Couple of questions about a new ECS SIS735 system

[JebC]

Hello all.

Well, with much apprehension I finally decided to make the big upgrade from a Pentium III 933 (OC'd from a 700) to a new Athlon 1400 on the ECS 735 board. The price was just too good to keep passing on the upgrade, $169.00 before shipping.

Anyway, I have been VERY pleasantly surprised by how easy the transition has been. I've read quite a few posts regarding boot and power difficulties with this board, so I went and bought a big power supply to hopefully avoid those, and so far things are going well. I do have a couple of problems, really more like quirks, that I'd appreciate any help with. First, the heatsink and fan that came with my combo are a vantec. I'm unsure of the model number, it wasn't printed anywhere on the box or HSF itself. When I plug the fan onto the header, the fan runs, 24/7, regardless of if the board is powered up or not. Is this normal? It just seems odd that it would run continually even when the system isn't on.

Second, the only software I've installed so far to test things out is the Return to Castle Wolfenstein demo. On my old system, this ran flawlessly at 1024x768. So far with my new system things are really odd. While I can move normally and smoothly, everone else's characters move very jerkily. (is that a word?) Every single other person in the game moves in these fits and starts. I'm using the onboard LAN, so I was wondering if perhaps there was a problem with that. I tried a couple of downloads just to see if the speed seemed as fast as when using my 3COM NIC that I had in my previous system, and even the DLs seemed much slower. That's pretty subjective I know, but I keep thinking that the onboard LAN may be the problem with RTCW. I'll try my other NIC when I get home later today and see if that fixes the problem, but I was hoping some of you folks might have some ideas. My system is:

ECS SIS735 board (can't remember the model number right this sec)
Bios that came with the board, haven't checked which one it is
384 megs Kingmax PC150 Sdram at Ultra settings (256 Crucial 2100DDR should come in later today)
Tbird 1400 (266fsb)
Windows ME
18 gig IBM master
80 gig Maxtor slave (both on IDE 0)
12x10x32 TDK burner (IDE 1)
Both Serial disabled
Parrallel disabled
No floppy
USB Mouse

Any help is greatly appreciated. One last thing for anything considering a similar upgrade, I've had a great experience with this board so far. As I said, these problems are just glitches to be ironed out more than anything, and this system is a VERY noticeable speed increase from my Pentium III 933. I hope to see an even further increase when I switch to DDR.

Thanks for the help,

JC

 

[Buz2b]

What drivers have you loaded for the board? No, the fan shouldn't be running. Recheck your connections from the case to the motherboard. How are you shutting down? No floppy? Have you disabled it from all aspects of the BIOS?

 

[Dhruv]

<< What drivers have you loaded for the board? No, the fan shouldn't be running. Recheck your connections from the case to the motherboard. How are you shutting down? No floppy? Have you disabled it from all aspects of the BIOS? >>



Dang BuzzB you are Mr. K7S5A!

 

[Buz2b]

It's all about timing my friend, timing. LOL!!

 

[Flatline]

It's likely that it's the AGP driver; try version 1.07. It fixed a couple of jitters on mine

 

[JebC]

Thanks for the quick replies Buzz and Flatline.

First, I'll check the connections Buzz. The floppy is disabled both on the setting up the drives Bios screens and the Selection where you can disable the Floppy controller (along with disabling the onboard sound, etc.) , so it's completely off from all that I can tell. As per the manual I set up the AGP driver before I setup the Nvidia driver (Geforce 2 GTS, latest), and then I set up the LAN driver as well. That's just weird that the fan is always on. I wonder if there's something wrong with the Vantec itself. One other thing, I am turning off the computer by a formal shutdown command from Windows. The fan thing started from the very second I plugged it in though, before I even got the vid card or ram hooked up, let alone Windows.

As for your suggestion Flat, I'll give the 1.07 a try, I assume that's newer than what came on the disk? I couldn't determine if the jerkiness was due to graphics or really bad lag, which is what made me think of the LAN card.

Thanks again for the help. I think this mobo is just a great price/performance choice, as my only problems so far are these two (hopefully) minor glitches.

JC