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Asus Crosshair V formula board may have hampered Bulldozer

40K views 364 replies 96 participants last post by  macca_dj 
#1 ·
And hampered it bad :

It turns out that the fx testing kits amd sent to every site, had asus crosshair v formula boards. apparently asus had an agreement with amd in order to make asus board the 'default' board for reviews. and all sites reviewed the chip by shoving it in that board.

when some sites benched the cpu not with that board, but other boards, results came up more in favor of the amd cpu :

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/315775-10-asus-crosshair-giving-biased-results-bulldozer

the benches with an asrock board :

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg12/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-total-war-shogun-2.html

crosshair v formula is a buggy board which had almost 30% return rate even at newegg. main problem comes from its uefi bios being new and untested.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-131-735&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=21#scrollFullInfo

in another review with a msi board, results came out even better in bf3 and f1 etc.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_gameplay_performance_review/2

..........

but when benched on gigabyte 990fx boards the results came out even worse for amd chip.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8150.html

it seems the bioses for the boards used for these chips are not mature yet.

...............

but rage3d people managed to bring out even more performance out of bulldozer below :

http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/cpu/amd_fx_8150/index.php?p=7

..............

and again, in the below test, test was run with a non-nvidia, ati card, but again an asus board, and its a flop.

http://pclab.pl/art47038-10.html

and its a flop again. so its not nvidia cards that are causing the flops apparently.

.....................

it is understandable for the asus crosshair formula v board to flop, since it uses the new uefi bioses, which are yet immature. however i also acquired a gigabyte 990fx board, which has a traditional bios (whatever we were using before uefi thing), and it is rather irritating that that board also flops for its best processor.

i hope gigabyte sorts out their bioses soon.

i dont think this is a chipset problem - else, asrock and msi boards would also perform badly. however they perform much much better to the point of making bulldozer come ahead of intel. so, it has to be a bios issue.

still, there is great variance in between the performances coming out from the same brands - however, it is now certain that the dozer can not only get even with, but also pass the intel's 2600 on some boards - brand and model may differ. however, asus boards seem to consistently flop. gigabyte boards flop, or not flop, asrock boards generally fare better.
 
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#2 ·
That may be the case but it shouldn't matter. Bulldozer should have performed basically the same regardless of motherboards or video cards.
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Farmer Boe;15296815
That may be the case but it shouldn't matter. Bulldozer should have performed basically the same regardless of motherboards or video cards.
that is an unfortunate statement that ignores the realities of circuit boards - performance of whatever component is on a mobo, is subject to that mobo.

just read the newegg review thread i linked. crosshair formula v was not even able to boot up until the recent bios iteration. you will see that the first 15 pages of 20 pages of reviews are almost one third RMA requests, complaints, and asus rep trying to get ahold of the situation.

so it was rather unwise benching anything on a board that was not mature and unstable evidently from the start.
 
#5 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boinz;15296845
Wow, this certainly sheds light on things a bit.
actually it was stupid for all of us to expect proper performance of these things right out of the box, since both the chip and the chipset used for it was new. and in case of the asus crosshair formula v, even the bios was new.

i actually was going to buy a crosshair formula v myself, before i grabbed the gigabyte i had. but after reading the reviews at newegg, i was horrified and chose the gigabyte board. it was approx 1-2 months ago and newegg was boiling with angst and the asus rep was running from customer to customer there.
 
#6 ·
Dont know how much truth there is to this, but Asus did just release a Bios for the BD chip last week that apparently sucked, the 8xxx Bios, and just recently pulled out the 9905 I believe to get the board compatible with BD. But cant blame this on the board manufactures. The original BD chip, before all the revisions, suppose to have worked with the original Bios that came with the CHV. That was like 5 or 6 Bios's ago. Hopefully they work this out.
 
#7 ·
Mmmhhh I'm losing fate to Asus board and I'm more leaning toward AsRock board now but we still need to wait another week of results and updates before jump the gun.

A lot of reviewer heard a lot of complaints and they are trying to ease out so AMD doesn't look too bad as it is already. As we always love to have competitors against Intel and I don't hate Intel. I have no idea how many intel board I owned so far. But again we might try to shred some lights for AMD.

We don't want Intel to dominate the market as well jacking up prices in near future.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by djriful;15296932
Mmmhhh I'm losing fate to Asus board and I'm more leaning toward AsRock board now but we still need to wait another week of results and updates before jump the gun.

A lot of reviewer heard a lot of complaints and they are trying to ease out so AMD doesn't look too bad as it is already. As we always love to have competitors against Intel and I don't hate Intel. I have no idea how many intel board I owned so far. But again we might try to shred some lights for AMD.

We don't want Intel to dominate the market as well jacking up prices in near future.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
its rather hard to blame asus on this.

but you can blame them on one major respect - they jumped on the uefi bios thing too fast, before it matured, and they jumped on it with their top of the tier cards, like formula v.

they should have put entry level boards etc into the market, and then matured the bios. but they put the top tier card into the foray.

then again, it is very possible that they wanted to make the enthusiast market beta testers of their new uefi setup. since this segment would do the best beta testing.

and they seemed to have flopped their major partner in the process. well done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by catharsis;15297016
Yup it must be those darn asus boards causing all the poor performance. No way it could be the chip.
rolleyes.gif
if the chip flops in 2 board brands, and beats intel in 2 others, then yes, it is the boards that flop the chip.

did you even read before you replied ?

