motherboard fun & games 4

[Scotsdude]

Hi,

system setup:

AMD Duron 950MHz
Gigabyte GA7-VTXE mobo
128Mb DDR PC2100
Elsa Gladiac 311 GeForce 2 MX200 graphics card
Onboard sound (AC97)
56k internal modem
10Gb HDD (ATA33 i think )
52x Creative CD-rom
4x4x32 Teac CDRW
Windows ME

The system has the hdd and cd-ron on ide-0, because for some unkown reason the creative cd drive will not run on ide-1. I've tried everything I know, but no joy.

What I want to know is, with the above setup, why is my system refusing to run the system bus and memory at anything more than 100MHz?

There is a jumper on the board for setting system bus speed, either 100 or 133MHz, but the board will not start on 133MHz, or at least I get nothing on the monitor.

Same with the memory. I can set the speed higher in the bios, but Windows will crash, claiming Windows Protection Error. System has been halted.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Scotsdude
email: scotsman@techie.com

 

[paparazi]

You have DDR RAM !
You have a DDR motherboard !
But what you DON"T have is a DDR processor!!!!!!!!!!
This means the correct setting for fsb IS 100 and not 133.
Now if you were to by an XP Palomino or DDR Athlon you would set the fsb to 133. Martin. Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[CitrixEngineer]

paparazi is right on the money. The processor is not DDR.

I'm not familiar with the @BIOS, but I'm sure you can underclock it by decreasing the mutliplier to 7 and increasing the FSB to 133. I think your board has a limit of 161Mhz on the FSB.

Why underclock?

It's safer on the processor to run it at a speed lower than specified - in this case 931Mhz - and you can get your subcomponents ticking away at the higher speed, so you get an overall performance gain at the cost of a few Mhz on the processor.


Remember, adjusting the speed of your processor in this way is not covered by manufacturers, and may invalidate the warranties of the processor and the motherboard. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Mulga]

To the best of my knowledge the duron 950 is multipler locked at 9.5, which means that whatever you set on the board or BIOS for multiplier will make no difference, therefore the frequency must be set to 100. Some boards allow you to run the memory at a different speed, some do not.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Hmm. Good point. However, you can unlock these chips... CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Mulga]

Indeed you can, and quite easily with the aid of nothing more than an ordinary pencil! Unfortunately I have lost the magazine I had with detailed instructions for this but I am sure it can be found on the net.

 

[dakota81]

Seriously make note of this as previous posts here state incorrectly (by this forum's top voted expert somehow...):

AMD DURON PROCESSORS CAN BE USED WITH DDR MEMORY!!!

There's only two things different with the Duron and the T-Bird, the amount of onboard cache and the motherboard speed. Other than that, these chips are INDENTACLE in their function and their compatibility.

I just put together a computer a couple weeks ago with a Duron processor and DDR memory. Works like a charm. You don't get the full potential of the memory, because the memory is running @ 200 MHz when it's capable of 266MHz - and that's because the Duron processor is locked @ 100MHz motherboard speed (this is to make the Duron a "value" processor while the T-bird is the "performance" processor).

It is a motherboard's northbridge chip that handles all memory accessing, not the processor. The processer simply tells the northbridge chip to read and write memory, the CPU does not care how the northbridge chip accomplished the task or at what speed, the CPU only cares that the task was indeed completed.


The term DDR stands for "Double Data Rate" - or in other words, it can read and write memory twice as fast as the older PC100/PC133 memory. As a side counter-example, it is possible to design a motherboard with, say, a Pentium II processor that takes advantage of DDR memory.

 

[paparazi]

Yes agreed!! Durons can be used with DDR memory, and I never said that they couldn't, if that is what you were infering?
In Scotsdude's case he was selecting either 100fsb or 133fsb with a jumper on his board (it wouldn't run at 133), I merely stated standard fsb for Duron was 100, I didn't want to complicate the issue by going into the O/C possibilities etc.
And I am the first to admit that in comparison to some of this sites top techs, I know but a postage stamp of information and humble to there greater knowledge and expertise.
Martin
Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[Shohan]

Here is the url for one of the sites that tell you how to unlock your L1 cache of the AMD processors.

http://www.oc-athlonxp.com/cpu.htm

Shohn

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Quote /"Seriously make note of this as previous posts here state incorrectly (by this forum's top voted expert somehow...):" /Quote

I don't think it's fair to make this kind of comment. The forum's top expert has that status because people have decided that this person's postings are very helpful to them and have clicked on the link to show it. It doesn't necessarily mean that person is right 100% of the time.

This is why I'm not giving your post a star

CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[paparazi]

CitrixEngineer,
Thankyou for your support, but I think it is YOU that SHOULD be this forums top expert.
My posts may have been useful to some but I am sure it's because of the numbers of replies I have made and not necessarily the quality of the answers that have put me at the top. Martin
And I always TRY, not to get personal with my replies. Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[Tedlast]

The GA-7VTXE BIOS doesn't allow you to adjust the multiplier. So, even if you unlock the Duron, there's no option to run at a higher multiplier. This link might be useful:

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review&dId=148&dPage=6

It appears (from reading the article) there is a way to adjust the FSB upwards from 100 in increments.

fyi... the link in the earlier post is to the unlock procedure for an Athlon XP with the bonus groove between the L1 points. I think the unlock procedure for the Duron should be the much simpler pencil trick.
Here's a link:

http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/how-to-guides/41_1.html