Last week I finally succumbed to AMD's recent price drop and picked up an X2 3800+ to replace my faithful 3000+ single core. Unfortunatley the upgrade experience was anything but smooth, firstly with a few solid, but resettable, freezes followed by a spectacular one that took out my Windows XP installation and requiring me to do a full reinstall of everything. My hopes that a fresh install might fix it all were quickly dashed when the regular (usually within 1 hour) freezes started happening again, no matter what I tried. FYI, I have tried all of the following to no avail:1. Flashing motherboard to latest version that definately supports the X2 processor - 10172. Reinstall Windows XP, including SP2 (twice in fact)3. All windows updates installed, including the dual core hotfix.4. Installing the AMD X2 driver5. Installing the AMD dual core optimiser5. Installing a variety of different drivers (both known previously stable and latest) for my main system components.6. Changing BIOS settings to more conservative/compatible settings - eg. AGP 4X, fastwrites off, memory to most conservative settings, Cool 'n Quiet off.7. Searching the internet high and low for solutions - seems to be a pretty common issue upgrading from single to dual then experienceing freezes, even on a variety of motherboards.8. Putting my A64 3000+ back in and noting it runs stable for hours with no issues where the X2 was locking up regularly.9. Reinstall flight simulator 2004 from scratch, including the patch, and not install any addons.10. Everything running at stock speeds - no overclocking.11. Hardware test programs all pass with flying colours (eg. Prime 95 overnight, memcheck86, 3DMark05 looping), but start surfing the net, managing files or run FS and the solid locks come back with a vengance.I am just about to get an RMA for this puppy and bite the 15% restock and return shipping fee due to incompatibility. Any final suggestions before I admit defeat?Gary

And I have always been saying one thing: DO NOT GET AMD. Thing is, noone ever believed me and every is for AMD and only AMD. AMD is God, AMD this and AMD that... After one has had an Intel expenrience, AMD is just bad. Intel might not have been TOP NOTCH, but it was surely just a bit below top notch. I mean, do I care if I get 25 fps instead of 30 or whatever the difference?? My system is still giving me very good performance, and next thing I will be getting is surely Intel. Trusty combination: ASUS + Intel and good RAM. I built audio computers and my own for simming, and never had hardware based crashes. Once I succumbed to an Intel Mainboard, and that produced a bad result. So I can only say: ASUS makes good mainboard for good CPUs (Intel). I could preach this till tomorrow never comes :)Cya!

FWIW, my last two systems have been AMD (A64 now and Athlon XP before that) and have been rock solid. Interestingly, the system I had before that was an Intel with ASUS motherboard that I had all sorts of boot problems with. Everyone's mileage varies it seems!Anyway, my intention was not to incite a riot against AMD, rather it was to see if anyone had any suggestions other than what I have tried already before I ship the CPU back.Gary.

I just did the same thing as you, and upgraded to an x2 4200+. I have not had any problems at all. I have it overclocked to 2.5 Ghz. I did the normal installation routines with updated bios, and amd dual core optimizer etc. Fs9 runs smooth as butter.As far as the previous poster badmouthing AMD, he really shouldn't be making such broad statements. I also have had 4 different AMD systems over the years, and have not had any problems at all. One individuals bad experience does not make the brand bad.I think you may have received a defective chip, and should RMA it. This can happen with any brand.

Nah, sorry Gary, I have absolutely no suggestions to make it work. Are you sure it's the CPU? As far as I understand it, CPUs usually either work or not... I think it's rather compatibility or possibly your mainboard.And just to reply to another post, I know that there are many good AMD systems. But usually, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, right?

DO NOT GET AMDThat's not an opinion of any great value.Gary, my experience has been that you're very thorough and knowledgeable in setting up/testing a new rig. So I haven't much more to offer than what you've already done.While I agree with Word Not Allowed that CPU's usually work or don't, I did have one that drove me crazy last year. Turns out that it was flaky. The only other suggestion I would make is to try different memory. When that stuff doesn't want to play nicely with a system it can make a man age prematurely trying to sort out.Hope you get it sorted,Greg

With the dual cores there is a few fixes you may need. Some games also requires you to run on a single core... However I do try a lot of games and haven

Thanks for the suggestion Greg. Whilst I am yet to try different memory (gotta wait for my son to land his long haul 747 flight :-lol ), I am currently trying running my memory at 2.8V and AGP at 1.6V to see whether a little extra juice will bring back the stability that these subsystems normally exhibit. I read this suggestion on a forum and thought it might be a bit of a stretch, but since I am now clearly in straw-grasping territory I thought - why not!Touch wood, but my system has been running for two hours now with a windowed FS2004 session, TV from my ATI multimedia center, an AVG virus scan, a remote desktop session to my work computer and a couple of web browsers. This is the longest it has ever lasted and hopefully I may now be on the right track to getting this working.Gary

Hope it works out, Gary. Another thing I just noticed is that you're running onboard sound. Should the problem persist try disabling sound in the BIOS and then test.Regards,Greg

Well Darn..Sorry about your whoe's...I certianly hope the memory change helps(or you discover the problem otherwise)..I just did a 4000+ to 4800x2 swap myself...Basically followed the outline in your first post and have had no problems thusfar...I actually anticipated some hic-ups however the swap was un-eventful...What is affinity?? Maybe some of these dual core guru's can answer that...I just recall having read that term in the past relating to "issues" with FS...I'm not sure it's relevant in your case...I just wanted to mention it as one more straw?? I'm sorry I can't elaborate on it either..I'm new to this x2 stuff myself..I hope the 3800+ smoothes out for you!! It seems your doing it right...Like soarpics mentioned..Maybe you got a flaky processor?? Hang in there... Good Luck!!

