Are Bulldozers this terrible or do I have a bad motherboard?

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Rauelius

2[H]4U
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Ok, the secondary system in my sig is the machine I'm referring to. Basically during the Bulldozer Launch I picked up an 8120, and popped it into that ASRock 970x board. I got core failures and memory failures, did the stress test in AMD Overdrive and got those errors at most 20 minutes in. I RMA'd it and got a replacement and had the exact same issues. Popped in my 1090t and the system was back to flawless operation. So all this time, I've run the 1090t on that board with no issue. Last week the 8150 went on sale, and I know the chip is good at handbrake(a tad bit better than the 2500k I believe), having 16 threads to Rip movies could be useful (2600k and 8150 working together). My original thought with the 8120 was that AMD rushed these chip out and a bunch of bad ones got out, and I was unlucky twice...Well, I get the 8150, was fine for a couple days. Then I notice performance collapses in Dirt Showdown, and it starts crashing just like the 8120 I had about a year ago.

I couldn't have gotten 3 bad Bulldozers in a row? I've tried several different RAM modules(Adata, Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin), different videocards (GTX460, Radeon 5850, GTS450, GTX670, Radeon 6870, Radeon 4890, GTX275) different power supplies (corsair 750, BFG 1000Watt, Coolermaster 750, Seasonic 1200). My best assumption is that the board is bad...but my 955, 965 and 1090t work flawlessly with it.

I've updated the BIOS to the latest (1.4 and earlier had issues with BD chips) Tried two different SSD, a regular hard drive. Only thing I didn't do was run a Linux distro on it...but I'm done....

Could it be possible that a motherboard based on the 9xx series chipset that was made FOR BULLDOZER, be incompatible with bulldozer? Or is the board messed up and doesn't supply power correctly or cleanly enough for Bulldozer, but Thuban and Deneb aren't as sensitive?

I'm about to RMA the chip or buy a new motherboard (newer 990fx based board), I feel like it could be the chip, but are the odds better that I get 3 bad chips in a row(ish) or that the board has an issue with Bulldozers.

I've read of people using this board with Bulldozer in the NewEgg reviews, so is this just a bad board, or do people not test as meticulously as me?
 
If youve tried 3 different chips and have the same problem then its gotta be the motherboard. My 8150 has ran rock solid since I dropped it into my Sabertooth. So a faulty motherboard would be my guess even though the X6 runs fine on it. The FX procs suck down a lot more juice than the Phenom line did so maybe its this extra wattage thats breaking the boards back and causing it to screw up.
 
As said above its the motherboard if its all the same problems.. its funny you tried all that other hardware, but not another mobo.
 
+1 on bad mobo

Check over the heatsinks on the board. maybe a FET or something has poor contact or maybe even cooling.
 
I advise a Corsair H80 or H100 if you're going above 4.0. My old H50 hung with my 8120 until I got to 3.9 then I reached it's thermal capacity @4.0. I'm not familiar with your air cooler so you might be fine if it's good.
 
Trying another powersupply. Was hoping to play with it, but I'd be happy this just running stock. I wish Intel had a program as useful as Overdrive...Had a lot of fun with the 1090t.
 
lillimon04 said:
As said above its the motherboard if its all the same problems.. its funny you tried all that other hardware, but not another mobo.
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I really didn't want to buy a new motherboard, and that other stuff I've had in other machines. This is the only board I own compatible with Bulldozer. Really didn't want to buy a new motherboard.
 
I freaking hammered that 1090t on that board. Ran it at 4.2Ghz for a while and it was rock stable, but this 8150 crashes and burns when running stock...This is the third Zambezi I've gotten in a row...so either I've had bad luck with bulldozers, the motherboard is bad, or AMD has absolutely no quality control what so ever.
 
Maybe the BIOS is the problem. Itwas updated as you said, but maybe it isnt working for BD. I have a Asrock 970 MB but have not tried a BD in it.

Maybe do some searching on your motherboard and see if others have had the same problem.
 
Its rare to get one bad cpu. Ide say like the others are and look into the board bios updates and make sure everything is set correctly in it also.
 
