Why wont bus oc work stable on my Abit KT7?

[Guest]

Hi,

i have an Abit KT7Raid with an Athlon 800 installed (and a Geforce2MX, 3 cdrom drives and 2 raid ibm harddrives, modem, sb live 1024 and network card).
I can easily overclock it to 1GHz with the multiplier.
But when i raise the bus speed a little bit, it will hang during games and stuff, not during benchmarking with either Sisoft Sandra 2001, BurnInTest or 3DMark 2001 (or 2000?). I ran these crash and burn in tests lots of times but they never hang. Only paint shop pro hangs when copying large images to the clipboard for instance and some games crash when the system is overclocked.

It doesn't make much of a difference if i set the bus speed to either 105, 107 or 110.

When i set the bus speed to 110, i have to set my agp timing to EA to have my geforce working and i set the i/o voltage from 3.3V up to 3.6V but still there is the occasional system crash. The CPU core voltage went up to 1.85 but still it hangs. Strange though, because i can run the processor at 1G with multiplier OC at 1.75V.

I have lots of case fans installed and huge Alpha heatsinks and even memory, videocard and northbridge coolers. I don't think it is a heat problem because the cpu doesn't go much higher that 50C or so.

Does anyone have experience with Abit KT7 overclocking? I want to know what BIOS settings will seriously improve stability without the loss of major performance. And are there some known Nvidia driver problems or DirectX 7 or 8, or windows 98 problems encountered with overclocking?

And.. Will a 5MHz Bus speed increase be noticable on a 100Mhz mobo?

 

[Guest]

what kind of memory do you have? Could be a memory problem. Remember, when you oc the fsb you oc the memory too. Make sure you have reputable memory and if you do check the timings on it.

 

[khha4113]

. Remember, when you oc the fsb you oc the memory too.

Not only memory that being overclocked but also Hard disk, Video card and PCI.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[phsstpok]

I have a KT7. It is not stable at all above 106mhz but at 106 its pretty stable. I haven't found options in a standard BIOS that provides absolute stability but setting AGP to 2X does provide a noticeably improvement with barely measureable loss in performance (about 10 points 3DMark2001).

Disabling ACPI greatly increases stability but you need a modified BIOS to do this. You can find modified BIOSes at <A HREF="http://www.biosmods.com" target="_new">Binary's BIOS Mods</A>. If you don't feel comfortable with this there are links at <A HREF="http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm" target="_new">Paul's Unofficial Abit KT7 FAQ</A> where you can learn how to do the modifications yourself. The mods are just reenable options of the ABIT BIOSes that are disabled by default.

I run my Duron at 1007mhz, 106mhz FSB, memory at 141mhz, Turbo, Cas2, 4-way interleave, 4K page mode, all PCI and AGP settings to max (except AGP is at 2X, as mentioned). Fastwrites are off because my Geforce256 won't work with this enabled. (Strangely, it did work with the 10.80 detonators. No others). My voltage settings are 1.85v core (reports as 1.91 volts) and I/O voltage at 3.5. (My modem doesn't like 3.6 volts). Drivers are 4.31 4-in-1's, detonator 14.40, and 3R BIOS (but I am going back to WZb01 BIOS which seems to allow me to overclock my Geforce256 just a little higher 150/216 vs 150/212).

At these settings I have looped the 3DMark2000 demo for 24 hours, continuous.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Guest]

I haven't tried the AGP 2x yet, that might be something to try. I wanted to run my athlon 800 at 110 x 10, but i think that won't be stable at all, although it seems to be stable for a while, but there will always be the occasional crashes every now and then.

ACPI is for power management and stuff right? Well, i never intend to use that, because it is annoying and whenever i press the sleep button on my keyboard, my computer goes into a coma anyway.
Do you personally think these modified bioses are reliable?

I have tried lots of the original bios versions, and i haven't found any noticeable diferences in stability. Perhaps i should try the WZb01 bios also, because i have an Asus Geforce 2MX, which is known to be a problematic item on VIA based boards.

I have the 4.32 4in1 drivers and i have tried several ASUS-NVidia-detonator drivers. Basically they are NVidia detonator drivers, but they include the ASUS control panel and stuff.
Changing drivers and directX versions did change stability when playing Black & White and also Pro Rally 2001. But it never got perfectly stable.

How much of an performance increase did you get with 106 instead of 100 bus speed? 9.5x106 compared to 10x100 for instance.

