KT3 Ultra2 and Barton 3000+ Unstable - Need advice

supabeast

Junior Member
Jan 28, 2005
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The short and sweet:

Has anyone out there been able to run a Barton 3000+ on a KT3 Ultra2? I realize that this configuration is like trying to squeeze blood from a rock, so if this is one of those situations where I cannot expect it to work just because MSI says it should please just say so. However, I would really appreciate a recommendation of a nice replacement mainboard that will run this chip. AGP is nice so I can stick with my video card, but if buying a PCI-E mobo and a 6600 to replace my 9700Pro is the only way to go I can suck it up and deal with that.

The details:

I have a KT3 Ultra2 6380E mainboard that ran fine for over a year with an Athlon 2200XP, 2x512 megs of PC 2700 RAM, a nice heatsink and an ample power supply. I recently upgraded to a Barton 3000+ 333mhz, which should work with the latest BIOS. For two weeks I have been able to run just fine - but only with the FSB at 133 mhz; at 166 mhz any memory-intensive app crashes within five minutes. Numerous heat monitoring programs combined with CPU burn-in apps have shown that the problem is not the CPU, at this point I am pretty sure that the mobo itself just can't handle the chip, researching several message boards , including the MSI support forum suggests that nobody has every gotten this working with the exception of a person who got it stable by only using one stick of RAM, which isn't an option for me as I want to use multiple large memory modules.

When I upgraded, aside from flashing the BIOS to the 5.70 version that supports the Barton 3000+, the only setting I changed from my old settings was kicking the FSB up to 166mhz. Are there other changes needed to make this configuration work?


Also, before anyone asks, yes I am running Windows XP with all of the latest updates and drivers.

Lastly, THANKS!