Iwill KK266-R not stable!!!!!!!!

[Jakki0]

After reading with great eagerness most of the reviews concerning the Iwill's KK266-R I purchased one. Along with it I got a Duron 750 and 256Mb of KingMax PC-150 memory(2x128 sticks). It was my hope that even with out having the ability to unlock my CPU I would just try for a FSB boost. Unfortunately nothing is working. I cannot use the 133 FSB option that is on the board and under the 100-132 FSB option I can only get up to 120 FSB with a fair amount of stability. I don't know it this has anything to do with the fact that I have 2 Maxtor 15Gb in a RAID 0 config as my boot drive. Then again I don't think this should be a problem since I am coming from a CUSL2 with a P!!! 700 very stable @ 980MHz. That is a FSB @ 140MHz.

I also have an issue with the way IRQs are allocated on the board. The way they are shared does not give you much options as to what to use with what cards. Can anyone suggest what is the best way to set them up?
I have these cards:
Raedon 64DDR AGP
3Com NIC
Promise Ultra 100
TekRam 395 SCSI
SoundBlaster X-gamre 5.1
Digital I/O Card for MiniDisc(occupies a slot but not inserted on board)

This is the board offerings:
PCI 1/5/AGP
PCI 2/6/USB0
PCI 3/Onboard sound
PCI 4/RAID
Also too does anyone know the speed of the PCI bus under the various FSBs?

If I cant get these things to work then there will ba a KK266-R for sale cheap!!!!!!!!!!

 

[petes28]

forgive me if i'm wrong... but aren't durons running at 100 (200) fsb?

 

[Adul]

ok first off is it stable when you run everything at stock speed?

Also, did you unlock you duron? Does that MB even support multipier adjustments?

BTW 7.5*133 = 1000 Mhz. Maybe that cpu will not run at 1 Ghz.

 

[Jakki0]

To Abdul:
Do you know anything about overclocking? A board does not get to claim stability status if all it can do is be stable at stock speeds or FSBs. I would suggest that you perhaps read a few reviews about mainboards and stability. Also yes this board supports mulitplier and voltage adjustments. I was not expecting to get to 1G without unlocking the CPU.

To Petes28:
Despite the 200FSB you should be able to increase the speed on your MB.

 

[Budman]

<< I am coming from a CUSL2 with a P!!! 700 very stable @ 980MHz. That is a FSB @ 140MHz. >>



Wtf????

Why did you even Downgrade to 750 Duron?

 

[petes28]

well of cousre you can increase the speed... but trying to run a duron@133 on a 133 board, and then claiming that the board isn't stable seems kinda wrong to me. i doubt that iwill would make any performace claims about 100 fsb chips running @133 on their boards. if you look at the review on pc gamer, it even says that they had trouble running a 200fsb t-bird at 266fsb

 

[WetWilly]

Gee, where do you start on this one?

1) I'd lose the attitude with Adul, 'cause attitudes tend to not go over well here. He made a valid point - is your Duron 750 guaranteed to run at 1GHZ? Unless you got it from a vendor who guarantees it, there's NO guarantee it'll boot at 1GHz. AMD certainly won't guarantee it. BTW if you don't unlock your CPU, the chip HAS to boot at 1GHz on a 133MHz FSB. See #3 below.

2) As for the stability issue, all reviews (and I've read plenty, thank you) can only discuss stability with THEIR particular board and THEIR particular CPU. They can extrapolate, but if you've been around these forums much at all you'll see that EVERY single top-rated board has had users that have suffered problems. MSI Pro2-A anyone? Or better, yet look at the Abit KT7/KT7A. I doubt you'll see a group of users/ex-users more highly polarized, but look at how highly the KT7 gets rated. I also doubt you've seen any review sites that will guarantee the board and CPU you'll buy will give the same results they get. Further, the fact that you've gotten a &quot;fair amount of stability&quot; at a 120MHz FSB speaks very highly of the KK266, because a lot of boards won't even POST at that FSB.

3) If you'd actually read many reviews of KT133A boards you'd know there's an issue with certain locked CPUs and boards that use a jumper selection for 100-132 and 133-up.

4) When you said nothing is working, what did you mean? No POST? POST, but no boot? Boot but Windows crashes? Adul gave you the correct starting point - if everything doesn't work at default then you know that overclocking is not the problem.

5) And I don't see anything up there about what's cooling that Duron, either.

