MrP
06-17-2002, 06:04 PM
Right,
slightly off thebeaten track for this BB, but i thought i would share this with you, so you dont end up spending hours figuring out how hard it is to get into BIOS'sand messing around with software that locks your PC solid
anyway, the story begins . . . . . . .
i wanted a cheap board for another SETI cruncher to add to the farm. Me being me, i wanted an all in one DDR board (LAN, Video, Sound).
after hunting around i found 3 boards. The gigabyte 7vkml, the PCChips m841LMR and the Epox 8kmm+ (theres been a few more realsed since) My one slight problem was the lack of inf about any of these board, the Via KM266 chipset in the gigabyte and epox board hadnt had a single review, and neither had the sis 740 chipset in the PC Chips board. the PC chips board was the cheapest around £65 plus VAT in the UK, whilst the others were £70-75
So off to my local computer fair, and one retailer was selling the PC Chips board for £55, so easy decision :) one M841 in my lap. I also bought a cheap stick of RAM with it, we will come back to that later
got the board home, and installed it in the case, put the ram in and threw a duron in to boot it up with. first thing was it would not boot. no post no nothing. After much messing around i found that the jumper for clearing the BIOS was set to clear :(
booted up wit 128mb ram and the default settings and all seeemed well, surprisingly quick, but that was partly a new system with no rubbish on it!
Anyway, it stayed like that for a while, before i obtained a tbird 1400 for it. so got hold of it, and threw the chip in. here i ht the first problem. it didnt like my 1400 tbird. would boot at 1050 (100 fsb) but would only just post at 1400. thought it was the PSU (these boards seem to like a decent power supply) but still no go. after much messing around, found it was the RAM at fault. it would take any cas setting, but wouldnt boot with the memory timings at anything but safe mode :(
so, a purchase of 2 sticks of crucial ddr2100 solved that. now running at cas2, ultra timings :)
next problem on the list, overclock it!
hereis where i really hit a wall.
my usuall route of CPUcool on it, and use that to change the FSB wouldnt work, as soon as CPUCool started to load, the machine froze. Tried H.Odas softfsb, but i couldnt find a pll file for it. Thought about writing one, but i couldnt figure out how to do it, so that dea igot trashed.
asking around, someone pointed me to a proggy called Speedfan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php). at first look this was just another cooling/montoring program from the stuff on the web site, but if you download it and install it, it has the capability to overclock a select few boards, and a select few PLL's
Oneof these PLL's hapens to be the same as the one of the M841LMR. so success. . . . .
well partly, i can now overclock to 146FSB, and i have the capability to go higher, but that means a dividor change for the PCI bus, and that means a crash. So untill i can figure out how to boot the machine at 150fsb i'm stuck.
still an overclock of 13fsb on a motherboard that didnt want to be overclocked is still impressive, and from some reviews i have read, better than some boards aimed at overclockers
and thats about it for now, will update this when i have some firm benchmarks for sandra, seti, 3dmark and some other stuff
toodles :xsofa:
slightly off thebeaten track for this BB, but i thought i would share this with you, so you dont end up spending hours figuring out how hard it is to get into BIOS'sand messing around with software that locks your PC solid
anyway, the story begins . . . . . . .
i wanted a cheap board for another SETI cruncher to add to the farm. Me being me, i wanted an all in one DDR board (LAN, Video, Sound).
after hunting around i found 3 boards. The gigabyte 7vkml, the PCChips m841LMR and the Epox 8kmm+ (theres been a few more realsed since) My one slight problem was the lack of inf about any of these board, the Via KM266 chipset in the gigabyte and epox board hadnt had a single review, and neither had the sis 740 chipset in the PC Chips board. the PC chips board was the cheapest around £65 plus VAT in the UK, whilst the others were £70-75
So off to my local computer fair, and one retailer was selling the PC Chips board for £55, so easy decision :) one M841 in my lap. I also bought a cheap stick of RAM with it, we will come back to that later
got the board home, and installed it in the case, put the ram in and threw a duron in to boot it up with. first thing was it would not boot. no post no nothing. After much messing around i found that the jumper for clearing the BIOS was set to clear :(
booted up wit 128mb ram and the default settings and all seeemed well, surprisingly quick, but that was partly a new system with no rubbish on it!
Anyway, it stayed like that for a while, before i obtained a tbird 1400 for it. so got hold of it, and threw the chip in. here i ht the first problem. it didnt like my 1400 tbird. would boot at 1050 (100 fsb) but would only just post at 1400. thought it was the PSU (these boards seem to like a decent power supply) but still no go. after much messing around, found it was the RAM at fault. it would take any cas setting, but wouldnt boot with the memory timings at anything but safe mode :(
so, a purchase of 2 sticks of crucial ddr2100 solved that. now running at cas2, ultra timings :)
next problem on the list, overclock it!
hereis where i really hit a wall.
my usuall route of CPUcool on it, and use that to change the FSB wouldnt work, as soon as CPUCool started to load, the machine froze. Tried H.Odas softfsb, but i couldnt find a pll file for it. Thought about writing one, but i couldnt figure out how to do it, so that dea igot trashed.
asking around, someone pointed me to a proggy called Speedfan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php). at first look this was just another cooling/montoring program from the stuff on the web site, but if you download it and install it, it has the capability to overclock a select few boards, and a select few PLL's
Oneof these PLL's hapens to be the same as the one of the M841LMR. so success. . . . .
well partly, i can now overclock to 146FSB, and i have the capability to go higher, but that means a dividor change for the PCI bus, and that means a crash. So untill i can figure out how to boot the machine at 150fsb i'm stuck.
still an overclock of 13fsb on a motherboard that didnt want to be overclocked is still impressive, and from some reviews i have read, better than some boards aimed at overclockers
and thats about it for now, will update this when i have some firm benchmarks for sandra, seti, 3dmark and some other stuff
toodles :xsofa: