AMD Phenom Errarta 298 – Important or Hype? When AMD was briefing the media about Phenom at their launch event they mentioned that a fix was in the works for one of the hundreds of erratums that the Phenom processor has. All processors have glitches and they are documented and given a erratum number. As time goes on many of these get fixed with BIOS updates and whole new CPU steppings.
This is normal and the way AMD and Intel have developed and updated processors for decades. The erratum that was in the fix dealt with the Translation lookaside buffers (TLB) on the new L3 cache fond only on Phenom processors. Translation lookaside buffers help the processor map virtual addresses to physical addresses.
Dec 21, 2007 - A couple weeks ago we got our hands on OverDrive 2.0.12 and found by using the Turbo button the TLB patch can be disabled. AMD just this. TLB disable tool on Phenom II has indicated higher SSE performance in applications that are entirely SSE limited where older K10 mainboards are in use. Newer mainboards do not or have had the flag removed to prevent the fix being enabled.
They hold the most recently used page mapping information in fast, chip-resident memory to speed up address translation. When a TLB miss occurs, page mapping information can be lost if it is not found in the L1 or L2 caches. For some reason AMD didn’t fully expose how minor/major the erratum was, so when when the TLB erratum was fixed many in the industry freaked out. At the time of his article the BIOS fix for the TLB erratum was automatically enabled in the BIOS and was not able to be turned off. A couple weeks ago we got our hands on OverDrive 2.0.12 and found by using the Turbo button the TLB patch can be disabled.
AMD just this week released OverDrive 2.0.13 beta, which adds more features but still lacks 64-Bit driver signing. That means if you are running 64-bit Vista for example you have to disable driver signing by hitting F8 while windows is booting, change the setting and then let Windows Vista 64-bit fully load. Over the past couple weeks AMD has made some strides when it comes to the TLB erratum, which to be honest should not be as big of a deal as many make it out to be. Legit Reviews has a number of staff members with Phenom systems and not one has encountered erratum number 298. After over a month of performance testing and use not one blue screen of death or crash has been seen that wasn’t related to overclocking. Legit Reviews contacted AMD about the TLB bug and asked them if they would like to clear the air. AMD was happy to jump at the chance to clear the air up and sent this comment over to us.
“It’s unfortunate that the TLB erratum that affects the AMD Phenom 9500 and 9600 processors has garnered as much attention as it has. Unfortunate not just for AMD, but for customers because I believe it has been blown out of proportion. Every processor, ours and our competition’s, has errata. Phenom is no different. Erratum number 298 is L3 protocol issue which can cause a system hang when running certain client workloads. That may sound scary, but some perspective is needed. It is extremely unlikely desktop users are going to find themselves in a scenario that could trigger this erratum.
I won’t go so far as to say no one will ever see it, because I’m not going to claim absolutes like that, and AMD wants to always land on the side of caution and prudence. That’s why I’d point out that the fix is in. We’ve communicated a BIOS modification to motherboard vendors that will ensure system stability, and we’re implementing a silicon fix in future CPUs. But what really stands out to me is that we put a switch in the AMD OverDrive utility that enables PC users to disable the BIOS workaround.
That should send a message of our confidence that desktop users should not lose sleep about this particular erratum.” – AMD PR to Legit Reviews on AMD says the TLB erratum is nothing to lose sleep about as end users have the ability to disable the BIOS workaround. Let’s take a look at our test system with and without the BIOS workaround enabled and see what happen to performance on a couple popular benchmarks.
After a week of loving the game, but being frustrated by the constant studder, i threw off the gloves and began to search for what the cause of my issue was. My computer spec's are not the greatest, but are not the worse by far. Windows 7 ultimate 4 gigs ram Nvidia GTX 260 and what ended up being the problem AMD Phenom 9600 quad 2.3 ghz proc. Now to fill you in on a little bit of history. Before AMD released the processor(which was the first true quad), they found a bug within the processor.
