NOT a ECS k7s5a problems (who'd thunk it!) UPDATE!

[RossGr]

In the morning I am heading to my brothers house to have a look see at his k7s5a/950Mhz Duron system. He tells me that it runs like a dog and benchs at 200Mhz in Norton Utilities. He has flashes to about a year old BIOS and says he has no exclaimation marks in Device manager (Win98, I hope!). Anybody seen this sort of problem or have any ideas for me to try out?

 

[mechBgon]

You might check to make sure his hard drive is in UDMA mode in the BIOS and Windows. Also, on my K7S5A, the system performs best with the RAM running synchronously with the FSB, even if that means slowing the RAM down to the Duron's 200MHz/100MHz bus instead of 266/133.

My Duron 1000 on K7S5A is competitive with a 1300MHz Pentium4 with RDRAM that we have at work (although that's not saying that much) so it shouldn't run like a dog.

 

[Peter]

K7S5A, even by today's standards, is a pretty fast board - there are slower KT333 and KT400 boards out there.

Flash to the current 2002/10/29 BIOS, remember to Load Optimal Defaults after you did that, and there you go. When using Windows 2000 or XP, remember to leave "ACPI aware OS" in BIOS enabled, and make sure that Windows actually uses ACPI. W2K needs service packs installed for full IDE speed, and of course installing a current driver set for the SiS 735 AGP and IDE, 900 LAN and 7012 audio from www.sis.com doesn't hurt performance either.

regards, Peter

 

[RossGr]

Thanks for your responces. If he is running Win98, as I believe, then I will ensure that APIC is disabled, I would think that even if he does not have the latest greatest drivers that he should have a pretty good system. Seem like not.

I am about ready leave, 30min drive, to start the family serivce call, first my mom, then the ECS system.

Wish me luck!

 

[Peter]

Don't confuse APIC with ACPI. K7S5A doesn't offer using the APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller), but its BIOS does have the ACPI (Advanced Control and Power Management Interface) control methods for modern operating systems.

Leave ACPI enabled, an operating system that doesn't use it won't even notice, and those that do will benefit from having it.

 

[RossGr]

I am back having found a couple definite problems, but still not all better. It must have taken that poor thing 5 min to finish loading the Win98 desk top! First thing I noticed that BIOS reported his CPU temp at 71C! This is idle BTW! I suspected a heat problem so had brought a tube of HS compond, he does have a very nice HS/Fan but the original thermal pad had never never bonded to die, looked to me that it was more of a thermal barrier then a conductor. After cleaning and appling TC the highest temp I saw was 42C. much better.

The next thing I noted was that he had a 40 wire IDE cable on hi NEW 60GB hd, he did have a 80wire one on his desk so after replacing the IDE cable, we benched in the Norton utilities and his HDs showed 100+ Mbs from the cashe, that should be plenty good!

His desktop now loads in a reasonable time, but the Norton Utilities still show the CPU running at ~450Mhz.

Is it possible for a processor to perhaps toast lightly rather then totally fry? This puppy was 71 AT THE MOBO at idle that is to hot! Could the procceor be damaged and not running at full speed?

 

[mechBgon]

I would ignore Norton. Run DirectX Diagnostics and it will report CPU speed accurately (assuming you have DirectX 8 installed). On Win98, this is found in C:\Program Files\DirectX if I recall correctly.

 

[Peter]

450? What does BIOS itself say? If that low, I'd say someone forgot to Load Optimal Defaults after first firing it up ... if still no faster, then this means BIOS decided to fire the thing up in Failsafe Mode (where you get 66 MHz CPU bus instead of the 100 the Duron natively wants) because it didn't boot in Normal. Which usually means something's wrong with the CPU.

regards, Peter

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

dxdiag is the command for the dx diagnostics

if the computer is booting and works under pressure such as in games, forget about it, must be fine.. electronics either work or they don't.

 

[Iron Woode]

Definitely check the CPU setup in the BIOS. Make sure the cpu is set up correctly and then benchmark it.

Let us know the results.

 

[RossGr]

The BIOS shows 100FSB and 9.5x multiplier. On boot up Windows sees a 950Mhz Duron. After installing the correct IDE cable we loaded Black&White (Due the troubles he was having he has very little software installed) Which I felt ran reasonably (I have ran B&W on a 450 PIII/ TNT2M64 system and it was at least that good) The stats said he was getting 56fps this is with a GF2Mx400. I would like to Run SiSoft Sandra on it, but the system is 40mi away, so not much I can do now. But I will relay information on to my brother.

He did build the system, clearly he is still learning

Edit:
Peter,
I was not certian that the ESC board offer APIC, I have been troubleshooting some issues on a ASUS A7N266e board, which does support APIC, was kind of thinking it was simply a feature of modern Mobos. (Thanks for your input!)