CPU

Infamous TLB Errata, Genetically Inherited in the Phenom Family

Recent reports show that all Phenom processors feature the L3 cache issue

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

30th of November 2007, 10:47 GMT

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From 'do you dare' to 'how did they dare'

Little took AMD's Spider platform launch to transform into a gigantic failure, and leave them with chipsets, GPUs and no CPUs. Spider is a good choice of words, because AMD dropped the 9700 just as the spider drops its limbs to go away. The 9500s and 9700s finally made it to the market, luckily, because they were slower than the unfortunate 9700s.

AMD stated at that time that the OS freezing could be easily

solved through a BIOS update for the motherboards to host the 9700 series, but the fix would only cut the processors 10 percent in terms of performance as it instructs the processors to avoid the affected L3 cache data.

Newer information however shows that the 9700 line is not the only one to get crippled by the L3 cache issue. Phenoms running at 2.2 and 2.3 GHz are also affected but the 2.4 GHz Phenoms made it obvious that something was not OK.

Advanced Micro Devices are working at a micro-code update that is supposed to fix the L3 issues. They are to implement the update to any processor in the Phenom series from 9600 Black Edition and beyond. The micro-code update is scheduled to be available no later than the end of January next year, when the Phenom 9900 (2.6 GHz) is supposed to be unveiled.

For the customers that have already purchased a Phenom processor, the micro-code update will be packaged into the next version of the BIOS update for the motherboard. Although the BIOS update is alleged to "cure" this genetic disease in the Phenom family, there is still one issue to overcome.

Most users refuse to perform BIOS updates because they either refuse to take the chance of destroying the motherboard (should anything go wrong during the update), or they do not know how to perform this simple, yet intricate task if no Windows based utility is available. Eventually, though it's highly unlikely, AMD could retire the currently sold motherboards for a major and free BIOS update.

TAGS:

AMD | Phenom | TLB Errata | 9700 | Spider

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