Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

During the few days I spent gathering info and data for the ASRock E350M-1 review I wrote last week, I had downloaded AMD's System Monitor v1.0.0.2 in order to get accurate HD 6310 IGP usage. Being the same inquisitive person I have been, I decided to take a gander inside the ".exe.config" file, since it was larger than usual 1-2KB; coming in at 11K. So like most files that don't have any associated program to open them, I drug it into Notepad and see if it was going to turn into gibberish 'decompiled' programming code, or like a typical config file for a game where it is easily modifiable. While I always hope for the latter I rarely expect it to be the case, so you can understand my slight surprise when it was!

Welcome to the first installment of "Adventures in Boredom, with Formula350" -- Today's chapter is: File Spelunking

Who said curiosity always kills the cat?

Like many of you I have taught myself everything when it comes to computers. Sure, I had lots of help from friends, forums and random web surfing but nothing came by way of school courses. A lot of what I know as far as Windows is concerned has came by way of pure exploring of the hidden folders and registry settings of the OS. Mistakes have been made over the years, especially during my early years. Like when I deleted the "File Manager" back in Windows 3.11, which for those not familiar with such a relic of an OS, think of it like the Directory exploring portion of the Windows Explore but still being able to access fair amount of programs via Start Menu. Or my other bone headed movie of compressing the hard drive, because Windows had said by doing so I could have gone from the massive 830MB of (total) hard drive space, up to something like 1.2GB! However, this isn't like NTFS directory compression, I totally hosed my system by doing this and required a reinstall (not something I knew how to do at that point in time)

*jump ahead over a decade and a half...*

During the few days I spent gathering info and data for the ASRock E350M-1 review I wrote last week, I had downloaded AMD's System Monitor v1.0.0.2 in order to get accurate HD 6310 IGP usage. Being the same inquisitive person I had been, I decided to take a gander inside the ".exe.config" file, since it was larger than usual 1-2KB; coming in at 11K. So like most files that don't have any associated program to open them, I drug it into Notepad and see if it was going to turn into gibberish 'decompiled' programming code, or like a typical config file for a game where it is easily modifiable. While I always hope for the latter I rarely expect it to be the case, so you can understand my slight surprise when it was! 

I admit that I wanted it to be something fun to monkey around with, but what I stumble across was equally intriguing: what appears to be undocumented info on Radeon Graphics models in future Desktop and Mobile Fusion APUs! Not only that, but also Crossfire compatibility with (at the time) unreleased discrete graphics card models and Core/Memory clocks on some of the APU's graphics chips

I wanted to get around to posting about this earlier, but since I edit Tony's articles you can see I've been a bit busy. After finding another tasty morsel of info yesterday by doing the same kind of exploring, I figured since I had some time I should share this nugget with everyone :) I'll get to the other part in a moment, but here's the huge list of APU-GPU, Discrete GPU, Clocks and Crossfire data from the EXE Config file. Originally in XML format, so here it is with formatting remove to be more easily consumed by your brain (please keep in mind this should still be considered 'rumor-mill' until openly confirmed by AMD):

Mobile APU-based Graphics Devices (All clocks are in MHz)

*Notes: "HD" prefix is absent from APUs in the file, everything is verbatim.
              All but the 6380G show an identical secondary clock profile, where the only difference on the 6380 is the secondary Max Memory Clock is again 667MHz.

Desktop APU-based Graphics Devices

*Notes: No clock info provided.
             HD prefix seems to be desktop only.

Discrete Mobile GPU Devices

*Note: Yes, device IDs are accurately displayed, apparently the use of differing clocks and memory types will make up the performance gaps.

 
Discrete Desktop GPU Devices

Mobile APU+GPU Crossfire

*Notes: Presumably laptops with a single stick of memory can utilize Crossfire, the exception being the HD 6775G2 (fastest combo) which is marked "False".

Desktop APU+GPU Crossfire

Are 990FX boards already in our midst?

Word around the campfire is that the 990FX is not going to be anything more than the 890FX rebadged. I'm crossing my fingers for more, but considering AMD already has done something similar to this in the past (890GX is almost a 785G, and 870 seems to be an 880G with the IGP turned off), I'm not going to my breath for anything ground breaking. Some tweaks sure would be nice though, to justify the new name and shelling out for the motherboard. Still, I will just be happy to see Bulldozer finally arrive, and if rebadge gets it here that much sooner then sobeit! Something known about all this is that both will utilize the AM3+ Socket (or AM3b, AM3 black socket), something that is again a socket relatively unchanged since the dawning of 939 Desktop and 940 Server Athlon 64 models. Over the years the visual differences were the alignment gaps, or the four raised areas on the grid, which kept the next generation from being crammed in the previous; AM2 into 939, or 939 into 940. The main change between AM3 and AM3+ is that now all motherboards will be utilizing every pin trace, since the upcoming chips will now need them to get as much possible from the 8-cores the desktop Bulldozers will come with, where as only a select few AM3 boards were built that way (Crosshair III Formula I believe was said to be one).

Officially speaking, AMD isn't supporting the utilization in the AM3+ chips in the AM3 boards, but they admit there also isn't anything preventing that from being possible. While that means some of us who bought 800-series boards (better chance for 890, especially FX owners) will only require a BIOS update, since manufactures had already been connecting all the pins on a few of their the boards, it doesn't mean all of the 800-series AM3 boards will work. With Bulldozer drawing near the board makers are starting to release some true AM3+ boards, in addition to the AM3-pseudo+ support via BIOS updates. ASRock has one of them, the 890FX Deluxe5, which we will have online for you soon. Visually it is not much different from the Deluxe4, with a few capacitor changes easy to spot, which even then is not too far off from the original Deluxe3 (though more than not, that time). The biggest change with the Deluxe5 is the adoption of the UEFI BIOS, and also it supports ASRock's new AXTU (ASRock eXtreme Tuning Utility). 

That is where my tinkering came in, as I decided to nab the AXTU and see if it'd be possible to futz with the files enough to make it support my 890FX Deluxe3 somehow :D I'll be sure to let you know if I do (or if you know, by all means shoot me an email!), but I got sidetracked by what I found in the 'index' XML file that tells it what board goes to what XML config file. For the Deluxe5 it shows:

<Item Conf="890FXD5.xml" Name="890FX Deluxe5" Index="21" IesConf="L6717.xml"/>

The 21 and L6717 are irrelevant as far as we are concerned, but the 21 is just the number in the index, with the L6717 being the controller responsible for voltage regulation (made by STMicroelectronics). It's the pointing to 890FXD5.xml that is of interest, because if you scroll down the XML file more we come to:

<Item Conf="890FXD5.xml" Name="990FX Extreme4" Index="45" IesConf="L6717.xml"/>

Now, just like with the APU info above, I'm not saying the 890FX Deluxe5 is going to be later rebadged as the '990FX Extreme4' ... but that sure seems to be well within the realm of possibility, no? My thinking on it is, every board seems to be just different enough from the next that an overclocking program can't call up on the sensor and voltage data/tables on another, unless they are virtually the same.  Case in point is that same index XML points to a few other boards that utilize the same config file, but they are only the difference of being a P67 Extreme4 and P67 Extreme3, or the 870 iCafe and 870 iCafe R2.0.

Does that mean anything at the end of the day if the Deluxe5 is a 990FX? No, not really, maybe except a few bragging rights if you felt so inclined. I just found it interesting, worthy of sharing, and that some of you might also be interested :)

[/nigh incoherent ramblings of a partially crazy person]