6) Budman asked a very good question - why would you go from a P3@980MHz to a Duron? Durons can't make it much past 1GHz; even with Tom's (of THG) supercooling setup the Duron couldn't be pushed past 1.1GHz.

 

[Jakki0]

To Budman:
I know it looks like a DOWNGRADE but I took the steps for 2 reasons:
1 I wanted to mess around with a socket A board. OCing with Intel Celerons and P3s had gotten a little stale for me.
2 I choose a duron 750 beacuse in the OC guide from Anand it showed that the 750 duron or Athlon (Duron for price)was a much better chip to get to 1G because of the multiplier. To get there all you had to do was up the FSB to 133 and (if your chip could handle it) viola! 1000MHz. Most of the other higher chips multiplier would get you nowhere but unattainable or unrealistic speeds unless you unlock to lower the multiplier. Sadly it seem that my chip can't even handle 124FSb without lockups.
Hey I can always go back to my CUSL2.
I chose the Iwill board because of the RAID controller. I have a Promise Ultra 100 and tried to setup RAID with a promise FastTrak 100 and they would not work. Promise Tech support told me that both controllers could not be in the same system since they bothe use the same chip. Since the ASUS A7V133 used the promise also it was out of the question. Iwill use the AMI RAID so I could keep my Ultra 100 (Running 4HD, LS120, ZIP 250 and RAID 0).

 

[Adul]

Jakki0, ITS ADUL!!!


Anyways, I am very well aware of on the art of overclocking. I have done it to every system I have built for myself, and for others that have requested it. I have experimented with a couple of types of cooling for the goal of ekking out that extra Mhz.

 

[Adul]

So can i assume that you did unlock you duron?

If you did have you tried the 133 FSB at a lower chip speed? either 733Mhz or 800 mhz?

What OS do you plan to run has well?

 

[Jakki0]

To Budman:
I know it looks like a DOWNGRADE but I took the steps for 2 reasons:
1 I wanted to mess around with a socket A board. OCing with Intel Celerons and P3s had gotten a little stale for me.
2 I choose a duron 750 beacuse in the OC guide from Anand it showed that the 750 duron or Athlon (Duron for price)was a much better chip to get to 1G because of the multiplier. To get there all you had to do was up the FSB to 133 and (if your chip could handle it) viola! 1000MHz. Most of the other higher chips multiplier would get you nowhere but unattainable or unrealistic speeds unless you unlock to lower the multiplier. Sadly it seem that my chip can't even handle 124FSb without lockups.
Hey I can always go back to my CUSL2.
I chose the Iwill board because of the RAID controller. I have a Promise Ultra 100 and tried to setup RAID with a promise FastTrak 100 and they would not work. Promise Tech support told me that both controllers could not be in the same system since they bothe use the same chip. Since the ASUS A7V133 used the promise also it was out of the question. Iwill use the AMI RAID so I could keep my Ultra 100 (Running 4HD, LS120, ZIP 250 and RAID 0).

To WetWilly:
I was not showing any &quot;attitude&quot; to Abdul. His reply indicates that he knows nothing about OCing. Also using &quot;WTF&quot; is showing &quot;attitude&quot; to ME. I was just making a point which I think is valid in that when reviews are done concerning a board everyone knows that running at stock speed should be stable or else that board should not be on the market. Now as for stability in the OC ring then that is what counts. If you read my post u will see that I mentioned nothing about 133FSB because I do understand that my chip could possibly get there off the bat. But i expected that at least i could go up to say 125FSB with out extra cooling (Ihave a recommended AMD HS on the chip.

 

[Budman]

JakkiO who's this ABDUL you keep refering to?

Also I know quite a few things about overclocking,I have been building computers for friends &amp; myself &amp; repairing computers for almost 10 years &amp; i think i am fairly knowlegable.

It's pretty ridiculous to think that any over the counter 750 Duron will do 1ghz,only the cream of the crop reach 1ghz.

From a Duron it's more realistic to expect 850-900,and 950-1ghz+ are very hard to find.

If you wanted a 1ghz Duron you should have bought a pretested Duron @ 1ghz.

Dont blame your own inabilities for the instabilies of the board,it's only doing what you are telling it to do.

If the board runs fine at the default settings that you paid for then dont blame the board.

 

[Adul]

OK lets not make this into a flame war and get back to the topic.

Here is what I suggest you do.

Lower the multiplier to 6
6*133 = 800

This speed should be very stablle has far has the CPU is concerned. You may want to bump the voltage slightly to ensure additional stability.

