DRAM settings on 440LX mb

[rob_b]

I posted a comment several weeks back about not being able to overclock a 300mhz PII. Today I was playing around in my bios (ohh nooo !) and found the MA wait state set to
slow instead of fast. I changed the setting to fast, set the bus speed to 75, and now up boots up as a 338mhz ! My question is, there were some other memory settings in there that I wasn't sure about how to set for optimum performance. Does anybody know what the items below mean and the optimum settings:

MA wait state FAST or SLOW (set to FAST)
EDO RAS# to CAS# DELAY 3 or 2 ?
EDO RAS# PRECHARGE TIME 3 or 4 ?
EDO RAM READ BURST X222 or X333 ?
EDO RAM WRITE BURST X222 or X333 ?

SDRAM RAS-TO-CAS DELAY FAST or SLOW ?
SDRAM RAS PRECHARGE TIME FAST or SLOW ?
SDRAM CAS LATENCY TIME 3 or 2 ?
DRAM DATA INT. MODE NON-ECC or ECC ?

That's all for now, i've taken up enough
space and time. Also, I do not have EDO
ram .... Rob_b

------------------
pentium II @300mhz
intel 440lx pci chipset
64mb memory, g400max,
cybervision C70 monitor
dual boot: win2000 from a maxtor 8.4 gb, win95 from a maxtor 4.3 gb

[rob_b]

ultimately, I would like to try the 83mhz bus
speed, but the last time I tried that it wouldn't even finish the POST. I had to reset the bios with the motherboard jumper.
might have more luck if the memory is configured properly... i don't know , just taking shots in the dark here .. Rob_b

------------------
pentium II @300mhz
intel 440lx pci chipset
64mb memory, g400max,
cybervision C70 monitor
dual boot: win2000 from a maxtor 8.4 gb, win95 from a maxtor 4.3 gb

[Compton]

when I was waiting on my celeron to get shipped to me I borrowed a PII-300 SL2W8. look at your chip, and if you see SL2W8 somewhere on it you might be able to hit 558mhz. Of course you'd need a new board but it's worth it. Try it out in someone else's mobo if you can.

[rob_b]

558? pheeeew ! thanks for the tip compton,
but for now i'm trying not to spend any money
until i'm ready for the "big one'. Until that time what i would like to do is just optimize what i have. If someone knows or could point me to a link explaining all the terms above and what to set them at , i would appreciate it. rob_b

[impact]

Try 'LOAD BIOS DEAFAULT' before o/cing. That way, everything will be set to safe values and your components will be safe. Set you hard drives to PIO mode 3, disable UDMA; change all Turbo and Fast settings to normal.

After a succesful reboot with the o/ced system, use LOAD SETUP DEFAULTS. If you still have trouble, you can use programs to set a higher L2 cache latency (8 - 10). The cache will be a bit slower, but stable.

BTW: when going for the 83 MHz FSB speed, make sure you have all your HD's and CD-ROMs in PIO mode 3. Failure to do so might lead you to reformat/reinstall, because the files on some disks get corrupted when using 83 MHz. If your system reports missing vxd files after o/cing , it is because of this.

Also, from my personal experience (366@458 with 83MHz FSB), my Creative 36x CD ROM was unable to handle 83 MHz FSB unless set to PIO mode 3. In mode 4 I got lots of read errors and slow reading and CD not in drive errors. On the other hand, my IBM Deskstar HD is running happily with a 83 MHz FSB and with Ultra DMA enabled. Usually the newer Ultra66 disks have no problems, but you never know...

[impact]

This covers the award bios. From my fav. pctuning site.

RAS to CAS delay: the delay between the RAS and CAS signals, smaller delay is faster, but requires better memory, with quality memory use 2, on o/ced system 3 is recommended

Read burst,
Write burst:both for older EDO modules, set by manufacturer of the board, don't experiment with this and leave the setting from LOAD SYSTEM SETUP (I think they mean load setup default).

ECC- error correction and control - if your memory modules support ECC enable it.

----
and here are their recommended settings


*SDRAM latency time : 3 (2 is faster but might be unstable)

*DRAM data integrity mode : non-ECC (ECC is used only in some servers)

*SDRAM precharge control : enabled

**System Bios Cacheable : disabled (irrelevant for Windows)

**Video bios cacheable : disabled (same as above, windows use its drivers to communicate with hardware)

**Video RAM cacheable: well they say disabled but enabled does give better performance on some systems

*8bit IO recovery time: NA (1) if you have no ISA cards, for older ISA cards use 2-3

*16bit IO recovery time: NA (1) same as above

memory hole at 15-16MB : disabled (used for some older ISA cards)

*passive release : enabled (allows to communicate with the PCI bus in passive state)

*delayed transaction : enable (for compatibility with PCI 2.1)

*AGP aperture size : 64+/- experiment, you know Matrox cards are picky about this

***Spread Spectrum modulated : disabled (enabled can help you to cope with heavy electromagnetic interferences, but it makes the signals on the bus less clear, which is bad)

Flash bios protection : enabled (disable only before you are going to flash your bios)

HW reset protect : disabled (enabled renders the reset button useless)

PNP OS installed : Disabled (if you use only W98, set this to enabled, the OS itself will initialize IRQ's, when in trouble, change this)

Force update ESCD/Reset initialization data: disabled (enable only after installing a new card, it will reassign the IRQs)

Resources controlled by: Auto (manual to manualy reserve IRQs for older, typically sound or network cards; set these IRQs to legacy/ISA then).

Assign IRQ for VGA: Auto/Enabled (depends, check you graphics card manual if it needs IRQ)

Assign IRQ for USB: Enabled if you use USB or have enough free IRQs

ACPI functions: disable (in win 98, ACPI doesn't seem to work quite right)

*PIO MODE: auto, when in trouble use mode 3

*UDMA mode: auto, when in trouble disable

Primary IDE: enabled

Secondary IDE: enabled (disable when you need IRQ's and do not use the secondary IDE)

*Parallel port mode: EPP 1.7 (port transfer mode, EPP is faster)


note:
-no star- will not affect speed
* will affect speed
** will not affect speed in Windows
*** will affect stability
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ouch my hands hurt, I don't feel like translating/typing anymore, try and check some english sites that deal with PC tuning, I'm sure there are be some.

[rob_b]

this helps alot impact. where exactly do you
change the hard drive to PIO mode 3 ? is that in the bios somewhere ? and what about
disabling UDMA ? in the bios also ?
thanks,
Rob_b

[impact]

Yes, they both can be changed in bios, under the integrated peripherals section (at least in my case).

[rob_b]

Well , i tried those settings and set my
bus to 83. Sure enough, it wouldn't even boot up, I had to jumper the motherboard
to restore the bios. I'm thinking maybe
my memory chips just aren't good enough.
They are 2 years old.... Rob_b

[impact]

I have the PC100 memory sticks that are designed to run on up to 100 MHz FSB. They work fine.

The professionals usually up the CPU voltage when the system doen't even boot up, but I cannot really recommend that unless you can afford a new chip in case you fry the current one. More power- better chance to o/c but also higher chance of 'melt-down'.

Also Celeron chips o/c better because they are stripped of the cache that usually prevents high o/cing on regular PII's.