AMD 690G does not support Vista 64-bit with 4gb ram?

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: SilverHair
Have you RMA'd the board yet?

Could it be a defective board that only surfaces when using Vista 64 drivers?

I will RMA one board tomorrow. We are not talking one board here, I have personally tested 4 boards. I got a replacement board today, with a completly different cerial number, and the result is... (drums): The same artifacts and crashing.

I also got hold of an Asus M2N-VM/DVI. The result is ...(drums): The same artifacts and crashing.

I got hold of another pair of 4gb RAM, using Quimonda chips. The result is ... (drums): The same artifacts and crashing.

Get the picture?

The only reason to RMA a board is to see if the supplier can find a working config, or get the suppliers to act. There is nothing wrong with boards, compared to other 690g boards: They all have the same flaw.

Personally I do not believe that there is any working 690g 4gb 64bit Vista config. This chipset do not work with Vista 64bit. Not until something is fixed, and it might be unfixable.

 

[Mega2007]

I got the same issue and have been posting since August 2007. Posted on amd they said we only support cpu. Posted on ati they said we don't support the motherboards. Posted on biostar they said nothing. Posted on Nvidia they did nothing.

my setup is

BE-2350 AMD AM2
biostar ta690g am2
patroit 4x1gb 800mhz 4-4-4-12 ddr2.
evga 8800gts 640mb
suxgate 500gbx2 raid0 aak crapware
x-fi
vista ultimate 64x

getting the same issue 4gb doesn't work it cause TDR in 8800gts, bsod, black screen of death.

Had to disable the memory remapping to have vista only see the 3gb then it runs fine. but still get bsod 0x124, and scream of death from x-fi.

I notice it takes a lot more voltage to keep the 0x124 from showing but in windows xp I don't have any of those problems and it takes less voltage.

Also I noticed my pcie has memory address not available at 0xc0000000-0xfebfffff.

Updated to current drivers and updates + fixes non helped I think your right something is not 64bit. I'm going to use windows xp and I going to leave amd and move to intel quad system in a few months/weeks.

*update flash to new bios and got back 3.25 in xp and 3.3gb in vista using the memory limit trick. It lets me use the 8800gts cause it avoids the memory addressing problem. Also got rid of the bsod in xp and vista64bit had to lower the speed cause the temp/volt reached the limit. Still pissed cause its missing the advertised specs but much better than before.

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Working rigg found!

I have teste these boards first hand:
Asus M2A-VM HDMI mATX
Asus M2A-VM mATX
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H mATX
Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H ATX

None of them work with 8gb, and some with the MSconfig hack by 4gb.

I had low expectations for the
---------------------------
MSI K9AG NEO2-Digital
---------------------------
but it works with 4gb and Vista64bit.

I did some dirty tests, by using two harddrives that had a nonworking install from another setup. One of these installs were installed with 2gb, and had the 4gb installed at first bootup.

This means that memory remapping is not needed for these boards. You do not have to do anything to get 4gb to work. If it do not, it is your board. Not the drivers as of 7.10.

8gb works on the MSI board too. I did however need to use the MSconfig hack. If not, it blue screened on me.

I have used Kingston and Crucial RAM with Micron D9HNL chips, but lets face it, it is the boards, not the other hardware that are at fault.

I have read a lot of negative reports from users regarding these 690g boards, and I cannot help getting the feeling that the industry do not care, but are aware of the problem. It is hard to believe the industry when they claim that they cannot reproduce issues or have never heard of such problems, when plenty of users reports that they have filed the issue several times.

The MSI board works, and you do not have to do anything unusual to get the 4gb to work. If your board do not work, with horizontal lines and crashing, your motherboard model is at fault, not just the board sample.

The MSI board is far from perfect, with a useless fan control wich induses noise into the fan, an off center chipsett cooler, and hardly any overclocking. But it works.

 

[nidhoggr]

Well, so im going to wait for some decent NON-AMD Phenom AM2+ Boards to replace my Gigabyte.
Customer support about this issue really sucks.

 

[JamMule]

Originally posted by: FrodeNilsen
Working rigg found!

I had low expectations for the
---------------------------
MSI K9AG NEO2-Digital
---------------------------
but it works with 4gb and Vista64bit.

I did some dirty tests, by using two harddrives that had a nonworking install from another setup. One of these installs were installed with 2gb, and had the 4gb installed at first bootup.

I'm the unhappy owner of a M2A-VM and M2A-VM HDMI boards, which do not work.

Does this board really work for you? And what is "the MSConfig hack"? Have you done a clean install on with this board?

If the board really works, I might get one, depending on one condition: do the digital outputs work simultaneously (i.e. can I use it for a dual head setup)? That was the reason I bought the HDMI board for, it has two digital outputs.

