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MBoard for AMD FX-4170

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steverashi

New Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2012
Location
Manchester, England
Hello,

Joined to get some advice regarding the above. I bought my PC ready built as I couldn't be doing with the hassle of building my own. What a mistake that was! Learning quickly that if you buy cheap you buy twice. So far I have changed the case and the power supply as the ones it came with were pants. Advertised as a gaming system but crashes every time you try to play anything saying that the driver has stopped working and has been restarted.

The board it has at the moment is a Gigabyte M68MT-S2 with an AMD FX-4170 and Radeon HD6670 graphics card.

Want a better board as this one only accepts 8gb of RAM and even then it only shows 4gb as usable. Running Win8 64. Tried changing all sorts in the BIOS but still doesn't show the full 8GB. I also think that it isn't the correct board for the processor as its showing as a 2.8ghz in CPU-Z but from what I've seen on here and the Net it should be 4.2??

I may be wrong but thought I would get some advice from you guys.

Thanks in advance :thup:
 
Hey Steve. :welcome:

What CPUz version are you on? Just making sure you are on the newer one that supports the piledriver CPUs correctly (the FX-4170 is part of AMD's piledriver line).

If you have power savings enabled in BIOS (usually they are on by default), you will only see the rated frequency under load, and at idle the clocks drop down to save power.

For the memory issue, I assume you have 2x 4GB sticks? In CPUz, on the SPD tab, it should have a dropdown I believe that can tell you if it can see 1 stick or 2 sticks. It's possible one stick is bad and not detected, or one of the RAM slots is bad. After you check in CPUz, we might want to talk about taking one stick out at a time, and seeing if the system can boot with just one stick in either slot (this would troubleshoot if there's a hardware problem).
 
This is all a bit new to me so please be patient. Hope these aren't too big
 

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The memory tab looks like the full 8GB is recognized.

I'm not sure why the core speed isn't changing, it might be the motherboard support for your CPU is very poor. When running prime95, it should run on all cores, which should ensure the CPUz frequency reported goes up... If it doesn't go up, that probably means the CPU is stuck at 2.8GHz currently. Which is weird - but your board is an odd one. I actually didn't know there was a GeForce 7025/nForce 630a chipset.

If returning isn't an option, I'd ditch the board and get something cheap but reputable.
 
No, 4170 is Bulldozer, 43xx is Piledriver.

What CPUz version are you on? Just making sure you are on the newer one that supports the piledriver CPUs correctly (the FX-4170 is part of AMD's piledriver line).
 
steve, I'm not sure of your budget but this board has served me well. I have been able to get my 8350 to 5.0 on it, so if you are planning on OCing it should serve you well.
 
The M68MT-S2 v3.1 supports upto 95W processors only, seems. The FX-4170 is a 125W TDP processor so that may explain why it is only running at 2.8GHz in that board.

Seem you have one stick RAM. To utilize dual channel memory bandwidth, optimally two identical sticks need be used.

Your current board is of microATX form factor, so if case size is a limiting factor a full size ATX board will not fit in a microATX case.
 
I have 2 sticks of 4gb ram both the same. Case size isn't an issue as I have changed to a Coolermaster Storm.

After some careful thinking going to get rid of both the board and cpu. A friend has an i5 with a decent board for sale at the same price as the ASUS Sabertooth. Will sell my existing rubbish on ebay. It does work just not that well when it comes to gaming. Everything else is fine but as soon as any game starts it crashes. Will be making any buyer aware of this as I am not in the habit of ripping people off.

Will be back on here when its changed over to get some advice on overclocking as you guys have been very helpful.
 
Your current board should be able to pick up the two sticks in dual channel mode by default.
You CPU-Z screenshots indicate it is not doing it. Have you tried swapping them around and also one stick at the time in each slot? Any BIOS setting that sets dual channel disabled? otoh, could be it is just due to the processor is not compatible with that board.
The crashing is 99% sure due to the boards inability to provide power for the 125W processor you have. The power design 3+1 on AM3 was not intended for it.

Seeing as you are in UK, I would have suggested this board : http://www.pcupgrade.co.uk/productdetails.asp?ProductID=10654&categoryid=671

Anyway, good luck on your future computer rig.
 
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