Some ?'s about my new P4 System?

[Mike360000]

Hello everyone, anyone.... batboy, turbo, ol'man and the rest.

As you know this week I have put together a P4 1.7 on a Abit BL7 Raid mobo. It has nicely oc'ed a P4 1.7 to about 2150 mhz so far.

However I have some very serious questions: One is my Hard Drives. I have three Maxtor ata100 40 gig 7200rpm HD's from my previous system, which was on an Abit BE6-2r2 Raid mobo. Now on that system when in DOS mode, mirroring my drives for backup, I got a transfer rate of about 430 MB/m. Now, on my new BL7 Raid, I only get a transfer rate of about 60 MB/m. And where it used to take me 30 minutes to mirror my hard drive containing about 16 gigs, it now takes about 4 hours! (No raid used on either board. But I use all my hard drives on the Raid Headers, without actually using the Raid itself. I only use the ATA 100 capabilities.) I desperately need to figure out what is wrong here! Please any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also about the above, I guess it is possible that ata 100 capabilities aren't being supported anymore in DOS that would cause this? And if I can't find a fix for it, would the new versions of Drive Image or any mirroring software work inside of Win98SE itself without having to go to DOS to do the mirroring?

My second problem is about my ram. I had two 256 meg sticks of Corsair PC133 CAS2 ram installed on my new system until Wednesday when I got a third stick of 256 meg Corsair PC 133 CAS2 ram. This totals to 768 megs of ram. However my system at startup and in Windows 98 only recognizes 640 megs of ram! So far it has oc'ed just as good as my original two sticks, but I am stumped at it not seeing the last 128 megs of ram on that new stick. BTW, that stick is in the last or third ram slot. Any help here would be greatly appreciated to! As I understand it, the Abit BE6's also had a similar problem at one time.

Finally about my oc'ing my P4. It looks like I have maxed out my boards capabilities to oc my cpu any further. My v core in BIOS only goes to 1.85v and that is where it is now, although Hardware Dr./Winbond shows the v core voltage to be just 1.79v. Anyhow I can't effectively stay at a fsb of 127 mhz and consistently play any demanding games. Usually within 30 minutes my system freezes. I actually noticed this freezing problem after installing PowerStrip. 126mhz fsb seems so far to go on indefinitely. And the whole time my system is still very cool, usually averaging 45c idle and I noticed up to about 55c after prolonged loading of the cpu. (That Sunflower H/F with Artic Silver is really a good cooling kit for oc'ing the P4, and not too loud.)

Thank you for your help!
Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Mike360000]

--Bump--

Anybody?
It sure has been quiet around here lately....

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[batboy]

Well, since you called upon me by name, I guess I feel obligated to respond, even though I don't have a definitive answer. First, I don't know what the RAM problem is. Try reseat them again and maybe try that third stick in another machine to see if it registers the full amount. Double check your mobo manual to see what the maximum amount of RAM is allowed too.

About the RAID, I don't have any experience in RAID 1 (mirroring). Is there a transfer setting like in RAID 0? I know when you stripe drives you can chose a "stripe size" which 64k seems to be a good compromise. Also, my last two Abit mobos that had ATA100 controllers, you had to load the ATA100 driver separately after the rest of the mobo .inf files. Maybe you don't have the controller running at ATA100 yet?

Here is a link to a good article about RAID setups. Maybe it will help since I can't. Good luck.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491

[Mike360000]

batboy

"Well, since you called upon me by name, I guess I feel obligated to respond, even though I don't have a definitive answer. First, I don't know what the RAM problem is. Try reseat them again and maybe try that third stick in another machine to see if it registers the full amount. Double check your mobo manual to see what the maximum amount of RAM is allowed too."

