Socket A motherboard

[Zxian]

Hey everyone,

I've got a quick question regarding a new mobo for my computer.

I've been having a problem with my Seagate hard drive that I got a while back. So... first off - my specs (they're not impressive by any means... )

Athlon T-bird 1333MHz (Socket A)

Soyo K7ADA V1.0 motherboard

512MB PC3200 RAM (running at PC2100 because of system bus)

200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 HD

40GB Seagate HD (ST340823)

GeForce2 MX 200

Basically, whenever I transfer files (or have any decent amount of disk activity) on the new drive, the CPU usage skyrockets and the whole system becomes laggy as hell (Winamp stutters, mouse jumps, etc etc ).

I've tried re-installing WindowsXP-SP2 and the evaluation of Server 2003-SP1 that I've got and the default drivers run the 200GB drive under PIO mode. When I install the motherboard drivers from Soyo, the IDE drives are listed as SCSI devices () and therefore I can't see what mode they're running under.

I e-mailed Seagate tech support and they said that it was a common problem when the motherboard doesn't fully support the drive. I'm guessing that this might be the case, since in BIOS, my drive is listed as 137GB in size (when it's actually 186GB true size - the whole 48-bit LBA support thing).

Anyways... those are the symptoms. I'm gonna double check that it's not my drive by putting it into another computer with a slightly newer motherboard (it's running an Athlon XP 1800+, dunno the exact mobo model off the top of my head) and seeing if the problem goes away. If it does I'm in the market for a new mobo that will fit my current CPU.

And I found this in the clearance rack of NCIX...

Would this board solve my problems? The USB2.0 and upgraded audio would be nice as well. Any input would be nice. I'm not looking for a complete upgrade, since this is basically my server box that mostly just sits there, plays music and movies, and downloads stuff. It's pretty much perfect as is, except for this annoying PIO mode problem.

Thanks in advance.

[ssmokee]

Basically, whenever I transfer files (or have any decent amount of disk activity) on the new drive, the CPU usage skyrockets and the whole system becomes laggy as hell (Winamp stutters, mouse jumps, etc etc ).

I've tried re-installing WindowsXP-SP2 and the evaluation of Server 2003-SP1 that I've got and the default drivers run the 200GB drive under PIO mode. When I install the motherboard drivers from Soyo, the IDE drives are listed as SCSI devices () and therefore I can't see what mode they're running under.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

First off, after you do a clean install of XP w/ SP2 (ie. the ALi Integrated v1.091 driver from the Soyo site should not be installed yet) what are you using to verify that the 200GB seagate is in PIO mode?

If you follow this you should be able to see:

Right click on My Computer and select properties -> Hardware tab -> Device Manager button -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers

Listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers you should see Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel, double both of them (one at a time) and go to the Advanced Settings tab. You should see a display the current transfer modes, and be able to select which mode the controllers are in. Set all of them to DMA if available.

Also check to make sure you are using a 80 wire ATA cable to connect your hard drives. Using a 40 wire cable could quite possibley force it to PIO mode.

And I found this in the clearance rack of NCIX...

Would this board solve my problems? The USB2.0 and upgraded audio would be nice as well. Any input would be nice. I'm not looking for a complete upgrade, since this is basically my server box that mostly just sits there, plays music and movies, and downloads stuff. It's pretty much perfect as is, except for this annoying PIO mode problem.

Thanks in advance.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I would recommend holding off on that purchase until you investigate further. Besides that, the audio will not be an upgrade. It will be roughly the same quality as your current board, give or take a little.

Edited July 23, 2005 by ssmokee

[jcarle]

First, follow ssmokee's recommendation and do make sure you have an 80-wire IDE cable running to your harddrive.

Second, make sure your BIOS is up to date by getting the latest BIOS update for your motherboard.

The fact that your motherboard supports the UDMA 133 transfer mode would lead to believe that hardware compatibility is not the issue, but this would most likely be a driver issue. Make sure you get the latest version of your motherboard drivers.

[Zxian]

Thanks for the input guys.

@ssmokee - With no IDE drivers installed, the device manager said PIO mode for my 200GB drive, dispite being set to DMA if available. I am using an 80-wire IDE cable connecting all my devices. I had checked all of this before posting here.

@jcarle - Yup... had gone through all that as well. Pretty standard troubleshooting procedure. Still no luck.

And as for the audio, the upgrade wouldn't be in quality (I'd need a better sound card for that) - it would be more for the availability of 5.1 channel audio.

