AMD Athlon 64 Revision E May Require BIOS Update

While Advanced Micro Devices advices its mainboard partners who make platforms to support processors of today as well as future dual-core chips, at least some platforms made now may require BIOS update even for new revision of the Athlon 64 as a result of a change in thermal specifications of the chip, which causes questions about compatibility with forthcoming chips.

NVIDIA, who said there were no compatibility issues between its chipsets and AMD’s new processors, pointed out that “a couple” of mainboard makers did not follow AMD requirements, but were still able to tackle compatibility at least on some of their mainboards issue with BIOS update

..“It seems that a couple of motherboard partners did not design their mainboards to AMD’s thermal requirements for [AMD Athlon 64 processor] revision E. A BIOS update from EPoX and ABIT would fix the issue. It has nothing to do with nForce4 and is not apparent on the majority of boards available in the market. Thus, for the rest of the manufacturers, a BIOS update is not necessary,” a spokesman for NVIDIA Corp. told X-bit labs.

..“AMD has changed voltage/thermal settings with [AMD Athlon 64 processor] revision E0 and that caused problems, but we could luckily change this with a BIOS update. Fortunately, [AMD Athlon 64 processor revision] E4 is not broadly available, so there were not so many complains from customer side,” an EPoX spokesperson told X-bit labs.

AMD’s Forthcoming Athlon 64 May Require BIOS Update
X-bit labs