Another Phenom Question!

[saig0nn]

just curiously wondering with he 9500 and 9600 and the whole TLB issue.. and the reason they made B3 stepping (9550, 9650)

if a user is still using the 9500,9600.. and they losing anything? ive heard amd had to fix some kind of problem that the 9500 and 9600 had.. but what kinda real performance issues will the user suffer from?

[ASharp]

The only major difference between B2 and B3 is that B3 has a fix for the TLB erratum. Nothing else really changed. It seems like people are able to overclock the B3's higher than B2's as well but otherwise, there's no performance improvements to speak of.

Under regular usage you probably wouldn't encounter the TLB bug on a B2 anyway so, you can just turn off the fix in AMD Overdrive or in your BIOS and it should perform around the same level as an equivalently clocked B3.

[LeeBear]

The B3 stepping chips won't be any faster then a B2 stepping chip (with TLB fix disabled). With the fixed enabled however expect performance to drop abut 10% on average with cache intensive programs like WinRar taking the biggest hit about 70%. While the TLB bug might be rare and you can disable the fix to regain performance you will risk the chance of random lockups or silent data corruption. Not a choice I'd like to make.

-LeeBear

[saig0nn]

yea i was extracting a huge file (6-7gb)from winrar n took about 2 hours. and i was doing other stuff as well and notice slowdowns. is that "normal"? or is this 9500 phenom B2 no good?

[LeeBear]

Unfortunately with TLB fix enable winrar will never be fast and you will probably notice slowdowns in other areas as well since the "fix" basically disables the L3 cache on the CPU and proper amount of cache is important to keep a system running smoothly. I would disable the TLB fix in BIOS if you can and just chance you will never encounter the bug. Also note that if you are using Windows Vista with SP1 installed the TLB fix will be enabled at Vista startup regardless of BIOS setting. You will need to use another program to disable the fix after Vista starts up.

-LeeBear

[mr_raider]

I've been running a 9500 with the fixed disabled since December. I fold 24/7 and have no stability issues.

[willy]

yea i was extracting a huge file (6-7gb)from winrar n took about 2 hours. and i was doing other stuff as well and notice slowdowns. is that "normal"? or is this 9500 phenom B2 no good?

Something is really wrong here .... even my AthlonXP can finish that in 10-15 minutes ...

[kud0s69]

yea i was extracting a huge file (6-7gb)from winrar n took about 2 hours. and i was doing other stuff as well and notice slowdowns. is that "normal"? or is this 9500 phenom B2 no good?

This is a Vista issue. Nothing to do with your processor. Google it and you will find your fix.