ASUS A7V266-E Overclocking Problem

[J_French]

Hi,

I'm having a lot of difficulty in overclocking my ASUS A7V266-E/Athlon XP 2100+ based system. Actually this machine is overclocking quite smoothly BUT the computer will not POST again on a 'cold boot' with ANY overclocked or manually set FSB speed setting other than the 1.72 ghz/133 mhz FSB nominal setting for the Athlon XP 2100+.

Even if I UNDERCLOCK the board at the 100 mhz FSB 'safe mode' setting, this computer will not POST again after a powerdown. Only the nominal setting for the Athlon XP 2100+ of 1.72 ghz/133 mhz FSB will allow the computer to POST on cold boot.

Strangely, I can manually set all kinds of FSB speeds and reboot with the new setting just fine as long as I don't power off the machine. As I write this message I have my computer overclocked to 140 mhz FSB and 1.82 Ghz CPU. Everything is rock stable, I can run Flight Simulator 2002, America's Army, Raven Shield, any CPU intensive application I can think of and nothing flinches one single bit. I can reboot all day and all night without a snag - BUT - if I powerdown completely and do a cold boot it will hang on POST again. Very weird.

Only resetting the nominal FSB speed again will allow a cold POST, no other setting under or over this will POST on cold powerup.

My CPU specs:

CPU: AMD AthlonXP 2100+
Code Name: Thoroughbred
Voltage: 1.68 v
Family: 6
Model: 8
Stepping: 1
Ext. Family: 7
Ext. Model: 8
Revision: B0

My ASUS Mainboard specs:

Model: A7V266-E
BIos: 1015e beta
Mb revision: 1.07

Major Components of my System:

512 MB Kingston PC2100 DDR memory
SBLive! Value 128 PCI soundcard
Gainward Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x video card
Antek 400 watt ATX 2.01 Power Suppy

I am using a Thermaltake Orb Heatsink with silicon free silver type thermal paste, intake and exhaust fans in my case tower, and am maintaining excellent CPU temps when overclocked. Heat is not a problem obviously.

I have tried BIOS versions 1011 and currently, 1015E beta, no difference in the two regarding this issue. I have also tried boosting the CPU core voltage but this has no effect either. This really seems like a defective EPROM chip at this point, I'm not sure.

I would greatly appreciate any advise or anysight anyone might have on this issue, thanks a lot!

 

[WarriorII]

hmmm, curious.

Mine does that too.
Sys spec's are similar (have xp1600 pally)

gave up on tho.

 

[D $hady]

Does it only reset the CPU speed on a cold boot? If everything gets reset maybe a bad CMOS battery? If not, I'll dig around and see if I can find anything helpful.

Edit: Another possibility...

Quoted from a7vtroubleshooting.com

There is an error in the manual regarding the CMOS memory reset jumper (CLR_RTC):

It should read To clear, place a jumper on it, in normal operation DON'T place a jumper on it.The manual tells it the other way round (To clear take off jumper, normal is with jumper) I repeat: DO NOT place a jumper there during normal operation, this might damage your mainboard! In the forum there were quite a few posts about boards loosing date and settings after having been run with that jumper in place.

-- Dave

 

[J_French]

CMOS Reset

I hate to admit it but I did at one time reset the CMOS with the jumper exactly the wrong way as you mentioned. There was a misprint in the motherboard manual specifying the exact wrong way to clear the CMOS! My machine would not boot after clearing CMOS and I finally realized that I had to remove the reset jumper again to get it to POST. After that it POSTED and I reconfigured everything again without any problem. I didn't think anything was damaged as I had no problems after that. It could definitely be an issue though with the symptoms I now have.

At this time the computer will hang from a COLD boot when overclocked and the only way to remedy this is to turn off the rocker switch on the power supply. After switching power back on the computer POSTs and goes into BIOS automatically with a 'safe' FSB setting of 100mhz. My computer will again hang on hot reboot (not a poweroff) if I attempt to boot from here with a 'safe' BIOS mode setting. The strange thing is that only the nominal Athlon XP 2100+ setting of 1.72 ghz / 133 FSB will allow POST on a cold reboot - no other setting under or over this will work.

After POSTing successfully and booting up into Windows XP with the nominal FSB setting as mentioned above, I can now reboot, go into BIOS, overclock, reboot, POST, and go into Windows and do anything I want, it's rock stable. I can reboot again all day long and no problemo, system will retain overclocked FSB settings and remain super stable under any environment. Now then if I power down completely by soft off and then do a cold boot, no POST. I have to start the whole process again.

Whatever this issue is it's certered around the BIOS and a complete powered-off state. I am running two hard drives and I've thought about the power supply perhaps being an issue on cold boot with the drives spinning up from zero in that condition but this would not account for the 'safe' FSB setting of 100mhz hanging on cold POST as welll.

This one has me scratching my head

Thanks for you insight and help!!!!

 

[sanford1]

That's what this board does by default as a safety measure. AFAIK, there is no way around it. Just use the normal "soft off", where the green LED stays on.

 

[J_French]

Power off method

Hi,

"Soft off" is the normal way I do shut down. The hang on POST will still occur. The only way I can reset everything after a hang on POST is to shut off the power supply with the rocker switch and start back from the beginning.

Thanks for you help though