Already flashed the latest BIOS when I ordered the FX 8150. This board worked amazing with my 1090t. Something I did try last night was disable the Turbos(3.9Ghz/4.2Ghz) and used a Coolermaster 750Watt PSU...Stable for an hour test. I was kinda pleased. Turned the Turbos back on and it was crash-city when stressed. When turbo'd I noticed it sat at 3.9Ghz for a good chunk of the time, and would occasionally drop to 3.6Ghz...Kinda like how the 2600k usually runs at 3.8Ghz...So it looks like it's probably how the board handles the power fluctuation with the turbo enabled. The FX appears to have a 3 Stage turbo (3.6/3.9/4.2) while the 1090t only had a 2 stage(3.2Ghz/3.6Ghz). When I had the 1090t on that ASRock 970x I ran it at 3.8Ghz/4.2Ghz(Quad-Core Turbo) and had no issues...So, is this entire board series bad for bulldozer or just mine that works perfectly for Thuban and Deneb but collapses under the weight of a bulldozer?
 
Rauelius said:
Already flashed the latest BIOS when I ordered the FX 8150. This board worked amazing with my 1090t. Something I did try last night was disable the Turbos(3.9Ghz/4.2Ghz) and used a Coolermaster 750Watt PSU...Stable for an hour test. I was kinda pleased. Turned the Turbos back on and it was crash-city when stressed. When turbo'd I noticed it sat at 3.9Ghz for a good chunk of the time, and would occasionally drop to 3.6Ghz...Kinda like how the 2600k usually runs at 3.8Ghz...So it looks like it's probably how the board handles the power fluctuation with the turbo enabled. The FX appears to have a 3 Stage turbo (3.6/3.9/4.2) while the 1090t only had a 2 stage(3.2Ghz/3.6Ghz). When I had the 1090t on that ASRock 970x I ran it at 3.8Ghz/4.2Ghz(Quad-Core Turbo) and had no issues...So, is this entire board series bad for bulldozer or just mine that works perfectly for Thuban and Deneb but collapses under the weight of a bulldozer?
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What kind of temps do you get with the 8150 OC'd? or at max turbo speed.
 
Hagrid said:
What kind of temps do you get with the 8150 OC'd? or at max turbo speed.
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Never had an opportunity to have OC fun with it, it wouldn't even run stock. I upped the voltage on the NorthBridge, but it still acted the same. I did get the Voltage to 1.45 and ran it on all 8 cores at 4.4Ghz, and it barely got into windows when aero just died. I fired up Dirt Showdown and saw graphical errors all over the place (happened with my 5850, GTX460 and GTX670)

I don't remember off hand, but I left it running open and the heatpipes on the Hyper 212+ were cool to the touch and the base was not very hot, no discomfort leaving my hand on the base of the 212+.. I think it was 35c maybe 40c, if I remember from overdrive correctly.
 
Someone told me to say away from ASrock on another forum so I went with the Gigabyte 990FX UA3 I totally recommend that board it's been solid since May.
 
You can try one of two things as I see it.

If Power Savings > Performance: Disable Turbo

If Performance > Power Savings: Set a fixed voltage and disable Cool n Quiet (I'm assuming that's what AMD still calls it)

Neither option is ideal of course, but either one is probably better than buying a new board.

If you're lucky, there will be another bios update that will fix the issue.
 
I recently built an 8150 on a GA990FXA ud3 with four matched sticks of corsair vengance low profile 1600. The first set of ram had a dead stick.The second set had one stick which intermittently produced every symptom of other components being at fault. After three long mem tests, a few windows tests and multiple attempts at loading w7 64 onto an ssd I was finally able to isolate it,while it was happening,running each stick one at a time,running puppy OS in ram and having puppy OS die.I think I will try the new Samsung memory.
 
Here's another vote for the Motherboard being the problem.

You've tried different RAM and CPU's and you've upgraded your BIOS, so the Motherboard is the next rational step.

AMD may not have the fastest CPU's with Bulldozer, but they are certainly not supposed to ave any real problems with stability.

Personally I don't have the greatest faith in Asrock products. They may be financially tied to Asus somehow, but they certainly are not rebranded Asus products. Much lower quality.
 
Ive never seen a CPU go bad, or not work out of the box. Motherboards/memory/hard drives though -- problems with them all the time.

I had an Asrock board that would not work with my HEC psu. weirdest thing, swapped PSU asrock worked fine. put HEC psu on another computer, it worked fine...

Though Ive had probably 5-6 asrock boards over the years and been very happy with them for price / feature set.
 
I LOVED this board with my 1090t. The Asus 790FX I had before would top out at 3.6Ghz/3.8Ghz(Triple-Core Turbo'd), but when I got this ASRock last year it was comfortable at 3.8Ghz/4.2Ghz(Quad-Core Turbo'd). I was happy when the 8150 at stock would game just as well(you know at resolutions that I actually play at) and rip DVDs as fast or faster than the 1090t. It also ran cooler because it wasn't overclocked. I did notice that with the FX 8150 the heatsing on the MOFSETs (the part on the motherboard behind the CPU with a small heatsink on it, I may be using the incorrect terminology) gets nuclear with the 8150 and noticed it was relatively cooler with the 1090t...both at stock. So, maybe bad MOFSETS that regulate power well for Deneb and Thuban but are tripped up by Zambezi?
 
