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AMD Athlon and VIA KT333 seems to SUCK!

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Has anyone gotten an Athlon Xp and VIA KT 333 to work 100% reliable yet?

I can't, unless I run my FSB at 100Mhz instead of 133Mhz.

I am on my second motherboard and second stick of pc2700 ram.

Here are my stats.

Athlon XP 2200+
MSI KT3 Ultra2 and ECS K7VTA3 v3.1
Crucial Tech PC 2700 Ram with Micron Chips. (First 2700 that I sent back was Samsung)
400 Watt PS
VisionTek Geforce3 64mb
2 Intel NICs
Cooler Master CPU Fan - DP5-6J31C-A1

I have found that 133Mhz is just totaly unstable. If I run at 133 I get random freezes and or reboots. I will sometimes crash to desktop as well.

I have heard that there is some issue with VIA and Nvidia and AGP 4x. To bypass this I have manually set my AGP to 2x in BIOS.

I have also heard that there is an issue with the VIA drivers and that you should use the slower ones that come with XP. I tried this and it doesn't help, and the VIA drivers cause no problems at 100Mhz.

I have tried things like running my DDR 333 memory at DDR 266 instead and that doesn't help the stablity at 133Mhz.

I have also taken out everything except an HD, VideoCard, and 1 CDRom to try to limit the wattage I am drawing and that doesent help. I also did the reverse to see if I was boderline by running 2 HD's,2 CD's, 1 Internal Zip, 1 Floppy, 3 PCI cards, and 1 AGP Video card. With all this in I get the same results.

My CPU temps run from 53 to 60 degrees c.

Besides my PSU fan and the CoolerMaster CPU fan I am running 2 80mm case fans. 1 in the front bringing air in to cool HD. 1 in the back exhausting hot air. I also have an 80mm system exhaust card mounted next to my GeForce to exhaust any hotair it is generating.

I have been fighting this stupid system for over a month now. Can anyone HELP! I just want to be able to play NWN stablely.

Thanks

Ed.Kutsko@cbs.fiserv.com
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Sorry to hear that.
I have MSI KT3 Ultra and also 8-9 of my customers have one, all of them running at 133 MHz, mine at 170 MHz with no problems.

Since you have made a lot of trouble shooting, just some questions:

1) What version of the VIA KT33 chipset do you have? Could be CD or CE. If you don’t know, just tell me when you bought the mobo.
2) What brand is your PSU and did you monitor the voltages of the +3.3 and +5 line at idle and under load? I recommend you Motherboard Monitor 5 to do this.
3) What RAM timings are you running at? Try at CAS 2.5.
4) Open the case and point a home fan to the components, then just benchmark to see if the freezings are still present.
5) Do you have the latest BIOS version?


<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

I don't think its a problem with the VIA KT333 or the Athlon. I have an Asus A7V333 that comes "factory overclocked" with a 135Mhz FSB and it runs perfectly stable with an XP2100+.

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I just bought the MSI board last weekend. I can't check the chipset now because the machine is at home.

I will check the voltages later, but I think they were ok, but I will double check them.

My ram is running at a CAS of 2.5.

I have the latest bios and via drivers.

I am not sure about the PSU brand either, I will have to try to find that later.

Looks almost fine, but you need to measure the voltages while running a game or benchmark.

I assume you saw those voltages running the RAM at 333 and AGP at 4X


Exactly, when do you see those freezings?

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by CMRvet on 09/27/02 08:06 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

The PSU looks fine from the paper, but you should consider that it could be DEFECTIVE.
Rebooting problems are normally related with PSU problems.

I suggest you to take the PC to the store and claim for warranty.


<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

My friend's AXP 1800+ and MSI KT3 Ultra runs without any problems. Of course, the FSB is set 133.

He is using following components:

300W no name generic psu (made in china)
MSI GeForce4 MX440 64 MB
2 x 128 MB Kingston PC2100 CL2.5 DDR
A cheap Cooler Master fan and heatsink (don't know the model)

AGP is set 4x in bios. With his cheap cooler and over 30 degrees temp of our city, his cpu runs from 54 to 60 degrees temp like you.

No stability problems.

<b><font color=red> Long live piracy! </font color=red></b>

My system as follows and is rock solid stable with agressive Ram timings (cas 2 2-5-2)

Athlon XP2100
MSI K7TULTRA-2R
IBM 120GXP x2 in RAID0
512MEG Apacer(samsung) PC2700
Sound Blaster Live!
SMC NIC
Leadtek GFORCE 3 TI AGP 4X
etc etc....

Nope...underclocking right now actually.

130Mhz seems to be stable enough to do most stuff. Even most games seem to run. I played Battlefield 1942 the other day for abot 3 hours no problem.

As soon as I clock up to 133 however I get seriously unstable. I am now getting a host of blue screen errors that really make no sense.

Stop 0x7e
stop 0x0a
Stop 0x50
Non_Page_Memory Faults
Stop 0xD0

I found this on MSI's site which is really making me think now it is my 400w supply.

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/e_service/forum/viewthrea...



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kutskoef on 10/03/02 12:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Just to rule out a RAM problem you could try 133 MHz FSB at CAS 3-3-3-6. If the system still fails I could suspect on PSU.

BTW, What PSU do you have?

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

Just Copy and paste from my last answer (post Nº7)
"Looks almost fine, but you need to measure the voltages <b>while running a game or benchmark</b>"

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

Quote:
My CPU temps run from 53 to 60 degrees c.

Too hot, dude. 60C is usually the crash point. When you run the FSB at 100 it's not as hot as 133. Use a quality thermal compound like Arctic Silver III and a better hs/fan.

To start press any key. Where's the "any" key? --Homer Simpson.

Installed a Volcano9 with Arttic Silver last night. It appears to have fixed the problem. I was able to play Unreal Tournament 2003 for a couple of hours last night without any problems. I was also able to complete several 3DMarks AT 133mHZ which I couldn't do before. In windows with nothing running I am at 42C now. If I check after playing a game for awhile I am at about 51 or 52C. That should come down a little more as the Artic Silver bonds according to the directions on their site.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kutskoef on 10/09/02 02:09 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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