The type of random lockup you describe sound to me like a cooling, memory or less likely, hardware conflict/driver.I would suggest the following:1) reset the BIOS to make sure old CMOS data isn't the problem.2) check the temperature if motherboard allows it - verify the heatsink installation, and proper thermal paste interface - the lockups you describe can easily be caused by this and quite common3)to quickly test hardware, run Prime95 (mersene prime numbers) to quickly give your system a workout. Any CPU or memory issue typically comes up withing 15 minutes of running Prime95.4) swap memory banks. you may have a bad memory stick or a bad contact.5) remove (or disable) audio. See if the system still locks up.Hope this helps, and good luck!EM

I actually think I am getting somewhere now! Last night I tried boosting DDR and AGP voltage, which worked for a while, but inevitably I got the solid freeze a few times again. One of the things I did notice while playing with voltages however was that Vcore under ASUS Probe was measuring as low as 1.308V, which is borderline low for the X2 (1.3-1.4V is the spec range). As a last last last ditch attempt (you know how it goes when trying to fault find something for a long time :-lol), I put the DDR and AGP voltages back where they were, and this time set Vcore in the BIOS to be 1.40V (1.35V is auto). Now ASUS Probe reads Vcore as 1.37V at its lowest point.The Vcore issue had me intrigued, so I tried a little overclocking fault finding to see how each core would perform at stock voltage. When I got it high enough for Core 1 to fail in Prime95, it came back with an expected calculation error message and the suggestion to check my hardware. Of particular interest was when I could get Core 0 to fail, the system would always lock solid, like I have been experiencing for the last week. A little more Vcore juice and no more lockups.So as of this morning I am pleased to report that my system has been running since late last night at 2.4GHz (4600+) and Vcore 1.45V (to give 1.41V in ASUS Probe). I have not had a crash/freeze, even after six straight hours of my FS / antivirus / file copy / web surf / TV multitask stress test. I also ran Prime 95 overnight on Core 1 with the TV providing a varying load on Core 2 (the load scenario that invites freezes to happen), and it was all still good this morning.I won't declare this issue resolved at this stage - I've played this game enough times over the last 10 years to know that it takes days / weeks of stability before I call anything a win. The fact that my new CPU doesn't run at auto VCore when my old one did easily (and in fact stabily overclocked 30% at the auto Vcore setting) kinda bugs me for a brand new bit of hardware, but the boost I made to Vcore still put it within spec range at stock speed. If the chip didn't overclock for crap (ie. because it was on the edge of flakiness even at stock), then I'd probably still RMA it, but if I can keep 2.4GHz alive over the next week I might just have a winner.Thanks to all for the suggestions - they might still come in handy when my current euphoria ends if Murphy makes my system lock solid just after I make this post ;-). Gary

ISTM that CPU is just not operating like it should. Maybe it will run forever with the higher Vcore, but I would consider RMAing it.scott s..

Glad that Prime95 ran stable. It is strange that your voltage seems to fluctuate this much. Question: what type of PSU do you have, and in particular, can you get the specs on the various legs? I'm wondering if for some reason, there aren't enough amps to keep the CPU power regulator circuit enough oomf.It may also be that you don't have enough power to maintain a stable voltage. Another thing that rings a bell is the Cool'n quiet feature. Is that disabled?I have an FX60 that I run at +0.25 volts to keep stable due to a serious overclock (I'm running +400MHz with heavy cooling), but that required a 650W power supply (true, not what's on the box), because of my dual video cards.

I have an Antec 480W TruePower power supply, which has been stable with everything I have in my box for about 18 months now and all rails are certainly specced with more than enough juice for this config.Cool 'n Quiet is definately disabled, as it is the only way to set the higher Vcores that I have been using.I can report that I've only had one freeze over the last two days of solid use, and interestingly that was when I had the CPU clocked back to 2GHz and 1.4V. At 2.4GHz and 1.45V Vcore (1.424V actual according to ASUS Probe) it has not frozen once, and thats been two days of a mix of work / TV, reinstalling FS and addons (a mammoth task let me add!), and the odd stress test (Prime 95 on two cores, and FS + TV running). The only thing that annoys me is the high temps I am getting, obviously due to the overclocking, Vcore increases and regular stress tests. The ambient temp of my computer room is already high at around 28C, and I am getting an idle temp of around 41C and load temps around 57C with 1.5 cores running (ie. 1 maxed and the other doing the windows housekeeping, FS addons and TV) and as high as 60C with both cores running flat out with my GPU in top gear as well.Actually it's more the fan noise that bothers me than the temp (As high as 60C is, it still gives me 5C margin to Tmax!). The fan on the stock cooler revs up to 5500RPM under stressful loads, which is kinda whiney, but it also adds to the audio ambience of the FS experience. :-lol.I'm still at odds whether to RMA it. I hope to get the FSX demo tonight and see if it benefits from dual core in a noticable enough way. If not, it's RMA time and I'll put back in my trusty, quiet and comparatively fast ole 3000+ @ 2.35GHz!.Gary