- Aug 25, 2001
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Ok, a while back, I got a P4 Mobile 2.0Ghz CPU from a friend for nothing. I bought a P4P800 from Computer Geeks, but the system didn't get built for months because I was looking for a cheap retail Intel HSF. Having found one, I put the system together, and installed using a slipstreamed XP SP2 CD that I made.
I started using a single 256MB DIMM, Apex brand with Elpida DRAM. Stick is marked as PC2100 in the SPD, but sold and tested working find at PC2700.
The mobo is an i845P-based board, which supports 200Mhz FSB, which isn't officially supported by Intel for the chipset. No CPU or DRAM voltage adjustment in BIOS though.
Mobile P4 CPUs default to a 12x multi when used in desktop S478 mobos - without SpeedStep support in mobo/chipset/bios, no way to kick in the "AC power speed" multi, which on this CPU is 20x. But the good news is that @ 200Mhz FSB, the CPU will run at 2.4Ghz.
With just the PC2700 DIMM, I could cold-boot @ 200Mhz FSB about 80% of the time. Otherwise a C-A-D soft reboot would get the video to come up. But I had trouble installing XP SP2 with that setup, got occasional errors about unable to read files off of the CD, and setup hung at the second stage, and there was video corruption. There were also a few pixels that appeared out of place on the screen using Partition Commander to partition initially, which worried me.
So I instead installed a 512MB double-sided DIMM (KVR -C3A), intending to use it since it was PC3200. But I cannot easily cold-boot at all with that DIMM installed! Sometimes I get a single long beep (identical to if I pull all DIMMs completely out), and sometimes just nothing. C-A-D doesn't help.
Two things come to mind: vDIMM = 2.6v for this, and there is no BIOS adjustment, and also, the chipset only offers manual CAS settings of 1.5/2.0/2.5, no 3.0 setting, but this DIMM is rated CAS 3.0 @ 200Mhz.
I only pulled the PC2700, as it failed Memtest86+ testing first pass @ 200Mhz, which is understandable.
I fiddled with things, and managed to get it to boot fine @ 166Mhz FSB / PC2700, and PC Health shows vCore = 1.53v - 1.55v, which is I assume standard desktop CPU voltage, which should be enough to take a Mobile P4 CPU quite some ways in OC'ing, enough for 2.4Ghz stable I think.
So I install XP SP2 again, after re-formatting/partitioning, and this time, no glitches or hangs during setup.
But after setup completed, and I start configuring Windows, it hard-hangs!
No C-A-D, no hitting the Power button (ACPI soft-off settings), nothing helps but Reset.
This happens several times, and I'm not sure what to think. A few times, the video display screwed up royally as it hung, and then went to a black-screen a couple of seconds after.
Interestingly enough, I couldn't reproduce any hang when booting into Safe Mode. The video driver used in S.M. is "VGA.SYS" I think, so perhaps it is a video card/driver issue.
So I'm thinking, either it's the video card, or the drivers for it, the default XP SP2 native drivers for a 2MB PCI S3 Virge DX/GX video card. It almost feels like there's some sort of address-decode error, or some other kernel-mode something is scribbling over the S3's MMIO mappings, but perhaps I'm reading way too much into this.
I went back and Googled the known issues with XP SP2 and Dell laptops - all seemed to be a Prescott/microcode-stepping issue. Mine's a Northwood CPU, but it did come out of a Dell laptop.
I'm just hoping that the CPU and mobo are kosher, since before I acquired an Intel HSF, I tried doing some BIOS-level boot-testing without any significant heatsink, and the chip hit 80C and shutdown in no short order. Not to mention, I don't know if the CPU got damaged before it got to me.
I also have the 300W generic PSU in this case, taken from a Codegen case+PSU combo, although it was powering my AMD XP2000+ rig with multiple HDs/opticals just fine. It has the extra 4-pin square 12v molex, and is plugged in to the mobo.
I don't have another PCI video card to test with at the moment, sadly. My S3 PCI *is* my test card, but I wonder if I've fried it with static at some point in the past.
Oh, one other thing, just before it froze the first time, or just after, something made a small noise in the machine. I inspected visually and smelled for anything that might have gone "pop" and didn't find anything, so I think it might just have been the HD's write-back cache getting flushed, but it did sound slightly wierd.
I'm going to run the Intel FID util to check microcode steppings, and perhaps flash to version 1.3 of the BIOS (currently 1.2), and try changing the video driver from S3 to standard VGA.
