After Epox nightmare, Abit saves the day!!!

[G3DN]

I've been posting this last week about the horrible problems I've been having with two Epox 8KTA3 (KT133a) motherboards I bought. Neither of them would run at 133MHz with either my T-Bird 900 or 1.2GHz. I was also having problems with the four IDE devices I have installed in my computer when DMA is enabled. Just installing programs from from my CD-ROM or moving large files from one hard drive to another caused my computer to freeze or reset. I had to disable DMA in order to keep that from happening. I was extremely disapointed...especially after reading all the great reviews on the board.
I've always bought Abit boards in the past, but I couldn't get one of their KT133A boards, and that's why I went with an Epox board. Any way, I just got a Abit KT7A-Raid today, and I'm VERY happy right now! First off, the DMA problem doesn't happen on my Abit board, and best of all I can run at 133MHz bus! =) In fact I can run at 145MHz bus at CAS 2 and 150MHz at CAS 3. I can almost finish loading windows at 1,333MHz...I haven't done enough testing to find the sweet spot yet. However, I think it will run at 1.3GHz just fine. My Quake 3 Team Arena scores went up 20fps from when I was running the Epox board at 100MHz bus. I'm a happy camper now...thanks Abit! =)

 

[Insane3D]

I agree..nice board. Check my system...

 

[Technonut]

I agree with Insane3D, It is a great mobo.

 

[DaddyG]

EPOX and maybe a few other mobo manufacturers need lessons from ABIT on BIOS overclocking. Just wish that ABIT would take a lesson from other mobo makers regarding quality !! Very high RMA rates.

I believe that dip switch OCing will be better in the long run.

 

[DarrylH]

I have contacted EPOX and the vendor I bought my CPU at and the reason the EPOX board won't go into 133 FSB is because the CPU's aren't available yet that support the 133/266 FSB. A regular Athlon does not work. If you guys are getting them to work, or you know a vendor that is selling Athlons with the 266 FSB bus then please let me know so I can join in the fun.

Outside of that the Motherboard is great and I found to be very overclockable, easily getting my 1 ghz athlon tbird to 1.2(actually 1.18)

Darryl@telocity.com

 

[Grendel99]

Thats why you underclock the multiplier and raise the FSB If you have a 1 GHZ TBird (10 x 100) you just set it to 7.5 x 133.

 

[johncar]

Couple of threads that have a tested Epox workaround at amdzone.com BBS, via chipset motherboards forum, threads = "Running 100 fsb....." init by RickM, and "Epox setting..." init by Droo.
John C.

 

[G3DN]

well what they told you is true and not true at the same time. No there isn't any offical 133MHz T-bird's out there..the key word is offical. To get a 100MHz T-bird to run at 133, you simply unlock the multiplier and underclock it. Then raise the FSB to 133. For my 1.2Ghz I moved it from 12x to 9x, then raised the FSB to 133 in order to get 1,200MHz 266 EVA bus. Pretty much everybody buying these KT133A boards are buying them to run their current T-Birds or Duron's at 266 or higher. I doubt the offical 266 bus T-Birds will ever sell well to overclockers...pretty much the same way hardly any overclockers buy the 733/133 or 933/133 models of the P3. The reason my Epox board doesn't work at the 133MHz bus, is that the particular board I have just sucks. Maybe most of the boards they made will run fine, but the one I have simpley won't. I know both my CPU's run fine at 266 on my Abit board, so there is no reason why they shouldn't have run on my Epox.

 

[G3DN]

I went to that BBS and read their tips...and I've already tried what they mentioned with no luck.

 

[Gothmoth]

well, like it was writen on some oc site on the web:

the 1 GHz athlons running a FEW miliseconds on bootup with there TRUE multiplier!!

this means 10*133 Mhz (if you use 133 MHz fsb) and not all t-bird will run at 1330 MHz (even with very good cooling and 1.85v).
after a few milisecond the multiplier is set by the bios.

look on the abit newsgroup how many abit kt7a owners have massive problems.
i dont think the abit is easyer to setup as the epox.
and the agp vcore setting in the epox bios are VERY helpful with geforce2 cards.

i have tested my geforce2 on the abit kt7a and i have great problems to get a stable system, so i decide to buy the epox 8kta3.

btw: on my epox 8kt3a my duron 800 runs fine with 8*140 MHz.

 

[DaddyG]

G3DN, did you cut the 4X multiplier on your L6 bridges ??. Thats the REAL fix for EPOX. ABIT simply has more experience with BIOS overclocking. I want to see a dips vs BIOS shootout.

