AMD Explains How To Get Your Rig Ready for Bulldozer

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, October 06, 2011, 10:22 PM EDT

Adam Kozak, product marketing manager at AMD, has just published a blog post on the AMD website titled, “Get Your Rig Ready for the AMD FX Processor”. As you can probably surmise from the title, Adam outlines the steps necessary for do-it-yourselfers to get their machines ready to work with upcoming AMD FX 8-Core processors, a.k.a Zambezi, which are based on the Bulldozer architecture.

In the post, Adam talks about getting the right motherboard, i.e. a socket AM3+ motherboard based on the 9-Series chipset (a handful of which we reviewed right here), flashing it with a Bulldozer compatible BIOS or UEFI, and he throws in a plug for some Radeon HD 6000 series graphics. “To unleash the power of the AMD FX CPU when it launches, you’ll of course want an equally powerful graphics card. AMD recommends matching the AMD FX CPU with an AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card or higher.”

Although an AM3+ motherboard is recommended, it’s likely some motherboard manufacturers will enable Bulldozer support on AM3 motherboards as well though a BIOS or UEFI update, but the extent to which those boards will be able to exploit the power saving features of AMD’s upcoming processors is not yet known.

“Follow these steps to be sure your PC is fully equipped to experience the unlocked and unrestrained power of AMD FX when the CPU hits the market this quarter”. Now Adam, when you say “this quarter”, do you mean next week? Next month? December perhaps? Just kiddin’, folks. We know when Bulldozer is launching, and so will you, soon enough.

Tags: AMD, Bulldozer, fx

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com