Also, I tried applying the Bulldozer Patch for Win7, but it said I had no hardware that would require it. So, I'm guessing this patch was already rolled into Windows Update?
 
buttons said:
Ive never seen a CPU go bad, or not work out of the box. Motherboards/memory/hard drives though -- problems with them all the time.

I had an Asrock board that would not work with my HEC psu. weirdest thing, swapped PSU asrock worked fine. put HEC psu on another computer, it worked fine...

Though Ive had probably 5-6 asrock boards over the years and been very happy with them for price / feature set.
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I've had 2 socket A athlons go bad. The first just blue screened one day while I was browsing and never booted again. Like you, the last thing I suspected was the CPU so I troubleshoot everything else first. More than once, before finally swapping out the CPU and viola, everything worked again... Very odd and very sudden failure.

Second one was similar, blue screened one day, I could get it to reboot but could never get it stable. Didn't take me nearly as long to troubleshoot based on my previous experience.

I had a socket a Barton core that degraded to the point of being useless but I kind of did that on purpose.

I've had a couple Athlon 64s degrade over time from overclocking/over voting even though they never ran excessively hot. One would not OC very well anymore and another needed a slight voltage bump to remain stable at stock speeds.

My old Q6600 I thought was starting to degrade because I periodically needed to bump the voltage to stabilize a 3.2ghz overclock but that turned out to be the board degrading as I was able to hit 3.4 with relative ease when I put it in another board to test.
 
RamonGTP said:
I've had 2 socket A athlons go bad. The first just blue screened one day while I was browsing and never booted again. Like you, the last thing I suspected was the CPU so I troubleshoot everything else first. More than once, before finally swapping out the CPU and viola, everything worked again... Very odd and very sudden failure.

Second one was similar, blue screened one day, I could get it to reboot but could never get it stable. Didn't take me nearly as long to troubleshoot based on my previous experience.

I had a socket a Barton core that degraded to the point of being useless but I kind of did that on purpose.

I've had a couple Athlon 64s degrade over time from overclocking/over voting even though they never ran excessively hot. One would not OC very well anymore and another needed a slight voltage bump to remain stable at stock speeds.

My old Q6600 I thought was starting to degrade because I periodically needed to bump the voltage to stabilize a 3.2ghz overclock but that turned out to be the board degrading as I was able to hit 3.4 with relative ease when I put it in another board to test.
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Heh...My Q6600 is still running strong at 3.6Ghz...It's still an amazing processor.
 
Installed my FX 6200 today without issue running cooler then my old Phenom 2 945
 
OK, you applied the Win 7 patch, but have you loaded the latest bios for the MB ?
The FX's basicly require a different bios than the 1090T!
 
Has OP tried bumping vcore up yet? I think the BD vdroop spec is different than Phenom II. And pretty sure this same issue plagued launch on a few motherboards, if my memory recalls correctly. Use normal load line.
 
oldbrave said:
OK, you applied the Win 7 patch, but have you loaded the latest bios for the MB ?
The FX's basicly require a different bios than the 1090T!
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It amazes me how people take the time to ACTUALLY READ the OP...

Oh that's right, they don't..:rolleyes:
 
That motherboard has 4+1 power phases. Look for something with 8+2. The asus you linked is 6+2. I'd go up one step on the asus to get 8+2, I know the gigabyte ud5 990fx I got is 8+2 also.
 
Christobevii3 said:
That motherboard has 4+1 power phases. Look for something with 8+2. The asus you linked is 6+2. I'd go up one step on the asus to get 8+2, I know the gigabyte ud5 990fx I got is 8+2 also.
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Already picked up the Asus. It's funny...I technically have a nicer board for my 8150 than I do for my 2600k.
 
It was too much hassle. As a daily I run my stuff at stock, but I get into spurts where I wanna OC and see what my machine could do. Would like to have some fun with the processor, but if I have to go through all this fine tuning just to get it to barely run stable stock(I got it stable by disabling Turbo, but I couldn't OC at all without complete failures), I'd rather get a new board and hope that my 8150 isn't bad...I loved seeing a higher WMEI score on my 8150 (7.7) than my 2600k(7.6) and the handbrake times on the 8150 were amazing, would love to see how it does OC'd.
 
Got the Asus 990FX and testing it...I hope it doesn't add to the migraine I already feel coming.
 
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