 

[G3DN]

No way am I going to cut any bridges on my brand new 1.2GHz T-Bird! You might be right about Geforce 2 cards, but I don't own one to try. I won't buy a Nvidia card as long as they have fuzzy 2d at high res. I think Abit's softmenu must be overriding the true multipiler on the CPU faster then the Epox bios does. Perhaps a lot of people are having trouble, but I have a motherboard that works well right now, so I'm happy. I sold one of the Epox boards I had, and kept one to play with.

 

[mofo888]

I have so much problems with epox boards in the past that
I would never use them again. Their bios is weak compared
to MSI and Abit.

Their customer service and sales people blows donkey.
Even in Taiwan, users hate them.

 

[DarrylH]

I'll cut(burn? lol) my bridges and report back if someone can point me to a good website that describes what needs to be done.

prefer email too, in case I forget to check back soon darrylsh@hotmail.com

EPOX 8KTA3 and Athlon TBird 1 ghz
256K Ram
Hercules Geforce2 Pro
blah blah blah


Darryl

 

[Arbiter]

Let me know how the bridge cutting goes or any tips, my 8KTA3 is also having the same problems going to 133.

 

[ErikaeanLogic]

Guys: why not cross some of the L6 bridges to trick the chipset into thinking that it's dealing with a lower multiplier(mine is 7x)?? It's so easy! Here's what it'll look like:

L6 . I I I : (this is for a 7x multiplier)

Get it?(choose whichever Frequency ID you want here.

I have an EPoX 8KTA3 with a 1GHz T-Bird and have no problems whatsoever, so I know that this works. The system posts with a 7x multiplier via this hardware mod. If I reset the BIOS settings for any reason(ie: clear the CMOS), the next boot registers the cpu speed as 700MHz(7 x 100). The chipset believes that it is dealing with an unlocked T-Bird 700(I wish it were; this thing was expensive!).

I hope that this is helpful.

 

[Arbiter]

All well and good for a 1Ghz chip but mine's a 1.2Ghz

L6: . | : | |

Best I can lower it to, without cutting bridges is 1.1Ghz

L6: . | | | |

 

[dougjnn]

Insane3D --

Since you pointed people to look at your system, I have to ask you a question. I'm about to decide which sound card I get for my abuilding system, a live x-gamer (I want the games) or a Phillips Acoustic Edge.

I gather the Accoustic edge is gonna sound better probably playing CD's or MP3's, or DVD's (maybe). But I also gather from a VERY long and detailed review which I read recently, that the Acoustic Edge has some more game compatibility problems than the Live cards do.

Not because of the quality of the card, but just because of who the games direct their support efforts at. It all seemed remarkably complicated. Especially it seems that patches to 3D sound problems with released games are gonna be a lot easier to get with the Live series.

What's your experience? Have you had your Phillips card long.

(Sorry for the OT.)

 

[ScottyB_]

This may sound dumb but I have never built a system before. I am getting the same mobo/cpu. Does the RAM in the system run at the fsb speed?

 

[dougjnn]

Yes.

The ram speed and the fsb speed are basically the same thing. Although sometimes the higher standard speed for current gen processors, 133mhz, is described as 266, in connection with DDR capabilities of the processor. (Whether or not DDR is installed, sometimes.)

 

[Dulanic]

<< well, like it was writen on some oc site on the web:

the 1 GHz athlons running a FEW miliseconds on bootup with there TRUE multiplier!!

this means 10*133 Mhz (if you use 133 MHz fsb) and not all t-bird will run at 1330 MHz (even with very good cooling and 1.85v).
after a few milisecond the multiplier is set by the bios. >>



This is semi uncomfirmed. And if it DOES apply it sure doesn't apply to all the boards. It sure doesnt effect me on my A7V133, I run 7x150..... its 8x100 default, and there is NO way my CPU will even post at 8x133, it wont even post at 1150. But then again the A7V133 has 2 dips that will allow you turn off CPU ID, so it never checks the default so that may be why.

 

[DarrylH]

Well I didn't have to cut my Bridges, instead I tried the above suggestion even though I got it from AMDZone before it was posted here.

But I connected the L6 bridge.
.|||: for my 1 gig to make it 700mhz

one of my connections didn't take well and set my chip at 9x (900MHz) but that was low enough so that it could post and drop to the 7.5 in the BIOS

So all is well and I am running 133 FSB!!!!

On a side note I broke the arm off my ZIF socket on my EPOX board and being desparate to get back up and running the only board I could find at a local store was the IWILL KK266, it didn't boot at 133 either prior to the L6 bridge change.

But it's running great and very stable, haven't tried to take it to 163Mhz like some of the reviews suggest is possible but I will play with it this weekend to see what it can do.

If anyone can fix the epox board and want it cheap, let me know.

Darryl