 

[JamMule]

Originally posted by: JamMule
If the board really works, I might get one, depending on one condition: do the digital outputs work simultaneously (i.e. can I use it for a dual head setup)? That was the reason I bought the HDMI board for, it has two digital outputs.

Well, I just downloaded the manual and apparently it is either DVI or HDMI but not both.

But anyway, it the Neo2 truly works, I might consider replacing the non-HDMI board with it. For the HDMI one I just have to get some other solution.

 

[nidhoggr]

MSconfig hack is simple: Start MSconfig - Start - Advanced - set "Maximum Ram" to 4096 (I dont know exact descriptions in english bacuase my vista is german)

So with every Windowsstart there will be only used 4GB - address space for video adapter etc, which makes in my case 3325MB Ram with a single x1950Pro 512MB.
So u will be missing the Ram like in a 32bit environment, but at least the system is stable until someone is going to fix that

 

[teaBagger]

I have a AMD X2 5000+ 65W CPU, Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H and an ASUS NVidia EM8600GTSLN-HTDP-256 graphics adapter installed with Vista Ultimate 64 bit and the magic 4GB of ram.... One week old.

I have no stability at all...

I actually installed Ubuntu at the same time - Thank goodness as at least I can use my new PC.

Vista starts up and I have the white static lines across the screen.
After a short time, I get a blank screen - Loss of sync.
Multiple crashes/Reboots etc.

I have tried a number of NVidia drivers to no avail.

I will try the MaxMem MSConfig setting tonight.

Not Happy Jan!

 

[wiak]

i have no problems running vista ultimate x64 (with catalyst 7.10)
my uptime is atm 8 days

so it might be the curse of 4 ram sticks as am only using 2x2GB sticks!

MSI K9AGM2-FIH (latest BIOS)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 65W Windsor (ADO5000CZBOX)
OCZ Gold XTC Vista Performance 4096MB DDR2 PC6400 Dual Channel 2x2GB KIT (OCZ2G8004GK)
SDM 2-Port SATA Sil3132 PCie x1 card
Hiper Type-R 580W Blue PSU
Optiarc AD-7170S SATA Burner (not connected)

via SB600
1x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000 RPM 16MB (WD740ADFD)
2x Seagate Baracuda 7200.10 500GB (ST3320620AS)
1x Samsung T166 500GB (HD501LJ)

via Sil3132 PCIe 2 Port SATA
2x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB SATA 8MB Cache (WD2500JD)

via USB 2.0
1x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB IDE via USB 2.0 (WD2500JB)

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: wiak
i have no problems running vista ultimate x64 (with catalyst 7.10)
my uptime is atm 8 days

so it might be the curse of 4 ram sticks as am only using 2x2GB sticks!

MSI K9AGM2-FIH (latest BIOS)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 65W Windsor (ADO5000CZBOX)
OCZ Gold XTC Vista Performance 4096MB DDR2 PC6400 Dual Channel 2x2GB KIT (OCZ2G8004GK)
SDM 2-Port SATA Sil3132 PCie x1 card
Hiper Type-R 580W Blue PSU
Optiarc AD-7170S SATA Burner (not connected)

via SB600
1x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000 RPM 16MB (WD740ADFD)
2x Seagate Baracuda 7200.10 500GB (ST3320620AS)
1x Samsung T166 500GB (HD501LJ)

via Sil3132 PCIe 2 Port SATA
2x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB SATA 8MB Cache (WD2500JD)

via USB 2.0
1x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB IDE via USB 2.0 (WD2500JB)

There is no difference running 2 or 4 sticks. It is the board that is at fault, or maybe these sticks of memory do not work. Try lowering the memspeed a notch, increase the voltage slightly, or ease the timings, or all of these tricks.

Have you tried the MSconfig hack? If that works, forget about the RAM, it is your board. The MSI K9AG Neo2 Digital works straight out of the box. There is no need to do anything special to get it to work with 4GB. Using MSconfig it runs fine with 8GB. Drivers are fine, so is the chipset, but most vendors mess this up. Makes one wonder if the AMD reference design works.

If this MSI board also got the problem, then even MSI have boards that do not work.

If you need a mATX board I have not heard of ANY WORKING SETUPS so far. I have heard of a lot of faulty 690G boards, tested two myself.

The industry turns hostile on you when this issue is raised. There is a problem with 690G boards; It is time for the vendors and AMD to officially recognize this. They are aware of the issue, but are trying to pull a watergate.

As of now the industry act like bullies, and it looks like they will not lift a finger to help anyone, until there is a fix. If there ever is going to be a fix.

 

[nidhoggr]

Today I got a gigabyte reply, they only say that the board is damaged and I should RMA it. They just completely ignore the fact that Memtest x86 runs completely stable for hours and the MSconfig hack just removes every problem and the system is 100% stable.
And its really very unlikely that only the chipsets 64bit DMA part is damaged and everything else just works fine...

 

[imported_Kreed]

Is this grounds for a law suit? It would be interesting to see if the replacement board exhibits the same problem.

 

[wiak]

as i said in my post, my system has NO problems, runs 4GB out of the box just fine
so it has to be gigabyte that has gotten a batch of bad chips

AMD 690G is RS690 and SB600

did gigabyte update bios after AMD released a new revision?
MSI updated theirs 2007-09-07 for K9AGM2-FIH board i use


http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=259955

 

[nidhoggr]

ASUS Boards have the same problems, also both Gigabyte Boards.

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=260014

Runs perfectly fine with MSconfig hack. Without Catalyst drivers installed also 8h Prime95 stable, because then the graphics adapter wont use the address space.

With onboard graphics, the system will remain stable withput msconfig hack, only sometimes there will be white bars when entering task manager or when UAC pops up or on any screenshot. Might be due to the fact that the VRAM then is system RAM. Im not gonna test it now, but im quite sure that assigning 1GB Ram for the X1250 might remove the white bars problem, because system will only habe 3GB then.

Well I hope GB will relaese the new BIOS soon.

edit: Lol im stupid, F4 is out, dated 08.Oct 2007... well im gonna test it now, but it only claims support for new Sempron CPU.

edit: BIOS F4 is working so far with the full 4GB Ram, note that SB600 Spread Spectrum is disabled by default, I never tested disabling it but with F4A it was enabled by default. There is now also an "virtualization" option.

Now I'm gonna stress GPU by using UT3 Demoloop, which will show if everything works fine.


edit: So far UT3, ET:QW and Source-Engine games ran fine, while I'm leaving for a few hours I will run Prime Blend tests to check RAM stability.
Funny thing that Gigabyte claimed my board was damaged, even though I mentioned using BIOS F4A while F4 was already released, instead of telling me to test the new BIOS. HW-Support really sucks these days.
Also, their documentation is pretty weak... SB 600 Spread Spectrum disabled, Virtualization option added, some minor changes in DRAM-options, but their homepage informs only about support for new Sempron-CPU.

Another edit: This BIOS forces another windows activation, lol... well, lets phone them again

 

[teaBagger]

I have performed the MSConfig - Set 4GB Hack and it has stabilised my system.

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: nidhoggr
MSconfig hack is simple: Start MSconfig - Start - Advanced - set "Maximum Ram" to 4096 (I dont know exact descriptions in english bacuase my vista is german)

So with every Windowsstart there will be only used 4GB - address space for video adapter etc, which makes in my case 3325MB Ram with a single x1950Pro 512MB.
So u will be missing the Ram like in a 32bit environment, but at least the system is stable until someone is going to fix that

I have to use this freaking hack to run the MSI board using 8GB. The blue screen of terror is haunting me otherwise. Not that sure about 32bit beeing enforced by 4gb. This hack really is wacky.

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: JamMule

Originally posted by: JamMule
If the board really works, I might get one, depending on one condition: do the digital outputs work simultaneously (i.e. can I use it for a dual head setup)? That was the reason I bought the HDMI board for, it has two digital outputs.

Well, I just downloaded the manual and apparently it is either DVI or HDMI but not both.

But anyway, it the Neo2 truly works, I might consider replacing the non-HDMI board with it. For the HDMI one I just have to get some other solution.

The K9AG Neo2 Digital works flawless with 8gb using that wacky msconfig hack. Something Gigabyte can only dream of, even with the latest bios.

My HTPC, which still runs the gb board, is not stable with the latest bios update. It froze three times yesterday. This might be related to the TV card, but I am not a believer.

The MSI board has been working at least two bios revisions.

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: nidhoggr
ASUS Boards have the same problems, also both Gigabyte Boards.

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=260014

Runs perfectly fine with MSconfig hack. Without Catalyst drivers installed also 8h Prime95 stable, because then the graphics adapter wont use the address space.

With onboard graphics, the system will remain stable withput msconfig hack, only sometimes there will be white bars when entering task manager or when UAC pops up or on any screenshot. Might be due to the fact that the VRAM then is system RAM. Im not gonna test it now, but im quite sure that assigning 1GB Ram for the X1250 might remove the white bars problem, because system will only habe 3GB then.

Well I hope GB will relaese the new BIOS soon.

edit: Lol im stupid, F4 is out, dated 08.Oct 2007... well im gonna test it now, but it only claims support for new Sempron CPU.

edit: BIOS F4 is working so far with the full 4GB Ram, note that SB600 Spread Spectrum is disabled by default, I never tested disabling it but with F4A it was enabled by default. There is now also an "virtualization" option.

