ripped off
http://www.apushardware.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm
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Why is my system unstable?
This could be for many reasons. Try the following:
Do you have a 300W power supply? Using smaller power supplies is the most common cause of instabilities.
Is your system properly earthed (is your wall socket earthed)?
Is your RAM correctly configured? This is the second most common cause of problems - see memory section for more information.
Do you have a conflict between SB16 emulation on your soundcard and the Highpoint controller (on KT7-RAID) or other device using IRQ5? See sound section.
Load latest VIA drivers - see drivers section.
Load latest motherboard BIOS - see bios section
Load latest peripheral drivers
If your AGP graphics card is unstable see section AGP- be aware that the AGP slot shares an interrupt with PCI slot 1, so try moving any card out of PCI slot 1.
Sound card problems can often be resolved by enabling the 15-16 MB memory hole in the BIOS
Note that the BIOS manual explicitly states that the onboard hardware monitor uses I/O addresses 294H to 297H. If you have an add-on card that uses these addresses you must select new I/O addresses for the add-on card. This can be set under System Properties - Device Manager - Properties - Resources.
Try raising the core voltage and I/O voltage by one notch in the CPU power supply section of Soft Menu III in the BIOS.
Don't put other electrical devices near your computer, particularly when you have the covers off. This can leave your system susceptible to interference.
Why does my KT7 freeze every 5 seconds?
Try the following:
Set "PCI Delay Transitions" to "Disable" under Advanced Chipset in the BIOS
Set "Memory hole at 15-16mb - enabled in BIOS
This may also be due to sharing of hardware IRQ's by a pair of PCI cards. See the question below "My system hangs with my network card. Why?" on how to troubleshoot this one (even if you don't have a network card!).
Another user reports that ACPI appeared to be the cause of this. He discovered that his video card was sharing an IRQ with the ACPI driver and that this IRQ was listed in Power Management/Wake-up Events/IRQs Activity Monitoring. He suggested disabling this, and if this doesn't help, disabling ACPI (see misc section)
This problem has also been linked to the power management software supplied with HP scanners.
Another user reported upgrading from VIA 4in1 driver v4.24 to v4.25a solved this problem.
How do I avoid IRQ conflicts?
Firstly, if your system is functioning correctly but you have shared interrupts, don't worry. You need do nothing, the system is working as it is meant to.
Disabling COM1 or COM2 in the BIOS (if you're not using them) can each free up an additional IRQ for the system, which can help.
System instabilities can often be caused by PCI and ISA cards sharing interrupt request signals (IRQs) with other devices, when one or both cards is not designed to share IRQs. In the past, when ISA cards were the standard interface, then cards could not share IRQs under any circumstances. It is a hangover from these "bad old" days that cause people to still worry so much about shared IRQ's. However it should be noted that the PCI standard is designed to allow cards to share interrupt requests. Indeed, according to an Intel support site on the web, the PCI Specification Revision 2.1 states "PCI devices are required to support shared interrupts since it is very likely that system implementations will connect more than one device to a single interrupt line." (my italics).
So, in most cases this is not a problem at all and is one of the benefits of the PCI standard!! However, some PCI cards (and particularly older or badly designed cards) or their drivers can have problems sharing IRQs and in this case it is necessary to know on which slots this will occur. If your PCI device is having a hard time sharing IRQ's, and it claims to be PCI2.1 compliant, complain at the manufacturer to get the driver fixed!
In the ABIT KT7, IRQs are shared by the following devices:
"INT Pin 1": AGP card and PCI Slot 1
"INT Pin 2": PCI Slot 2 and PCI Slot 3 and ACPI (if enabled)
"INT Pin 3": PCI Slot 5 (and HPT370 controller in KT7-RAID)
"INT Pin 4": PCI Slot 4 and PCI Slot 6 and USB
Note you can force a particular IRQ number to be used by a particular "INT Pin #" using the PNP/PCI Configurations Setup in the BIOS. This allows you to force a certain slot to use a specific IRQ. You should not normally need to do this. A fuller explanation of this process is given in the BIOS section in the question "What on earth is the interrupt pin assignment table on p3-43 of the manual all about?!". Note that if you have ACPI enabled, Windows will ignore the assignments made in the BIOS and allow ACPI to determine this.
