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Phenom: Phew! it works

ASUS BIOS update

So, the project was originally quite simple. Upgrade the AMD Athlon processor to a Phenom processor.

The Gigabyte motherboard supported the AM2 socket system, therefore replacement of the processor by simple drop in and out. Oh, but computers are never that easy.

After failing to boot with constant long beeps: I decided to purchase an ASUS motherboard. After upgrading the BIOS (see above), the machine seemed to boot OK. Certainly boot and stay stable enough for timing tests of Athlon vs. Phenom in a previous post.

Adding the extra 2Gb of RAM just pushed the poor system over the edge. Random reboots and general instability. My first thought was to blame the Phenom. How wrong I was.

Thanks to this comment from Tim, I hunted down the documentation of the ASUS motherboard and found that the Corsair memory I was using was not certified! 5-5-5-12 vs 4-4-4-12 timing memory is not a small thing. Also, there are voltage differences between the memory sticks.

Corsair 4-4-4-12 vs 5-5-5-12

So CM2X1024-6400 did not work, but the CM2X1024-6400C4 is working perfectly well – 4Gb installed on a Vista x64 24×7 and under CPU load.

Lesson learnt: read the supported memory documentation!

Oh, and the Phenom is a good 20% or so better transcoding video. Phew.

General Melchett goes Vista Ultimate SP1

sp1_rtm

Whilst General Melchett has been Vista x64 from birth, we Microsoft people were recently given early access to the final Vista Service Pack 1.

Last night, I downloaded the updater. Backed up General Melchett. Double clicked. And watched.

So, firstly a note to all. When the installer says 1. Several Reboots and 2. About an hour – both are highly correct. Please be patient.

After an hour. A restart to the login screen. Service Pack 1 is installed.

Everything is working. Networking, Remote Desktop. It is difficult to quantify any gains quickly: however the formal list of changes is worth a read.

Phenom in ASUS Motherboard: Works

IMG_1695

After the desperate fail of the Gigabyte motherboard with the Phenom processor last week: I indulged my motherboard addiction, took Michael Kleef’s valuable advice and purchased an ASUS.

Specifically, the ASUS M2A-VM HDMI board. Installed, upgraded the BIOS and it worked. Booted first time. In fact, a few driver installs later and the machine is working.

Performance change: As this machine is primarily a video capture and encoder machine, transcoding is an excellent measurement of performance change.I have a standard 5Gb video that I transcode using Microsoft Expression Encoder with a common output setting.

ASUS M2A-VM AMD Athlon 6000+ : 17m27s

ASUS M2A-VM AMD Phenom 9600 BE : 14m09s

This is a 18.9% improvement in performance.

The Windows Processor performance on the Processor changed from 5.4 to 5.9 (as you would expect)

Now to reconfigure the drivers for the digital video capture.

Decimation of the Smart One Thousand

Before you get all concerned about the word ‘decimation’, read the etymology.

OK, now we see we are getting 10 groups of 100 people thinking (thanks for correcting my spelling, Uncle Mike) deeply about topics important to the future of Australia in a radio-sound-byte year (why not 2022. Nah, 2020 just sounds better)

On the internet side of this weekend in Canberra I’d like vote up six independent, smart thought leaders in the future of technology space. Cameron Reilly, Stilgherrian, Mark Pesce, Peter Black ,Laurel Papworth, Duncan Riley

AMD Phenom Phantom on Gigabyte Guts with no Glory

IMG_1666

According to documentation, you should just be able to socket replace your AMD Athlon (Socket AM2) with an AMD Phenom. Boot, and watch the bits fly. Well, theoretically.

In my Gigabyte’s case: this was not to be so. The smaller Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H (blah!) is in our Media Center PC. This combination has been working well in production for months.

Continuous beeps (longish) from the Power-on-self-test (POST) indicates either power, memory, motherboard or somesuch failure. The Gigabyte documentation is 7 lines long and 7 pages short on helping.

OK, reading the procedures on forums and stuff.

It’s not the power supply. I can swap out the Phenom and Athlon with the same “everything” and it boots.

The Gigabyte online specifications state that the 9600 Black Edition (BE) is supported with a recent BIOS update. My BIOS has been at this update for the last 2 months in anticipation of the Phenom processor.

In short, wait people. Or at least research a little more than I did. Colleagues report that ASUS motherboards are work OK.

Oh the joys of hardware.