D
Dr. J
Hello yall.
I am posting this for all the unfortunate people who insist on being
"daft" enough to install a Radeon 8500DV (Built by ATI) on an old Abit
BH6 1.0x with SS Bios.
I wish I could have just responded to other posts but I'll be darned
if I can figure out how to do that with Google Groups.
Here is my rig's setup:
Abit BH6 1.0x with SS Bios
Powerleap PL-iP3/T 2.0
Intel Celron 1.4Ghz @ 100mhz FSB & 1.5x volts
512MB Kingston PC100 SDRAM (2 sticks of 256MB)
Windows 98 SE
ATI Radeon 8500DV All-In-Wonder 64MB running at AGP 2x
Realtek RTL8139/810X PCI NIC
LiteOn 16x10x40 CD RW drive with latest firmware
16x DVD Drive
WD 7200RPM 2MB buffer 40GB Hdd
Maxtor 5400RPM 40GB Hdd
OK here is the low down. I have read that some people have tried to
install an 8500DV on a BH6. They all seemed to have great success. I
had not been able to install mine though. The problem was that when
the drivers initiated, the system locked up. I spent 24 hours of
troubleshooting/tech support to figure out that it was in fact my
jerry-rigged processor with the Powerleap adapter that had indirectly
caused the problem.
To get the adapter to make the 1.4 Ghz Celeron to work on the BH6, the
error hold in CPU Soft Menu II had to be disabled with custom
settings. BUT when you 1st get the defaults in "custom settings"
after having a low end Celeron like my 400MHz Celeron, the AGP to CPU
clock ratio is set to 1:1. This will not work with the 8500DV even
though it worked with my old VooDoo 3 3000 AGP. The setting must be
at 2:3.
All the BIOS must be updated and I recommend that the latest drivers
are downloaded. I am currently running Catalyst 3.6.
With my rig as shown, I have managed to get a 3DMark 2001SE score of
exactly 6000 and sustained 30FPS on Star Trek Elite Force II with
balanced performance and VSync always on. Elite Force 1 is a sustained
60FPS with the same settings.
When overclocking the FSB, there is only slight performance gains.
With Turbo enabled in CPU SoftMenu II, 3DMark 2001SE had scores of
approx 6150 3D Marks. Games showed no improvement. When I upped the
FSB to 112MHz the 3DMark 2k1 only increased to 6350 marks. All higher
frequencies resulted in the failure to POST and possible corruption of
registry. This is possibly due to my RAM's inability to go to 133MHz.
The overclocking of the Radeon 8500DV with Powerleap did not help at
all. I assume that the AGP 2x bottleneck is just too much.
The card was able to have a PCI bridge for the firewire port and works
great. All the TV functionality is working very well.
The real test is when I upgrade the OS to XP Pro and NTFS with the
possibility of RAID level-0 using a Promise PCI card.
END OF LINE
I am posting this for all the unfortunate people who insist on being
"daft" enough to install a Radeon 8500DV (Built by ATI) on an old Abit
BH6 1.0x with SS Bios.
I wish I could have just responded to other posts but I'll be darned
if I can figure out how to do that with Google Groups.
Here is my rig's setup:
Abit BH6 1.0x with SS Bios
Powerleap PL-iP3/T 2.0
Intel Celron 1.4Ghz @ 100mhz FSB & 1.5x volts
512MB Kingston PC100 SDRAM (2 sticks of 256MB)
Windows 98 SE
ATI Radeon 8500DV All-In-Wonder 64MB running at AGP 2x
Realtek RTL8139/810X PCI NIC
LiteOn 16x10x40 CD RW drive with latest firmware
16x DVD Drive
WD 7200RPM 2MB buffer 40GB Hdd
Maxtor 5400RPM 40GB Hdd
OK here is the low down. I have read that some people have tried to
install an 8500DV on a BH6. They all seemed to have great success. I
had not been able to install mine though. The problem was that when
the drivers initiated, the system locked up. I spent 24 hours of
troubleshooting/tech support to figure out that it was in fact my
jerry-rigged processor with the Powerleap adapter that had indirectly
caused the problem.
To get the adapter to make the 1.4 Ghz Celeron to work on the BH6, the
error hold in CPU Soft Menu II had to be disabled with custom
settings. BUT when you 1st get the defaults in "custom settings"
after having a low end Celeron like my 400MHz Celeron, the AGP to CPU
clock ratio is set to 1:1. This will not work with the 8500DV even
though it worked with my old VooDoo 3 3000 AGP. The setting must be
at 2:3.
All the BIOS must be updated and I recommend that the latest drivers
are downloaded. I am currently running Catalyst 3.6.
With my rig as shown, I have managed to get a 3DMark 2001SE score of
exactly 6000 and sustained 30FPS on Star Trek Elite Force II with
balanced performance and VSync always on. Elite Force 1 is a sustained
60FPS with the same settings.
When overclocking the FSB, there is only slight performance gains.
With Turbo enabled in CPU SoftMenu II, 3DMark 2001SE had scores of
approx 6150 3D Marks. Games showed no improvement. When I upped the
FSB to 112MHz the 3DMark 2k1 only increased to 6350 marks. All higher
frequencies resulted in the failure to POST and possible corruption of
registry. This is possibly due to my RAM's inability to go to 133MHz.
The overclocking of the Radeon 8500DV with Powerleap did not help at
all. I assume that the AGP 2x bottleneck is just too much.
The card was able to have a PCI bridge for the firewire port and works
great. All the TV functionality is working very well.
The real test is when I upgrade the OS to XP Pro and NTFS with the
possibility of RAID level-0 using a Promise PCI card.
END OF LINE