interesting!

 

[blppt]

"0705 was released in august, thats the ver that shipped in december. i had no troubles with steam with that version at least on my bench system. 0901 was available at the first part of december, i flashed it on a bench system, run some tests and then called every customer i sold those too and made appointments to flash those machines(talk about customer service)."

I dont specifically remember what was wrong with the 0705 BIOS on my 990FX (performance issue IIRC), but I do know that the next upgrade (08xx) was the one that officially supported the FX-series Bulldozers, and it was the one that caused the BSOD issues. So I guess, yeah, if I had stuck with the 0705 it WOULD have loaded my Valve-CEG games, but like I said, I *believe* there were issues with that BIOS as well, which is why I flashed in the first place. Usually I wouldnt bother unless there was some issue or some feature the new BIOS introduced/fixed that I couldnt be without.

 

[blppt]

[citation][nom]doron[/nom]A fanboy and a troll walk into a restaurant..[/citation]

Ummm, how exactly am I a fanboy or a troll? I owned both an 8150 and a 990FX, and that was my experience with it. LOL. No fandom, matter of fact since I bought the 8150 and 990FX in lieu of a SB/Z68 system at the time (which could have been had for a similar price at the time) you could say if anything I was an AMD-centric person.

 

[jdwii]

Man its just gettin worse for AMD lately, with the under performing bulldozer, the latest top flight nvidia cards besting the high end HD 7xxx series, and now the mobo issues, things aint looking great for AMD at the moment

Oh yeah its so bad for amd right now? How long did it take for nvidia to come out with their new video cards, Heck i still can't find a 680 online at newegg. It does'nt matter if Nvidia made a card 10 times as powerful as amd can it used 1 watt and it only cost 99.99$ if no one can find one! Amd one this gen on sales just look it up nvidia lost a lot of money, by the time nvidia gets their whole series out Amd will be on their 8000HD series.

 

[halcyon]

The power hungry Keplers? The 680 has a lower TDP than the 7970.

Please don't make fun of my 7970's. They try as hard as they can...and they do alright.

 

[bryonhowley]

[citation][nom]Achoo22[/nom]I've read all the KBs, but I can't find any indication of what the actual issue is. What, specifically, is Steam doing that causes BSoDs on AMD platforms?[/citation]
It has to do with with Steam's CEG DRM. It only effects games that use Steam's CEG DRM and only with the FX CPU's. It does not have anything to do with CPU's lower than the FX like the 1055t even if you are running a 990 mainboard. So if you are getting BSOD with a Phenom II you need to look somewhere else for the problem.

It also is not just the 990 mainboards but any mainboard that can run the FX like my MSI 890FXA-GD70 which MSI got fixed in January of 2012. As far as performance my FX rig will play any game out there at 1080p on max/ultra with no problem's at all. Sad thing is that Steam and the game Dev's could have solved the problem for there customers buy removing the Steam CEG DRM from the effected games but they choose to sit on there hands. All in all it was really just bad DRM that was at the cause of the problem! While a permanent fix is welcome the whole problem could have been avoided buy the game dev's supper fast.

 

[pedro_mann]

[citation][nom]greeneman510[/nom]I get that from time to time. I run a 1055T and a Sabertooth 990FX. I thought it might be my hardware, but after reading this, I think it's the BIOS. Good thing I still have my i3 2100 handy.[/citation]
Because it is totally easier to swap out the entire motherboard than to simply flash the BIOS?

 

[sarinaide]

[citation][nom]unksol[/nom]Totally with this. Bulldozer is behind. new architechture. power issues. we all know. it can hang for average users but not for "us". but tech is merging. GPGPU compute will play major roles. and bulldozer has legs to grow supporting that.look at the budgets though. even when AMD was kicking Intel's butt they were way behind with resources. we all need AMD. they pushed the envelope. only guys in the game before arm. and when they were beating Intel to a pulp in performance despite Intel's illegal actions no one knew or bought except the builders who knew better. so they got screwedI am no fanboy. AMD has always been the best value before so I went with them. now I need to recommend i5s. of course I hope AMD comes back swinging. we all should. And with GPUs... you are kidding right? nvidia is 6 months late to the game. all their advantages are due to auto overclocking and crippling gpgpu compute. AMD releases a real series improvement. nvidia scrapes the bottom of the barrel to push out GK104. fan boys go nuts say where is 110, its held and ready cause AMD Sucks. nevermind AMD cards actually overclock with ease, are the same performance, have gpgpu compute, and have 150 bucks in free games... their mistake was playing it safe. not doing more aggressive binning and higher stock clocks when they had a 3 month lead.and then we find out GK110 wont be available till 2013 because nvidia can't make it work and has to shove a 104 into the "pro" space to hold them over... the 8000s will be out by then....[/citation]

Well I will still give the overall to Nvidia, but the AMD card advanced GPU technology forward a lot, the 7970 practically oblitrated the prior standing champion card (580) across the board, the issue was pricing, the GTX 580 was around $530 at the time, AMD perhaps overpriced the HD7970. With Kepler's release, the GTX 680 has the advantage on superior core and memory speed which is the reason for the better FPS, but I will wait on the HD RADEON GHZ edition cards, that way we can see just how good the GTX 680 is when Clock for Clock its on a even par.

Processor wise, modular design and GPU/CPU integration is revolutionary, its just not perfected. I am willing to bide my time, the AMD architecture suits my future needs more than power efficiency.

 

[sarinaide]

[citation][nom]jdwii[/nom]Oh yeah its so bad for amd right now? How long did it take for nvidia to come out with their new video cards, Heck i still can't find a 680 online at newegg. It does'nt matter if Nvidia made a card 10 times as powerful as amd can it used 1 watt and it only cost 99.99$ if no one can find one! Amd one this gen on sales just look it up nvidia lost a lot of money, by the time nvidia gets their whole series out Amd will be on their 8000HD series.[/citation]

Granted most things are never on time, Bulldozer was late, HD7000 was late with the 79XX series a few weeks overdue, and the still limited availability on the 78XX series, IVY was late as well so, being on time is not a customary thing. However it is nigh on 2 months now and I still struggle to find GTX 680 reference design cards on the market, something is not right. I have had two GTX 680's fail on minor overclocks, and with the reports of FAB issues and the rumours on chip degredation, maybe Nvidia have run into problems they are trying to remedy before mass release, but yes RADEON 8000 series is on the way, NVIDIA perhaps should be worried about AMD afterall, it is clear and cut the 8000 will beat the 600 series(if not the revamped 7900's), it will give AMD GPU design the opportunity to move to 9000 series development particularly with the 700 series no closer to initiation.