AMD K6 - 2

[TopsyTurvy]

I am running two machines with Socket 7 mobos. One has an AMD K6-2/500 and the other an AMD K6-2/550. The K6-2/550 machine was a bit unstable and would freeze at various times.

I have now swapped processors and the problem has followed the K6-2/550 to the other rmachine but instead of freezing, it now repeatedly crashes with in windows with "A fatal exception OE error has occured at 0028:0005338 in vxd vmm (01)" etc.

If I reduce the clock speed to 500 MHz it appears to be stable. I have rechecked all the links to ensure voltages amd cpu speeds are correct. The fan & heatsink have been replaced using plenty of the thermal grease. Am I missing a trick somewhere?? Is there something in the Bios setup that needs adjusting?

How do you check the processor temperature??

Many thanks for previous help..

[knucklebusted]

It may be that your 550 is a marginal unit. If you underclock it to 500, does it have the same problem? I have seen a few of the older 300s that I could not get to run 100mhz FSB with the L2 cache (on the Mobo) enabled. If I disabled the L2 I could run the higher FSB. With L2 enabled, I could only run 83mhz FSB.

Good luck.

[vagpap]

You don't really need to put plenty of grease between the CPU and the H/S. Just a thin layer will do the trick.
If your mobo doesn't have on board thermistor, you could use the thermistor of a cheap RadioShack electronic thermometer, the one which has indoors/outdoors temp and put it between the fins of the H/S as close to the CPU as possible.

Hope this helps a bit.
Vangelis

[daveleau]

If the temp is ok (below 50C on a motherboard sensor), then I think you really have two options. One would be to underclock the processor to 500, and the other would be to raise the voltage .1V, to see if that makes things stable. Watch the temps though, if you do raise the V. This is what is generally done in a situation when an overclocked system is unstable. I do know though, that yours is not overclocked. The situation is similar though.

Best of luck
Dave

[JCB]

I think that most of the 550's are supposed to run at 2.3 or 2.4v.

[TopsyTurvy]

Thanks for all your replies. I think i'll try the 0.1volt increase and see if it does the trick.

Regards

[Bovon]

I remember some posts about many of the K6-2s being remarked back in 98 and 99. Remember, those processors were high as a kite too when they first hit the market. I paid $120 bucks for the K6-2 500 I am using now, and thats way down in price from when they first came out... I had to keep my K6-2 300 going awhile longer til the 500s came down some. But, back to the remarking.. I know there was some remarked K6-2 cpu's back then, and I have read where that may be one of the reasons why AMD and Intel stopped putting a metal cap on them.

BTW, I just remembered, where most of the K6-2s ran at 2.2 Vcore...this one I am using is case marked for 2.4 Vcore

[Praetorian]

AMD's website says the K-6(2) come in 500, and 550mhz. Are they missing something? One of my machines is a K-6(2) 450mhz.

[Bovon]

I would certainly think they are missing something. I have had (and still have some cpu's) K6-2 200, 300, 333, 450 an this 500...so, I believe they need to re write that page..