Tou can try using MMTOOL to extract them from another motherboard's BIOS.

alexanrs wrote:

Tou can try using MMTOOL to extract them from another motherboard's BIOS.

Yeah, I know that, but it's easier said then done... after a couple of hours of researching and downloads I came to the conclusion that 99% of motherboards that support FX CPUs do so natively - as BIOS updates for these boards do not contain any microcode updates... I downloaded dozens of bios updates for popular FX compatible motherboards (MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte) and none contained any microcode updates whatsoever. That leaves me with extracting said update from the a COMPLETE BIOS dump from a board that supports FX processors, but I do not own such a board.

Do any of you guys own an AMD FX compatible motherboard (AMD 8xx and 9xx chipsets) and if so, could I bother you for a BIOS dump?

.

If I remember correctly the AGESA for the FX CPUs was quite different from the that which the AM3 & AM2+ CPUs used and updating a BIOS would not be an easy task.
If you do want to attempt it, take a look at the BIOS updates for the Crosshair IV Formula & Extreme, Asus added support for AM3+ CPUs for those AM3 boards.

DrSwizz wrote:

If I remember correctly the AGESA for the FX CPUs was quite different from the that which the AM3 & AM2+ CPUs used and updating a BIOS would not be an easy task.
If you do want to attempt it, take a look at the BIOS updates for the Crosshair IV Formula & Extreme, Asus added support for AM3+ CPUs for those AM3 boards.

I had a look into the 3027 bios that supposedly enables the use of FX CPUs on the boards but there is no CPU microcode update there... in fact, the latest microcode update for AMD bioses seems to be from 2010, white FX CPUs were launched in 2011 if I recall correctly. Is it possible the AGESA module is stored somewhere else? I need AGESA 1.5.0.0 to run my FX 8320e.

UPDATE:

OK so I FINALLY found AGESA updates (ver v3.1.4.0) but I can't add it to my BIOS. MMTOOL said it's not a valid CPU Microcode update file. What do I do?

This file contains both the lates BIOS update for my board and the AGESA microcode update:

I also found AGESA microcode updates here: https://www.bios-mods.com/resources/index.php … %2FAMD+Agesa%2F

I can add the AGESA module with MMTOOL in the "Insert" tab, and it shows up as "POST" but I'm not sure this will do... any ideeas? The BIOS chip on this board is a tiny 8 or 10-pin chip and I don't have a board with a similar BIOS socket to hot flash it back if anything goes wrong...

UPDATE2:

Ok so I took a risk and added the AGESA module to my board's bios file and flashed it.

The Good: The machine Posted normally with the Athlon X4, displaying CMOS Checksum bad. This went away after I reset CMOS.
The Bad: It still won't POST with the FX-8230e 🙁

Why not simply get a cheap 40€ Motherboard ?
and sell the old one with the Athlon X4 ?

The cheapest mATX mainboard with FX support I could find is a 72e Asrock... don't have that kind of money right now.

For that price you might as well try to find a used SB i5 system.

alexanrs wrote:

For that price you might as well try to find a used SB i5 system.

Those still sell for a lot of money here - 200 euro at least. A good board + i5 2400 still go for well over 100 euro. If I want a mATX board (the machine's case is mATX form factor) it jumps even higher. Not to mention allmost no one has a Z77 or Z68 mATX board - and those who do will not sell them because there's no real reason to upgrade.

I do have a working i5 2500k CPU but no mATX board, and this machine NEEDS TO BE mATX. The only LGA1155 board I have is an Asrock z68 extreme3 gen3 witch will not fit in my Segotep TT cube chassis. I wanted to sell both at one point but I'm thinking I should hold on to them since I always sell stuff I don't use and cry about it later - like I sold my LGA1366 kit (GA-X58A-UD3R with USB3.0 + i7 920) a couple of years back, and now I have two LGA1366 CPUs and I can't find a working motherboard for them at a decent price.

I did find cheap boards that will take the 8230e - for 45-50 euro or so, but they are quite frankly crap. If I'm going to buy a new board, I want SATA 3, USB 3.0 and UEFI. No point in spending 50 euro for something identical to my biostar that just happens to support the FX series CPUs.

Here's a pertinent example - the ASRock 960GM-VGS3 FX supports the FX CPU line, but it has the exact chipset as my biostar, no uefi, no sata3 and no USB 3.0. Even the layout is 90% identical down to the arrangement of the cpu power circutry. The only real difference is sata port placement (worse on the Asrock), bios chip location and the fact that the asrock has a PCI-E 1x in place of a PCI slot in a location where it cannot be used due to the size of the video card. The Asrock costs about 48 euro, 51 shipped.

In contrast, I could go for the ASRock 970M Pro3 witch has UEFI, SATA 3 (6 ports), USB 3.0, two 16x PCI-E slots (one at 4x electrically), one PCI-E 1x slot and a PCI slot. It runs the newer AMD 970 chipset, has four memory slots instead of 2 and has VRM heatsinks. A MUCH better board for a total of 76 euro shipped.

