Anyone with a Epox 8KTA3 able to get this thing to run at the 133MHz bus? Just to make sure my CPU wasn't the problem I underclocked it all the way to 550MHz and then upped it to 133MHz, and allI get is a black screen. Heck just to get any bus speeds options past 120MHz, I have to go back two bios updates to the very first one. This board is making me very angry! =( I'm using a 1.2GHz T-bird (that I unlocked) and 256MB Corsair CAS3 PC133. Any ideas?
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Epox 8KTA3 problem
- Thread starter G3DN
- Start date
T
Tom
Guest
YOU NEED TO REMOVE A JUMPER TO GET IT TO WORK AT 133 OR FASTER LOOK FOR IT! mine will be here on monday keep me updated
If you are already aware of the JP5 to set the FSB from 100+ to 133+, you should also be aware that the 8KTA3 may have another issue to tackle.
Apparently, because there are no multiplier dip switches on the board itself, the board's initial boot state is from the default settings on the CPU. This means that if the default multiplier for, say, an 800 MHz Duron is 8x100, when you switch JP5 to 133 the machine will try to boot, just briefly, at 8x133 before switching to the bios settings. If your chip won't do that (and most Duron 800s won't), then it never gets to the bios settings and you will not post until JP5 is lowered back to 100 MHz.
Epox is aware of the issue, but quite frankly without something to shortcircuit the default multiplier on the CPU like a dip switch such as on the A7V133, we may be left either running at 100 MHz FSB or altering the L3 and L6 bridges on the CPU to lower the default multiplier. This is particularly tricky as it involved severing bridges, which many people, including myself, have never done before. Some people apparently have modified the motherboard itself, also not for the casual overclocker.
T-Birds @ 1.2 may not have this problem, although noone is quite sure why. There is speculation that 1.2s have some additional flexibility in their bridge settings to make the jump from 100 to 133.
Apparently, because there are no multiplier dip switches on the board itself, the board's initial boot state is from the default settings on the CPU. This means that if the default multiplier for, say, an 800 MHz Duron is 8x100, when you switch JP5 to 133 the machine will try to boot, just briefly, at 8x133 before switching to the bios settings. If your chip won't do that (and most Duron 800s won't), then it never gets to the bios settings and you will not post until JP5 is lowered back to 100 MHz.
Epox is aware of the issue, but quite frankly without something to shortcircuit the default multiplier on the CPU like a dip switch such as on the A7V133, we may be left either running at 100 MHz FSB or altering the L3 and L6 bridges on the CPU to lower the default multiplier. This is particularly tricky as it involved severing bridges, which many people, including myself, have never done before. Some people apparently have modified the motherboard itself, also not for the casual overclocker.
T-Birds @ 1.2 may not have this problem, although noone is quite sure why. There is speculation that 1.2s have some additional flexibility in their bridge settings to make the jump from 100 to 133.
- Thread Starter
- #4
yea I'm pretty sure your right about everything. My 1.2GHz T-Bird won't make the jump to 133MHz on my Epox 8KTA3, and I doubt it will on the Abit KT7A-Raid I;m going to install today. It seems a lot of recent 1.2GHz T-Birds are unlocked and don't seem to have a problem making the jump to 133MHz. Even though I only bought my T-Bird like a week ago, I wasn't lucky enough to get one that's not unlocked already. I hope my new Abit board at least solves my problem of my computer crashing every time I install something from a CD-ROM or transfer a large file from one hard drive to another. I can live with 1.2GHz at 100Mhz bus as long as my system is stable...this crashing is BS! If I can't solve my problem, I think I might just sell everything and just go back to Intel...I may have to pay more, but at least I know I'll have a stable system. =(
I don't know how the KT7A works. I know the A7V133 gets around the 8KTA3 problem by having dip switches on the board that set the initial boot state rather than reading them off the CPU.
