something not working, please help!!

[phill9700]

hi guys
yesterday i have got back my epox board and have been testing it today, as i work 12 hours and havent had any time to do it..
have a little weird thing going on at the moment tho, as when i try and overclock the cpu in this new board, it just dont post and make a beeping sound like something is wrong..
the details on the two cpus i had changed are as follows...

AXDA1700DLT3C XXXXXXX280149 (these last 6 digits are slightly different on the other cpu... later one i think..)
JIUHB 0313RPMW

i have managed to up the multiplier and it works fine, but when i up the fsb to 140 (thats all i have tested because i have to take my corsair memory out and then put another dimm in to clear it or what have you...) it posts, but when i try something like 166 or 200 it just dont want to know.. i havce corsair memory xms twinx3200LL stuff, would that be whats giving me the problem? its working fine now at 12.5 x 133, but i dont want to have to keep swapping and changing the memory over.. anyone got any ideas?
has anyone got any ideas on this? i have checked and apparently its the most recent bios.. (3/5/03) want to overclock this new cpu of mine.. and i cant :disgust; anyone, someone please help!!

[cristoff]

hmmm... thats a wierd one I'll tell you...

Might want to come down on the timings for your ram. Perhaps thats it.

Also, when you set the FSB at 333 or 266... it will bump your ram up automatically I believe. My p4 board does that to my ram. Then when you raise your fsb manually the ram goes up even more. So try going down on the FSB for the chip and then try overclocking it.

I say at most its the ram for some reason...

For me if I set my FSB for the Chip at 533mhz (p4 board and chip) my ram is automatically at 177mhz... Get up to 180 but with a small overclock.

If I set it at normal 400mhz I can get my ram up to about 180 and my CPU is higher becuase the ram can go higher. I can also lock my pci/agp clock speed, so that helps.

Try these... Hope it helps..

[phill9700]

the memory timings are set to cas 2 3-3-6 which isnt what the memory is rated too ( cas 2 2-2-6) if i set it to those values it will beep

if my memory is set to 133 i have a little option that will tell me that i can increase up to 200% or decrease to 50% which means if the fsb is set to 200 i can put it so it will boot at 75% for the memory speed or which ever option i feel between the values above.....

If i go down on the fsb it makes it slower than it already is which isnt helping, i wanted it to be going higher!!!

my agp is at an auto setting but i can set it to what ever i want, i dont know about the pci side of things as i cant see an option for them but when i had my older board ( this is a repacement because the other went wrong) i was able to run at 200fsb with the same memory and the everything used to run fine (but it wasnt quick enough )

i believe it is something to do with the ram as before it was running fine with this memory but now it dont seem to like it, im very annoyed as i was led to believe the memory is the best and it seems not to be the case at all.....

[g.l.amour]

on my 8rda+ i always
load setup defaults

turn off driveA
integrated peripherals, turn off everything (serial, parallel, lan, ie1334)
my memory at 100% of FSB
everything to expert
agp at 66

wil prolly not help, but i can't think of anything else than a ram or agp divider that are making em components run rediculously out of spec.

g'luck on tha quest

[phill9700]

what ever we do doesnt seem to make a bit of difference, im gonna phone up where i got the memory from and see if they will swap it out for some geill memory pc 3500x 1gig of

[jtroutma]

Phil:

Which memory slots do you have your RAM in?

I discovered that on my Epox 8DRA+ that I could not get stability with memory in slots 1 & 2. I put my RAM in Slot 2 & 3 and viola, stability again.

Also DONT TOUCH THE MEMORY % OPTION!!!! Leave it at 100%. That setting is forcing your memory to run Asyncronously from your FSB; that very bad because 1) performance penalty 2) OC your RAM without getting your FSB OC.

Also I have heard of people claim that they were having problems with their Epox boards accepting high speed RAM with the default timmings. Make sure that you boot your system with low memory settings (starting system with INSERT key pressed is a life saver) and then manually set your RAM timmings to something manageable for now then work with them latter. I would try CAS 2-3-3-7 for now and try faster latter.

Also what BIOS revision are you using? I have not upgraded my BIOS since March because everything has been working great for me with the March release. Try that one and see what happens.

Last, dont ditch the Corsair......I havent heard of Geil doing any better than OCZ.........IMHO

If you need more help, PM me or replay to this channel. WE can get you up and running.

[phill9700]

how annoying but its true..
it just simply wasnt going to load for me no matter what i did!! anything i was doing with the corsair stuff just gave me problems..
im running the memory is slots 1 and 3, which i think is ok isnt it? what slots do the dimms have to be in for dual channel? is the dual channel worth the hassle or not?
ram is always set to 100% even when it was working at 133fsb.. i never saw the point in going lower or higher..

i would like some advice as to getting it to work faster tho.. at current i have it just working at 1.825v at 200fsb x 12 multiplier... it dont want to know 12.5 to take it to the magical 2.5ghz mark which is a shame, but i was wondering what you might sugguest? even when i have the cpu at 1.9v it just dont boot windows at all... memory is set to 2.9v through the bios... what else can i do? memory timings are now set to cas 2 2-2-6.. any ideas?

im now using the bios thats at the epox website, its i think release date 7/5/03, which i think is the latest isnt it?

if you need any more information to help me to get this darn cpu to my 2.5ghz goal please just ask!!

my 'aol' handle name is physicalphill and my windows messenger is kimphill.. feel free to drop me a line if you see me online.. although i have just finished a night shift of 12hours, so im going to try and get some sleep in a minute!!
thanks so much for the help!!

