Athlon 1.4 & DDR problem no one can solve :(

[Guest]

Hi Guys,

I've been battling with this problem for about 4 weeks now

I have tried to put everything here I have done - I hope its not too long

===========================================================

I recently upgraded my machine with a 1.4 gig AMD chip, Elitegroup K7TA3 mobo, radeon 64 ddr agp and DDR ram.


All appeared ok, but when a few apps were open my system would hang for a few seconds - I ran a CPU monitor and it showed it running at a constant 60 - 80% usage, going off the scale when an app was opened and hanging.

After reformatting a few times, trying with ME and 98SE, stripping the machine down to bare bones, and having the same results even immediately after a clean install, I returned the stuff to the shop.

At the shop they replaced each component one by one and had the same problem, they even tried another mobo, an MSI ddr board and a geforce 2 gts card and got the same results - after about 3 days they used the CPU MON on the DDR systems they are building from new and found them to have the same problem - which they then decided wasn't a problem and must be a charcteristic of the DDR mobo setups - I think thats bollox (imho)

They then gave me my box back and as far as they are concerned that is the end of it - its meant to be like that

This is exactly what I have done in constructing the new pc

1) Set the mobo jumper from 100 mhz to 133mhz
2) Fitted Mobo and attached 512 of DDR ram in sockets 1 and 2
3) Fitted 30 GIG ATA 66 HD to IDE slot 1, set as master
4) Attached floppy and cable to floppy socket
5) Attached HP CDWriter PLus 9300 to second IDE socket set as master ( I even removed this and rebooted but no change)
6) Attached Radeon DDR card to AGP slot
7) Inserted boot disk into floppy and started machine
8) On DOS promt, formatted C drive and subsequently installed Windows ME
9) Once first boot was complete - before installing any drivers, I opened one of a couple of CPU monitors and the CPU was jumping around at between 60 & 80 % usage.
10) After installing all drivers for mobo, 4 in 1 chipset stuff, card drivers etc - still the same
11) Downloaded and updated to latest mobo bios - still the same

Can anyone help me with this, has anyone got a 1.4 ddr machine they could run a CPU mon on to see if they have the same prob?

TIA

stubbsy

 

[Toejam31]

I don't know if it's relevant to your situation, but just in case, I'll post the info, anyway. If it helps ... it helps, if not, then you won't be any worse off than when you started.

Win9x has a minor problem with 512MB of RAM or more.

The preferable solution would be to upgrade to Win2k, which has much better memory and system resource management.

However, there are a couple of workarounds for Win9x. First, run sysedit.exe from the Start\Run Command Line, and navigate to the system.ini file. Under the [386Enh] section, put these lines:

MinPagingFileSize=51200
MaxPagingFileSize=51200
ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1
PageBuffers=32

Next, while still in the system.ini file, navigate to the [vcache] section. Add this line directly under it: MaxFileCache=262144. Close the file, and save the changes.

Third, run MSCONFIG. Click the Advanced button. This will open the Advanced Troubleshooting section. Click the "Limit Memory to xxxMB" box. Set the number at 511.

Next, open the Device Manager. Open up System Devices. Find the Direct memory access controller. Open the properties for this device, and under the Settings tab, with the reserved memory area, check the box for Reserve DMA Buffer. Make the amount 64K. This should automatically make a new listing (after a reboot) in the system.ini [386Enh] section that says: DMABufferSize=64

Finally ... right-click on My Computer. Go to Properties, and click the Performance tab. Set your Virtual Memory to a minimum and maximum of 50MB. You won't really need the swap file with these settings, but this is just in case the system doesn't react well to any of the changes. Win9x "dislikes" not having some kind of swap file during the boot, even if you have basically eliminated the system's ability to access the Virtual Memory with the system.ini changes.

Note: You should do all of this without rebooting, even if the system prompts you to do so. Make the changes, first.

<i>Now</i> reboot, and double-check all the settings, afterwards.

This should take the Operating System memory limitations bug out of the equation, and help you narrow down the source of the problem. It might even fix it, which would be nice for you, huh?

One last thought. Make sure the voltage for the DDR memory is 2.5v ... not the standard 3.3.

Comments, people?

Good luck!

Toejam31

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>

 

[Guest]

Just out of curiosity, does the mobo have anything on-board whether it be sound, raid, whatever?

*****

That's what you get for buying your computer based on <font color=orange>color</font color=orange>. :redface:

 

[Guest]

Toejam31, tried your suggestions but no luck.