[jcarle]

Hey Zxian, I'm originally from Vancouver myself. Really miss it there. Great place, even own a dating website from back there.

Anyways, if you want a really cheap upgrade, get yourself an Asrock K7S41GX from NCIX. I'm not going to lie to you, it's not ASUS quality, but it's a fast, solid board. I've installed at least 8 of them so far. I have two of my clients that are running that board with Sempron 2300+ cpus that have the FSB overclocked to 400MHZ combined with DDR 400 memory. They run stable, they're peppy and upbeat, and really cheap.

[Zxian]

Yeah, Vancouver is really nice. Summer finally started last week if you know what I mean.

Well... to let you know - I got the ABIT NF7-S motherboard on clearance. I looked at the board you linked to, but the 2 RAM slots and 2 PCI slots is kind of a bummer. The ABIT I have has 3 DDR 400 RAM slots and 5 PCI slots. Not only that, I managed to get my hands on a free Athlon XP 2000+ and another 512MB (2x256MB) of PC2700 RAM.

Now... since I'm new to this whole "overclocking" shindig... the FSB on my motherboard is currently set to 133MHz (CPU runs at 12.5 x 133MHz). How would I go about making the RAM run at PC2700 speeds? My current RAM is rated at PC3200 (Kingston), so it wouldn't be the limiting factor. In my BIOS, I've got an option to manually set the FSB speed, but I'm not sure how that will affect the rest of the system. AFAIK, the AGP bus speed is independent (there's a separate setting for that).

[boooggy]

abit is a very good choice.

[big poppa pump]

It all depends on the type of CPU you have! Is it a T'bred A, T'bred B, Barton, Mobile? The mobiles are the best overclockers. I have a XP2600+ mobile running on my Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0 (wife's machine) 24/7 @ 270*10.5 = 2.83Ghz. But then you need to have memory that can match that high FSB and also cooling to tame all the heat being generated.

[jcarle]

In AMDs, the FSB is doubled. So at 133MHz, your CPU and RAM work at 266MHZ...

Try setting your FSB to 166Mhz (for 333MHz) and see if your system runs stable. If not then try working it up to 145 and see if it's stable. Just play around with it. Worse that can happen by simply changing the FSB is that it won't boot. Then you have to clear the CMOS and try again.

[Zxian]

@big poppa pump

Thanks for the reply. I'm not really looking to overclock my CPU (although I'm guessing I could afford to). It's a Thoroughbred-A 2000+ currently running at 12.5x133MHz @ 1.58V (I don't know how much control of the voltage I have). At idle it sits at about 40-41C (with brand new AS5 - not worked in yet) and after 12hrs of Prime95 it got up to 46C (room temp is 21-22C). So I don't think cooling would be an issue if I push it a little bit.

Like I said, I've got 2x256MB PC2700 and 1x512MB PC2700 (I thought it was 3200 - that must have gone into my ex's computer... ****), so I'm guessing that I've got some breathing room for frequencies in terms of my RAM (since it's running at 266MHz right now). The timings on the RAM right now are 2.5-2-2-6 and it's been stable running Prime95 since last night

Just to help with more info about my rig so far, here is my heatsink. It's not the greatest, but it does the job better than the stock HS.

[Zxian]

In AMDs, the FSB is doubled. So at 133MHz, your CPU and RAM work at 266MHZ...

Try setting your FSB to 166Mhz (for 333MHz) and see if your system runs stable. If not then try working it up to 145 and see if it's stable. Just play around with it. Worse that can happen by simply changing the FSB is that it won't boot. Then you have to clear the CMOS and try again.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm just wondering about something so that I don't end up frying my new hardware...

When a CPU dies, is it usually from overheating? or is it possible to fry the chip simply by running it to fast?

So if I were to try setting the FSB to 166MHz, I'd need to set my multiplier to 10 to keep the same CPU speed, right? (just being paranoid/cautious here)

One last thing (for this post at least) - does the FSB or the multiplier give more of a boost when talking about pure CPU benchmarks? For example, would I notice a difference on a pure CPU test with the default 12.5x133 settings versus 10x166?

[Bluelight]

Hi Zxian..

I think I wrecked the Chipset on a MoBo once caused by to high FSB, but that was because I put it higher then the MoBo can handle..

At least I think that was the problem, I may be wrong...

And I know that if you set your multiplyer to high, you might trash/fry the CPU..

