I am beginning to worry about my newly-upgraded system, which is showing the following signs of being overclocked even though I do not intend to overclock any part of it:

1) Iffy boot sequence - random and unrepeatable errors, but usually works

2) White blocks around text in menus of some programs (what, specifically, is this a symptom of? I didn't touch the video card settings).

Now I am beginning to worry if Sandra was right when it said my motherboard is overclocked. It is running at 133 mhz bus (x 4 = 533) and Sandra says the maximum bus speed for it is 100 mhz (400 mhz). It is an Asus P4S533 (SiS 645DX, officlally supports 533 bus and 333 mhz ram).

What else could be causing the above problems if not overclocking? Power supply?

Thanks.

hmmm
a weak powersupply usually manifests itself via failed bootups and regular lockups/spontaneous reboots during havy CPU use.

i wouldnt worry too much about sandra... it gets alot of things wrong.

if you want to know what speed you are really running at, try <b>WCPUID</b>.

as for your screen corruption, the most likely candidates for cauzing that problem are overheating graphics card, overheating northbridge/MCH or faulty ram.

try testing the ram with <b>MEMTEST86</b>
does the system crash/lockup when gaming and/or under full cpu load? if it only locks up under gaming then its probably the graphicscard.

just do a process of elimination.


Proud owner of the <b>Beige Beast</b>

Thank you. The graphics card is the only thing I retained from my previous computer setup (replaced almost every other part) and it did not cause such problems before.

The computer works well when it is on. It has not locked up or had any problems while running other than the white blocks around text in some programs (basically non-Microsoft ones). No spontaneous reboots yet.

I may replace the RAM anyway because it was advertised as CAS2 (Corsair XMS 2700) but it is clearly not. SPD reports it as CAS 2.5 and manually setting it to CAS 2 results in no boot.

Thanks again.

thats unfortunate... corsair is usually pretty good. allthough certain early revisions of the PC2700 had problems.

least u can return it under warantee.
i suggest you try some Sambsung PC2700.

Proud owner of the <b>Beige Beast</b>

If your motherboard is running at a 133Mhz FSB, it's possible you are overclocked, but that's only if you have an older Northwood or Willamette Pentium 4. The Northwood B's use a 133Mhz FSB, and can support the 133Mhz memory bus.

"When there's a will, there's a way."

The motherboard (Asus P4S533) is designed to run with a 133 mhz bus. In fact, I was going to try to underclock it to 100 mhz, but the slowest speed that the BIOS allows is 133 (up to 166). I'd need to flip dip switches to go slower.

I bought a new power supply and, crossing my fingers, have not had the start-up problem occur since. However the white color behind menu text remains. Oddly it is only with non-Microsoft programs. Strangest problem I have ever seen. What bothers me about it is that it indicates a deeper problem, like system instability, but even looping a graphics-intensive demo resulted in no crashes or errors.