1.2 AMD 200 FSB... needs help

[MoPEquinox]

I recently purchased my first AMD and i am very impressed! Now the motherboard i have is a K7VZA by ECS and i got the combo deal here...

http://www.accubyte.com/applications/search/itemdetails.asp?sku=MBC-805-12

I have 512 MB's of PC-100/133 ram and it only works as pc-100 for now. There are jumpers on the M/B to set the ram for 100/133 but when i set it to 133 the montior won't turn on. I was told to set my multiplyer to 9 x 133 instead of 12 X 100, but where do i do that ? I don't see it in BIOS and it's not anywhere in the M/B manual. I do see in BIOS an option to set my RAM for pc- 100/133 but when i change that, there is no difference on start up where it tells you "AMD 12 x 100", am i stuck at using pc-100 ?

Also as far as overclocking goes... how much can i get out of this chip and how do i go about doing it?

Any ideas on this subject would be a great help... thx for taking your time to read this. :)

[theflyingrat]

I purchased a K7VZA for a friend of mine about 8 months ago, and it's a good, inexpensive, solid board. However, there were a couple of different K7VZAs made. The older revisions had a brown PCB (this is what my friend has), and these boards were equipped with an older KT133 chipset. You can set the FSB/memory timings in BIOS (I think under Advanced Options). It should let you start at 100/133 (for 100FSB, 133MHz memory), and it sounds like you've already done this. This will run the memory faster than the front side bus, but the front side bus remains at 100 MHz; in effect, you still have a 1.2 Athlon, just with a faster memory bus. There should be other timings....ones like 104/137 or 106/139. These are probably what to start with here.

The newer revisions have a black PCB, and have a newer KT133A chipset, which you should be able to run at 133 FSB and 133 MHz memory with the right CPU.

However, if you're starting at a 1.2GHz CPU, if you jumped straight to 133FSB, you'd suddenly have a 1.6 GHz CPU. Which is not all that bad, but you're not going to be able to do it on that board.

The K7VZA has no multiplier controls anywhere; not in BIOS, and not on jumpers. There are also no voltage controls anywhere, either. This leaves you with two choices: either take it in baby steps up to about 110 MHz or so (if you have the black motherboard - you can do this in BIOS) with no voltage changes, or go for the gusto and mod the voltage on the CPU itself. This would entail closing all the L7 bridges on top of the CPU with a pencil. This can get complicated without a suitable motherboard.

IMHO, you're best off inching up one-by-one MHz, starting at 100. This motherboard is definitely left to non-extreme overclocking applications. If you just want a stable, decent-performing closed-box system, you have the right board. If you want a fire-breathing, tweaked out system from hell, you've definitely got the wrong one.

[theflyingrat]

Almost forgot....welcome to the forums Mop!