Next try running at the 133 Mhz FSB speed. It should post and make it into windows. Work from there to gain more speed.


Also, you want to remove the additional devices and the raid setup and start from a more bare bones approach. this will help isolate any instability that may be brought on by other components. This may be time consuming, but it is more thorough.

 

[Budman]

If it came out as a Flame post i am sorry i did not mean for it to be one,i was just stating facts as i see them.

 

[Nelmster]

I have NOT overclocked, yet, but I have a theory on this - and anyone is welcome to bash it and correct me if I'm wrong.

With FSB jumper settings of 100-132, isn't the PCI divider at 1/3? So, if you are at 124 FSB, your PCI devices are running at 41 MHz, right? Is there potential that this is contributing to the problem?

Whereas, with FSB jumper setting of 133+, the PCI divider is 1/4...so even at 150 FSB, the PCI devices are only running at 37.5 MHz.

A 10% &quot;PCI overclock&quot; as opposed to a 25% &quot;PCI overclock&quot;...

On a side note, and I say this with the utmost respect and objectivity, your response to Adul did have quite a bit of attitude. In your defense, Adul appeared to be dishing some, as well...

 

[Adul]

I did at first. My mind must have been asleep.

 

[WetWilly]

Now that we're all getting along ...

1) Nelmster's right about the PCI bus. Unless your board goes back to a 1/4 PCI divider &quot;early&quot;, like at 124MHz, you're definitely pushing the PCI bus. The other thing to note is that some Promise controllers (and hard drives for that matter) don't like being on an overclocked bus, regardless of whether it's on the system board or on a PCI card. To eliminate that as an issue, follow Adul's advice and try the onboard VIA IDE first.

2) &quot;AMD Recommended&quot; for the Duron cooling doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. All that guarantees you (assuming proper installation, etc.) is acceptable operation at default speeds. Some of the better heatsink/fans, e.g. Alphas expensive as they may be, aren't even on the Duron list. Also, if I (vaguely) recall correctly, the thermistor on the Iwill doesn't even touch the CPU, so I'm not sure how accurate the reported CPU temperatures will be.

3) Yes, I'll admit I understand the playing around with a Socket A board thing. I went from a Celeron 880 to a Duron 990 - but I DID step up a little

As an aside, stability in the OC ring isn't always what counts. If that was true, companies like SuperMicro, Tyan, and Intel for that matter would have been out of the system board business a long time ago.

Good luck.

 

[ManuTOmanU]

Follow those great instructions and you will be fine...It is an awesome board as long as you can get the 133MHz at a lowered Multiplier to work... This is the only problem with that board...

 

[rmblam]

I just set up the same board with a Duron 700@ 133x7 and RAID 1. Any higher multiplier and it gets wacky. It'll handle a bit higher fsb but not too much. I left it at 133 for now.

I recommend you redo your L7 bridges with something more permanent if you used pencil. Rear window defogger repair is easy to come by and works great. Pencil always gets flaky on me over time.

Did you have it at 133 to start or did you go from 100 to 133 with the jumper? You might want try clearing your cmos, set to default, reboot and reset the settings.

Disable the com ports to open up some IRQ's if you don't use them. You can assign each device to its own IRQ in the bios.

The far left RAM slot would indicate the RAM as 255 MB? Try using the middle or right slot. I am reaching, but maybe there is an issue there.

What cas and interleaving settings did you try? Try reseating your RAM or try a different slot(s).

Also, try setting it up without the extra peripherals to see if something is holding it back.

Cooling ok?

Good luck.

 

[gtd2000]

Jakki0
Try your overclocking with only one stick of RAM..even if both did work in another board at higher FSB's.......
I've just been thru this for the last week and also had the same problems you describe
I am now finally running 133FSB and even 140 if I choose upto 1000Mhz with my Duron 700 and one stick of my Micron RAM...

 

[SiliconVandal]

<< Does that MB even support multipier adjustments? >>

Do you know a damn thing about this board? I guess not.

First off, I would try setting your VCore to 1.85, and multiplier to 5.5. Then try the 133Mhz FSB, and it will post for sure. You can then up the multiplier until it doesn't post, then you will have to take it off 133MHz FSB and take the multiplier down one step and put it back on 133. From there you can up the FSB until you find a frequency that you max out at.

SV

 

[LXi]

I wonder why you guys still try to help him, he has proven himself a jackass, he doesnt deserve people's help. Just how the hell did he conclude that Adul knows nothing about OCing? Dont give a crap to these pretentious self-claimed experts.