Asus A733 & XP 3000 - BIOS settings...

[John Hellingsworth]

Hello

I have the following set-up, (recently upgraded, from an XP 2500 and FX
5600), and installed for me by a third party.

Asus A7333 Rev 2.0 Motherboard
Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) 333FSB
1Gb (512mb x2) DDR 333 PC 27000 Mem
PNY GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
Antec TP 480w Power Supply

I upgraded because I am an avid Flight and Car Sim fan.
Whilst seeing an increase in quality and speed, I am disappointed with what
seems to be a fairly minimal benefit - still getting the "jerks" on Flight
Combat Sim and Flight Sim 2004.
I don't profess to have any expert knowledge (hence my question on here),
but can find my way around bios and other settings with guidance.
I went into BIOS and noticed that my CPU speed setting was 1300Mhz. Looking
at the AMD website, the recommended setting appears to be 2167 Mhz. I reset
it, but just on running Norton the system hung, and when retrying, hung and
rebooted.
I've now set it at 1733Mhz, and so far seems ok, but haven't really tested
it on the software yet.
Before going any further, I wonder if anyone out there can advise me as to
the CPU speed setting that I need to use, along with any other recommended
settings or advice that you may have.
I'm not really interested in overclocking, because of my limited knowledge.

Thanks in anticipation
John Hellingsworth

 

[kony]

Hello

I have the following set-up, (recently upgraded, from an XP 2500 and FX
5600), and installed for me by a third party.

Asus A7333 Rev 2.0 Motherboard
Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) 333FSB
1Gb (512mb x2) DDR 333 PC 27000 Mem
PNY GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
Antec TP 480w Power Supply

I upgraded because I am an avid Flight and Car Sim fan.
Whilst seeing an increase in quality and speed, I am disappointed with what
seems to be a fairly minimal benefit - still getting the "jerks" on Flight
Combat Sim and Flight Sim 2004.

Is there a regular interval to the jerks?
There is a setting in the bios for an I-Panel Update
interval (might be worded differently) and if that is
enabled, i have observed those boards will definitely
hesitate each "X" number of seconds when that update
happens.

I don't profess to have any expert knowledge (hence my question on here),
but can find my way around bios and other settings with guidance.
I went into BIOS and noticed that my CPU speed setting was 1300Mhz. Looking
at the AMD website, the recommended setting appears to be 2167 Mhz. I reset
it, but just on running Norton the system hung, and when retrying, hung and
rebooted.

Norton what?
In general, Norton does bad things to PCs, you might just
uninstall it and see if the situation improves.

You can manually set it to correct values if you like,
The multiplier can be left to auto and FSB set to 166.

I've now set it at 1733Mhz, and so far seems ok, but haven't really tested
it on the software yet.

Instability could be due to the dual 512MB memory modules.
Temporarily remove one, set FSB back to 166MHz, and see if
problem remains. Try the first and/or last memory slots,
not the middle one.

Before going any further, I wonder if anyone out there can advise me as to
the CPU speed setting that I need to use, along with any other recommended
settings or advice that you may have.
I'm not really interested in overclocking, because of my limited knowledge.

Your CPU is spec'd to use 13X multiplier and 166MHz (DDR333)
FSB. If the CPU is "locked" by AMD, you can't change the
multiplier but can change FSB. Set memory sync'd to FSB,
not + or - 33MHz. Do not use the "turbo" memory setting in
bios.

Test system after any FSB or memory change with
http://www.memtest86.com , prior to booting OS. Do not boot
the OS till it passes memtest86 for at least a few hours.

 

[John Hellingsworth]

Thanks for the info. Due to lack of technical knowledge, I would be obliged
for further help.

1. I can't find any reference to an I-panel Update..... whereabouts in Bios
menus should I be looking for this?
2. I apologise in advance for this......... but what is FSB? and where in
Bios do I find these settings to tweak?
3. My memory stacks are currently in slots 1 & 2 ........ so I will move one
out of the middle and retry..
4. I went into Bios .......... I seem to have the 13x multiplier ok, but
when I try to change the 166Mhz from 133Mhz, it reverts. so guess that is
the "locked format that you refer to.
Your following instruction about seting memory sync'd to FSB I did'nt
understand ! .........
5. I will download the memtest that you refer to...

Finally.......... with all tweaks in place, should I be able to run this
setup at 2167Mhz ?

Any further clarification would be gratefully accepted................
Thankyou for your time

Regards
John Hellingsworth

 

[kony]

Thanks for the info. Due to lack of technical knowledge, I would be obliged
for further help.

1. I can't find any reference to an I-panel Update..... whereabouts in Bios
menus should I be looking for this?

I can't remember, only distinctly remember it being there
because at the time it was causing jerkiness in a 3DMark2001
benchmark until i disabled it. The system in question did
have an I-Panel attached to it, perhaps the setting is
dependent on having the I-Panel attached.

2. I apologise in advance for this......... but what is FSB? and where in
Bios do I find these settings to tweak?

Front Side Bus
Just look though the menus to find the CPU speed section,
there is probably a setting for "auto" vs. "Manual' or
"expert" or something like that, which enables specifying
the FSB frequency from a drop-down menu. It's not really
necessary if there is another drop-down menu that specifies
3 different CPU speeds, then the 166MHz FSB option would be
the last choice, if I remember correctly, I don't have one
of those boards here at the moment.

3. My memory stacks are currently in slots 1 & 2 ........ so I will move one
out of the middle and retry..
4. I went into Bios .......... I seem to have the 13x multiplier ok, but
when I try to change the 166Mhz from 133Mhz, it reverts. so guess that is
the "locked format that you refer to.

If system won't POST due to too high a setting, the bios may
revert back to lower speed by design. You might
double-check the CPU voltage setting in bios, the reading
shown by the hardware monitor/health report in bios, and
double-check the voltage jumpers on the board, consulting
the manual. Take care not to move wrong jumpers to avoid
damage to CPU, there is even a jumper that overvolts by
quite a bit that should not be changed.

Your following instruction about seting memory sync'd to FSB I did'nt
understand ! .........

Set front side bus and memory to same speed, but at 166 MHz,
it "should" happen automatically... however something isn't
working properly so I was suggesting it. If all else fails
you might try clearing the CMOS (see manual for jumper
location), then setting only the FSB to 166, no other bios
changes.

5. I will download the memtest that you refer to...

Finally.......... with all tweaks in place, should I be able to run this
setup at 2167Mhz ?

In theory, yes. I had one of those boards running at 174MHz
FSB, resulting overclock of a different CPU was 2.3GHz. I
also had an earlier revision (1.01 maybe) that didn't do so
well with newer CPUs, but your revision should be ok.

Any further clarification would be gratefully accepted................
Thankyou for your time

I still suspect the memory, but this motherboard has so many
different settings that it's hard to say without the system
in front of me. There's also a "ROMSIP" jumper that you
might change, not even sure what it does but vaguely recall
someone mentioning it helped with stability (in which
position I don't recall).

 

[John Hellingsworth]

Kony
Thankyou for your advice and time ..........
Appreciated
Regards
John