A7V + Athlon?

[Guest]

I have just invested in a system and am slightly concerned with the amount of crashes that I have had so far. On the first day of using it, it crashed every 10-15 minutes and I was sent a patch from the manufacturer for the motherboard. Their explanation was that the motherboard and the CPU don't go particularly well.

Now the patch sorted it out mainly, but it's still hanging and blue screening quite a bit, maybe a once every couple of hours.

Can anyone fill me in on this mb/cpu combo and offer any advice as to whether I should get a different motherboard or whether its fine and something else is causing the problem. I don't think it's a heat problem either.

MB : Asus A7V Ultra DMA/100
CPU : Athlon 900
GFX : 3D ProphetII Ultra
RAM : 256

It's also got DVD, network card, Plexwriter, SB Live Platinum.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kodiak]

Well, it all LOOKS fine, hardware wise, and it should work... but with computers, the key word is always *shouls*
The way it's set up has as much influence as which components are in there...
A7V is pretty good with Athlons (many will argue one of two best board for it); however, a surprising percentage of them are factory-defective, and need to be returned/exchanged. I don't know whether that's where your problem lies, you probably can't know until you mess around with it a little and try to isolate the problem...

 

[Bubba]

Did you build this system yourself? If so, did you format the hard drive first? If not, do it and do a clean install of whatever OS you are using. You could also try putting on a new OS like WinME (I know this sounds strange but it solved all my problems). If you have a newer OS installed, try a different stick of Ram.
Also, you should have at least a good 300W power supply, if not, get one.

 

[RavenPrime]

I have an A7V with a 900MHz T-bird and a GTS card. My system won't run stable with the Detonator3 video drivers. I have had to downgrade to the D2 drivers.
Other suggestions:
In the BIOS:
AGP Fast Write [Disable]--very unstable when enabled

BIOS version 1003 is supposed to be the most stable but I have 1004d and no problems with it.

Don't put any cards into:
PCI slot 1--shares IRQ with AGP
PCI slot 2--shares IRQ with ATA/100 controller

PCI slot 3--good for network card
PCI slot 4/5--share IRQ with each other and USB--ok for sound card.

James

 

[Guest]

No it came with ME on from the manufacturer.

It's funny because just kind of bought the PC to coincide getting cable and the cable company say that they will only install the stuff onto a 95/98 machine.....so it looks as if I may well be doing that. Thanks mate.

 

[Guest]

That's interesting about the drivers. I'll check it out.

And interesting about the PCI slots. Where would be best for the modem? (Didn't mention that

 

[skuba]

I am also running a Asus A7V with a 900Mhz Thunderbird. My video card is a PCI Guillemot Cougar M64 with the TNT2 processor.

The new Detonator 3 drivers will not allow my system to run. IE I can only boot into safe mode. Not know what was wrong, it took me some time before I found I needed to replace the Nvidia drivers. This is the first time I have ever had a video driver problem. I picked the A7V since ASUS seemed to have the least problems in Tom's testing.

Is this a motherboard problem? And has anyone gone back to ASUS about this?

 

[Guest]

I had the same problem. I first thought it was the CPU. I then exchanged the cpu with the one I had in my Abit KT7-Raid (from an 850 Mhz to an 800 Mhz). The problem was the same. I actually exchanged all the components (including RAM) but the problem persisted. The heat on the cpu never exceeded 49 C and there were 2 case fans.

I installed Windows Me and the problem persisted. There were no shared IRQs, I tried virtually every bios setting but the crashes persisted. I spent a month trying to figure this out.

I did one thing about 1.5 weeks ago and the board hasn't crashed once since - and that is on the energy savings settings in the power options on the control panel, I set the turn off hard disks to "never" and the system standby to "never". The behaviour of the board has completely changed since that time and it's running quite well now.

Obviously the board is defective but my 30 days is up and I'm living with the current situation OK.

 

[RavenPrime]

You can put the modem into slot 3 or slots 4/5. I depends upon which is more finicky about sharing IRQ, your network card or modem and it will take some trial and error to figure out which one.
I have DSL and so never installed a modem and I don't miss it!

I have posted messages at Asus, Elsa, and Microshaft and there responses have been useless! Basically, been there, tried that.

James

 

[Bubba]

I would put the SBLive in slot 3. Put the modem and the NIC in slots 4 and 5 (no particular order). If you don't have an ATA100 Hard drive, disable the ATA100, and just use the IDE ports. This will free up slot 2 which will not be sharing with anything and put the network card there.

 

[RavenPrime]

I had problems with SBlive in slots 1 and 2 but none with 3, 4, and 5--I have tried them all. My SBlive doesn't seem to mind sharing in slot 4 and I have my USB loaded. I have a USB mouse, keyboard, joystick, strategic commander, and printer.

Having the printer on the USB frees up IRQ 7 for the sound card and that may be why I am not having problems--I don't know.

IRQ problems were supposed to go away once ISA slots were taken off the motherboards--another promise not kept.

James

 

[Guest]

I've had so many situations where the problem with locking up is tied to the "Power Saving" feature! I've found if you totally disable it (don't allow windows to manage power) then it fixes and avoids many problems having to do with hanging.

I don't miss the power saving feature at all either since it's mainly intended to be used with a laptop where power is an issue. With a desktop though, who cares how much power it uses up?

Good post.

Poderoso.