New Gigibyte mother board

[Karl F. Larsen]

Sundar Nagarajan wrote:
> Karl F. Larsen wrote:
>
>   
>>     But I read a wiki about my cpu and it said the running a cpu 
>> designed for a MD3 socket in a MD2+ socket may cause some sort of BIOS 
>> problem. Well that is odd because on my computer BIOS has a CMOS memory 
>> chip which is kept working by a small battery. What does BIOS do with 
>> the cpu? I understand it reads the hardware and boots up the computer. 
>> Why would the BIOS do anything to the cpu?
>>     
>
> Karl,
>
> I guess you mean AM2+ amd AM3, not MD2+ and MD3. Assuming that, what you 
> read is right. Technically, AM3 CPUs were designed to work in AM2+ 
> sockets (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM3).
>
> Quoting from that link:
>
> 	AM3 processors are backwards-compatible with Socket AM2+, contingent
> 	upon a BIOS update for the motherboard. Manufacturers including Asus,
> 	[5] Gigabyte,[6] and others have labeled existing AM2/AM2+ boards as
> 	being "AM3 Ready" or similar, indicating that BIOS support is provided
> 	for the specified boards. This allows existing AM2/AM2+ systems to
> 	upgrade the CPU without having to upgrade any other components
>
> There's also some additional information atthis link (also available on 
> the wikipedia page above:
> 	http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3169
>
> The AM3 CPU contains a DDR2 as well as DDR3 controller, whereas the AM2 
> CPU has ONLY a DDR2 controller on-chip. Perhaps the BIOS update serves 
> to allow the BIOS to control the CPU on board initialization to enable 
> the right memory controller or Hypertransport transfer rate for the board.
>
> I think everything will be fine. The board has 2GB of DDR2 and the the sources all say a AM3 cpu can work with DDR2 so that is the main important thing. 
    As for a BIOS problem I am even more sure that is an error.

Thanks for the other URL's and help.


73 Karl