 

[CALV]

Hi,

Ii have a kt7a raid, curruntly running a 1 gig (100) at 1360 (136 x 10) I did have a few probs similar to you initially, I changed bios to 3R and had better success. it may be the memory thats your problem, have you tried running at 133 x 6 ? that way tthe rest of your system (pci etc) are still running in spec, or maybe try 8 x 100 but set your memory to host + pci, that way you memory will be running at 133, if this causes probs still then its most likely down to the ram.


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I was wondering, since i have a 100MHz motherboard, what if i set the FSB to 133 and the memory to host clk only? then the AGP and PCI busses shoud get a different multiplier than with 110 and they should be in spec. Memory should also be ok at the rated 133MHz. But i don't think my 100MHz FSB Athlon would like the 133MHz FSB....

hmm...

 

[Guest]

Ah, yea... ah... excuse me, but i too have a KT7-RAID, but i have a different story... Ive had my CPU at 115 FSB and it was hella stable, hot but stable.... i think i had it at like 7.5x115.... it was a while ago.. but it was STABLE...

My Specs:
KT7-RAID (Bios= 3C)
Tbird 850 (100x8.5) OC--> 115x8.5= 977FSB, VCore 1.85v
Load Temp= 56C (AS2 on a chrome Orb, Modified to fit KT7)
Idle= 38C
384Mb PC133 RAM (Kingston)
GeForce2 MX (eVGA..... sucky for OC Ram.... GPU clocks high though)
2 Maxtor 20Gb Striped
Netgear NIC
SB Live! Mp3
USR 56k Sporster Modem

Like I said, it was stable... nice speed too, benchmarked with the 1Ghz big boys...

Yes, I'm the BOY who got Win98 to load in under 10 sec... ah....

 

[CALV]

if you leave it set to host clk, your ram will run at the same speed as the fsb is set to, if it is set to host+pci, it will run at the fsb + pci (i.e. fsb is 100, pci is then 33, so ram runs at 133)
I'd try and boot at 133 - may or may not work, will give a better performance increase than increasing the mplier, if it dont work- nothing lost , I have to 100 athllon and runs happy at 133 and 136, sort of happy at 140 - the 140 prob in my case is the psu I think.

Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[phsstpok]

I forgot to mention that CPU temperature greatly effects stability. Having played around with multiple settings and speeds over the months I have found that 51 degrees is a critical temperature for my Duron. Some hot summer days have forced me to back off from my overclocking. As you probably know, each degree increase in room temperature generally causes a one dregree increase in CPU temperature.

Regarding the WZb01 BIOS. I'm sorry, I meant the modified WZb01 BIOS (with the ability to disable ACPI. Yes, power management). I also have the WZ BIOS which seems to overclock equally as well but I still think ACPI adds instability. As I said I may go back to the WZb01-mod but I will reread some of the BIOS update notes to see how important the "fixes" seem to be.

For 106mhz for 100mhz bus, you would be able measure some differences especially with memory benchmarks because at 106mhz memory is at 106+35=141mhz. At 100mhz FSB memory is at 100+33=133. With games I think you would hardly notice the difference. Most of us try to push whatever graphics card we have to the highest level of detail and the highest resolution while keep our games still playable. Doing this, performance is very dependent on the graphics card, more so than a few mhz difference on FSB speed. I'll run a few benchmarks at 100mhz FSB to confirm.

I can't help you with the ASUS vs nVidia driver thing. My Visiontek Geforce256 is an OEM card which only used nVidia drivers. The only extra feature is a DVI port which I have never been able to test since I don't have a flat-panel display.


Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 08/30/01 09:46 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[phsstpok]

Actually, if you set FSB to 133mhz the hstclk+PCIclk option goes away. You can only run memory synchronously at 133mhz. I'm assuming you have the KT133A chipset. 133mhz is not possible with the old KT133 chipset.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[CALV]

if you set FSB to 133mhz the hstclk+PCIclk option goes away

Yes it does, because if you are running a 133 fsb, then host + pci would be 133+33=166, and most ram (if any) could handle that



Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[phsstpok]

I found an interesting little article at <A HREF="http://www.overclockers.com.au" target="_new">www.overclockers.com.au</A>. In this article the author speaks of modifying VIAMACH.INF. The reason for doing this was to get Windows ME to load the correct VIA hardware drivers for his system instead of generic ones. It seems that even though the author loaded the 4-in-1 drivers, Windows chose to load generic drivers for Host Bridge, PCI-PCI Bridge, ISA Bridge, and Other Bridge (Power Management). After modifying VIAMACH.INF Windows correctly loaded the appropriate VIA drivers. The author claims that the suspend function now works and his system is stable.

