[jookyone]

As per Legend911's post on my 8k7a issue a few days ago, my system is somehwat unstable under normal operating conditions (when idle), but when under heavy load (in games, etc or when using a higher end graphics card) it crashes/freezes. For whatever reason, i had overlooked checking my vcore and vagp settings because i had never changed them, never even attempted overclocking because i didn't yet have the proper cooling for it. I have an athlon 1.4GHz that runs with a vcore of 1.81v --as i understand this is way too high for a non-overclocked 1.4 athlon, not to mention my vagp is set at 3.41v, again an abnormally high setting, particularly for a standard diamond viper v770 tnt2 card (the geforce 2 gts i have causes system to crash sometimes, ALWAYS in games). I checked the jumpers on the mobo and they are on default (J2 1-0) so i can't understand why the vcore is so high. In the manual, it shows that the vcore/vagp can be set in BIOS, but in my BIOS it is greyed out, and i have the most recent version from the epox site. Anyone have any suggestions, bc i am almost certain that this is what is causing my system to be unstable. Thanks ahead of time any input,
-jookyone

[OnDborder]

Welcome to the forum!


No, the vcore, vdimm, and vagp have jumpers on the motherboard. You have to set them manually.

[WyrmMaster]

There is no jumper for vagp on that board. The only way to change it is through a hardware mod. The vcore and vdimm however do have jumpers. And 1.81v is standard for a Thunderbird, those things ran HOT. As for your crashing problem, it could be an overheating problem, try running with the side panel off and a room fan blowing into the case, just to test it. If that doesnt fix it chance are its something else. Could be a software problem even.

[Wazer]

I just posted this to another person on an 8k7a thread. Its a very common issue. guys at aoa forums and ambmb.com have all had this issue. Hope this answers some of your questions.

The Problem has to do with the bad board design and sometimes caps going bad. I have two of these boards sitting in my closet right now because they are to much of a pain in the arse to work with. They both ran fine for about a year then they started getting very pickey on video card. In fact i could not get my gf3 or 8500 to work on the board. I did however get an old voodoo5500 to work (most likely because of the extra power on the card) and all pci cards to work. The systems would still hard crash after being on for awhile.

There are only a few things i can suggest.

1. Buy a very good power supply. PC Power and Cooling or Sparkle (fortron source) are very good for this board.

2. Get a crapy pci video card and use it as a file server, your still gonna have to get a good power supply though.

3. Put it in the closet

4. Bitch to epox about bad design.

5. Go buy a 8rda+ from newegg for 85 bucks

These boards were netorious for being power supply pickey. In fact my 300w sparkle worked better with this board than my true power 430 antec supply. Whats really bad is the 300w supply i had finally took a dump after being abused and having the 5v pots cranked up.

Its really sad cause these boards are really nice...too nice to be sitting in my closet.

Wazer

[jookyone]

The temporary solution i found is i lowered the fsb setting from 133 to 100, sucks because i can only run at 1.05 instead of 1.4, but i installed my geforce 2 gts and it runs like a charm now, 105F under full load(i have lots of fans in my beastly antec case). So from this i would guess the problem was overheating, causing my system to be unstable, and when in a game that requires heavy graphics, to freeze and crash. Going to pop in my roommate's athlon XP 1600+, which has a much lower vcore than the tbird, and see how that goes. This all confused me because i have read so many places that the 8k7a was a great and very stable board for overclocking, which is one of the main reasons i bought it. But even if this does work i plan on buying an antec truepower 420W power supply..bc eventually i will be planning on getting a KT400 chipset mobo, or hold out until the opteron comes out
Thanks for your comments guys, i appreciate your input.
Take it easy,
jookyone