Intel 815EP north bridge chipset question

[Executioner]

Hi,
My Abit BF6 mobo crapped out, and I'm in the process of getting another baord. Locally here in town, they have this mobo for only $49:

** Dual Socket 370 Celeron/P3 Motherboard by Acorp **

Building a computer system is like constructing a house...you need a good foundation! Give your customers the foundation that they need to make a great system! This Acorp motherboard will give them the foundation they need to build a superior computer system. Featuring dual socket 370 for CPU support up to 1GHz and three 168-pin DIMM slots for a maximum 512MB SDRAM, they can blaze through their favorite video games or render complex 3D models. With one open 4x AGP slot and five
open PCI slots, they can configure this system to their specific needs!
--> General Features:
- Two Socket 370 CPU Slots (see below for processor support)
- Three (3) 168-pin DIMM socket supporting a
maximum 512MB SDRAM
- One (1) 4x AGP at 66MHz
- Five (5) 32 bit PCI slots
- One (1) CNR slot
- IDE controller provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO,
bus master and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 operations modes
- Up to four (4) IDE devices
- One (1) floppy port supports 2 FDD with 369k,
720k, 1.2MB, 1.44MB and 2.88MB
- One (1) Serial port (also includes a cable to
add a 2nd (COM2) port)
- Two (2) USB ports
- One (1) parallel port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- Intel accelerated hub architecture with 266MB/second bandwidth
--> Processor (CPU) Support:
- Intel FC-PGA Pentium III 500MHz-1GHz or
higher with 100/133MHz FSB
- Intel FC-PGA/PPGA Celeron 300MHz-800MHz or
higher with 66/100MHz FSB
- VIA Cyrix III processor with 100/133MHz FSB
- Can run single or dual processors
- NOTE: ONLY PENTIUM III PROCESSORS ARE SUPPORTED
IN DUAL MODE
--> Chipset Features:
- Intel 815EP north bridge system chipset with
support for 66/100/133 FSB
- Intel ICH2 south bridge system chipset
--> BIOS Features:
- Award legal BIOS
- Supports APM 1.2
- Supports USB functionality
- Supports ACPI
- Plug and Play BIOS
- BIOS support for CD-ROM, SCSI, LAN BOOT,
temperature sensor, wake on modem, LAN, alarm bus
CLK setup CPU fan speed monitor
- System and CPU temperature monitor
- System voltage monitor
--> Retail Box Includes:
- Acorp Motherboard, Model 6A815EDP1
- Two (2) HDD UDMA 66/100 cables
- One (1) FDD cable
- One (1) COM2 cable
- One (1) Acorp 6-in-one-Bonus Pack CD-ROM for
system setup
- One (1) Acorp 6A815EDP User Manual

** Dual Socket 370 Celeron/P3 Motherboard by Acorp **

I'm not sure of this chipset thought. Is this Intel chipset any good?

 

[Peter]

The one big trap with i81x is that it does NOT support three DIMMs. This chipset can handle no more than four rows of memory on two DIMMs. If you have a three-DIMM board there, use of slots 2 and 3 is highly restricted. Either put one DIMM in slot 2, or put two identical single sided ones into 2 and 3 that will then be used as if it were one double sided DIMM.

 

[Executioner]

Thanks Peter. I should be able to install 2 256 meg sticks, totaling 512 total megs of ram right? Each one of my PC-133 sticks has chips on each side, so I would have a total of 4 rows using 2 slots. Right now, memory is not that big of a concern if I can use 512. I'm currently using Win98 with only 256.

 

[Peter]

dp

 

[Peter]

As long as it's only two sticks, with a maximum of 128 MBytes per DIMM side, you're fine. That's where the 512-MByte limit actually comes from, you can have no more than 4 DIMM sides with no more than 128 MBytes each. That'll be two double sided 256-MByte DIMMs.

DIMMs that worked on i440BX will also work on i815 btw.

regards, Peter

 

[AndyHui]

Er, actually the i815EP chipset does support 6 sides of RAM, or 3 full DIMMs.

However, the chipset is spec'ed to run 3 DIMMs at a maximum of 100MHz, while dropping down to supporting 2 DIMMs for 133MHz operation.

 

[Executioner]

Thanks for all the great info on the chipset. I did get the board because my pc has been down since Monday night. Installed the new board and installed the Intel drivers on the cd. After serveral reboots, the only issue I have in device manager is "PCI System Management Bus" has a yellow question mark on it. I fired off an email to their tech support for the location of the driver, as I can't find it on the CD.

 

[AndyHui]

Just grab the latest Chipset Inf Drivers (Chipset Installation Software) from Intel.

 

[Executioner]

OK, I downloaded and installed the latest Intel drivers and it fixed the "PCI System Management Bus" problem, as the yellow question mark has now disappeared, but I still get the prompt for drivers? I simply hit cancel and look in device manager, and no errors.

Is there anyway to stop this driver prompt?

=-EDIT-=
Never mind. I was able to fix it by searchng the HD for the driver file. I almost gave up, as it was not in the \win98\system folder or any other folder off the \windows parent folder. I found it in the TEMP folder of all places under a folder called REMOVE.