Well it's not that one may actually know the answer, but rather having a conversation itself is enough to get some ideas, and you gave me a couple. I'm thinking it's in the BIOS/motherboard thouhg, but I can't be sure until I test. And you reminded of a good way to go about it.
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"About the RAID, I don't have any experience in RAID 1 (mirroring). Is there a transfer setting like in RAID 0? I know when you stripe drives you can chose a "stripe size" which 64k seems to be a good compromise. Also, my last two Abit mobos that had ATA100 controllers, you had to load the ATA100 driver separately after the rest of the mobo .inf files. Maybe you don't have the controller running at ATA100 yet?"


Actually I didn't mean I was using Raid. Sorry if I sounded like that. I actually use my HD's individually, and my problem is when I go to DOS to mirror copy/Image one HD to another with Drive Image, the HD's are real real slow. I think I found the problem for this though, and it was intended. Seems Intel adds support to their chipsets to enable or disable ata/DMA support in DOS mode, and the mobo manufactures has the option if they want to include it or not. Seems in my case Abit has decided not to include options or make avaialble any DOS support for HD's.

I think Drive Image 5 does not use DOS anymore and all my mirroring can be done through Windows. Although I don't know how they got around that? So I guess I need to upgrade my copy of Drive Image.

Thanks again for your help,
Mike

[muddocktor]

I have the Highpoint raid controller on both of my comps with 1 running 98 SE and the other running Win2K and I'm also running an IBM 75GXP drive on the AMD machine on the raid controller without using any raid capability(Win2K machine). I installed the raid controller drivers so that Win2K would properly find the drive during install as it couldn't find the drive on the HPT370 without the drivers. I'm presently not using the raid controller on the Soyo board as the hard drive that is presently in the comp is only an ATA33 drive and can't take advantage of the increased headroom. One thing you might check is to go into the HPT370 bios and make sure that ATA100 is enabled and to use DMA.
When my other IBM GXP75 30 gig hard drive gets returned to me from being RMA'ed(:mad: :mad: ) I will put it on the raid controller on the Soyo board and image the present drive to it. Hope this gives you some ideas on what to check.

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Mike360000
Hello everyone, anyone.... batboy, turbo, ol'man and the rest.

My second problem is about my ram. I had two 256 meg sticks of Corsair PC133 CAS2 ram installed on my new system until Wednesday when I got a third stick of 256 meg Corsair PC 133 CAS2 ram. This totals to 768 megs of ram. However my system at startup and in Windows 98 only recognizes 640 megs of ram! So far it has oc'ed just as good as my original two sticks, but I am stumped at it not seeing the last 128 megs of ram on that new stick. BTW, that stick is in the last or third ram slot. Any help here would be greatly appreciated to! As I understand it, the Abit BE6's also had a similar problem at one time.

Finally about my oc'ing my P4. It looks like I have maxed out my boards capabilities to oc my cpu any further. My v core in BIOS only goes to 1.85v and that is where it is now, although Hardware Dr./Winbond shows the v core voltage to be just 1.79v. Anyhow I can't effectively stay at a fsb of 127 mhz and consistently play any demanding games. Usually within 30 minutes my system freezes. I actually noticed this freezing problem after installing PowerStrip. 126mhz fsb seems so far to go on indefinitely. And the whole time my system is still very cool, usually averaging 45c idle and I noticed up to about 55c after prolonged loading of the cpu. (That Sunflower H/F with Artic Silver is really a good cooling kit for oc'ing the P4, and not too loud.)

Thank you for your help!
Cheers,
Mike Lamb

Well since you kinda figured out the transfer problem yourself, I'll just throw in my $0.02 on the other questions. Many BX motherboards have issuses when all ram slots are used. Some slots can be bad, on my P3B-F 768 MB worked well, even at 150 Mhz fsb (still does in my sons computer now), but only in dimmslots 2, 3 and 4. #1 didn't work properly when 2 of the other or all 3 other dimmslots were filled. Maybe a bad slot, maybe a power issue? Didn't really matter to me as my Alpha cooler blocked the first one anyway. It could also be as simple as dust in the slot. It could also be that the ram block isn't "compatible" with the BX chipset, but I'm sure you know exactly what ram to get, as it sounds like all 3 dimms are the same type.

