Athlon 64 vs. Athlon 64 X2

[sccrmania1]

After buying all the parts for my pc with an athlon 64 and being severely dissapointed when it failed to post, i felt obligated to tell some people here that are looking at athlon 64's socket am2 why it failed to post.

What amd and your mobo don't tell you is that when you buy that shiny new xms2 ddr2 800 ram they recommend is that it will NOT work with single-core am2 cpu's. That means the athlon sempron or athlon 64 will NOT work with xms2 800 ddr2 ram. Its not hte motherboard, its the cpu that is having the memory combatibility issue.

What i did to solve this was upgrade my cpu to the Athlon 64 X2 (dual-core) and everything works great - a lot of people thought my memory was bad or my mobo was bad (i actually rma'd the first one i had) but it was the cpu all along. So please please, if you are going to buy an athlon 64 socket am2 DO NOT buy the 800 ddr2 ram, go with the ddr2 667 ram or less and save yourself the headache of having to return your ram/cpu.

hope this helps at least one person.

[joshrogoff]

I'm sorry to tell you that what you are saying is absolutly not true. I have run a single core on my machine with no problems at all. Check specs below.

Originally Posted by sccrmania1 After buying all the parts for my pc with an athlon 64 and being severely dissapointed when it failed to post, i felt obligated to tell some people here that are looking at athlon 64's socket am2 why it failed to post. What amd and your mobo don't tell you is that when you buy that shiny new xms2 ddr2 800 ram they recommend is that it will NOT work with single-core am2 cpu's. That means the athlon sempron or athlon 64 will NOT work with xms2 800 ddr2 ram. Its not hte motherboard, its the cpu that is having the memory combatibility issue. What i did to solve this was upgrade my cpu to the Athlon 64 X2 (dual-core) and everything works great - a lot of people thought my memory was bad or my mobo was bad (i actually rma'd the first one i had) but it was the cpu all along. So please please, if you are going to buy an athlon 64 socket am2 DO NOT buy the 800 ddr2 ram, go with the ddr2 667 ram or less and save yourself the headache of having to return your ram/cpu. hope this helps at least one person.

[blue60007]

sccrmania1 - what motherboard are you running?

[sccrmania1]

asus m2ne, corsair xms2 800 ddr2 ram.


i thought it was the motherboard at first too which is why i rma'd it, the new one did the same thing, turn on for 10 seconds and then it shut off. when i got the athlon 64 x2 everything works perfectly - same ram, same mobo.

on the corsair site it says that the xms2 800 ddr2 ram will not work with the athlon 64 or athlon sempron.


also my cpu was the 3500+ athlon 64, unlike the 4200+ that josh has in his sig. on second glance the cpu listed in your specs is DUAL CORE and is X2...which is exactly what i'm saying works.

[blue60007]

I'm assuming since Josh said "I have run" that he had a single core in at one point (seems like I recall something about that), but is running a dual core now. Nonetheless, interesting.

[joshrogoff]

That is correct blue. I had orignally went with a 3800 single core. A friend decided to take it off my hands and i went with the dual core. So yes, i have run the single core on my machine and it worked perfectly.

[glc]

This just reinforces the flaky issues that AM2 is having with ram in general. In all fairness, Intel is having *some* ram issues with C2D too, but not to that extent. There definitely is something to be said for sticking with mature technologies. I *will* build C2D, but I won't do AM2 yet. I'm an Intel shop, but if a customer really wants an AMD I'll do 939.

[joshrogoff]

Originally Posted by glc This just reinforces the flaky issues that AM2 is having with ram in general. In all fairness, Intel is having *some* ram issues with C2D too, but not to that extent. There definitely is something to be said for sticking with mature technologies. I *will* build C2D, but I won't do AM2 yet. I'm an Intel shop, but if a customer really wants an AMD I'll do 939.

Sounds like this guy had processor issues, not RAM issues...

[glc]

Where do you think the memory controller is? It's in the processor........

[blue60007]

What BIOS version are you guys running? Perhaps sccrmania1 has a flakey BIOS revision and Josh has a more stable one.

[joshrogoff]

I'm running the latest revision, 0304. All i'm saying is that i havn't seen anyone have problems with XMS2. With other brands there has been problems. The point is that the first processor being single core has nothing to do with the OPs problem.

[glc]

You just cannot be absolutely sure of that though.