Holy grizzly... I recently purchased a ECS K7VTA3 mb ( KT266 ), which, despite all the well-known issues that have surrounded VIA chipsets from some time ago, I managed to get working flawlessly under w2k after installing sp2 + amd AGP miniport + 4-in-1 (v 4.33) . Thus far , it will run 3dmark2001 and sandra tests without a complain, and it flasks DVD movies perfectly stable for hours, without a single hang.
Well, this is of course only half the truth... since the point is that the system will get quickly unstable as soon as you set DRAM speed to 133mhz (well, 2x133 since it's DDR, but anyway...). 100mhz (200 DDR) works solid as a rock, but 133 (266 DDR)... ha , no way, you can bet.
While running DRAM at 133, any intensive use of the AGP bus (gaming, 3dmark2001) will result in locking the whole system in about 30 seconds or even less, not to mention that stress tests result in "stressing" disasters : sandra isn't even able to complete a RAM benchmark, and flask will eventually reboot the whole system after some minutes of operation.
This is kinda strange, since I've read some k7vta3 reviews in which the dudes managed to run all the tests at 133mhz, and the numbers where pretty nice . Being forced to run memory at 100mhz, my sandra RAM numbers are kinda poor : INT 480 , FLOAT 540 ( approx.), while I think that a kt266 based mb would have to give something around int(580)/float(680) , or similar ( correct me if I am expecting too much from his chipset ).
Yes, I have missed the last BIOS upgrade : I have 1.0f and latest is 1.1b , but if you see the history revision for 1.1b at ECS web, there seems to be nothing related to 133mhz DRAM instability.
BTW, forget about setting "DRAM Command Rate" at 1T instead of 2T : it will crash, regardless it's 100 or 133mhz. The only thing I can tweak is setting CAS to 2 instead of 2.5 ( not much of a deal, tought ), since it seems that my 2x256mb Hyundai pc2100 modules are cas2 capable.
Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated, dudes, since I'm afraid I've got out of ideas at this point :-(
FYI , if this helps :
K7VTA3 rev1.0 + Athlon 1400 @ 1400 ( 10.5 x 133FSB ) + 2x256 Hyundai pc2100 + Leadtek Geforce3
Many thanks in advance,
Jose,
Well, this is of course only half the truth... since the point is that the system will get quickly unstable as soon as you set DRAM speed to 133mhz (well, 2x133 since it's DDR, but anyway...). 100mhz (200 DDR) works solid as a rock, but 133 (266 DDR)... ha , no way, you can bet.
While running DRAM at 133, any intensive use of the AGP bus (gaming, 3dmark2001) will result in locking the whole system in about 30 seconds or even less, not to mention that stress tests result in "stressing" disasters : sandra isn't even able to complete a RAM benchmark, and flask will eventually reboot the whole system after some minutes of operation.
This is kinda strange, since I've read some k7vta3 reviews in which the dudes managed to run all the tests at 133mhz, and the numbers where pretty nice . Being forced to run memory at 100mhz, my sandra RAM numbers are kinda poor : INT 480 , FLOAT 540 ( approx.), while I think that a kt266 based mb would have to give something around int(580)/float(680) , or similar ( correct me if I am expecting too much from his chipset ).
Yes, I have missed the last BIOS upgrade : I have 1.0f and latest is 1.1b , but if you see the history revision for 1.1b at ECS web, there seems to be nothing related to 133mhz DRAM instability.
BTW, forget about setting "DRAM Command Rate" at 1T instead of 2T : it will crash, regardless it's 100 or 133mhz. The only thing I can tweak is setting CAS to 2 instead of 2.5 ( not much of a deal, tought ), since it seems that my 2x256mb Hyundai pc2100 modules are cas2 capable.
Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated, dudes, since I'm afraid I've got out of ideas at this point :-(
FYI , if this helps :
K7VTA3 rev1.0 + Athlon 1400 @ 1400 ( 10.5 x 133FSB ) + 2x256 Hyundai pc2100 + Leadtek Geforce3
Many thanks in advance,
Jose,
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