Good reading. Here is the link.

<A HREF="http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_viamach_mod/" target="_new">http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_viamach_mod/</A>

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[phsstpok]

115 mhz is really impressive on a KT7-RAID. Did you have the memory speed set at HSTclk + PCIclk? If so what memory were you using that worked at 153mhz (115+38)?

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Matisaro]

Kt7 uses kt133, the origional version wont go much higher than 106, as someone else said before.

Regarding dram, they have pc150 and pc166, I am running pc166cl3/pc154/cl2 server ram I got for 50 bucks, and it does 150fsb on my kt7a raid with turbo memory timings.

But yeah, origional kt7, 106 max stable, 112 max period.(some peopl can get 115 but this is uber rare.)

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
~Tbird1.3@1.55~

 

[Uncle_joe]

I have similar problem on my MSI K7T Pro-2A
(same chipset).

Whith Duron 700, I was able to OC fsb to 120
whithout increase in core voltage. It was rock
solid.
Now I have T-Bird 1.2 and 120 fsb is unstable
even with core voltage maxed (1.85V).

There are two things I can think of:
1st: T-bird may not be as OC-able as Duron
2nd: Power consumption may be overwelming
for 300W psu I have.

Any comments are welcome.

 

[Guest]

It could be a power problem because i have a bigtower full of hardware and a 300W power supply.
But wouldn't the system do a spontaneous reset when there isn't enough power, or could this also cause the system to hang?

i think i'll only go for the multiplier overclocking because this FSB stuff just won't work stable. And i'll oc my geforce2 a little bit and that will be all i guess..

i think i'll remove some of the 17 fans i have installed too...

and i am going to add 512Mb to the existing 256Mb, and i think that will cause some speed increase also, because there will be much less harddisk swapping... over here 512Mb costs only $50 or so.

 

[Guest]

17 fans!.lol

Medication helps

 

[Guest]

Ok, in a desperate attempt to keep my system cool during the HOT summer months i have installed the following:

(in an AOpen BigTower case)
- two 8cm fans blowing air out at the top and keeping the 30Gig IBM RAID drives cool.
- two 8 cm fans on top of eachother sucking air in at the bottom.
- again two 8 cm fans on top of eachother just above the previous two sucking air in at the bottom.
- two 8 cm fans blowing air out through a 5,25"bay at the front to keep the cd burner cool.
- An Alpha 6035 cooler with 4800rpm fan.
- An 8cm slot cooler at the rear bottom.
- A Blue Orb on my Geforce2 MX
- Two 486 coolers on both sides of the Geforce RAM (with heatsinks)
- One 6cm Fan on the back of the Geforce 2 GPU (with heatsink).
- One 6cm fan blowing on the SDRAM (with thermaltake heatspreaders)
- One fan on the Northbridge chip.
- One 8cm fan in the power supply (standard of course)

That's all the fans i can remember putting in there...

It sounds like a thunderstorm in there...

*Great!*

-Oops, forgot my medication again-

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by arien on 09/02/01 12:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Was only laughing in recognition of having almost as many.

Medication helps

 

[mark_h]

i was wondering what that humming noise was in the uk
now i know!!!
lol

 

[Guest]

ain't it great?!

 

[Guest]

Oh, by the way, i have two sticks of 128Mb 133MHz SDRam installed made by spectek and rated CL3. But at normal speed i can easily set them to cas2. I ran my system at 110x10 CL2 and tried lots of memory burnin programs and memory benchmarking programs, and they all ran just fine. But the problem with these programs is that you can't simulate real computer usage. Because normally you would use a lot of things at the same time, not just your memory.
Anyway, my memory seemed to do just fine at 110 + 110/3 = 146.66 MHz.
First i thought it was 110 + 33 but most programs reported 147MHz so i figured that the extra 33MHz in the bios is just a division of 3 from the motherboard speed.
Now that i am going to install the extra 512Mb of memory which probably doesn't have a brand at all (cheapo), i think i can forget about speeding up the memory...
I know that with upping the FSB, the memory, PCI and AGP bus also run faster. That's probably why my asus V7100 would only work with the manually selected EA timing.