Asus A7M Questions

[srs]

1. Does it support the Athlon XP Processor ?

2. Whats the differences between rev 1.04 and 1.05

3. Anyone else experience serious system instability when upgrading to the 1.05 bios (1.04 rev board) ?

 

[tristramshandy]

1. Apparently, Athlon XP procs are supported with bios revisions after 1005.

2. Not sure about all the differences between rev 1.04 and 1.05 mboards (I have a 1.04 I b'lieve).

3. I've never gotten my board 100% stable -- still get freezes in OpenGL games. There are tons of tips and tricks to try. More people in this Forum can comment. Another good source of info is the ASUS forum at amdmb.com.

By the way, a new bios beta revision 1006_01a is out. More details at ntcompatible.com and amdmb.com.

 

[srs]

hey thanks for the reply,

i hope the a7m266 works with the athlon xp cause i just bought that and a xp 1600. Anyone have any experience with an amd xp chip and this mobo ? also when i upgraded to the new bios 1005, my temp readings shot up 10 deg C (???????????) and computer would lock after about 20 secs of quake or a couple hours of windows. stange thing is it never locked up when i ran programs that heat up the cpu, like prime 95 or cpu burn..... strange..

i'm sorry to hear that you've never gotten the board stable.... it runs very well for me which is why i decided to buy another one (well that is until bios ver 1005, hehe). how are you testing teh stability of your system ?

 

[srs]

damn, after reading the threads at amdmb.com i think i should have chosen another mobo for the amd xp chip.......

d'OH

 

[tristramshandy]

Here's some more tips:

I've gone and flashed 1006.01A, and it seems to be quick and very stable. Mebbe you should give it a whirl.

More recent bios updates have been reported to be more accurate in reporting heat (hence higher temps shown).

Get that video stable (mine's always improving). A. Set SK Slew rate to 2 or 1 instead of default 3 (mine's set to 2). B. Do not set OS to "Plug 'n Play OS" in the bios -- this board does not seem to like PnP setting (and that's been my experience). C. Set Write Recovery Time to 3T. D. Set Memory timings to set by "SPD". E. Set all performance options to Auto until you've got full stability. F. Up the PCI latency to 64 instead of 32. G. Make sure that Video bios is not shadowed in Ram (even though this is default setting).

All the above are suggestions from AMDmb.com forums. H. Go to those forums and do a search of "A7M266 Bible" for a full list of all basic A7M settings in cmos (which may not reflect the points made above or all the settings of more recent bios updates). I. Remove the default jumper from the ddr ram Voltage jumper (see amdzone forums and the original lostcircuits.com A7M266 review).

Good luck!

 

[SonicTron]

My friend just bought an A7M266-e and AXP 1600+ and its working fine. The BIOS temps are quite wrong though lol. Says 60+ celsius at idle.

 

[srs]

you mean the a7V266e ?

i've been trying to avoid via chipsets with all the problems they've been having

 

[tristramshandy]

Uhhmm, the newest Via KT266A chipsets appear to have the greater inherent stability over the older AMD761 chipsets that you would expect from a matured design. I just bought a KR7A-Raid because I was (A) convinced that the limitations of the A7M266 as the most basic of the AMD761 boards warranted an ostensible upgrade and (B) because I had grown irritated with ASUS's increasing complacence about the materials they put in their boards and the system/overclocking options they would support. Frankly, I experienced chronic, mystifying problems with system stability with the A7M266 that I had never encountered with the earlier K7M board.

I could never get my high-quality corsair and crucial dimms to o'c to any significant degree, I've had to turn most settings to Auto, and I appear to have burned out the memory on the old GF2 GTS with constantly playing with the AGP settings. I have yet to discover anything particularly useful that I would want to do with an AMR slot (and given this board's enduring expensiveness, what system integrator would be feckless enough to buy a bunch of these?). Long ago, when the earth was green and we all lived in the forest, I had great experiences with the BH6 ver. 1. So what the he11, I figured I'd give Abit another go.