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Tracking Down The AMD "Processor Bug"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the complex-causes dept.

tercero writes: "over at the Gentoo Linux website there is an update on the AMD processor bug mentioned here. The sum up is that AMD claims it's not a bug with the Athlon processor, but with the motherboard. More detailed information can be found on this LKML post." An Anonymous Coward points to a similar explanation at Linux Weekly News. Update: 01/25 01:25 GMT by T : Daniel Robbins from Gentoo clarifies: "AMD is not calling this a 'motherboard' issue, it is an interaction between a feature of the Athlon called 'speculative writes' and the design of the GART, which is not cache-coherent. It's a 'Athlon/cache coherency/GART' problem, not a 'motherboard' problem."

8 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. 1st AMD fanboy post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    1st!

  2. this is something.. by otuz · · Score: -1, Troll

    ..that mac users dont have to worry about. :)

  3. although i SHOULD mention... by Narcocide · · Score: 0, Troll

    although i SHOULD mention that until VERY recently one of those boxes that happened also to be using an Aureal Vortex 2 soundcard (good soundcard... damn shame about the company) was experiencing lockups on sound play until someone discovered that you have to run this line:

    /sbin/setpci -d '12eb:*' 40.B=ff

    before using the soundcard in order to keep athalon systems with aureal vortex-based soundcards from locking up.

    frankly, i'm not even sure what the hell that line
    does, it's magic. i don't even know how you'd go
    about figuring something like that out, but at least now i can use my soundcard in linux... damn shame about windows. heh.

  4. Easy - Buy Intel. The cost of using 2nd party... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    This has always been problematic with the software industry having problems with AMD. The most recent is when the add-on/upgrade for EVERQUEST was released it didn't work entirely with AMD processors. They had to specifically patch the game to be compatable with AMD systems. This has happened with so many pieces of software in the past that it has put off my option to buy anything other than Intel anytime in the past and near future.

    It just isn't worth it.

    Lower costs typically means lower perfomance, and this just solidifes it more. I'm sorry if this comes across as a troll post, but it is reality and not made up bogus stuff. And no, I like competetion, but not from AMD. Anyone remember Cyrix? Even worse..

  5. I'm wondering if this issue is related by cecil36 · · Score: 2, Troll
    I'm running M$ Windoze on an Athlon 750. I noticed that the system crashes on a few occasions. Specific incidents where a crash can be predicted is when I
    • Play Diablo II on Battle.net. The crash occurs when I try to join an Open game after leaving another Open game.
    • Run M$ Word for an extended period of time. The crash comes when I scroll through a large document or paste a lot of text or images from another source.

    I also noticed that as I run programs, not all the memory used by the program is freed when the program terminates. I ran the System Monitor and it revealed to me this information. I'm not sure if this is Athlon or Windoze related. Anyways, I'm suspecting that the problem may not be limited to Linux boxes.
  6. How do I block these page lengthening posts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I am really getting sick of
    Read the rest of this comment...

  7. Re:This is embarassing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Are you a moron? Why would they label it a hardware bug when the hardware isn't at fault?

  8. Re:Easy - Buy Intel. The cost of using 2nd party.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    yeah, all these amd users complain when the 4-in-1 drivers break their OS. And it seems like every week there is a new VIA/AMD based problem. Via's poor agp, ide, etc. And every week there are new 4-in-1 drivers, or patches for this or for that. Didn't the SBLive and some VIA boards have problems with corruption or something of that nature? I think the biggest intel bug would probably be the foof bug, lol. You get what you pay for.

    Oh, and if AMD and their boards are soooo stable and awsome, why doesn't DELL carry them? How come my ISP don't run AMD servers? I bet like %99.5 of the real internet is run of intel or non x86 systems.