Now I'm gonna stress GPU by using UT3 Demoloop, which will show if everything works fine.


edit: So far UT3, ET:QW and Source-Engine games ran fine, while I'm leaving for a few hours I will run Prime Blend tests to check RAM stability.
Funny thing that Gigabyte claimed my board was damaged, even though I mentioned using BIOS F4A while F4 was already released, instead of telling me to test the new BIOS. HW-Support really sucks these days.
Also, their documentation is pretty weak... SB 600 Spread Spectrum disabled, Virtualization option added, some minor changes in DRAM-options, but their homepage informs only about support for new Sempron-CPU.

Another edit: This BIOS forces another windows activation, lol... well, lets phone them again

Happy for you!

My HTPC rig is not quite stable yet, but it uses a TV card notorious for a 2gb vista issue. Please post back in a while to let us know if your system is running long term fine.

That bios date makes me wonder what Gigabyte is up to. Maybe the tech guys are not that bad at Gigabyte, but as winnie the pooh says: It sounded so nice inside my head, but something happened on the way out.(english-norwegian-engligh translation. My apologies to all pooh fans out there)

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: JamMule

Does this board really work for you? And what is "the MSConfig hack"? Have you done a clean install on with this board?

I got one working 8gb rig, and two running gigabyte rigs, waiting to hear the RMA train.

I had one harddrive with a clean install, only vista, ATI drivers, and that MS patch. It was originally installed on a Gigabyte board. This harddrive worked flawless with the MSI board.

Switching it back to a Gigabyte board, and would you know, pizasso was back on the screen.

That drive did not work with your ASUS board, I tried it on one sample. But the ASUS board should be fixable with a bios update, if not, ASUS fases a lawsuit.

 

[FrodeNilsen]

Originally posted by: Mega2007
I got the same issue and have been posting since August 2007. Posted on amd they said we only support cpu. Posted on ati they said we don't support the motherboards. Posted on biostar they said nothing. Posted on Nvidia they did nothing.

my setup is

BE-2350 AMD AM2
biostar ta690g am2
patroit 4x1gb 800mhz 4-4-4-12 ddr2.
evga 8800gts 640mb
suxgate 500gbx2 raid0 aak crapware
x-fi
vista ultimate 64x

getting the same issue 4gb doesn't work it cause TDR in 8800gts, bsod, black screen of death.

Had to disable the memory remapping to have vista only see the 3gb then it runs fine. but still get bsod 0x124, and scream of death from x-fi.

I notice it takes a lot more voltage to keep the 0x124 from showing but in windows xp I don't have any of those problems and it takes less voltage.

Also I noticed my pcie has memory address not available at 0xc0000000-0xfebfffff.

Updated to current drivers and updates + fixes non helped I think your right something is not 64bit. I'm going to use windows xp and I going to leave amd and move to intel quad system in a few months/weeks.

If you remove the Nvidia gfx and uninstall the drivers for it, do the board work with the integrated gfx?

The creative x-fi should work with 64bit Vista, if you use the correct driver, but those blue screens of terror are hard to diagnose. Removing it running the board naked, exposing them expansion sluts, should help you eliminate if them dedicated bards are cheating you.

Try running a naked board with only 2gb ram, then 4gb ram.

Blue screen of terror is not widely reported by 690G owners, Nvidia and Creative on the other hand...

 

[teaBagger]

When I removed my NVidia 8600GT from the equation and just used the onboard ATI - It appeared to be stable....

 

[nidhoggr]

System ran 24/7 since saturday morning, no flaws.

 

[sideeffect]

I have this issue with a Gigabyte 690g Micro atx motherboard. I'm using 4 x 1GB sticks of crucial ballistix (micron). Also using Vista x64 and a x1950 pro ATI card. 2GB of ram is completely stable and I have had no problem until I tried to put another 2gb in today and got the white lines of death.

Turning off all vista effects eg. Aero makes windows stable but as soon as I start a 3d app the computer will crash. I have removed the extra 2GB of ram for now.

Is this grounds enough to ask for a refund on the motherboard ? My board is only a month old and I dont particularly want to keep it if I can't run over 3gb of ram ever.

edit - ok seems the new bios fixes this issue. The bios i'm using though has unlocked voltages so I have to decide if I want to overclock or have 4gb :/

 

[nidhoggr]

What board exactly?

ps: System still absolutely stable, I wonder why it took GIgabyte several months to fix this...

 

[FrodeNilsen]

I am sorry I cannot say the same. I got a system running as a htpc, and the recording and watching the telly may kill it three times a night.

Had to MSconfig it, and it was running happily again. The system is due for a MSI mobo, I will post back if the MSI mobo runs fine.