So yes, I could sell both the X4 and the Biostar board for 40e (tried to sell them before, nobody would pay more) - I could also sell my i5 2500k + asrock z68 and I would have enough to buy a really nice motherboard for this machine and have money leftover, but I don't really want to. That's the point of this thread.

In any case, I opened a thread on bios-mods.com - maybe someone will be able to help me there.

Why not sell the 8230e and buy a micro-ATX LGA1155 for your 2500K? Outside of some very specific edge cases that would give you the better system and suck a lot less power.

washu wrote:

Why not sell the 8230e and buy a micro-ATX LGA1155 for your 2500K? Outside of some very specific edge cases that would give you the better system and suck a lot less power.

If the microcode update does not pan out my suggestion is to do this and sell your existing lga1155 motherboard as well. Then you could afford a really nice LGA1155 motherboard to pair with your 2500K

Nah, I'd rather wait a couple of weeks and buy a new board for the 8230e. My sister had an 8150 and it was good. Not as fast as intel's high end offering at the time, but fast. Plus these things are decent overclockers and with a little OC they will actually match an i7 2600 at stock frequency (for games anyway). I'm also curious to see how current multi-core optimised games do on this CPU. It sucked on release, but it might do a lot better now. Hell, even my athlon X4 at 3.120 GHz + R9 280x can squeeze out 20 to 60 fps in Fallout 4 on high-ultra if I reduce the rendering distance. Plus I'm an AMD fanboy and haven't owned a new AMD machine for years - shame on me right? 😜

Turns out I have two LGA1155 CPUs - the aforementioned i5 2500k and an i5 2400. I think I got the 2400 from a dead HP desktop - fried mobo and PSU. The CPU still works fine.

Out of pure curiosity I checked all large online e-tailers for a microATX Z77 board and could find NONE. No-one has them in stock anymore. The only thing I could find in stock is a shitty ASRock H61M-VG4 witch might be ok for the 2400, but wasted on the 2500k since it doesn't do overclocking. At all.

F*cking intel assholes - remember when you could OC your e2180 to 3.something GHZ on a decent G31 board? Well those days are gone, and intel will continue to milk us for money until someone does something about it. Hopefully AMD's ZEN won't flop like the FX series did. I mean come on, who tough it would be a good idea to put 8 ALUs and 4 mediocre FPUs on a chip - then run the L3 cache at northbridge speeds just to bottleneck the whole thing... I'm somehow inclined to think the FX series might perform better in FPU intensive apps with the L3 cache disabled.

washu wrote:

Why not sell the 8230e and buy a micro-ATX LGA1155 for your 2500K? Outside of some very specific edge cases that would give you the better system and suck a lot less power.

Well I don't really care about how much power it uses since I will be rarely using this machine - most likely it will be on when I have a friend over for a lan party or when my fiancee wants to play WoT. Plus I'm curious what the 8230e can do in modern multi-core optimized games.

Plus look at it... all shiny and chrome* - brand new never been used - I couldn't bare to sell it. Besides, I have a hunch these things will be pretty rare in 5-10 years time and if I don't hold on to one I'll regret it later. I'm going to hold on to it, and put the Phenom II X6 on my "to buy list" as well as the original Phenom X4, before these get hard to find as well. People are asking good money for an X6 even now, and I don't know if I'll be able to get one locally for less then 60-80 euro, since I've been keeping an eye out for them for like two years and prices have not changed much.

*sorry about the Max Max reference - been playing the game for a few days now and for some reason I keep getting the urge to speak like Chumbucket.

As an AMD fan, I agree 😀 heck my FX-8350 is fantastic. Make sure to turn God Rays off in your graphics settings if you have not already, that one setting can really screw up the FPS on ATI cards. I wonder how well that fx-8230e will overclock, my dad's 8120 runs on the stock crap HSF at 4ghz.

FPU is not the bottleneck imho... the whole cache subsystem is. Small write-through L1, high latency L2 and slow + high latency L3. Even old Nehalem is much better in these aspects.

I have god rays on full and the 280x doesn't give a sh*t. In fact, on a proper system (4GHz 2500k + Asrock z68 extreme 3 gen 3) it will play FO4 on ultra and Witcher 3 as well (all nv gameworks options off of course). The only thing holding the system back is the X4 620. Even with a serious overclock (and damn the Biostar A780L3 is a great overclocking and unlocking board) it still won't cut it unless I turn all object / character / landscape fade down to half.

P.S. - not particular to Asrock (MSI fan as of late) but they do make good high end boards that are priced a lot better then the competition - and they are pretty reliable. If I had my way I would buy a MSI 890GXM-G65 but I can't seem to be able to find one in stock anyware. MSI boards usually sell fast and e-tailers don't stock too many since most of their sales consist of ASUS and Gigabyte.

havli wrote:

FPU is not the bottleneck imho... the whole cache subsystem is. Small write-through L1, high latency L2 and slow + high latency […]
Show full quote

FPU is not the bottleneck imho... the whole cache subsystem is. Small write-through L1, high latency L2 and slow + high latency L3. Even old Nehalem is much better in these aspects.

