GA-790XTA-UD4 and AMD Phenom II X6 1090T crashes if using 6 cores

[giobaldac]

Hallo everybody,
I'm reporting a problem with GA-790XTA-UD4 motherboard and brand new AMD processor Phenom II X6 1090T. As you probably already know from an older post, the MB itself doesn't support this processor out of the box since the BIOS must be flashed to version F3 (using ANOTHER 4 core or less processor, do figure the hassle!!!!). :mad:
Obviously I had to get it done from the reseller. Then I installed Windows XP SP3 and everything seemed to work normally, except for Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra costantly crashing while trying to play any movie (DVD or Blu Ray, doesn't matter). :confused: It just crashed while scanning the movie structure so you weren't able to see anything. :muro:
At first I blamed Cyberlink and PowerDVD 9 ultra and I was almost ready to but the new version 10. I downloaded a demo but it crashed in exactly the same way. I then tried a demo of the latest Corel WinDVD 2010 and (guess what) it crashed too in exactly the same manner. :doh: Then I understood. It had something to do with the motherboard or the OS and only regarded disc recognition. The whole process was tested on 2 different BD-drives so you can't even blame it on the optical drive. I performed a search on the internet for similar problem (obviously nobody had that problem) then I performed a lot of reinstallation of software and operation system to see if I could come to terms with the problem. :muro:
A complete waste of time. Then I had the flash of genius. Could it be the 6 cores? Shocked I tried to disable 2 of them and everything magically started working and still works as a charm. Now I ask: someone here made a big mistake. Either AMD released a processor with 6 cores without releasing a valid driver for Win XP SP3 to support it, or Gigabyte needs to deliver a better compatible BIOS, or Microsoft should release some patch for the new AMD processor (I remember back then something even worse that forced Microsoft to hastily release a patch to support some new 500 MHz AMD processor on Win98 SE). This is my two cents. As of yet, disabling 2 cores everything works. However using a 300 euros 6-core processor with only 4 cores, thus downgrading it to an X4 955T that costs about half the price, doesn't seem an intelligent buy to me... I hope somebody provides a fix to this situation soon. :cry:

[devil_mcry]

Hallo everybody,
I'm reporting a problem with GA-790XTA-UD4 motherboard and brand new AMD processor Phenom II X6 1090T. As you probably already know from an older post, the MB itself doesn't support this processor out of the box since the BIOS must be flashed to version F3 (using ANOTHER 4 core or less processor, do figure the hassle!!!!). :mad:
Obviously I had to get it done from the reseller. Then I installed Windows XP SP3 and everything seemed to work normally, except for Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra costantly crashing while trying to play any movie (DVD or Blu Ray, doesn't matter). :confused: It just crashed while scanning the movie structure so you weren't able to see anything. :muro:
At first I blamed Cyberlink and PowerDVD 9 ultra and I was almost ready to but the new version 10. I downloaded a demo but it crashed in exactly the same way. I then tried a demo of the latest Corel WinDVD 2010 and (guess what) it crashed too in exactly the same manner. :doh: Then I understood. It had something to do with the motherboard or the OS and only regarded disc recognition. The whole process was tested on 2 different BD-drives so you can't even blame it on the optical drive. I performed a search on the internet for similar problem (obviously nobody had that problem) then I performed a lot of reinstallation of software and operation system to see if I could come to terms with the problem. :muro:
A complete waste of time. Then I had the flash of genius. Could it be the 6 cores? Shocked I tried to disable 2 of them and everything magically started working and still works as a charm. Now I ask: someone here made a big mistake. Either AMD released a processor with 6 cores without releasing a valid driver for Win XP SP3 to support it, or Gigabyte needs to deliver a better compatible BIOS, or Microsoft should release some patch for the new AMD processor (I remember back then something even worse that forced Microsoft to hastily release a patch to support some new 500 MHz AMD processor on Win98 SE). This is my two cents. As of yet, disabling 2 cores everything works. However using a 300 euros 6-core processor with only 4 cores, thus downgrading it to an X4 955T that costs about half the price, doesn't seem an intelligent buy to me... I hope somebody provides a fix to this situation soon. :cry:


hi, can you try with windows 7 or vista?
if you run stress test with 4 cores (with xp), can your systems run without errors ?

otherwise, if with w7 or vista it doesn't run @ x6 I think there are a hw problem, probably cpu. I think is not probably that gigabyte release a bios for tuban support and it can't work with tuban ... :confused:

[giobaldac]

Windows7 64bit apparently works with 6 cores but stability seems an issue with some programs. Point is I have of program I need/want to use and some of them are a little old and Windows7 is not recommended. Anyway I tried to playback a Blu ray movie with PowerDVD 9 ultra under Windows7 64bit with 4 cores only and it crashed after 30 minutes. This happened twice. And didn't happen at all on Windows XP SP3 32 bit (and this should answer your question about stress tests). My opinion is that several programs need fixes in order to run correctly under Windows7. Since I bought PowerDVD 9 and Cyberlink doesn't officially supports it for Windows7, since they released PowerDVD 10 which is certified to run on that OS, and since the upgrade isn't exactly cheap, you may guess my point. Should I pay to upgrade every program I use in order to make it work under Windows7. :( Or should AMD, Gigabyte or Microsoft release a patch for X6 processors under WinXP? I guess the second option would be much better for me. :D I'm not asking my new CPU to run as a rocket under WinXP. I'm simply asking that I get what I paid for (6 cores) and that, when a piece of software is programmed with multicores in mind, it detects the extra cores and maybe uses them. But, moreover, I'm asking that non-multicore software still works and doesn't hang the system...

[devil_mcry]

if your programs aren't compatible with w7, this is a big problem !

I think that the problem is only winXP (no gigabyte or amd) (if under w7 64w it works fine), in this case, you can only hope for an wXP update or patch for programs ...

:( wait other feeds from users who use these programs, maybe there is some tips & tricks

do you have try to run this programs with setting affinity to one core?

[giobaldac]

The point is that Windows XP is somewhat discontinued and there's not much hope Microsoft will do something. They're surely concerned about selling as many copies of Windows7 as possible, and have little interest in supporting newer hardware on older operating systems. Let's hope they do something, however.
Regarding your advice "run this programs with setting affinity to one core".
Does one such option really exist? I would be really glad to find it. But, as I previously said, what crashes is not exactly Cyberlink PowerDVD rather thar Corel WinDVD. What crashes is some mistery DLL (Windows API or device driver) that handles the optical disc contents before passing them to the playback software. What could possibly PowerDVD do if his simple request (give me the DVD/Blu Ray file contents) simply crashed for unknown reasons?

[devil_mcry]

The point is that Windows XP is somewhat discontinued and there's not much hope Microsoft will do something. They're surely concerned about selling as many copies of Windows7 as possible, and have little interest in supporting newer hardware on older operating systems. Let's hope they do something, however.
Regarding your advice "run this programs with setting affinity to one core".
Does one such option really exist? I would be really glad to find it. But, as I previously said, what crashes is not exactly Cyberlink PowerDVD rather thar Corel WinDVD. What crashes is some mistery DLL (Windows API or device driver) that handles the optical disc contents before passing them to the playback software. What could possibly PowerDVD do if his simple request (give me the DVD/Blu Ray file contents) simply crashed for unknown reasons?

Steps to set set affinity to applications in Windows XP

Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open Windows Task Manager, and go to the Processes tab and look up for the process name that you want to set the affinity for. If you don’t know which process is associated with which application, go to the Applications tab and right-click on the application name and select Go To Process.
In the Processes tab the specified process will be highlighted. Now right-click on the process and select Set Affinity.
In the Processor Affinity dialog, you will see 32 check box options, only the number of cores in your processors will be available to set affinity to.core
In a single dual core system you’ll see CPU 0 and CPU 1, from here you can check or uncheck the core you want the application to use.
Steps to set set affinity to applications in Windows

Set Processor Affinity in Windows Vista or in XP using Command Prompt.

Go first to “Run” from the Start menu and type “cmd” to enable processor affinity for a particular application.
Type “cscript %SystemDrive%\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/[insert application name]/SMPAffinitized TRUE” at the command prompt.
Type “cscript %SystemDrive%\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/[insert name of application pool]/SMPProcessorAffinityMask [insert mask value]” at the command prompt to bind a particular application permanently to a specific processor.

from

http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-set-processor-affinity-to-an-applicationor-process-in-windows-vistaxp/
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Processor-Affinity.html

beyond that I can do, I never used those programs, I have GA790XTA UD4 but I do not have Tuban

[giobaldac]

Thank you very much. Will try! Most probably in the weekend.
Regards!