Problems with AXIA 1Ghz 266FSB on Abit KT7A

I got my nice shiny new AXIA 1GHz only to find it being a bit of a pain to overclock.

System:
M/B: Abit KT7A-Raid
Cooler: Globalwin WBK38 (with arctic silver compound)
BIOS Version: Evaluation BIOS for SBLive fix that was posted on www.viahardware.com recently.

I've closed all the L1 bridges, tested it and it works fine up to 8.5 * 133Mhz, to give 1133Mhz, using the standard 1.75V

I am having problems getting anymore than this - the system won't even POST (I've increased the voltage up to 1.85V). I've even lowered the FSB to 100MHz and tried combinations of that but it's having none of it.

However, there is one setting in the BIOS which does work and I can't figure out why, it's the setting that says 1250~1700(100), with an automatic 12.5 multiplier.

This then boots the system at 12.5 x 104Mhz (1300MHz) and POSTs fine at 1.75V !!

What the F*** is going on with this board and CPU? I can't get it to POST at anything between 1133Mhz and 1300Mhz with the other settings, but this one setting does allow it to?

Advice please before I lose my head!

Thanks!

I had a simular problem before I went to watercooling. I also got to go higher by lowering the voltage. Couldn't lower it less than 1.60. It is probably a heat conflict. Try 133/33x7.5 and voltage at 1.70 see if you can post at that. If you will remove your cpu and bend the thermal sensor up a little and add a little a/s to it you will get a truer temp reading.

More info:

thanks for the reply, but it's nothing to do with the cooling, you're missing the point.

I have since done further work and have discovered that it objects to any manually set multiplier between 9 and 10.5 - it will refuse to boot when the multiplier is set manually to one of those multipliers and @ 133MHz.

It will POST at those multipliers but only when the frequency is set to 100~105MHz (I'll need to do more testing to confirm the exact limits). BUT what it actually sets the multiplier to isn't what the BIOS says, e.g BIOS set at 9x and it actually POSTs and reports the multiplier as 7.5x. Or BIOS set at 9.5x and it will POST at 8x and so on until you reach 11x when it POSTs at 11x.

I have confirmed that it POSTs quite happily at 11 * 133Mhz (1463Mhz), although Win2K will blue screen when loading. I have used 11 x 118 (1298Mhz) and this POSTs, but Windows is a bit unstable at that. I figure the CPU is going to be limited to around 1300Mhz, but this is exactly what I can't achieve using the 133Mhz FSB (the whole bloody point of me buying the motherboard and chip in the first place) because of the multiplier setting being screwed up between 9 and 10.5

I have reverted back to the latest official BIOS (according to ABIT's website), WZ and this shows no change EXCEPT for the odd setting of 1250~1700(100) disappearing (when the board would POST at 12.5x104MHz)

I have done further reading tonight and found similar problems reported by this site with a MSI K7T Pro2A motherboard. It appears that this is a yet another problem with the VIA chipset.

Has anyone got a workaround for this? I have tried what this site suggested under the "KT 133 Multiplier Fix" (written by Ed Stroligo) but I can't make it work.

Re-do your L1 bridges

Hoot

bump..

that seems to be yer problem.

Thank you all, I removed the heatsink and redid the bridges and it works fine now! I used a 5B pencil instead.

I did almost lose my thumb in the process cos it's a Global Win WBK38 but other than that, everything now appears to be hunky dory and I have it running at 1200Mhz (9.0 x 133). I'll be having a go at increasing that later on to see what I can really get out of it!

proze (Apr 23, 2001 04:40 p.m.):
bump..

that seems to be yer problem.

Click to expand...

There are two versions of the patch, 1.0 and 1.4. 1.4 seems to cause overheating.

I'm waiting for an official BIOS release, because of a previosly bad flash... Now running WZ.

Thanks for that last bit of, er.......advice.

I now have it running at 1400Mhz, the load temp is a bit high for my liking, 43 degrees C. That is with the bog standard M/B temperature probe underneath the CPU, so I reckon the true value will be a bit higher.

Does anyone think it's safe to try much higher than this? Not that I'm being greedy, of course

Check my sig for my temps. Fiddling with direction of airflow of the heatsink can make a nice difference. My temps don't rise that aggressively anymore, but on the downside, they don't so fast drop either...
<forgot a word>

Use needle nose pliers to save your fingers!!!