Something i would like to add tho, which may confuse the issue, I am using a usb mouse, when i move the mouse around the cpu level drops by about 50% for some reason?

Also it does have onboard sound, but I have disabled this in the bios

thanks for your help so far

 

[Guest]

one other thing i discovered is the the problem disappears if i excahnge the ddr agp card for an old 8 meg AGP card?!?

thats about all the info I can give you guys on this one, still hoping

stubbsy

 

[killall]

incompatibility issue with the radeon? has to be it...

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[Guest]

I have exactly the same problem with my new Athlon 1.4 and DDR motherboard, yet with a GeForce DDR and Asus A7M motherboard!

Is there a faulty batch of 1.4 Thunderbirds doing the rounds? I bought mine two weeks ago in Manchester, UK.

My machine is fine until I run a demanding 3D game or benchmark such as 3D Mark 2001. The situation is even worse with Open GL games. I have tried no less than 8 different versions of GeForce drivers, and 4 clean installations of Windows 98 SE and Windows ME. Still no luck. I think the only piece of hardware I have in common with Stubbsy apart from the Athlon 1.4 is the HP CD Writer. May be a problem with this software or hardware combination?

The most obvious think I thought was wrong with the system was maybe the processor was getting too hot. But the temperature is only a standard 40 degrees C which is fine for a 1.4, the motherboard is 36 degrees C.

My DDR memory (256MB) is listed as being tested and copatable with the Asus board in the Asus A7M manual, but when I put the FSB speed down from 133 to 100 the problems dissapeared, unfortunetly, losing 400mhz off the CPU is not an option!

I'm getting a GeForce 3 soon, if it still dosn't work with that then where is there left to go?

Does anyone have the VIA DDR chipset rather than the AMD 760?

 

[killall]

personally i blame microsoft... try installing win2k, if that doesnt work install a fresh mandrake 8.0 (has geforce 2 drivers) and locate a linux version of quake 3... if that doesnt work... well, uhm, yeh hardware problem... but as long as youre only trying windows it doesnt mean that there is a hardware problem...

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[killall]

personally i blame microsoft... try installing win2k, if that doesnt work install a fresh mandrake 8.0 (has geforce 2 drivers) and locate a linux version of quake 3... if that doesnt work... well, uhm, yeh hardware problem... but as long as youre only trying windows it doesnt mean that there is a hardware problem...

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[rbertino]

It could quite possibly be an inadequate power supply for both of you. That might explain why if you switch it to an older 8 MB card it works, because the 8 MB card doesn't draw as much power as the Radeon. And also why underclocking the bus would fix it, because then the processor isn't drawing as much juice.

I forget what video cards and AMD processors need for power, but I seem to remember someone saying that they both draw from the same line on the power supply, so having a 300 W power supply doesn't necessarily mean that it has enough power. It depends on what it provides on certain lines. Does anyone remember and/or have a link as to what they require?

<i>I don't know anything about computers... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night...</i> :lol:

 

[Guest]

The problem, I have now found out, is a design error on the Asus board. The default setting for the DDR memory module voltage is actually 2.7v, when it should be 2.5v, so your DDR is being overclocked out of the box! You have to remove the VI01 jumper to return the voltage to the preffered DDR default of 2.5v. The Asus A7M manual does not mention this, which is an oversight, and the default should never have been 2.7v because DDR memory is not yet designed to run at this voltage - hence it will get too hot and in 3D games where high memory usage occurs - CRASH!

See this thread for more information:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1

In an earlier post, it was mentioned that a problematic system worked fine with an old 8meg AGP card, this will be because memory bandwidth between the slow AGP card and the DDR RAM is kept low because the video card is not fast enough to demand more, so the DDR has an easier time of it, despite being overclocked!

 

[phsstpok]

I don't know about the "CPU MON" that you mentioned but simple CPU monitoring software, like Window's own System Monitor, can erroneously report CPU activity when there is none. The problem is ACPI's software CPU cooling function. System Monitor mistakenly detects this as genuine CPU activity.

If you try some better software like TaskInfo2000 you will get better readings of system activity.

Get TaskInfo2000 <A HREF="http://www.iarsn.com/" target="_new">here</A>.

Read about Taskinfo2000 <A HREF="http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,52060,00.html" target="_new">here</A>

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info phsstpok,

although I had already been using a couple of 3rd party monitors, with this one it shows that there is little or no cpu activity

Although I am pleased that maybe it was incorrect cpu monitoring that i was seeing, it still doesn't explain why when i had the 8 meg card in the cpu idle disappeared when i was using the old monitor.

thanks for your advice

stubbsy