Need help...new Athon won't run at full speed.

[Sukhoi]

I'm building a new computer for my parents. It's an Athlon 1800+ retail, EPoX 8RDA+, etc. I have it all assembled, and it POSTs ok. But it's only running at a 100 MHz FSB. On the screen it says "Warning! CPU has been changed or Overclock fail. Please re-enter CPU settings in the CMOS setup and remember to save before quit!". I have the jumper on the 133/166 MHz setting. Any ideas? The CPU fan RPM is registering fine, and it's only at 37º C. If I can ever get this running right it's gonna be doing SETI 24/7.

 

[Sukhoi]

Oh, the LED is showing 7F.

 

[Sukhoi]

Well, that was interesting. I cleared the BIOS for a minute. Then I booted, and it was set to 100 MHz FSB in the BIOS. Previously it had been set for 133 MHz in the BIOS but still running 100 MHz. So I set the BIOS to 133 MHz, and rebooted. Now it picks up the 1800+ ok and the LED is showing FF, which is good. I assume I shouldn't worry about it anymore?

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

Have you tried it with the jumper set to 100/133? The 1800 is a 133 processor so it should work at either jumper setting but maybe the mb is having issues. Worth a shot... After that I'd try to manually set the multi and bus speed in the bios (not auto detect) and see if it likes that better.

Keep us updated! Good luck!

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

Originally posted by: Sukhoi
Well, that was interesting. I cleared the BIOS for a minute. Then I booted, and it was set to 100 MHz FSB in the BIOS. Previously it had been set for 133 MHz in the BIOS but still running 100 MHz. So I set the BIOS to 133 MHz, and rebooted. Now it picks up the 1800+ ok and the LED is showing FF, which is good. I assume I shouldn't worry about it anymore?

Did you clear the bios when you first installed it? I've found that should always be one of the first steps in building a new pc, twice I've had issues that went away after clearing when building a new rig. Maybe the manufacturers QA has messed with settings when testing?

If its booting correctly (test it 5 or six times!) and runs ok for a day or so, I'd call it good!

 

[Sukhoi]

I believe it's the first time I've ever had to reset the BIOS on a computer.

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

Originally posted by: Sukhoi
I believe it's the first time I've ever had to reset the BIOS on a computer.

You obviously don't overclock enough! When I got my old duron 750 and was pushing how far it would got and what my mb and memory would take, I probably reset the bios 10+ times in one day. After I got bearing on the relative range of what each component would do Prime 95 was a good stability test but I got quite a few occurences of straight out refusal to boot.

I ended up just being happy with ~1 ghz 140 mhz fsb, but I tested alot of different settings!

[edit] And it was my brothers non-oc'd 1.3 ghz that had all kinds of stability problems. Troubleshot it forever then wiped the bios to start from defaults before I reformated and reinstalled windows. But before I could start the reformat, we tested a few things, no problems. Restored all the optimized settings, no problems. So now I just clear it when I build a machine.

 

[Sukhoi]

Well, I do have my P4 1.6A@2.0, but it's on a Gigabyte board with the Dual BIOS. So whenever I set it too high and it didn't POST it would just go to the second BIOS and reset the first one.