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1285/pg12/amd-fx-8150-black-edition-8-core-processor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-total-war-shogun-2.html

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/10/11/amd_bulldozer_fx8150_gameplay_performance_review/2

on these boards, bulldozer came up equal or better in most respects with the intel chips. and in gaming, it had a wide margin as it should have.

bulldozer delivered on some boards, and had not, that tells us that there is an issue with some boards, period.

evident conclusion of empirical data surpasses anything else.
 
#12 ·
Any problems with UEFI on Intel boards?
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by kabj06;15296990
The Hardware Heaven review showed BD to be much faster in gaming than the 2600k. Maybe this is an ASUS fail more than an AMD fail (?).
Much faster? at most a 5 fps difference in average is faster?
poke.gif


Besides all those tests are GPU limited. Its already known that for some unknown reason AMD's have better performance when the computer is GPU limited. Look at the other benchmarks though, like starcraft and wow. Games that don't support 8 cores and aren't GPU limited. There is no "winning" for the bulldozer. It gets equal FPS in the newest games with MAX resolution but loses in nearly everything else. The chip is just not competitive. Accept it.
 
#15 ·
Not that I know of...

I wouldn't put much stock in these "alternative" reviews, their test suites are weak at best, and their gaming tests were done with gpu bottlenecks.

Even the "good reviews" show a terrible chip, 5.9 in Cinebnech is not an improvement. All they've done is taken AMD money and created a bench suite that is unrepresentative of actual usage and gpu bottlenecking.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by catharsis;15297085
Much faster? at most a 5 fps difference in average is faster?
poke.gif


Besides all those tests are GPU limited. Its already known that for some unknown reason AMD's have better performance when the computer is GPU limited. Look at the other benchmarks though, like starcraft and wow. Games that don't support 8 cores and aren't GPU limited. There is no "winning" for the bulldozer. It gets equal FPS in the newest games with MAX resolution but loses in nearly everything else. The chip is just not competitive. Accept it.
read the newly made benches with non asus and non gigabyte boards. chip performs better in other applications than gaming in those.

there is nothing to accept or reject. the benchmarks are there, difference is there. at the minimum new chip seems to be equal to intel chip in most respects as it should have been in these new benches.

and thats even before any optimizations or usage of libraries that will work with the NEW technology that was implemented in this new chip.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Karnage;15297107
Not that i've ever heard. UFI has been perfected in the 10 months since sandy bridge was released
My CHV has been absolutely flawless and the best board i have ever owned, and I go through about 3 boards a year. And I love the new Bios. You can essentially edit the Bios from Windows with the UEFI software included.
Quote:
So does this mean if i stuck a BD in my Sabertooth mobo it wouldnt perform as well in a Asrock Mobo
Stick one in and tell us. Thats all i am waiting on. User reviews. I was going to be one of those "users' but all the delays and leaked benches shy'ed me away.
 
#20 ·
The C5F is a flaky board, and very well would have hampered the preformance of the FX chip.

I would have preferred the test been done on the C4F with the 3012 BIOS, would have done better. IMHO

I still prefer my C4F over my C5F for now, though the C5F is comming along with the later BIOS updates.

I have 2 FX-8150s ordered and intend to try one on the C4F and the Sabertooth when/if ever they arrive.
 
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#22 ·
I have ran and benched 3 Phenom II X4 and X6 chips in the Crosshair V formula board with zero issues. It is one of the best boards I have ever owned. I have not loaded the bios in question though.

If the operating system booted and the CPU was kept at stock frequencies with all benchmarks completed without errors, I cannot see the motherboard being much of a problem.

I do feel that better bios applications on all motherboards will improve performance some but not more then 10%.

AMD just dropped the Ball on this release and I for one hope they recognize that.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuckclc;15297154
My CHV has been absolutely flawless and the best board i have ever owned, and I go through about 3 boards a year. And I love the new Bios. You can essentially edit the Bios from Windows with the UEFI software included.
2 months ago newegg reviews showed DOAs or no boots 1/3 of the time, leading to RMAs. other reviews showed various issues, even if they were not doa.

there were a small percentage of users which came out well on their board.

at a point i entertained on taking the gamble and waiting for bios fixes if the board did not work well, but i decided against it since i needed to use the board i was to get for work rightaway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Electroneng;15297175
I have ran and benched 3 Phenom II X4 and X6 chips in the Crosshair V formula board with zero issues. It is one of the best boards I have ever owned. I have not loaded the bios in question though.

If the operating system booted and the CPU was kept at stock frequencies with all benchmarks completed without errors, I cannot see the motherboard being much of a problem.

I do feel that better bios applications on all motherboards will improve performance some but not more then 10%.

AMD just dropped the Ball on this release and I for one hope they recognize that.
they say it seems to be a l1 or l2 cache bug, but, then the chip would not perform better on asrock and msi boards of the same chipset.

so im tying it to be a bios issue depending on the model of the board and manufacturer.
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by unity100;15297192
2 months ago newegg reviews showed DOAs or no boots 1/3 of the time, leading to RMAs. other reviews showed various issues, even if they were not doa.

there were a small percentage of users which came out well on their board.

at a point i entertained on taking the gamble and waiting for bios fixes if the board did not work well, but i decided against it since i needed to use the board i was to get for work rightaway.
I'm sure 1/3 of the Crosshair V buyers went for the Open box special to save $20 as well.
 
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