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Intel microcode update? Thoughts?

Just saw this as well. Bit :confused: as there doesn't seem to be information anywhere of the problem it fixes... smells of a cover up :o
 
What exactly does this fix? I saw it on the Inquirer and downloaded the fix but have not yet installed it. Not going to either until i find out what it does. There is no mention of what it does on Microsofts website.
 
Well that's what I thought. Here's a bandage for that problem? What ******* problem???

I'll keep digging around and see what the www has on it.
 
I think this is what it's all about........?




Around April 10th, 2007, Intel released a microcode update (BIOS flash to the rest of us) so resolve several major issues with how Intel Core 2 series processors operate.

Intel has provided a microcode update as a critical software fix. This Intel microcode update addresses an improper Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) invalidation that may result in unpredictable system behavior such as system hangs or incorrect data. OEM's are making available a system BIOS upgrade that integrates a new version of this Intel microcode to address this potential but extremely rare issue. While the occurrence of this issue is extremely rare, OEM's strongly recommends upgrading the system BIOS to an updated version. Intel has indicated that the microcode update has no known measurable performance impact and provides a complete and comprehensive resolution to this issue.

The issues can affect any workstation that uses Intel Core2 Duo desktop processor E4000 and E6000 sequences, Intel Core2 Quad desktop processor Q6600 and Intel Core2 Extreme processors X6800 and QX6700 processors.

While the implications of the issue are difficult to quantify, any of the following symptoms can occur:

The system may stop responding to keyboard or mouse input.

A system operating in a Microsoft Windows environment may generate a blue screen.

A system operating in a Linux environment may generate a kernel panic.
 
What i downloaded from Microsofts website is a patch, presumeably for XP, not a bios update.

Just checked Gigabytes website and there is no new bios as of yet.
 
Just installed it in XP 32bit, SP2.

No problems, no crashes when installing, fast install. It seems no faster or anything, and super-pi time is like, a few ms faster, but nothing to get excited about.

But as of yet, no problems, but no obvious good effects either
 
daft question - but as this is probably minor errors in calcs .. can this effect Orthos stability ?

ie if certain circumstance that caused an error in a calc due to the microcode error - then couldn't it "trip" Orthos into an error ?

Mark.
 
Could be anything, all processors have errata, intel just discovered another one, and informed microsoft and bios makers how to avoid it. No real problem.

Probably takes a specific code sequence to even trigger it, as there havent exactly been thousands of people complaining their c2d systems crash too often.

My own system, I can count the number of crashes on 1 hand since I built it, the same week the C2D was released.

There were unfixed errata in P3 that never even got an update, and that one was faily easy to trigger, but virtually no real world programs were effected.

Doubt its a miscalculation though, that would have shown up a lot sooner imho, like the floating point bug in the original pentiums.. Was quite soon after Pentium's release it was discovered.
 
If you've updated your BIOS sometime in the past few month, then you've probably already got the fix.

This software fix will be for those who don't know what a BIOS update is and have been having problems.
 
All CPU's have bugs, the most well known being the Pentium FDIV issue.

We have 1000's of installation working hard 24/7 and I have never seen any issues with cpu errata's with Intel or AMD

Problems with new motherboard chipsets is a far, far bigger problem.
 
I was thinking more along the lines of people running Orthos say like for 7 hours - as always surely a possibility of one combination of calcs hitting the errata ?
 
I think I may have been a victim of this - had random BSODs in Vista x64 for a while, completely unpredictable timing, Windows reported it as a serious error reported by the CPU. I've applied the patch, hopefully this fixes those crashes! Running a 4300 on a Gigabyte P965-DS3P FWIW.
 
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