Bought a T-bird 800 and a Gigabyte 7ZX-1 VIA

[Mill]

I have a regular Global Win fan on the CPU and it will work at 8x112. The temperature gets above 100 degrees farenheit. What is the safe and effective way to overclock my 800? I haven't messed with computers since I built my p2-400 years ago.

What type of cooling? (For the ATX midtower and the T-Bird)

What is the safe temperature range for this chip and mobo?


I guess I should have waited and gotten an Abit KT7-Raid. I think my Gigabyte board isn't too great of a board. That and their site for bios/drivers is SLOW!

So, should I ditch the Gigabyte and get the Abit KT7-Raid? What other board? Is the Gigabyte that bad of a board? Does it work at 133 FSB?

How do I unlock my T-bird? Or is there a board that unlocks them?



Here are my specs right now.

T-Bird 800Mhz
Gigabyte 7ZX-1
640 megs PC133
Promise ATA 100 Card
WD 30GIG ATA 100 drive
WD 13 GIG ATA 66 drive
Hi-Val DVD 12x/52x CD
Diamond Fireport 40 Card
ATI All in One Rage 128 32 meg
SCSI Yamaha Burner
250W Power Supply
Creative Labs MP3+ RTL Sound Card
Allied Telesyn AT-2400 Network Card
Com21 Cable modem.

 

[nickdakick]

<< How do I unlock my T-bird? >>



Read here !

 

[Mill]

^

 

[GaryTcs]

The gigabyte board does not support multiplier overclocking, so closing the L1 bridges will have no effect. You can overclock using the fsb via the ez-tune 3 software on the installation disk, but you probably want to get a bit faster than that. My 7ZM bussed to 117, but theres no guarantee yours will do it. If you want to go faster, get one of the new 133/266 motherboards. This way you won't have to get another one for a while.

On the bright side, the Gigabyte is by far the most stable Socket A board i've tried. So if ~900mhz is good enough, stay where you are.

 

[Mill]

<< The gigabyte board does not support multiplier overclocking >>



So if my t-bird is unlocked now it doesn't matter? I can only OC by FSB? BTW I don't have the cd that came with my board. I downloaded the easytune III tools from gigabyte but it always says that it doesn't support my motherboard. WTF?

Should I just get a new board?

 

[MrCadaver]

That's right, Easytune doesn't work with the GA-7ZX. If you want to overclock, then you definately need a new board, one with the KT133A chipset, like the Abit, Asus, Epox, or Iwill. On my GA-7ZX I got my FSB up to 105, tried 110 but it locked up in games. That's why I have a new Epox KT133A and GlobalWin FOP32-1 in the mail.

 

[GaryTcs]

Yes, if you want to multiplier oc, you need a different board. I am sorry, I didn't realize that ez-tune didn't support the 7ZX (strange since the 7ZM is just a uATX version of the same board).

 

[DaddyG]

You should know that you bought one of the most stable mobos out there. Gigabyte makes great mobos, but they only recently opffered overclocking features. Gigabytes KT133A mobo (version 2.1) offers overclocking using the VIA platform and the 7DXR offers overclocking on the AMD 760 platform.

Sure, you could have gone ABIT and RMA'd the mobo three times by now, stability is a MUST HAVE for me and Gigabyte has it.

 

[GasX]

Since I am getting the same board, and have a 900T-bird, does that mean I am stuck @ 900 until I get the KT7?

 

[GaryTcs]

Mwilding, no it doesn't mean that you cannot oc. However, you will only be able to bus oc, which doesn't yield as well.

Daddy G makes a good point, although you probably won't have to RMA An Abit, Asus, or Epox, it does take a lot more effort to get them to work right. The Gigabyte board is nothing to be ashamed of, just doesn't support our hobby well. And thanks Daddy G, I didn't know the new ones supported multiplier oc'ing. This makes mobo shopping easy.

 

[MrCadaver]

Yeah, I am not sure what the deal is with EasyTune. Originally, I didn't get the error message, but it didn't seem to take effect. I updated the board BIOS (I think to like version FA - weird version codes has Gigabyte) and I started getting that message that says it doesn't work with this mobo. I guess it never really worked, and rather than actually fixing the problem, they just didn't support it (can't blame 'em really). Anyway, I have my new Epox, and let me tell you it's one BADA** motherboard.