PC Upgrade - Advice Needed

MÓC

ok I'm running ito some problems on this one and any advice would be greatly appreciated

original system :

Pentium II 266
Abit BX6 intel 440 mobo (2xAGP)
64M pc100 sdram (running at 66mhz due to PII's 66fsb)
8MB Ati Xpert@play 98 (based on rage pro)

This was pretty good spec when bought in late 98, but was getting on a bit now. What I wanted to do was upgrade bit by bit,
using this tutorial as a guide

http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/01q4/011005/pcupgrade-01.html

bought a Pentium III 1Ghz 256k/133fsb/1.7v Slot 1 which is the most the motherboard can take ( although not officially )

upgraded BIOS to latest version

inserted processor and turned on machine. Nothing!

I thought the problem for this were the RAM being overclocked to 133Mhz. So I bought 256Mb of PC133 SDRam. ( Crucial )

Tried the new Processor with the new Ram and still the same result. Monitor dont come on at all ( so I cant get into the BIOS to try and reconfigure it )

I'm think its the Graphics card thats letting me down, but would be pretty annoyed if I splash out and find that its still dont work.

I need to know if I'm doing something wrong here or if I aint then I need to know what kind of graphics card to get. I'm pretty set on getting an nvidia geforce 3 but the board is only 2xAGP. Will a 4X graphics card work with this and even if it does will it be wasted.

Saruman

Its simple enough to rule out the card without buying a new one... take it out and power it on.. system should beep to let you know the graphics card is missing.. if not its something else.. chances are its the cpu though.. i ASSUME you put back in your old one and tested it to make sure you did not blow something else?

If old cpu still wont post the system, then tell me did it work after you flashed the bios but before you inserted the new chip? I hope you tested that first! Oh and did you move any jumpers to get new chip working? Some mbd's especially older ones you need to set the jumpers for the right cpu... usually if its not far off it will show up on the wrong speed but still work.. but if its way off i.e. 266 - 1000 ... i forsee problems.. other thing is... the new chip is more than likely coppermine and the mobo might not support this.. only the original PIII Katmai chips

Inspector Gadget

...I'm not sure that your motherboard can take that CPU - maybe someone like Gerry (being an Intel head) can confirm this? Is that CPU based on the Tualatin core, I wonder?

However, according to http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/pt_main_back.jsp?pPRODUCT_TYPE=MotherBoard&pMODEL_NAME=BX6, your motherboard won't like a multiplier of over 7.0, and may not boot with a CPU with an 8.0 multiplier (see below for where I got this). However, as there were two versions of the BX6 (a 1.0 and a 2.0. as I understand it) it's not even guaranteed that your board will go that high... also, for all I know, that board might not even support a low enough core voltage (the core voltage used by all x86 CPUs has had to decrease in line with increases in clock speed to try and keep heat under control)!

Anyway, regardless of whether the motherboard can take it or not, you can be sure that that board will do no more than 100FSB (or thereabouts) - did you change the FSB up to 100 in the BIOS? - [edit]Just realised that you can't possibly have - doh![/edit] which will limit your 1GHz PIII to running at about 800MHz (1GHz = 8.0 multiplier x 133MHz FSB; at 100MHz FSB you get 8.0 x 100 = 800MHz) even if it did work.

Just in case it's something simple, though, check that everything you've changed (CPU, RAM) is properly seated (i.e. shoved into its socket fully) and that you've correctly applied a suitable heatsink and fan to cool a 1GHz Slot 1 CPU, with thermal paste as appropriate (I assume you need thermal paste with SECC CPUs... Gerry?) Also, is your machine beeping in an unusual way?

Just my 2c...
Gadget

elexes

take out the chip soundcard and unplug everything from it turn it on see what happens .

then put in ram see what happens


me thinks its the mobo . dont think that it can take the processor or somthing like that . also when flashing bios did you have any porobloms . did it work at all after the flash ???

Gerry

Well, many people have run that cpu, and faster cpu's on that board, so I dunno.

Your board does support the 133fsb, but try setting it for 100 in case the board is a wee bit dodgy. (ie put in the old cpu, and set to 100).

Also make sure you clear the cmos, you need to plug out the power first.

About the graphics card being dodgy, well if it works with your old cpu, its fine. Your old cpu still works doesn't it?

Multiplier on intel cpu's is normally irrelevant. The cpu ignores the multiplier the motherboard asserts, and uses its own one. It works because the multiplier is internal to the cpu, it is not "seen" by the bus.

The cpu is a coppermine, cc0 stepping.

I do not have the time today to dig up more info on this, but I will.
try searching the intel cpu forums at www.overclockers.com (link on left sidebar of the front page).

Remember abit boards are extremely finicky, and manys the time I thought my board was dead, only for it to boot after some more tinkering.

MÓC

Finally got somewhere with this.
took me 6 hours, a lot of tinkering and a lot of searching on overclockers forums

Flash upgrade was fine as old cpu worked after this.
bx6 version 1 is jumperless so it wernt that.
The graphics card was working with the old cpu ( now the new one (but not at 133fsb) so it wernt the graphics card
the voltage can be stepped incrementally down to 1.3 so no probs there

Think the problem was

- processor not properly seated
- Processor wont work at 133fsb. ( I think this is due to AGPCLK/CPUCLK not having enough options only 1:1 and 2:3 ). this is why I thought the graphics card
was at fault
- Turned speedbit error off

finally got it working but ....................

The best I can get it working at is 112 X 8 = 896 although
it shows up at startup as 840E Mhz ( the Same in SiSoft Sandra (841Mhz) ) which is
112 x 7.5 !!?

Is it possible to get the full 1Gig out of it ?



One a side note about Memory test at startup .......
Originally with the pc100 - memory test counted up incrementally
(1 by 1 odometer style ) to 65536 Mb
after trying the processor the first time, the memory test sometimes did not occur
when it did it was the tail end from about 59000 onwards.
When the new memory (pc133) was installed the memory test just shows 262144 (without the count)
Does this indicate anything ?

Gerry

I'm not sure what the memory test indicates. About the graphics card, well most modern cards do not have a problem working at the 89mhz agp speed which comes from running a bx board at 133 fsb. However you may want to try a different card, (pci if possible) to rule that out fully.

The cpu speed is 840, it has a fixed multiplier of 7.5 for 7.5 * 133 = 1000.