PC133 running @ 100mhz with 66mhz Ram ! Help needed to fix it.

[Spazmogen]

I have an Abit VT6X4 (YK BIOS) with a P3 1ghz (133 mhz) and 256mb of PC133 ram (not over clocked). Ram is 2x 128mb.

I was getting an error similar to: cannot load Win2K. systemced not found. I traced that back to a known problem with my Promise ATA66 board & Win2K Pro.

I moved my drives around so that windows does not boot from the Promise card. I think I got that cured.

When I did that, I had to remove the processor and both sticks of ram (to get the drives out safely). All seemed to go fine. I built the system, so nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. No static, no snaps or pops. I was careful, grounded & sober.

When I rebooted, the bios said the processor had failed or been changed and hit F1 to continue or DEL to enter set up.

The bios is seeing the 1ghz P3 as a 500e P3.
I'm also getting the big single beep. I've narrowed that down to 1 of the dimms being screwed. It was running fine at 133mhz just an hour before I did this. Go figure.

Now, I've fiddled...and got the processor to run @ 750mhz (100mhz bus). It will not run @ 133mhz.

The lone stick of ram will not go over 66mhz even though its PC133. The other stick will not work at all in any of the 3 dimm slots, therefore that stick has to be dead.

I doubt I cracked the board, because its running.

Currently it's set up at 100mhz x 7.5
DIMM is HCLK-PCICLK 100mhz-33mhz=66mhz.

The bios will not let me go past the 100mhz x 7.5 barrier. 133mhz gets the big single beep again.

I've done the CMOS jumper too.
Reset safe defaults etc. No luck.


Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated.

Spazmogen

Here's the system specs:
P3 1Ghz (133mhz bus)
256mb PC133 Ram (2x 128mb)
Abit VT6X4 motherboard.
32mb AGP 4x GeForce2 video card

The drives:
IBM 20gb 7200rpm ATA66 Primary Master
Creative Labs 6x region free DVD Primary Slave
40gb 5400rpm ATA66 Maxtor Secondary Master
LG GCE-8160B 16x10x40 cd-rw Secondary Slave

Promise ATA66 card: 4.3gb Maxtor DMA 2 (it's my download drive).

[BipolarBill]

My advice will be to never use an Intel CPU on a VIA board, first off. Nothing beats Intel on Intel.

Obviously, something damaged your memory. If there's a voltage adjustment for it, adjust it. If not, you need new DIMMs. Buy Crucial.

Welcome to SysOpt!

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Coulnt agree more. I mean they make the cpu and the chipset its gonna be the best. They know their own tech. better than anyone. And their not gonna tell via how to make best use of their cpu-nor sis. So who's got all the secrets-Intel. Look at the 440bx compared to ANY other brand chipset mobo. Nothing can even compare in performance. Its the king of ALL P3 and P2 mobo's! Over 400mb/sec. mem bandwidth on sdram, now thats impresive. I will also say that Intel standardised the pc100 spec. So they now sdr too, and how to get the manufacturers to stick to a certain spec. If it werent for them you will still be only guessing when buying ram-is it really pc133 or just O'clocked pc100. That was the "evil Intel's idea"me folks say. Same with agp and pci. Intel is pretty smart and a huge input in the pc world-wether amd fans like it or not,they have alot of Intel tech. in EVERY mobo they buy. Ironic isnt-anti-Intel=Intel parts like it or not. Hehe.

They did the same with !850 chipset-standardised the pc800 rdram and the !850 is still the #1 performer of all mobo's. You'll see this pattern over and over as pc's evolve.

So long story short-have a intel cpu, get a intel chipset. Not a Intel brand mobo as they are limited in the bios setting-just the chipset and get from agood third party mobo manufac. like Asus or MSI etc.

[RJA]

With the symptoms:

Win2000 exception or file error and then after rebooting,
a processor failure error from the BIOS are telltale signs that
the processor voltage is a high chance to be the wrong
voltage. I had a *very* similar symptoms with my
Soyo SY-K7VTA-B motherboard, when attempting to overclock
my AMD Athlon T-bird 900 mhz to 1.1 ghz. The Windows 98
file errors were simply because at least with the Soyo SY-K7VTA-B and Deer DR 250 ATX power supply , it cannot handle
more than 1050 mhz (1.05 ghz), and because I needed the Vcore
at least 1.80V. The processor failing to be recognized was because of overclocking with the earlier BIOS, and apparently,
the 2000 (Soyo SY-K7VTA-B) BIOS had a major bug. It will overclock with the 4/11/2001 BIOS (Soyo SY-K7VTA-B).

I suggest trying to raise the processor voltage by a step
if possible.

[Spazmogen]

The voltage is starting to look good to me.

I had a chance to put the 'bad' ram into another system. It ran fine. I'll try uping the core voltage and see what happens.