[tippey]

hi m8 is your mobo runnig the standard passive cooler as i've heard it may help overclocking if the northbridge was actively cooled.

I've just bought the ED RGA model myself, just got to save the pennies for the rest of the system lol

[phill9700]

yeah its standard, i couldnt get it working much better the last time so i never bothered with doing anything with the board!!
i might consider changing it when i get the thing stable!!! thanks for the info!

[airspirit]

The board will beep like that if it is unable to post. Look at the port 80 LED on your mobo and compare it to the information in your manual to figure out your problem. I have found that typically when it rests on C1-C3 it is caused by too hard of an overclock.

Bear in mind that you will need to replace the northbridge cooler on those boards cos the stock one sucks. It makes things a hell of a lot more stable.

[phill9700]

i have had no such errors as of yet, but my memory dont want to go above 200fsb without some serious problems..
in my other 8rda+ it used to go to 206fsb without any problems, i have no idea why its not doing it now..
i have been recommended the vantic cooler? is that one any good?
i do need some stablity.. i cant even reinstall xp without it crashing now... stupid machine!!!

[bigben2k]

You ought to check which revision of the NB you have. If it's C1 then you should be able to hit 200 easily.

Can you hit 200 without overclocking the CPU?

[phill9700]

how could i check the revision on the board? i know its a rev 1.1 board, but im not sure how else to see what it is..
would cpu-z be of any help??

[phill9700]

i think its rev a2 i will get the darn thing working again and check then...

[phill9700]

heres a snap shot of cpu-z for you, it will probably make more sense to you anyway!!

[bigben2k]

Yep, there it is. The A2 is your wall. A C1 (aka A1), which is a later revision would take care of your problem.

[phill9700]

hi, can i flash the bios to make it an A1 or would it mean a new board again,

[bigben2k]

You ought to try the latest BIOS first, but if that doesn't do anything for you, you'll only have one option left: trade the mobo in.

[airspirit]

You have another option: use a vantec Iceberq copper cooler. It will give you quite a bit of room on top of what you're hitting now. The stock heatsink SUCKS. Do that, then report what problems you are having because without that you WILL have problems.

[phill9700]

Originally posted by bigben2k
You ought to try the latest BIOS first, but if that doesn't do anything for you, you'll only have one option left: trade the mobo in.

well as to trying the latest bios, that was what fixed my problem with my other problem, the 133fsb problem..
trading it in? god i dont know if i can go through more RMA's!! the problem is unless they try the board before they send it, how else are they going to know whether or not its a C1 (A1) revision or not?
one more option, what about the newer version (i think...) of the board, the 8RD3A+????? would that help me out there or not? i do have (possibly) an NF7-S board coming back to me.. version 2.... would that be better?

[phill9700]

Originally posted by airspirit
You have another option: use a vantec Iceberq copper cooler. It will give you quite a bit of room on top of what you're hitting now. The stock heatsink SUCKS. Do that, then report what problems you are having because without that you WILL have problems.

at the moment i do have problems!! when i try and lower the fsb but higher up the multiplier to keep near to the same speed, the darn thing crashes out so badly that im forced to reinstall windows xp!!
everytime i run at 200fsb, the machine is on the edge.. with pcmark 2002 the test with the coloured lines scrolling up the screen, on the second one, no matter what cas settings or latency settings are used, the darn thing crashes and dont do anything.. i just cant seem to find anything stable enough to use the darn thing that much.. it was doing ok @ 2.4ghz but when using sandra and doing the memory benchmark it crashed the machine as well.. i just think it has it in for me!!
i just personnally think that its the board giving me hassle rather than cooling problems, although for the sake of purhaps £10 or what have you, its possibly worth a look in.. :shrug:

thank you so much for the help.. its really nice of you

[bigben2k]

IF you want to go around RMA'ing it, you can sell it in the forums, then pick yourself up a new one.

It can be hard to determine that it's a C1, but most should be that by now. This is why a brick-and-mortar computer shop is still better than an on-line shop.

[phill9700]

what would give me the better chance of getting one tho? theres no point in rma'ing something if there is no garentee that it will be the one when i get it back..
would the 8rd3a+ be a better bet or not?

[bigben2k]

The 8RDA3+ would be a guarantee of getting a C1.

[airspirit]

You need some lessons in overclocking. First of all, disconnect your HDD when experimenting with system speeds or you get what you deserve when your HDD craps out. Second, you need to do some speed testing to see what each individual component in your system can handle.

http://12.18.239.202/heatercores/primer.htm

Read that and follow the testing procedure. Before you do that, though, put a better northbridge cooler on your board. Really, you can NOT expect a good measure of stability unless you swap that aluminum monstrosity off of your board.