Abit KT7A

I just got an Abit KT7A with a 1.1ghz Athlon. When I boot it says it's an 850mhz chip. I go into the bios and change it to 1.1ghz. I reboot and nothing comes on the screen. I blank my CCMOS and then boot and it's back to 850mhz. Did I just get screw or something?

what settings are you using to get 1.1 ghz and how are you exiting the bios ?

When I just do auto it does this. When I set the multiplier to 8.5 and the clock to 130/32 it does this.

I tried changing the core voltage to 1.8 instead of 1.75. And the I/O voltage from 3.4 to 3.5 and that seams to work. But then in the middle of formatting my drive it just shut off. Is my heat sink/fan not good enough? It's only on for about 4 min.

I use a 1.85 v core voltage on my Abit KT7A-R and 3.4 I/O otherwise it is unstable, I also had the same situation when my psu was not pushing out enough power ( use a minimum of a good 300 w )

perhaps its a power situation such as the one I experienced, are your temps ok ?

I'm at work right now so I can't test it, but I was thinking that might be it. I'll try your power settings when I get home. I hope it's not a crappy power supply. I know it's a 300W, but I don' t know how good of one it is.

it could be the power supply but of course i have a crappy 300W pSU and it works

I don't think it's a heat problem. The longest it's stayed running is when I boot with a win98 boot disk and 17% formatting a 40 gig hard drive. Which is about 4 min. I've never owned an AMD but I'd think they don't heat up that quickly.

If teh hsf isn't sitting on the proc correctly it can heat up in a matter of seconds. Not enough to kill it, but enough to cause errors. What kind of heatsink are you using? Are you using thermal paste? What are the temps in bios?

Fiz

PolyPill (Jul 10, 2001 06:48 p.m.):
I don't think it's a heat problem. The longest it's stayed running is when I boot with a win98 boot disk and 17% formatting a 40 gig hard drive. Which is about 4 min. I've never owned an AMD but I'd think they don't heat up that quickly.

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It actually only takes about 30 sec to get too hot. AMD chips get hot fast. With a improperly seated HSF it could be damaged by the time you get to the windows logon screen....

I think it is over heating. I order a mobo cpu combo and it came with a head sink and fan. It's a decent sized heat sink with a rather small fan, but I assumed they wouldn't sell something like that if it wasn't good enough.

I've got it just sitting in the bios temp screen and it's rising rather fast, it was at 45C then just crashed, I'm assuming that way too hot.

I may have read the article wrong because im half asleep rightnow but have you tried 8.5x133..the stock speed..Cause the KT7a cant detect 133 fsb..it has to be set...also try the "K7_OPTimal Clock" I think thats it..but set it to optimal. Also a 300 watt power supply shoudl easily power that cpu. ist when you get near 1.3 I have heard that it becomes an issue..especialy with high Vcore. Also I thought raiseing I/o voltage causes instability?
Also if you have the "ww" version of the BIOS you wont have the K7_Clock" option thing. Its under chipset features above CPU to PCI buffer.

*edit*
ALso the temp riseing in the BIOs seems to be perfectly normal..reGaurdless of setup and bios version.

Man I cant read what Im typeing my eyes are so bloodshot.
Anyway hope this helps. TT120 should be around..he knows this board well...

Hey cool everythinsg gettin all fuzzy *falls face first into his keyboard*

I did what Angry said and it seams to be working although it hasn't been running long enough yet. I'm starting to think about cpu temps and I'm wondering how hot is too hot for an AMD? This is a budget PC so the case doesn't look like it has a very good air flow. Not even a vent in back for a fan. I've been running with the sides off because I just put it together today. I thought an alarm went off if the cpu was too hot.

Change that. It just crashed again. Blah!! It keeps crashing at 45C So I'd think that's too hot. Time for a fan upgrade?

Ok let me jump in just a bit to help out and share my experiences. Temperature wise I would stay at 50 degress fahrenheit or less under full load and less if you can do it to increase the life of the chip. I suggest getting the best HSF you can buy perhaps a Swiftech MC-462A with a Delta Fan is a really good choice this HSF combo is not cheap and I will say that right off the bat. You can find others that will do a good job cheapers. Also lots of case cooling as well. And to affect the CPU itself is a mod to the Bios itself. here is the link and read it all to understand it throughly and your Idle CPU temp will drop up to 10C or more and this refers specifcially to your idle temp. I can get my idle temp down to system temperature from full load in about 1 or 2 min or less and Durons are harder to cool then Athlons because of the smaller die size the Duron have.


here is the link

If you have any questions I am fairly well versed in this mod as me and AMDGuy discussed it out in another thread dealing with the the beta bios version 3Rb01-03.and bios version "WW"you have to have windows installed to use this mod. But its a very nice 1 to help you cool things down. As I use it and it works. Hope this helps some..

Maestro

If 50 isn't bad, why is this thing crashing at 45? I got another fan on this thing now, just a temp fix, but now it does a ram check and just sits there. I put the speed back down to 850 and it's working again. Lets see if it crashes now.

Crashed at 850 with a 2nd fan and I'm starting to get really pissed off.

Also when it crashed I have a wait a while to power it up and it has to be unplugged.

*bump* I really need this fixed today.

PolyPill (Jul 11, 2001 09:41 a.m.):
*bump* I really need this fixed today.

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It's possible that you've got a bad chip. I'd send it back and get another one to try. If it bombs then start looking at cooling. 45C should be ok. It's a little on the high side but not high enough to cause problems.

I read on an earlier post that some KT7 boards have a problem or something. Is there any way I can determin whether it's the board or the cpu?

If you know someone with a socket a board, you could ask to test your chip in their board and vice versa.

Also, for the PCI register 52 thing, you can do it in Linux too. MUCH easier than in Windows, just use the pciutils package. I'd post the proper command for doing that, but as my linux setup is still screwed up, I can't

It doesn't run long enough to get an OS installed. Also the comp isn't for me and I'd think he wouldn't want linux.

Correction, I got windows 98 installed, only crashed twice while installing. In windows when it crashes it doesn't shutdown. It just freezes.

Ok, what FSB and Multipier are you running? The default for the KT7a is 100.
100*8.5=850
133*8.5=1130
130 is an odd speed to run and the board just might not like that speed.

45C is a little high for idle temp, but not unreasonable. AMD had a press release a while ago that said that without a heatsink their processors will fry in under 7 seconds. I also do not think heat is your problem. It might be a lot of things causing instablity. Maybe it is memory. Someone suggested testing the processor in another motherboard. This is a good idea.