This is not a design fault of the KT7! PCI devices are only allocated four programmable interrupt pins by the VT82C686A Southbridge chip used in the KT133 chipset. The same is also true of almost all other motherboard chipsets. The PCI bus must therefore nearly always share IRQs on some or all of its PCI slots. What makes the KT7 slightly unsual is that you get six PCI slots, an AGP slot and an ISA slot, which mean that all the slots may need to share! As I said above, this is not usually a problem and you should be grateful for all those slots!
Many AGP cards do not like sharing IRQs with other cards, so try to avoid putting cards in PCI Slot 1. This will solve many graphics card instabilities issues. However, check with your graphics card manufacturer to see whether it can share interrupts - you may be lucky!
Note: if you are using an ISA card, this cannot share its IRQ with any other device. You must therefore identify what IRQ it uses, and then allocate the card its own IRQ by setting the appropriate IRQ number as "Legacy ISA" in the "Resorces Controlled by" item of the PNP/PCI Configurations Menu in the BIOS. This then removes that IRQ number from those made available to the pool of resources used by the Plug and Play system and hence prevents it from being allocated to the PCI bus. The ISA bus is unable to report what resources it uses to the BIOS, so this cannot be done automatically. You will also have to assign any DMA resources used by the card to "Legacy ISA" for the same reason.
One user writes (about his NIC network card in a KA7) "DO NOT EVER EVER EVER LET YOUR SOUNDBLASTER LIVE AND YOUR NIC SHARE IRQ'S. In other words, do not put the soundcard in slot 2 and your NIC in slot 3. This will not only cause stability problems, but also kills your system performance without you even knowing it. Windows shows no conflict, but there is definately a hardware conflict. Basically, after I rearranged the slots, my HD performance went from 40 MB/s to 50 MB/s and CPU use dropped from 13% to 5%. Also, mouse movement is smoother, even on ps/2. (I'm wondering how many of those PS/2 problems were caused by this, or something like it). If you put your soundcard in slot 2, which is very tempting, put your NIC in 5 and watch your problems disappear. There was no need to disable PCI Delay Transaction with this configuration."
For a more complete understanding of this topic, see "What on earth is the interrupt pin assignment table in the manual all about?!" in the BIOS section.
Thanks for theory, but which slots should I put my PCI cards in?!
Ok, so you've studied all the above and now fully understand the sharing of IRQ's, but you'd still like to know where to put your PCI cards to avoid IRQ sharing! As a simple guide, the following may help:
If you have an AGP card and two PCI devices, but no ACPI, USB or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in slots 2 and 4, 5 or 6
slots 3 and 4, 5 or 6
slots 4 and 5
slots 5 and 6
If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and ACPI, but no USB or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in slots 4 and 5
slots 5 and 6
If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and USB, but no ACPI or HPT370 enabled, you can put those devices in slots 2 and 5
slots 3 and 5
If you have an AGP card, two PCI devices and HPT370, but no ACPI or USB enabled, you can put those devices in slots 2 and 4 or 6
slots 3 and 4 or 6
If you have an AGP card and two PCI devices and ACPI and USB but no HPT370 enabled, then slot 5 will have its own IRQ
Other than the above combinations, your PCI cards will always have to share an IRQ with at least one device. But, to re-iterate, with a modern properly designed PCI card this is not a problem! The PCI standard is designed to allow the sharing of IRQs.
Also see Complex Configurations and IRQ Information for the AMD Processors at AMD's web site. AMD recommend installing cards one at a time, shutting down and powering off between the addition of each card. They recommend installing cards in the following order:
AGP card
Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo I or Voodoo II Cards: Since these cards do not require an IRQ address, it is recommended that they be installed after the successful installation of your operating system. They do require a PCI slot.
Any ISA card
Internal Modem (PCI)
Sound Card (PCI or ISA)
Network Card, a.k.a. NIC (PCI or ISA)
DVD Devices requiring Dxr3 Decoder Board (PCI)
Note: Some video decoder boards require two (2) IRQs for complete functionality. Check with your video decoder card manufacturer for video decoder support and requirements
SCSI Adapter (PCI)
Any others.
I have two network interface cards (NICs). How should I install them?
One person reported success with using slots 3, 4 and 6 in a system with an AGP graphics card and 3 PCI cards. In this case, slot 3 for a sound card and 4 and 6 for network (NIC) cards. The USB ports and both network cards then shared the same IRQ.
