Time To Stop Overclocking? Advice please....

[SCompRacer]

Got a KT7A with a 900 T'bird, 128MB Crucial 7E. Was mixed with a stick of 128MB Micron for 256MB, but that stick wouldn't let me get past a 103MHz FSB, so out it came.

With the 7E stick only, can get up to 107/35 with a 9.5 multiplier for 1026, voltage at 1.775.

If I try 110/35, gets stuck at PCI Device screen while booting. Rebooted, upped CPU voltage to 1.8 and it crashed in safe mode. Went back down to 107/35, 9.5 multiplier, boot and benchmark OK.

At 107/35 and a multiplier of 10 for 1080MHz, froze at Win98 screen. Upped voltage to 1.825, got Windows protection error on a black screen next. Went back down to 107/35 @ 9.5, 1.8v, for 1026MHz.

The memory is at 143MHz at 107/35, and the 900 T'bird is at 1026, so is this as far as I can go, or did I miss something along the way?

Almost forgot, the CPU never went over 46C, voltage at 3.4.

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ABIT KT7A, RAID 0 * 900MHz Athlon T'bird * 128MB Crucial 7E PC/133 RAM * Two 30GB IBM 75GXP * Two Cheetah LVD's * Barracuda UW * DiamondMAX IDE * Plextor Ultraplex 40max/Plexwriter 12/4/32 * Hitachi IDE DVD * 2940U2W * SB Live * 3Com 905B-TX NIC * 3Com Courier V. Ext. * Hollywood + * Win 98SE, Win 2000 *



[This message has been edited by SCompRacer (edited 29 January 2001).]

[Wombat]

I'm still waiting on my KT133A board, but from what I've read, you have a lot of control with various bus speeds. See if you can OC your CPU's FSB, but not the RAM. And 133MHz FSB, with 33MHz PCI and 100MHz CPU doesn't work?

[SCompRacer]

Tried it at 133/33, forgot to lower the multiplier though, left it at 9, oh-oh, Black Screen Of Death. Had to slide the side panel off, power down and clear the CMOS with the jumper...

Anyway, can only get it up to 1000MHz, 7.5, 133/33.

[Rik]

Have you tried a WZ (beta) version of the KT7 bios? This gave me much better stability when overclocking the FSB than any previous version, and I have read that others have experienced this too. It also sorts out the mixed-up memory timing settings.

[Rik]

Whoops...just noticed you have KT7*A* - does this use same bios as regular KT7?

[SCompRacer]

Yes, have the WZ beta for the KT7A. They do list the A BIOS seperate, but I am sure they are real similar.

[Claymonkey]

If your using the kt7a try changing the ram speed to just equal the front side bus. Then try running your cpu at say...7.5x133 and go from there. You should notice a decent increase in performance.. from what I have read all the thunderbird/duron's have run at least at 133 on the kt133a chipset

[Claymonkey]

- oh it sounds like you haven't unlocked your thunderbird yet.. would probably help with my previous post... here is a link http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002302.html
Hope it helps


[This message has been edited by dparadis (edited 29 January 2001).]

[SCompRacer]

dparadis, my T'bird came unlocked, no L1 bridges cut at all....wasn't I lucky. Got it late December. Posted awhile back, seems there were others with uncut bridges.

Seems the highest I can get it to go with a 133FSB is 7.5 multiplier for just shy of 1000MHz.

Only thing I haven't tried is cutting down on memory settings, at turbo now.