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LOSTCIRCUITS
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| AMD's Phenom Processor - Beyond Erratum 298 | |
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(Author: Michael Schuette, January 1, 2008) |
ASUS M3A32-MVP
As mentioned earlier, we used ASUS' M3A32-MVP as the platform of choice for benchmarking not just the Phenom processor but also the "Spider" platform. Given the final volum of this article we did not spend much time on the idiosyncrasies of the chipset itself but concentrated on the CPU alone. For what it's worth anyway..
It was also mentioned in this article that according to AMD's marketing documentation the Spider platform boards are backwards compatible with any AM2 CPU, the VRM controller can switch from dual plane to single plane and vice versa. It would be interesting to see whether there will also be a workaround for the existing AM2 boards, provided that the manufacturer releases a BIOS update to recognize the 10th generation AMD CPUs.One caveat in this case is the dual plane voltage supply to the core and NorthBridge that might throw a monkey wrench into the compatibility, however, it might be worth looking into it anyway. Particularly the Foxconn "C51" board as probably the best nForce 590 motherboard out there could become a very interesting choice, especially since there is a chance that nVidia does not feel obliged to cripple the BIOS according to Erratum 298. This would be especially important since AMD's AMD OverDrive utility supposedly only works on the "790/770" chipsets. Don't bet on it, though!
Anyway, without any further ado, here is the low-down on the ASUS board we used in conjunction with AMD OverDrive.
In short, the M3A32-MVP is a single processor board featuring four DDR2 slots, 6 USB slots, Firewire and eSATA onboard. Audio is provided by Realtek in analog and S/PDIF form and network connectivity through the Marvell Yukon network adapter. The potentially high TDP of the high-end Phenom processors and separate power planes between cores and NorthBridge is taken care of by a rather elaborate voltage regulator module based on ST-Micro's L6740L Hybrid controller supplying four phases to the CPU and one phase for the NorthBridge. Northbridge in this case refers to the logic comprising the Cross-bar switch, the L3 cache and the two DRAM controllers (DCT0 and 1). The controller is capable to auto-sense the type of CPU used and depending on whether it is an AM2 Athlon processor or a Phenom CPU, enter serial VID (SVID) or parallel VID (PVID) mode for single or dual plane voltage supply, respectively to the CPU and NB. In dual plane mode, the NB section is always left in HighZ.
AMD's OverDrive Utility
nVidia was the first company to set an example for overclocking right out of the box with their EPP overclocking utility, followed recently with the expansion into Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA). Intel has released XMP, short for Extreme Memory Profile where the profile stored in the memory SPD can be used to overclock the entire system. Moreover Intel is also releasing a software-based overclocking utility to the OEMs for customization of individual features and look and feel. In that scenario, it is only logical to see AMD follow in the same footsteps with the AMD OverDrive (AOD) utility. Aside from some auto-overclocking, another benefit is that by clicking on the "turbo" button in the upper right corner of the GUI, the color can be changed from green to yellow or red, signifying slow, medium or fastest system performance. More precisely, in "green" mode, the "safety patch" for the bug of erratum 298 is not overridden, whereas both the "yellow" and "red" mode will negate the safety patch on the OS level.
Performance sliders primarily affect the PCIe bus, in addition it is possible to create profiles that can be saved in a user-defined library and then loaded on demand. In general, AOD appears to work quite well except that it doesn't seem to be executed on some motherboards (e.g. Gigabyte's MA790FX-DQ6), and doesn't seem to like switching back from Red to Green mode.Given the fact that the green mode is supposedly the "safe" setting and at the same time the only setting at which we experienced stability problems and system crashes we can't help but call it a case of poetic justice. Or maybe it was just irony of fate.
 (AMD Phenom 9600 2.3GHz (HD9600WCGDBO)) |
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