WHY did they release it like this? I wonder if disabling the northbridge-speed L3 cache will show any speed increase...

kanecvr wrote:

I have god rays on full and the 280x doesn't give a sh*t.

Ah duh that makes sense. My HD7870 plays Fallout4 maxed out with some frame drops w/Godrays enabled so it makes sense that the 280x would not even break a sweat.

kanecvr wrote:

WHY did they release it like this? I wonder if disabling the northbridge-speed L3 cache will show any speed increase...

BTW how did you get the NB clock that high? I was thinking of trying to OC the northbridge alone and run benchmarks.

This screenshot is not mine, I found in on local PC forum. Unfortunately I don't own any 8-core FX.
Overclocking the NB (and L3 cache along with it, as the run the same clock) helps in some applications. Default frequency is 2000 - 2200 MHz for FX-8370 and lower / 2400 MHz for FX-9370, 9590. All FX should OC NB @ 2400 MHz no problem, maybe even 2600. All you must do is change NB multiplier in BIOS and maybe bump the voltage a little.

I'm a bit biased as I've had to deal with the crap AMD is currently putting out as server chips. The current opterons have the same crappy architecture as their desktop chips, but without the clock speed advantage. I run workloads that really can use multiple cores and don't use the FPU much (web, SQL servers, not games) and still see a 2.5 to 3 X per core advantage for Nehalem over Piledriver. Newer Intel chips are even better.

havli:
It's not just the FPU or the cache. Despite the dual integer units, current AMD chips only have one of most other important subsystems. Critical parts like the instruction decoder and branch predictor only have one per module. And since the integer units are weak but separate they cannot help each other like on Intel chips. On Intel chips all the individual ALUs can be dedicated to a single task or split up with hyperthreading therefore being able to adjust depending on need.

washu wrote:

I'm a bit biased as I've had to deal with the crap AMD is currently putting out as server chips. The current opterons have the same crappy architecture as their desktop chips, but without the clock speed advantage. I run workloads that really can use multiple cores and don't use the FPU much (web, SQL servers, not games) and still see a 2.5 to 3 X per core advantage for Nehalem over Piledriver. Newer Intel chips are even better.

havli:
It's not just the FPU or the cache. Despite the dual integer units, current AMD chips only have one of most other important subsystems. Critical parts like the instruction decoder and branch predictor only have one per module. And since the integer units are weak but separate they cannot help each other like on Intel chips. On Intel chips all the individual ALUs can be dedicated to a single task or split up with hyperthreading therefore being able to adjust depending on need.

Well I still remember when you could get a good AMD CPU for a fraction of the price intel had to offer at that performance level (Duron vs P3, Athlon XP vs P4, A64 vs P4). It didn't have to be the fastest CPU around to run your games well, and as a high-school student with a part-time job I could afford a good PC out of my own money. Even when intel launched the core 2 duo and core 2 quad CPUs the were kind of wary of AMD and said CPUs were priced really well. I bought a Q6600 new back in the day and it didn't break the bank. It wasn't top of the line, but there were no OC restrictions like today and it happily ran at 3GHz and it ran everything I threw at it. I still remember playing everything on 1680x1050 on my 8800GTX w/o the machine ever braking a sweat. And guess what - I later upgraded to a Q9550 w/o having to replace my motherboard! Outrageous right?

'nowadays the 4710HQ in my laptop is soldered to the board, my fiancee's Dell Inspiron won't run with an i5 for more then 30 minutes because intel implemented some sort of kill switch for HM70 chipsets not using a Pentium Dual Core CPU and if you want to upgrade the CPU in your desktop you more then likely have to spend nearly twice since you need a different MB as well. I have where the IT industry is heading.

Another funny little tidbit - In today's money, a Q6600 (using 2007 pricing) would cost about 2/3 of what an i5 6600k costs now. Cool huh?

kanecvr wrote:

Well I still remember when you could get a good AMD CPU for a fraction of the price intel had to offer at that performance level (Duron vs P3, Athlon XP vs P4, A64 vs P4).

I think you are remembering through the fog of nostalgia. Back when AMD chips were competitive or better than Intel chips they were just as expensive or more so. I had AMD chips in both my personal and professional life when they were the best. I will again if that happens in the future. Today AMDs are not competitive at all in performance or price in the markets I use them in.

And guess what - I later upgraded to a Q9550 w/o having to replace my motherboard! Outrageous right?

Oh the irony given the purpose of this thread!

'nowadays the 4710HQ in my laptop is soldered to the board, my fiancee's Dell Inspiron won't run with an i5 for more then 30 minutes because intel implemented some sort of kill switch for HM70 chipsets not using a Pentium Dual Core CPU

This is obviously not true at all. Lots of laptops have HM70 chipsets with many different CPUs other than Pentiums. One faulty laptop is not indicative of all of them.

and if you want to upgrade the CPU in your desktop you more then likely have to spend nearly twice since you need a different MB as well. I have where the IT industry is heading.

Intel chipsets and MB have generally supported two generations per since at least the core 2 days. It's not like AMD was any better when they were in the lead, they switched sockets and chipsets quickly back when the Athlon 64 came out in the lead.