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Barton 2500 and NF7-S up and running, comments and questions>>

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eeglot

Member
Joined
Jul 18, 2002
Well it was a little rough start.but I got it up here are the points and questions I have:

First off here is the new setup:
Barton 2500
Abit NF7-S
Corsair XMS pc3200 512 MB (1 stick) 6-2-2-2, (optimal settings in BIOS for now)
Vantec Aeroflow HSF
Antec TRue Power 430 watt
Tyan Tachyon 9700 Pro
Maxtor Diamond Max 7200 RPM 75 GB
Quantum Fireball 30 GB
Decent case cooling, ALum case, 80mm intake, twin 80mm exhaust

1. Corsair XMS would not let the machine post at first with the BIOS that was in it. I upgraded to 16, and it solved the problem.

2. Windows would not boot off the HD. I had a fairly new previous clean copy of XP Proff. installed that was running on my old KR7A 266 and XP 2100 setup. Windows did not like this new NF7 Barton setup, and refused to load. I tried all different BIOS and hardware settings, and concluded that it was not a hardware problem, and that possibly it was a Windows drivers issue, not recognizing the new hardware. I know that ultimately you always should do a fresh install with a MB upgrade, but this was fairly new,a nd I didnt want to format again. So I had to end up booting off the Windows CD,a nd chose to repair the XP ccopy I had on the drive. THis worked fine. Just confused as to why this would have happened. Any insight?

3. Got all the drivers loaded, 3.2 catalyst, and current Nforce drivers, everything looking good so far,a dn seems very fast in windows anyway.

4. Burn in..it booted up fine at 100 X 5 with 1.8 Vcore. Ran 3D Mark all night, no problems. according to BIOS, and Winbond, temps never go above 37 degrees C, even under load. I am still wondering if thats accurate. The Vantec Aeroflow got great reviews, but I am still skeptical about the fact that the CPU temp has not gone above 40. and idle temp and load temps are the same, it never seems to come off 37 C.??? SO I give it a break,a nd try 1.82 volts, it runs for about an hour and crashes, still at 100 X 5. I up the DRAM voltage to 2.7, adn this seems to help, but still crashes. TEmps are still the same, as reported. Am I doing the right thing here by upping the ram voltage as well? For some reason it does not like 1.82 Vcore????

5. I am still a little confused regarding the PCI FSB ratio, and how its spelled out in this BIOS. Does this NF7-S have a locked PCI bus, that is seperate, and doesnt get overclocked?? The CPU FSB/DRAM ratio in Softmenu3, I left at "by SPD". It seems that if I put it to "auto" the machine will boot with 333 Mhz Ram speed, and 400 Mhz, when its set to "by SPD". Is there a certain ratio other than these I should eventually be using? (ie 5/4, 5/5 6/4).
AT stock settings the Barton boots up at 166X11.5.
Also should I enable CPU interface to allow overclocking?
My eventual goal with this setup is to just do a 180 FSB X 10.5 or something like that, modest overclock. I am not looking to break and records. I just want to understand better how this BIOS works. I understand some theory, but I get in this BIOS and I am lost as to what settings I need to do.

6. whats the easiest way to see if I am running USB 2.0? I dont see any thing listed in the device manager. I do have SP1 installed now.

You Pros out there with NF7 boards, please help me out, and help me understand the BIOS better, and see if you can answer those questions I had:

-crashes with 3DMark at 1.82 Vcore, yet temps still show 37 degrees. 1.8 Vcore will run all night.
-XP not booting from old KR7A setup
-better understanding of the BIOS in the NF7-S, and FSB PCI bus ratio, and how it relates to CPU FSB, and what settings may be best for my 180 FSB goal, and possibly higher, some day down the road.

Thanks for the help in advance.
 
so r u running @ 100mhz fsb and 200mhz memory? (400mhz ddr)?? or r u running everything @ 100mhz synchronous?

since u said upping the dram voltage to 2.7 helps, I would say look at the ram first, especially if u r running @ 200mhz. Get memtest86 and run it for 10-20 passes to see if there's any errors.
 
well, the xp one is the way it was designed, it will always crash like that when yo do a mobo level upgrade. its to prevent casual copying of thier os, you took care of it, so lets work on the other problems. if you have your ram and chip running in sync at 100fsb, there is no reason to need ram voltage increase so that shouldnt have helped, but thats only if you are running sync. you may want to try a higheer speed to burn in, maby 8 or 10 by 100 as some chips just act funny at such a low speed as 500mhz. your barton is new and it may just not like more than 1.8vcore, the newest 1700+ are aslo sometimes having this problem. your board should have a pci lock somewhere in the bios, i dont have an nf7 but im thinking thats the nforce2 board right? you could probably find much good information about the bios in the abit mobo section, and with xms3200 ram and a nforce2 board 200-210fsb is also an easy goal, very doable
 
ok thats where I am confused as well, where is the option for synchronous?
yes it is booting up DDR 400

........calling from a deep hole..........heeeeellllp:D

sorry you all have to spell it out to me

I will try a little faster speed for burn in
 
all nforce2 mobos have the pci locked so u shouldn't worry about that...

The pci/fsb ratio can be found in softIII menu in the bios and can has values from 3/3 (3/4, 3/5, 3/6-4/3, 4/4, 4/5 etc.) untill 6/6
 
sorry forgot to add that the values 3/3 4/4 5/5 and 6/6 are the same and mean that u are running synchronous!
 
I would deff. do a new install of windows first and forewmost...it's 1 hour well spent....after this I would run my ram in synch(1:1) for the best resaults......as for the vcore...I was able to get to 2.3 gHz with ddr2700ram and 1 gig of it runnen at 185 fsb with the vcore stable at 1.8.....so with your ram....it should be GREAT at 1.8 vCore runnen at say even 12.5 multiplyer and a 200fsb....thats oobviously a theory....but I would think you should be preaty stavble at this setup......:D:D:D
 
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