The fact that I can't cold-boot @ 200Mhz FSB, with the KVR PC3200 512MB DIMM still bothers me though. If the DRAM can't run @ 200Mhz / CAS2.5, then I should still be able to boot and get into BIOS setup, so there may be either a PSU or mobo vDIMM/vCore issue going on here still.
I started using a single 256MB DIMM, Apex brand with Elpida DRAM. Stick is marked as PC2100 in the SPD, but sold and tested working find at PC2700.
The mobo is an i845P-based board, which supports 200Mhz FSB, which isn't officially supported by Intel for the chipset. No CPU or DRAM voltage adjustment in BIOS though.
Mobile P4 CPUs default to a 12x multi when used in desktop S478 mobos - without SpeedStep support in mobo/chipset/bios, no way to kick in the "AC power speed" multi, which on this CPU is 20x. But the good news is that @ 200Mhz FSB, the CPU will run at 2.4Ghz.
With just the PC2700 DIMM, I could cold-boot @ 200Mhz FSB about 80% of the time. Otherwise a C-A-D soft reboot would get the video to come up. But I had trouble installing XP SP2 with that setup, got occasional errors about unable to read files off of the CD, and setup hung at the second stage, and there was video corruption. There were also a few pixels that appeared out of place on the screen using Partition Commander to partition initially, which worried me.
So I instead installed a 512MB double-sided DIMM (KVR -C3A), intending to use it since it was PC3200. But I cannot easily cold-boot at all with that DIMM installed! Sometimes I get a single long beep (identical to if I pull all DIMMs completely out), and sometimes just nothing. C-A-D doesn't help.
Two things come to mind: vDIMM = 2.6v for this, and there is no BIOS adjustment, and also, the chipset only offers manual CAS settings of 1.5/2.0/2.5, no 3.0 setting, but this DIMM is rated CAS 3.0 @ 200Mhz.
I only pulled the PC2700, as it failed Memtest86+ testing first pass @ 200Mhz, which is understandable.
I fiddled with things, and managed to get it to boot fine @ 166Mhz FSB / PC2700, and PC Health shows vCore = 1.53v - 1.55v, which is I assume standard desktop CPU voltage, which should be enough to take a Mobile P4 CPU quite some ways in OC'ing, enough for 2.4Ghz stable I think.
So I install XP SP2 again, after re-formatting/partitioning, and this time, no glitches or hangs during setup.
But after setup completed, and I start configuring Windows, it hard-hangs!
No C-A-D, no hitting the Power button (ACPI soft-off settings), nothing helps but Reset.
This happens several times, and I'm not sure what to think. A few times, the video display screwed up royally as it hung, and then went to a black-screen a couple of seconds after.
Interestingly enough, I couldn't reproduce any hang when booting into Safe Mode. The video driver used in S.M. is "VGA.SYS" I think, so perhaps it is a video card/driver issue.
So I'm thinking, either it's the video card, or the drivers for it, the default XP SP2 native drivers for a 2MB PCI S3 Virge DX/GX video card. It almost feels like there's some sort of address-decode error, or some other kernel-mode something is scribbling over the S3's MMIO mappings, but perhaps I'm reading way too much into this.
I went back and Googled the known issues with XP SP2 and Dell laptops - all seemed to be a Prescott/microcode-stepping issue. Mine's a Northwood CPU, but it did come out of a Dell laptop.
I'm just hoping that the CPU and mobo are kosher, since before I acquired an Intel HSF, I tried doing some BIOS-level boot-testing without any significant heatsink, and the chip hit 80C and shutdown in no short order. Not to mention, I don't know if the CPU got damaged before it got to me.
I also have the 300W generic PSU in this case, taken from a Codegen case+PSU combo, although it was powering my AMD XP2000+ rig with multiple HDs/opticals just fine. It has the extra 4-pin square 12v molex, and is plugged in to the mobo.
I don't have another PCI video card to test with at the moment, sadly. My S3 PCI *is* my test card, but I wonder if I've fried it with static at some point in the past.
Oh, one other thing, just before it froze the first time, or just after, something made a small noise in the machine. I inspected visually and smelled for anything that might have gone "pop" and didn't find anything, so I think it might just have been the HD's write-back cache getting flushed, but it did sound slightly wierd.
I'm going to run the Intel FID util to check microcode steppings, and perhaps flash to version 1.3 of the BIOS (currently 1.2), and try changing the video driver from S3 to standard VGA.
The fact that I can't cold-boot @ 200Mhz FSB, with the KVR PC3200 512MB DIMM still bothers me though. If the DRAM can't run @ 200Mhz / CAS2.5, then I should still be able to boot and get into BIOS setup, so there may be either a PSU or mobo vDIMM/vCore issue going on here still.
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