This also applys to new MoBo's with temp. shutdown..

Extreme values will fry the CPU even with protection..

And if you don't belive it, you can buy a brand new MoBo and look in the Manual..

"Wrong settings may damage your hardware"

I'm happy to see you are supporting both Seagate's HDD's and Opera 8, the fastest Browser on Earth..

A note to the grafics-card brand.. I whould get a ATI card..

I don't support those GeForce people..

Edit: And by the way, with that kind of memory set, you wont be able to run Dual Channel DDR..

And I just found a manual from a brand new Abit AN8 UltraMoBo:

WARNING: The wrong settings of the multiplier and external clock in certain circumstances may cause CPU damage. Setting the working frequency higher than the PCI chipset or processor specs, may cause abnormal memory module functioning, system hangs, hard disc drive data loss, abnormal functioning of the VGA card, or abnormal functioning with other add-on cards. Using non-specification settings for your CPU is not the intention of this explanation. These should be used for engineering testing, not for normal applications.

There will be no guaranty for the settings beyon specification, any damage of eny component on this motherboard or periphrals result therein is not our responsibility.

- Abit

Edited July 26, 2005 by Bluelight

[Zxian]

OK... so I'm gonna ask for a little help again here.

What I've got running - CPU at 10*166MHz so it's at the same speed. This also means that my RAM is now running at 333MHz (PC2700) like the RAM is supposed to handle. CPU temp is at 40C idle.

Everything boots fine. I can notice a pretty big difference when booting into Windows, just that all my startup items appear much quicker than before. But when I start stress-testing to make sure that everything is rock solid, I get errors in Prime95. Something to the effect of:

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4

Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

I tried increasing my core and RAM voltages to 1.65V and 2.7V respectively (up from 1.6V and 2.6V) but no change so far. I set the memory timings to "Optimal" where they were set to 2.5-3-3-7 (which is what Lavalys tells me is "normal" for all the sticks).

I just ran MemTest, and it told me it found 8 errors at the same time that Prime95 failed. I'm guessing that I got a bum stick in there... I haven't swapped out the sticks, since it's late and I have to get up fairly early tomorrow, but that's something perhaps for tomorrow night. Maybe I've got to wait for Santa to come early with a proper new RAM kit...

[jcarle]

Zxian, start off by loading your BIOS default settings. Then run a MemTest to make sure you don't have a bad stick of Ram.

After you're sure your Ram is good, then try changing your FSB to 166 and your multiplier to 10. Run memtest again and check for errors.

Memtest is always a good way to make sure your system is running stable because it involves a lot of math and it involves the most sensitive part of your system, the memory.

If you get errors after changing to 10x166, then something is not liking the change.

Overclocking on itself will not damage anything right off the back. All you're doing is increasing the system clock frequency. It can shorten the life of your parts, but you're talking about a small reduction over a very long period of time. What can severly damage components is too much voltage. And the other culprit, is obviously heat. As long as everything stays cool and you don't overload the voltage factor, everything will be fine.

I used to overclock a PIII 800EB I used to have to about 937MHZ without any voltage adjustments. Just straight FSB. I think after that my PCI frequency started getting to high and I'd start freezing up everywhere.

That's also something to check for. If you have them, try playing with FSB:RAM:PCI ratios.

[Zxian]

Thanks jcarle,

I reset all the BIOS settings to default (12.5*133) this morning and ran MemTest* again. Checking in on my computer after about 2 hours, it hasn't found any errors yet. My temperatures are 40C at idle and 44-45C at load, so no worries there. I've got a big 92mm fan blowing air onto my heatsink and the RAM sticks (it's big enough to cover both ).

I may or may not have the chance to look at it again later tonight. I'll let you know if I manage to find out anything new.

As for general OC'ing knowledge - Since technically I'm not pushing any of my hardware beyond the specified limits, am I actually overclocking? My CPU is set to 12.5x133 by default, but since 10x166 gives the same CPU frequency and lets the RAM run at it's maximum speed, there's no real overclocking going on, right? My guess is that I'm just manually setting the clock speeds to provide more performance than the default configuration.

*As for MemTest...right now the one that I had running for the past couple of hours was the one I found here. I have a command line based Memtest program, but I don't know if it's the same one. I've attached it for you to see. It's got options that you can access using the /? switch. I also found this site which allows you to make a bootable ISO. Any recommendations on the best one? or will they all do the same thing in the end?

memtest.7z