HELP!...with Gigabyte GA-7IXE motherboard (enabling the cache)

[Rwest75]

i need help figuring out how to enable the cpu cache and onboard cache on my mother board. when i start my computer it says on the black screen that lists all of my components and resources that my 512kb cache is disabled. i have an AMD Athlon 750 on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE motherboard. I have the latest bios (ami vF7) , but there is nothing in the bios that allows me to enable the cache. is this done elsewhere? ie windows (dont think so) or on the board? (not sure) has anybody else ever had this problem with this board

 

[Rwest75]

hello? anybody wanna tackle this one

 

[Fermilevel]

I sold one of these mainboards to a customer last summer and had the exact same problem even with the newest BIOS (as of 12/00). She also had intermittant locking problems. I replaced her RAM with better quality PC133-CAS2 and oddly the cache became enabled. Not sure what was going on, but suspect BIOS POST detected an unstable system and dumbed itself down for reliability. Both problems solved.

It would be interesting if quality RAM solved your problem also.

 

[Rwest75]

well thank god RAM is so cheap right now.......ill have to try that next payday....also i revisited the gigiabyte web site and it stated in the bios section about the previous bios version befor the vF7 that it was supose to fix the AMD cache problem. i was told by someone else that the newest version of bios always includes the stuff from previous versions so that it carries over ....or something to that effect. anyhow i jumped straight from the bios version that the board came with to the most current bios version and i didnt install any of the versions in between......was it ok to do this or should i have installed each new version ? Thanks again

 

[Fermilevel]

No need to install intermediary versions of BIOS. Each package contains a complete BIOS update so you are fine. Version F7 is what I flashed into my customers' system.

I'm not trying to advertise here, but I would consider using RAM from a leading manufacturer. I just replaced my RAM with Crucial, PC-133, CAS2, ECC and the stability and speed are incredible.

After you install it, just use optimal defaults in your BIOS and you should see the cache enabled during the next boot. Removing the option to manually enable it wasn't a very smart thing for them to do.

Likewise, if you still can't get it to go, you can always revert to an older version of BIOS. I think version F2 had the option to manually enable it.

Good luck with it!

 

[Rwest75]

thanks for the help. i ll let you know what happens

 

[Rwest75]

i got another memory chip (for free cant remember name but its 128mb pc100 ca2 ,and put it in with my other memory(wich the other 2 were both kingston pc100/128-R p/n 740617047172)and i was able to get half of my cache back. the book for my motherboard and cpu says that my cpu has 512kb cache.

i have a new memory problem now though see "i just installed 768mb of memory and now im getting windows protection error" thread in technical support forum because its too long to list what the problems are

Thanks