Time for new CPU on BH6 rev 1.01

[Verschuur]

I've been using a BH6 rev 1.0 and 300A@450 for a while now and it is time for an upgrade. Have been thinking about a Celeron 566@850, but the performance gap to the coppermine is a bit too much compared to what the Celeron 450 offerd vs. PII 450. So my thoughts are going to a Coppermine 650 or 700. A few questions:

-Does the BH6 rev 1.01 offer a PCI bus divider at 133MHz FSB. The latest BIOS I flashed (SS) doesn't seem to offer this option.

-I still have 64 Mb PC100 (next to 128 Mb PC133)that I'm keen to use. Any chance of this?

-What are the chances of PIII 650@866 or 700@933 using the 133 Mhz FSB using air cooling, using the cB0 stepping? I believe the latest cB0 are not as good as the earlier ones, but we're always a bit behind in the Netherlands, so for once that may be an advantage...

-Any way to disable the AGP SBA of my V770 Ultra as this appears to be a limiting factor with a overclocked AGP bus.

OK, thanks for any help, if it is a bit tricky, I will probably get a 815 motherboard, although I prefer to keep my trusty BH6 as the 815 board seem to offer little (performance) advantage beside more flexibility. But if a PIII works on my BH6, I won't need that!

 

[squirrel dog]

I like the bh6 also,I have two of them.I dont think there is a 1/4 divider for the bh6 1.x I once flashed a beta bios with all kinds of new settings,that was one,and none of them worked.My bp6 has it,as does the bxe2,and most likely their newer boards as well.Dont know about the rest.I have read on other boards that 566's at 900 and 700's at 933 with the bh6,I havent done that though.I have 366's@550 for now.

 

[bigfootmd]

The first step along the road is to download the latest bios for the BH6 REV 1.01. This is available at the ABIT site. I have a BH6 Rev 1
and I am using a Celeron 566 that is overclocked to 850 MHZ. If you really want to overclock then you should try to buy a pretested processor. There are several people here on anandtech that sell them.If you order a 566 that is not listed as having been tested there is a chance that it won't overclock. I'm quite happy with my Celermine 566.

Also, you can search this message area for previous hints and tips.
I am not sure if the latest bios will allow you to select 133.
Using the Celermine 566 will extend your system life for at least another year. Then when the P4 comes out we can all dump our current cases and memory. The P4 will require new motherboards, memory and cases.

Any questions, just ask.

 

[Nack]

I have a BH6 1.01 (not the newer 1.1) that I flashed to the SS bios. As reported by the other poster, the bios does report a 1/3 PCI/FSB divider at 133MHz. The bios screen, however, is wrong. My BH6 1.01 DOES have a 1/4 PCI/FSB divider at the 133MHz setting, despite the fact that the bios says it doesn't. I have tested this extensively with other programs, and all report a 33.XX MHz PCI bus when running at 133.XX MHz FSB. I run a PIII 700 on this board at 7x133=933MHz, perfectly stable, every day at default voltage.

Good luck,

Nack

 

[Brig]

I also have a V770 Ultra. A utility called Powerstrip will disable side band addressing for you. Forget where I downloaded it from, but you shouldn?t have any problem finding it.
After you start it up, select far right icon on toolbar (graphics system info), select ?windows? tab, select ?details? button.

 

[Verschuur]

I just checked, my 64 Mb PC100 memory is rated at 7 ns. (I checked my sales receipt and the SDRAM chips myself, they are from LGS and have the number 7 at the end of the 'code' printed on the RAM chips. My PC133 SDRAM chips appear to be rated at 8ns from the print on the chips.....weird.)
Does this give me a good chance to hit 133Mhz FSB with this PC100 SDRAM?

 

[gtd2000]

Nack
I was reading with interest about the 1/4 divider - what program do u use to verify this.......I'm currently running a PIII450@600 on my BH6 with LN BIOS installed and I am concerned that I may be running things a bit high with the 133FSB
I've downloaded the SS BIOS but not yet installed....

 

[Nack]

Sisoft Sandra (latest version), Dr. Hardware (an old version), and another program (which sucked so I deleted it) all reported a 1/4 divider, or a ~33MHz PCI bus when running at 133MHz FSB. The fact that my NIC, PCI video card, hard drive, and PCI winmodem (backup for the cablemodem) didn't all melt is futher evidence that this is true.

The bios will still report a 1/3 divider, but the PCI bus does run at 1/4 of the 133MHz FSB speed.

Nack

 

[gtd2000]

I've checked out the SiSoft thing and yes it does indeed report the bus speed as 34Mhz and the AGP at 89Mhz....however I'm not actually convinced that this is telling the truth...
Reason?
Well I also have a Tekram C210 video capture card in my system which actually gives a totally different image quality when using the cam at the 133Mhz FSB. (It becomes very grainy)
Perhaps the SiSoft prpgram and other purely assumes a PCI speed of 34Mhz rather than 44 or whatever it would work out to be?