Rasing the FSB for an Athlon on an Asus K7M

[Zenfe]

I have tried to raise the FSB on my mobo via the soft FSB settings in the BIOS. However if I go to anything past 104Mhz I get a windows protection error. What exactly is preventing me from raising the FSB and giving me this error?

Thx.

[Vlip]

Well it can be multiple reasons.
If you raise the FSB you not only raise the speed of your CPU, but also every peripheral and components of your computer (RAM,Video Card,...)
So the error can be the fault of the memory, the video card,....

Your computer can't boot at more than 104mhz FSB? Not a big deal, you may try to change the cpu multiplyer, there you'll only stress the CPU and not the components.

To do that you'll need a special card (more info: www.amdzone.com).

Happy overclocking.

Vlip


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"A vaincre sans péril, l'on triomphe sans gloire"
Corneille

AMD Athlon 500, Asus K7M, 128Mb PC100 SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX, Sb Live and a lot more toys and gadgets.

[Zenfe]

I have pc 100 RAM, 2 years old though

I have upped the multiplier on my cpu (check my siggy) but I still want MORE POWER...hehe...don't we all.

I really think the problem is my RAM. But has anyone out there had any luck with raising the FSB on an Asus K7M board??

Thanks

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Athlon 500MHz @ 750MHz 1/3
G400 32 meg Dual-Head Vanilla @ 160.2/200.25 (400.5, 2.5/2.0/2.5)

[Vlip]

I do remember myself booting my computer at 550mhz (and playing games hours) 5*110 is what I made.
At 5*112 I got what should be memory failure.

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"A vaincre sans péril, l'on triomphe sans gloire"
Corneille

AMD Athlon 500, Asus K7M, 128Mb PC100 SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX, Sb Live and a lot more toys and gadgets.

[Thundrchez]

Yup, I'm running nice and stable at 110 FSB on my K7M + Athlon 700 for a good 770 MHz.

Why can't you get that high? Could be your ram, power supply, cpu, chipset, video, agp, or a bunch of other things. A windows protection error could mean anything.

If you've got a bunch of spare parts to play around with, you might could better isolate it. Borrow a friend's PC133 to see if it was your ram, put in an ol PCI video card to see if it was the agp...

[Zenfe]

I honestly think it's the RAM seeing as though others don't have problems with the G400 running on an overclocked AGP bus.
I also have an ISA Sound Blaster AWE 64 card, could this be a limiting factor? Never really had a reason for changing to a SBLive card. The power supply is brand new 350W so I know it ain't that.
Anyways thx for the input.

BTW Thundrchez if you wouldn't mind could you post some benchmarks of your system plz. I would just to compare it with mine. Either post them here or email them to be at platinm@hotmail.com.

Thx

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Athlon 500MHz @ 750MHz 1/3
G400 32 meg Dual-Head Vanilla @ 160.2/200.25 (400.5, 2.5/2.0/2.5)



[This message has been edited by Zenfe (edited 22 January 2000).]

[Vlip]

Just my two cents, but usually the memory is the first not being able to take the load.
You should really try to borrow a friends PC133 memory.

Vlip

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"A vaincre sans péril, l'on triomphe sans gloire"
Corneille

AMD Athlon 500, Asus K7M, 128Mb PC100 SDRAM, Matrox G400MAX, Sb Live and a lot more toys and gadgets.

[Greebe]

All of the above is wrong. It's because the MB can't do it! All K7M's have the same problem, even with the best PC133 cas2 mem.

[hominid skull]

Now that my Athlon system is stable and able to get into windows, thanks Zenfe, i can get my K7m to 110 MHz with no problems with memory. I have pc100 memory installed but if i try for any higher, even 111MHz, they entire system gets really unstable - it doesn't crash - but sometimes it hangs badly for no apparent reason.

I don't think you isa sound card is giving you any trouble. Isa runs at a measly 8 MHz whatever the fsb.

Did you try to decrease the multiplier on the cpu and up the fsb to see if it is the cpu maxing out or just the mobo? That's what i'd try.

You can also try uping the vio to the cards and memory i've set mine to 3.56v and everything seens fine(it wasn't the problem in the first place with my system )

Hope that helps..

[RoGuE]

Greebe is right - the K7M can't do it, but then again neither can any other Athlon mobo - the AMD 750/751 chipset will not tolerate a bus speed much over 100MHz. The best I've heard of is 112MHz.

[Thundrchez]

Zenfe, any particular benchmark that you would care for me to run? I'm not much on benchmark programs lately. I've been more in the mode of "show me the performance in my games". I'll give it a whirl, though.

[Greebe]

Like I've said before... haven't seen a K7M yet do better than 110 mHz.

And another point that needs to be addressed is H.Oda's program for changing the L2... well unless it will set the L2 to 2/5 or 1/3 latency on bootup it won't make it past POST!

[Zenfe]

Thx for the info guys.

Although Greebe like you said you "haven't seen a K7M yet do better than 110 mHz", but I can't even get past 104Mhz. Ahh well that's life I guess. Once I get a hold of some newer RAM I will try again. For now I am still happy with what I got.

Thanks guys

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Athlon 500MHz @ 750MHz 1/3
G400 32 meg Dual-Head Vanilla @ 160.2/200.25 (400.5, 2.5/2.0/2.5)

[Thundrchez]

OK, here are a couple of 3D Mark 2000 benchmark results for me.

The System:
Asus K7M with the 1209 BIOS
Athlon 700 running at 7 * 110MHz
SB Live X Gamer + LiveWare3
2 * 128MB PC-133 Corsair Micro DIMMS with Micron chips at CAS-2
WD 18G 7200RMP 2MB cache IDE hd
Hitachi GD 2500 IDE DVD
Iomega Zip 250 IDE
ViewSonic GT800
Enlight 7237 with Vextrec PTP-3018 300W PS
Logitech First Mouse+ PS/2 mouse
MS Natural keyboard
USR Courier V.Everything EXT
Generic VIA Rhine 10/100BT NIC
"super bypass" is disabled because my revision of the 751 chipset doesn't support it (it is C-4, not C-5, dang!)
Win98 + DX7a

For each test, I clicked on the "Run Default Benchmark" in 3D Mark 2000.

vanilla G400 32MB DH, PD 5.50 beta + Matrox Tweak at 20% overclocked + Vsync disabled + agp2x forced: 3105 3D marks

vanilla G400 32MB DH, PD 5.41 + Matrox Tweak at 20% overclocked + Vsync disabled + agp2x forced: 3065 3D marks

Guillemot Prophet 3D GeForce 256 SDR 32MB, nVidia Reference drivers v3.68, core at 143MHz, memory at 172MHz, vsync disabled, agp1x enforced by drivers: 4097 3D marks

[Greebe]

Zenfe, 103-104 is the norm on the K7M.

TChez, Looks like you have a cream of the crop @110mHz