Abit TH7II Owners - Question about Vcore

[JetMech]

TC, are you having any problems with the floppy drive. Glimmer was trying to get info in another thread because he couldn't get any floppy to operate on his board. Someone else (sorry can't find the thread to get the name) gave him a link to the Abit web site and there it's apparent they know about that prob. The configuration of the ASUS P4t board is supposedly to compensate for some little electron gremlins caused by all that memory bandwith. I'm not dong a good job describing this because I'm rushing to get ready for work but the point I'm trying to make is that there may be some design issues with that board at very high clocks. On the videocard prob, have you checked Gainward for 2k drivers?

 

[TC]

No insult taken. I have checked just about everything I can think of. Bios settings look good. 400 watt P4 ready power supply should be okay - worked fine for the P4T. Doesn't seem to be any shorting. I should have restated my boot problem. It will cold boot and go through post, and when it should be loading the OS it just goes to a blank screen. If I hit reset it posts again and loads on the second try. It's not like it's completely dead on a cold boot. On the video I did reload windows from scratch and try the gainward drivers for 2k. Funny how everything is perfectly fine until I reboot immediately following video driver install. Then it comes up with vertical bars as though the newly loaded drivers screwed something up. The 423 pin 1.7 gig chip I have overclocks much better. It was almost 100% stable at 2100. This new chip and board (1.7 gig also) does not even post beyond 2040. I used the oem heatsink for both setups. Last but not least, no floppy problems whatsoever - can't offer any advice for glimmer. I'm still using the board, but with a plain jane ati pci video card. I may swap in a asus 6800 card just to see what happens with another agp card. I wouldn't call this a nightmare, but certainly appears to have some kinks that hopefully with be fixed with some bios updates.

 

[Hyperfish]

TC, are you having any problems with the floppy drive. Glimmer was trying to get info in another thread because he couldn't get any floppy to operate on his board. Someone else (sorry can't find the thread to get the name) gave him a link to the Abit web site and there it's apparent they know about that prob. The configuration of the ASUS P4t board is supposedly to compensate for some little electron gremlins caused by all that memory bandwith. I'm not dong a good job describing this because I'm rushing to get ready for work but the point I'm trying to make is that there may be some design issues with that board at very high clocks. On the videocard prob, have you checked Gainward for 2k drivers?

Wesley-

Have your friend try:

A. Cutting/grinding the tab off the floppy cable & flipping it.

B. "Hot" plugging the cable during POST.

I went through three boards on the last TH7II system I built.

Board #1 ran hot as he**, idling at 36'C-38'C in an Antec SX1030B, 2 x 80mm intakes, 2 x 80mm exhaust fans, Enermax 431W PSU.
The board died after 3 days.

That same case/PSU runs my Asus P4T/1.7GHz @ 2040MHz, board temp is 30'C-32'C.

Board #2 had a bad floppy controller.

Board #3 exhibted the same problems, floppy detected in BIOS, not in OS.
Light remained lit at all times, if I flipped the cable (after grinding off the tab) it wasn't detected.

I finally "hot" plugged out of frustration during POST with a known bad floppy in it.

It now works, and the cable is actually in the connector as it should be, minus the tab.

This board also runs at 32'C to 34'C using the identical components & setup as board #1.

Weird...

 

[Hyperfish]

No insult taken. I have checked just about everything I can think of. Bios settings look good. 400 watt P4 ready power supply should be okay - worked fine for the P4T. Doesn't seem to be any shorting. I should have restated my boot problem. It will cold boot and go through post, and when it should be loading the OS it just goes to a blank screen. If I hit reset it posts again and loads on the second try. It's not like it's completely dead on a cold boot. On the video I did reload windows from scratch and try the gainward drivers for 2k. Funny how everything is perfectly fine until I reboot immediately following video driver install. Then it comes up with vertical bars as though the newly loaded drivers screwed something up. The 423 pin 1.7 gig chip I have overclocks much better. It was almost 100% stable at 2100. This new chip and board (1.7 gig also) does not even post beyond 2040. I used the oem heatsink for both setups. Last but not least, no floppy problems whatsoever - can't offer any advice for glimmer. I'm still using the board, but with a plain jane ati pci video card. I may swap in a asus 6800 card just to see what happens with another agp card. I wouldn't call this a nightmare, but certainly appears to have some kinks that hopefully with be fixed with some bios updates.

TC-

See my reply above.

IMHO, I would RMA that board.

I'm VERY disappointed in the lack of QC on the TH7/TH7II boards.

I've built 12 systems using the Asus P4T, have nver[/b[ had a single problem or cause for RMA.

The P4T is faster in every benchmark AND seat of the pants feel, particularly PCI and memory throughtput...

 

[TC]

TC-

See my reply above.

IMHO, I would RMA that board.

I'm VERY disappointed in the lack of QC on the TH7/TH7II boards.

I've built 12 systems using the Asus P4T, have nver[/b[ had a single problem or cause for RMA.

The P4T is faster in every benchmark AND seat of the pants feel, particularly PCI and memory throughtput...

What would you suggest getting for a replacement s-478 i850 right now? Or just try another abit?

 

[Ebola]

i think you should rma it and get a board from a different manufacturer unless abit actually is going to fix it and relatively soon. thats sad. i like abit boards too.

 

[TC]

Unfortunately this appears to be the only overclocking friendly s-478 i850 board. I would try an Asus - but it's i845 - yuck.

 

[JetMech]

Unfortunately this appears to be the only overclocking friendly s-478 i850 board. I would try an Asus - but it's i845 - yuck.

You're in the same boat I was in when I started building my P4. You're slightly ahead of the technology motherboardwise. Could get expensive. Whatever ASUS comes up with will have a premium price tag. I spent $230.00 for my P4T.

 

[JetMech]

No insult taken. I have checked just about everything I can think of. Bios settings look good. 400 watt P4 ready power supply should be okay - worked fine for the P4T. Doesn't seem to be any shorting. I should have restated my boot problem. It will cold boot and go through post, and when it should be loading the OS it just goes to a blank screen. If I hit reset it posts again and loads on the second try. It's not like it's completely dead on a cold boot. On the video I did reload windows from scratch and try the gainward drivers for 2k. Funny how everything is perfectly fine until I reboot immediately following video driver install. Then it comes up with vertical bars as though the newly loaded drivers screwed something up. The 423 pin 1.7 gig chip I have overclocks much better. It was almost 100% stable at 2100. This new chip and board (1.7 gig also) does not even post beyond 2040. I used the oem heatsink for both setups. Last but not least, no floppy problems whatsoever - can't offer any advice for glimmer. I'm still using the board, but with a plain jane ati pci video card. I may swap in a asus 6800 card just to see what happens with another agp card. I wouldn't call this a nightmare, but certainly appears to have some kinks that hopefully with be fixed with some bios updates.

Is Win 2k installing drivers upon detection of the video card and if so are you reverting to standard vga before installing new drivers. Gainwards drivers may be modified like Diamond used to do. I couldn't upgrade to a geforce2 mx because my system held remnants of diamonds TNT2 drivers. Just a thought.

 

[Hyperfish]

What would you suggest getting for a replacement s-478 i850 right now? Or just try another abit?

TC-

Been waiting for vendors to get this: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1001404151

Unfortunately, it does appear to be a 4 layer design:
http://www.asus.co.jp/Whatsnew/whatsnew2109.html#p4t-e