It had to do with one of the buffers. This buffer, called the Translation Look aside buffer(TLD) on occassion(rare) would cause the system to lock up. The 'basic' solution, was to disable this buffer. This is where our problem occurs. Depending what the application is, the perforance drop loss can be anywhere from 10% up to 40%(different sources list different values).
From my experience im around 15%, BUT OUR issue is not performance directly, but the studdering. Fast forward to the release of the Phenom procs. AMD knew that many of us would complain about the performance loss, so they pressed the motherboard manufactures to allow us to be able to 'Toggle' the TLD bug fix on or off. My Mother board has an option in the BIOS to turn Enable/Disable TLDErrata (BUG PATCH) this worked great.UNTIL Windows Vista service Patch 1 Yup Microsoft in there evil need to take over the world decided to overwrite the bios options and force the TLD patch. So if you have Vista SP1 to Windows 7 you are forced to have the TLD Patch.
Regardless what you do, you can not turn off the the patch. But there is a light at the end at the tunnel!
First Make sure you have the processors in doubt. If you are not sure do the following click the start button in the search field type the following dxdiag hit enter on the system page, half the way down under processers you will see something like AMD Phenom(tm) 9600 Quad-core Processor (4cpu's) 2.3 Ghz The following processors are know to have the bug Phenoms x4 9500 quad Phenoms x4 9600 quad Opterons 2300 What have the Bug corrected are all Phenoms x4 9X50's so if your proc has a XX50 in it, it has the fix built into the proc. NOW FOR THE FIX. You will need CrystalCPUID this piece of software supplies information only people like me love:P, chance are it will scare most of you, but other than installing it, you will probably never have to touch it Next go to this next site, read the installation (goes over some of what i talked about) down load his fix tlbver1.05.rar this is the current fix for the tlb fix once you have this file downloaded, you need to unrar it into the folder you installed crytalcpuid.
You will have 2 files in CrstalCPuid TLBDisable -this is the one that we want ie it turns the patch off and gives us uber power, no more studder TLBenable -this repatches the cpu, making the system stable, but makes the game run like rubish I would like to point out, you have to launch this everytime you play the game, seems there is no PERMANENT FIX, everytime you reboot, it resets. Hope this helps Best Regards Rottencore EDIT: updated proc's cleared XX50 class of phenoms added Opterons Last edited by peachpitt; Nov 24 2010 at 10:14 PM. Ive noticed that, Infact ive spent the morning/afternoon trolling the boards, and I'm surprised how many people this may actually be their cause. There has been some distrubing questions brought up on some later generation phenoms that DONT have the bug, but that windows vista, and perhaps windows 7 are misinterpretting as those proc's with the TLB bug, and thus APPLYING the patch. Killing not only your performance, but causing the performance issue. This would explain why many AMD people are having the similiar Hitching issues.
Once i applied the fix, im happy as a bee in honey:P. But the truth is, I would really like some other tech/engineer with a new gen Phenom, who's not frightened of computers, and is experiencing hitching to apply the fix. First my amd phenom 9600 (2.3Ghz) runs this game at 60+fps in dx10 at high settings(honostly i find my gpu is the most important factor, that is once i fixed my tlb issue). Second, Im not talking about the sync issue, what I am concerned about, and was trying to point out was that the 'patch' isnt done by me or you, It's done by Windows, It's also a NINJA PATCH. Now what decides if you qualify for this 'patch' is an algorithm that is old, and not foolproof. This is where the problem occurs. Seem people who own Phenoms that are NOT the 9500 9600, opterons, or basically any with the tlb issue are having the TLB patch applied to them.
It's also been hinted that some Phenom II's in windows 7 are even having the patch applied to them. Is this true? Im not sure, because only a few games/applications show the performance loss, and it seems to be dependent on certian chipsets/motherboards.
Thats why i asked someone who is computer savy, familiar with memory addressing, and owns a newer phenom that has the studdering to take a look and see if the patch is being applied. If so, see if adding the original pointers/instructions rectifies this? Simply put, there are alot of people with this issue, every one that we can solve, is one less. Last edited by peachpitt; Nov 23 2010 at 09:00 PM.
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