On your P4 cpu. Man I'd like to see what speed you'd be able to get it up to in something like a TH7-II :D Having an option to go up to 2.2V's is what's getting me to 2.0 Ghz. I'd have been stuck around 1.7 if I couldn't get past 1.85 in the bios. The thing is you probably wouldn't notice the difference of even 200 Mhz more. I'd get that Sunflower anyday, if only I could find a place to buy it here, but I found a Thermaltake Volcano 478 (really cheap too), and it took another 5-6°C of my max. full load temp, and I'm even down to around 37°C/99°F when "idle" (I know windows isn't really ever idle, but you know what I mean I guess). I don't think that's too bad for 2 Ghz and 2.20V. After 2 hours of RTCW it's "only" around 53-55°C/127-130°F However I haven't been able to get it 100% stable at anything higher than 133 fsb.

[Mike360000]

Hey there Turbo,

"Well since you kinda figured out the transfer problem yourself, I'll just throw in my $0.02 on the other questions."

Yeah that's kind'of a bummer. Abit could have enabled the option or gave us the opton if they had wanted to, cause Intel makes it an option, and it doesn't have any speed hit! So why disable it I don't know? But I can do alright if I get a copy of Drive Image 5, as it uses only Windows.
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"Many BX motherboards have issuses when all ram slots are used. Some slots can be bad, on my P3B-F 768 MB worked well, even at 150 Mhz fsb (still does in my sons computer now), but only in dimmslots 2, 3 and 4. #1 didn't work properly when 2 of the other or all 3 other dimmslots were filled. Maybe a bad slot, maybe a power issue? Didn't really matter to me as my Alpha cooler blocked the first one anyway. It could also be as simple as dust in the slot. It could also be that the ram block isn't "compatible" with the BX chipset, but I'm sure you know exactly what ram to get, as it sounds like all 3 dimms are the same type."

Hey! I found my problem! I am embarrassed to! Crazy thing! When I was putting my puter together I accidently used a stick of Corsair 4X16 PC133 CAS 3. It ran fine, just it was a 128 megs instead of 256 megs.
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"On your P4 cpu. Man I'd like to see what speed you'd be able to get it up to in something like a TH7-II Having an option to go up to 2.2V's is what's getting me to 2.0 Ghz. I'd have been stuck around 1.7 if I couldn't get past 1.85 in the bios. The thing is you probably wouldn't notice the difference of even 200 Mhz more. I'd get that Sunflower anyday, if only I could find a place to buy it here, but I found a Thermaltake Volcano 478 (really cheap too), and it took another 5-6°C of my max. full load temp, and I'm even down to around 37°C/99°F when "idle" (I know windows isn't really ever idle, but you know what I mean I guess). I don't think that's too bad for 2 Ghz and 2.20V. After 2 hours of RTCW it's "only" around 53-55°C/127-130°F However I haven't been able to get it 100% stable at anything higher than 133 fsb."

Yeah that is really a bummer about the low v core on the BL7 boards! I dunno why they choose to do that. And I am not even getting a full 1.8v! Only 1.79v according to Winbond. I wished there was an easy fix for this, but I'm basically satisfied.

As for the Sunflower and other Cooling, look at this site, http://1coolpc.com/home/ That is a very dedicated bunch of peeps there! They are GOOD! And I don't usually brag on such things. Sunflower for about 26 bux.

FWIW, I ran 3DMark2001 today and my high score so far is 7370 at 1024x768x32. That is with a Radeon 8500. I guess my memory would limit in a bench like this cause it would use the extra bandwith. But that is still a decent score.

My Sandra scores again:
Memory ALU 608: FPU 610
CPU ALU 4111: FPU/SSE2 1291/2649 MFLOPS

Still not too bad.....

My brother could only go about 1950 with his cpu, and Ithink he's lowered it some from that high point. So I guess there are differences.

Again, thanx for your help.
Cheers,
Mike Lamb