Duron "Cooked?" Getting lots of disk errrors, Gone when I underclock

[Hans]

The old 700 might be messed up. I get tons of errors when trying to defrag, and have to run Norton Disk Doctor again and again and again...tried reformat, reinstall Norton System works, etc.

But when I tried setting the Duron to 500mhz, the errors went away, and I can defrag without interuption.

It was running fine for months at 927 mhz, but now has started some locking up in No One Lives Forever and System Shock.

I have a new T-Bird 1 gig on the way, but is it possible I'm describing a familiar pattern?

Fresh home cooked chips, hot and crispy anyone?

hans

[DarkFire55]

Are you sure you didnt get suckered when you bought that chip?
Maybe somebody sold you a Duron 600 and passed it off as a 700.

Also you got any Arctic Silver or thermal grease between the hsf and the cpu?
Its either a duron 600, no thermal grease, poor hsf, or too high of an fsb.
But more than likely the first two.

[Phil]

It does sound like a heat issue or maybe a lack of power, how many watts is your psu, 235W can sometimes be a problem with 250W being a sensible minimum and 300W preferable.

[Rav]

What was your FSB set to when you were getting these errors? I know some IDE controlers get flaky when the PCI bus is too high. Also, I had a hard drive that gave me errors if the FSB was over 105. The fix I found was to disable DMA, but the performace dropped horribly. That was an older drive though. Phil may be right about a lack of power and the temperature, does your board give you a CPU temp readout? If so whats you load temp? Good luck.

-Rav

[dozier768]

sounds to me like something is getting too hot like perhaps your chipset or cpu. if your cpu is fine test your chipset i had the same problem and i custom made a heatsink and fan for my chipset lapped the bottom and used some ars epoxy and it fixed it right up cant hurt to put a sink on the southbridge too it controlls al your ata functions

[Hans]

Well, it's a 700 all right, and I use Arctic Silver. My FSB was 107, but the problems even occured at 100 if the multiplier is set over 650 (at the moment).

Heat is showing 48c at load under MBM.

I I have a 300 watt AMD approved power supply.

I just tried System Shock and it kept loading slooow and locking up for 10-15 seconds in the game...yet ran fine at a 500mhz underclock. Ack!

I have the Asus A7V board, and I don't know where the chipset is...says Via on it I guess? Or the southbridge. I would love to sink them up if that might help. If anyone knows a link to a tutorial on the subject, that would be pretty swell.

So, can a chip fail gradually in this way, or does this case seem unusual I wonder...

Thanks,

hans

[William]

You by chance running an SB Live! in that system?

[Hans]

Why yes, why do you ask ?

hans

[Oni]

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a WEINER!!

The A7V uses the 686B SouthBridge, which does not like SoundBlaster cards of any kind. It can cause all sorts of errors, including some of the ones that you're having. Get the latest drivers from VIA (http://www.viahardware.com) that include the 686b SouthBridge fix, and that might clear up your problem.

Good Luck! :)

[William]

Hans (Jun 14, 2001 12:06 p.m.):
Why yes, why do you ask ?

hans


try running everything without the SB Live! in there. My mobo(MSI K7T Turbo) gave me all types of problems with the SB Live! in there. Put an old Turtle Beach Montego in there and everything is fine. With the Live! in there, i would get registry errors and random lockups on install and other weird stuff. Its is definately worth a shot.

[Tomas]

did the problems occure when u got the sblive card or did u have it when it ran fine too??

[Hans]

Sounds like a plan. I'll try the Via drivers first to see if that helps.

Then a trip to Turtle Beach.

Thanks,

hans

[Hans]

Tomas, it was ok with the SBLive for quite a while before the trouble began.

Thanks,

hans

[Rob Cork]

I guess it could be the psu dying - check the voltages using Asus Probe or MBM or similar, see whether they're varying a lot from the intended values (eg 12V running at 12.3 like mine!). It could also be the way the chip is unlocked - my duron 600 ran fine at 1000 for a few months unlocked with a pencil, but then I started getting random lockups and had to clock back to 900. I fixed that problem by using conductive paint to unlock the chip instead - no problems since!

By the way, I think the A7V uses the 686a southbridge (the 686b is for the KT133a) - although it doesn't particlularly love SBlives either, it's not as bad as the 686b. Doubt it's the sound card, but you might as well try changing drivers to rule it out.

[Hans]

Thanks for the help. It's really good to have the information.

Much appreciated,

hans

[Hans]

Well, an Athlon 1000 came in the mail, so I dropped it in and am running it stock at present.

Do I raise the voltage to "burn in?"

Anyway, That's one way to avoid the trouble.

Thanks to you guys for the very good advice, I learned a lot.

hans