Problem building my first Athlon system. Need help.

[coomarlin]

I just put together my first Athlon system today and I am running into a problem I can't seem to fix. Here are the specs:

Athlon T-Bird 1100mhz
Abit KT7 Moboard
1 Stick 256MB Micron PC133 SDRAM
32MB Leadtek GeForce GTS
Sound Blaster Live
Intel 10/100 NIC
Quantum 18.0GB 10KII LVD Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive
Adaptec 29160N Ultra 160 SCSI CARD
Enlight 7237 Mid Tower Case with 300w Power supply

I've loaded the Via 4-in-1 4.25a drivers.

The computer operates fine until I install the video drivers. I've tried the 6.50 Det 3 drivers and the 5.32 det drivers. At 640x480x16 everything seems ok, but when I up the resolution to 1024x768x16(or 32) the computer will often freeze up. It's weird because it seems like the lock-ups will occur often when I open the device manager and try to view the IRQ's that my hardware is using. Anyone ever seen this before?

If I go back to the standard vga driver I don't have any problems with the PC. Is there something special other than the 4-in-1's that I need to load? Could there be a bad bios setting that is causing this? Could it be IRQ conflicts? I'm stumped. I'd really appreciate any help you guys could give. Thanks.

-coo

 

[huh!!]

Make sure that your video card is alloted a irq in your bios. Most modern videocards require an irq, especially when playing 3d games. If you have a card in the pci slot next to the agp slot, move that card to a different slot. For most motherboards, the AGP Slot and the PCI one next to it share IRQs, this may be the problem.

Good Luck.

 

[coomarlin]

The Geforce GTS card is using IRQ 10. But I do however have a network card in the slot directly beside it. I'll try moving it.

What is this stuff I hear about PCI slot 5 having it's own IRQ? I've left it blank, but do you think I should move one of my other cards into the 5th slot?

 

[RangerSix]

I have a similar setup and have not encountered any problems.

Be sure (a) nothing is in the PCI 1 slot, (b) load the via drivers BEFORE installing any video card drivers, (c) keep the video card running at x2 speed and not x4. I have heard the via chipsets are not that stable with x4 AGP enabled (do this in the bios). You will not miss any significant performance drop.

Also, I have read that it is best to put network cards in the PCI 5 slot. Remember, remove the device BEFORE you go pulling cards out! I may be wrong, but I believe it is best to remove devices while in safe mode.

On my Abit KT-7 RAID I have the Geforce in the AGP slot of course, the optional USB connectors passing over the PCI 1 slot, Soundblaster in PCI 2, modem in PCI 3, firewire card in PCI 4. I may put a network card in PCI 5 later.

Hope this helps!

 

[coomarlin]

One more question. When you install the 4-in-1's do you use turbo mode or normal mode? I selected turbo mode. Could this make it unstable?

 

[TigersHere]

I installed this same board today to see if my CPU kernal usage would be normal

Do you see any problems running say Media player for asecond and then close it.
Have the system monitor on and just load and unload most any program
Even a empty browser!
Then close it and see if the CPU goes back idle
Mine does not on this MB and CPU nor with a ASUS board
It stays up, even 100% and slows to glue
I have given up on what's causing this as I turned off everything at start up and I can't see what's causing it
AMD does not 'know' either.

So I am going back to slot 1 I guess since that OLD system does not show these quirks I am seeing on a socket and AMD
Most might not see this problem unless it spiked at 100%, then they might not load the system monitor to see that the CPU is spiked
On Windows SE it never seems to spike but it goes to 70% or higher and stays there until I load say, media player and then it's ok
But when ya close all apps, why does it not go idle or close to it
Anyone ?

IS this normal ?
The 100 % can't be but I can't live with rebooting all day either ;/
Oh, and I got every driver update there was.

I hope someone else has seen this and can say what's going on and since I see you're using the same MB and CPU, I thought I would throw this in the ring!

Check that system monitor !

Tiger

 

[coomarlin]

Haven't had a chance to test the kernal.

What about ACPI? Has anyone installed Windows with the "setup /p i" option to bypass the installation of ACPI? It seems like there is some type of ACPI device sharing most of the IRQ's in the system.

I may try another clean install using the 4.25a 4-in-1's, my SCSI card in PCI-2, my SB Live in PCI-4, and my NIC in PCI-5. I may also opt for the normal mode over the turbo mode in the 4-in-1's. Anyone have any recommendations on AGP Driving control values?

 

[Racer7201]

I've read in several places the sb live should go in pci slot 3 since this is the only slot not shared with anything else. PCI slot 2 shares with ata100 controller, and if I remember correctly 4 & 5 share with usb and each other.
=========================
A7V
Duron 700@927
Maxtor 45g ata100
Matrox G400
128m pc150 Kingmax
2 cheap nics
56x cdrom
Acer CD-RW

 

[Zoson]

Everyone forgot to ask the most important question... What OS are you using? I experienced a similar problem using Win2k... For some GeForce cards under Win2k the drivers cause extreme crashes... Download the WinNT drivers and install them... That fixed my problem... Win2k is similar enough to WinNT that the drivers for the video cards are 100% compatible.
-Zoson

 

[coomarlin]

OS is Windows 98 SE.

 

[Zoson]

ok, jeesh, i have no idea then...
good luck man.
-Zoson

 

[silky]

Try uninstalling the Via ATAPI Driver.

 

[coomarlin]

Well i've finally gotten the system running stable. Unfortunately I had to install in standard mode instead of turbo and I had to go down one click on the hardware acceleration slider. How much of a performance hit will I take by doing this? The system seems fast as heck and I was playing the Quake III demo at 1600x1200x32 without a hitch. I wasn't sure how to figure out my fps since I'm not a normal user of Quake3, but I installed the demo in order to run some stability tests.

Anyway, how much of a hit will I take for running like this?