ABIT KT7A-RAID and Athalon 1300 CPU

[Lupo]

This might not be quite right for the motherboard section, and if this is the case, I apologise.

I got an ABIT KT7A-RAID motherboard and an Athalon 1300 CPU this weekend. I am having problems getting the two to work together.

I installed the board and the CPU and installed my drives on the first two IDE ports (not the HPT ones, the green ones). I booted off of a floppy and installed windows 98SE to C:

C:, E: and F: are on one drive, D: is on another drive. This will become important later

After booting the processor was detected as a 1300 CPU. But the machine kept locking up. During the install it was fine, but after the install it would lock every 40 seconds or so. This was a hard lock that only a power down / up would fix.

I upgraded the bios to the WT one. This worked fine. processor was detected as 1300 (12.5x?). Windows worked fine, but as soon as I started a game the machine would lock up. I read a bit more and found that the ZT bios fixes this problem when you have a Sound Blaster live (which I do). So I upgraded to the ZT bios. After doing this, I saw that I had new bios speed options. Where before I only had up to 1250, I now had
1250
1200~1700
1333.

I chose 1200~1700 and at boot the CPU was seen as a 1300 (13x instead of 12.5x). After reboot, as soon as I started windows it would lock. Every single time, within 10 - 20 seconds, it would freeze solid. I left it for 25 minutes to see if it would come back and it did not. I then tried changing the speed to 1333 in the bios. This seems to work ok. I have not had any of the locks that I have described here. But I am now seeing incredibly slow disk performance. This is especially apparant when copying from one partition on the same disk to another. My other worry is that CPU temperature is now around 58 C.

Lastly, AFAIK the 1300 processor uses a 100Mhz FSB. The 1333 uses a 133Mhz FSB. Is it safe to run the 1300 at 1333? Will I see any other problems ?

 

[MCS]

<< I upgraded the bios to the WT one >>



Hmmmm, the default BIOS should have been WW, so you would have gone BACK a version there. I found I have the best results with the WW BIOS. Using a later BIOS, I get the freezes at the Windows desktop at bootup too, unless I lowered the CPU voltage.

I completed avioded the VIA/SB Live bug by running my HDs on the Highpoint controller and my CD-ROM/Writer on the VIA IDE ports. Also make sure your SB Live! is in PCI Slot 3, this can help.

As for your temps. 58C is fairly high but not dangerous. What cooler are you using?

And finally, yes it is safe to run the chip at 1333, my 1200 is a 100Mhz FSB chip but I run it at 133Mhz FSB. As long as you have PC-133 rated memory, of course!