Abit A-n78hd: Phenom support

[Cyborg1024]

I have an Abit A-N78HD and have installed an AMD X2 7850 Kuma processor upgrade. The Bios frequently hangs with only one processor detected. I've verified the CPU is good and would like to know if anyone could mod the current bios from Abit to support newer processors. Abit closed the doors on the MB side and dont have any current updates. This board should be able to work with any AM2 or AM2+ processor. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

m717a_13.bin is the latest Bios version available on the Abit site.

[TheWiz]

Pick out a board, any board, that has the proccessor support you want and I'll insert it into your MOBO.

TheWiz

[Cyborg1024]

The ASUS M3N78-VM uses the same chipset and lists support for the X2 7850. I'm attaching the Bios for that board that has the required CPU support. Thank you very much for you help with this.

Pick out a board, any board, that has the proccessor support you want and I'll insert it into your MOBO.

TheWiz

[TheWiz]

No problem. I will need a day or two to do this as I am quite busy with my academic endeavors today, but I will try my best to get it done quickly.

Thanks,
TheWiz

[TheWiz]

Okay, two things. First off I noticed teh board supports Phenoms, so it is confusing as to why it would hang. More importantly, the bios you gave me to update the bios code is an ami bios, and it be safer to stick with an award bios that has the proccesor support you want.

Thanks,
TheWiz

[Cyborg1024]

I agree. The reason it was brought into question was that my system was hanging up durring the CPU detection stage before the windows logo would appear(Showed 1 instead of 2 CPU's). I would think the instructions for this core should be very similar to the X3 and X4 Phenoms. A new development occured this week which may have corrected the issue but time will tell as the hang up has been an intermittant occurance. The system was plugged into a UPS battery backup which failed durring a power outage on Wednesday. I believe the power comming from that component wasnt clean as the system hasnt locked up durring the boot process once since its plugged directly into a surge protector. I had tried just about everything and was ready to replace the board if the Bios update didnt work but the power outage may have saved the day! Also I was having intermittant USB HDD detection issues at startup and that has also cleared after taking the system off the failed UPS. It a very strange issue but a wake up call to me that sometimes battery backups can cause some flakey behavior. I appreciate you working on the Bios mod but for now I think this may have cleared. I will post if anything changes.

Okay, two things. First off I noticed teh board supports Phenoms, so it is confusing as to why it would hang. More importantly, the bios you gave me to update the bios code is an ami bios, and it be safer to stick with an award bios that has the proccesor support you want.

Thanks,
TheWiz

[TheWiz]

Wow, nice call! If you need anymore assistance please do not hesitate.

Thanks,
TheWiz

[NightShade]

Ok, I had an Abit a-n78hd board with a Sempron 3500+ cpu. The board worked fine but was able to pick up a Phenom II x4 965 black edition cheap and figured it would work.

The board posts and boots fine but the cpu does not clock at the right speed nor does it show the proper cpu information. I found a beta bios posted online and gave it a try. The CPU information now shows correctly but it still hugely underclocks the cpu to 800 mhz and the portion to change the multiplier that was available on the sempron cpu is no longer showing.

When I flashed the bios I made a backup of the original so uploading both the one I had as well as the beta version. I am just hoping that the multiplier setting can be restored so that I can set the multiplier to where it should be otherwise to have it set to the default of 17 would be fine as right now it is defaulting to a multiplier of 4.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K10/AMD-Ph...OX%29.html

I found the Beta bios version at http://www.theraptorpit.com/forum/index....topic=2629 which added the Phenom II support

Original BIOS
  AN78OLD.BIN (Size: 1 MB / Downloads: 4)

Beta BIOS
  an78new.bin (Size: 1 MB / Downloads: 12)

Any help to get this fixed would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise I will end up trying one of the BIOS services or getting a new board but really don't have the funds for either at the moment.

[NightShade]

Well guess this post is actually not needed but going to put some information out there.

Took about 5 hours of searching and tweaking things. Had to turn off the cool and quiet implementation in the bios and downloaded Phenom MSR Tweaker. The power states in windows 7 and/or the bios was causing the cpu to default to a 4x multiplier and a low power state no matter what the power profile was set to.

Using the Phenom MSR Tweaker I was able to set the power states as follows

P0 to 17 for the multiplier and a voltage of 1.4volts
P1 to 14 for the multiplier and a voltage of 1.3volts
P2 to 11 for the multiplier and a voltage of 1.225 volts
P3 to 8 for the multiplier and a voltage of 1.15 volts
P4 to 4 for the multiplier and a voltage of 1.05 volts

The service was enabled so that the tweaker would handle the power states and control when they will be activated.

This is all done using the Beta BIOS listed in my above post. I ran Prime 95 for about 30 mins as well as ran the windows assessment and the system showed the proper state changes in CPU-Z and ran stable. The cooler that was sent with the CPU spins up in the higher states and slows down as the states drop and the cpu cools down.