When i reformatted by hard drive to upgrade my mobo, I had a lot of problems with lock-ups when transferring files from the CD-Rom drive. Turns out that even though I believe the drive should support DMA transfers, it crashes when the DMA option is turned on. So I had to turn it off and it was working fine. Then it started happening again a day or two after I turned DMA off, but it turns out when you install a new version of the VIA all-in-one (I installed the 1.28(a) version), the installation can switch DMA to 'on' and you don't even know unless you check the device properties again.
Hope you get it worked out, and I hope Epox can figure out a fix. I am not looking forward to manually altering my L3 and L6 bridges.
When i reformatted by hard drive to upgrade my mobo, I had a lot of problems with lock-ups when transferring files from the CD-Rom drive. Turns out that even though I believe the drive should support DMA transfers, it crashes when the DMA option is turned on. So I had to turn it off and it was working fine. Then it started happening again a day or two after I turned DMA off, but it turns out when you install a new version of the VIA all-in-one (I installed the 1.28(a) version), the installation can switch DMA to 'on' and you don't even know unless you check the device properties again.
Hope you get it worked out, and I hope Epox can figure out a fix. I am not looking forward to manually altering my L3 and L6 bridges.
- Thread Starter
- #6
The Abit board doesn't have jumpers on the board, so I doubt it will help my problem with 133Mhz bus. If I would have know that a motherboard with jumpers would solve my problem, I would have got the Asus board. That sucks you have to disable DMA...if I do that my DVD movie play back is choppy and everything else is slower...this is BS that we have to diable DMA just to keep our motherboard chipset from crashing our computer's. VIA needs to fix this problem, and supply us all with replacement motherboards.
- Thread Starter
- #8
I got a Abit KT7A-Raid today...so I ripped out that POS Epox board and guess what? The dang thing works at 133MHz finally! =) I also got a stick of Micron CAS2 256MB PC133 today...I tried the stick in the Epox board to see if it would help and it didn't. Any way, going from CAS3 to CAS2 memory, and going from the 100MHz bus to the 133MHz bus I was able to increase my Quake3 Team Arena scores 20 FPS! That's with leaving the CPU at 1.2GHz. I haven't tried enabling DMA yet to see if my IDE devices will crash like they did on my Epox board...I'm going to test that out tonight..I'm also going to see how far I can push the FSB now that I've hit 133. Abit rocks!!! =)
- Thread Starter
- #9
Well after about an hour of testing I haven't been able to make my system crash when DMA is enabled with my Abit board. Also I can run at the 145MHz bus at CAS2, and 150 at CAS3...I can almost load windows at 1,333MHz...my stable clock speed is somewhere in between 1,266 and 1,333MHz....I'm guessing I can run fine at 1.3GHz. I'll just have to find the sweet spot with more testing. I'm a very happy camper now! =) Never again will I leave the safe fold of Abit.
T
Tom
Guest
i got my 850 thunderbird @ 1015 145x7 no problem right from the start with m 8KTA3 DMA is on and i have had NO problems booting at 133. One thing i did notice was the bios revision that my board came with was not the original one but the 2nd one and the multiplier wat 5.5 when i 1st booted my board or if i clear the cmos with the jumper so maybe the problems were fixed on the Epox boards
Here's how I solved the problem. I have a duron 700 that also wouldn't
boot when I switched the jumper to 133. What I did is boot at the 100 MHz
setting, set the multiplier to 5.5, and then switched the jumper and booted
at 133. From here you can set the mult. to whatever you want. The bad thing
is, when you go to high and it doesn't boot again, you have to do the jumper
switch again. Keep your case off for a while until you're satisfied! I've gotten
mine up to 933 now so I'm rather pleased.
boot when I switched the jumper to 133. What I did is boot at the 100 MHz
setting, set the multiplier to 5.5, and then switched the jumper and booted
at 133. From here you can set the mult. to whatever you want. The bad thing
is, when you go to high and it doesn't boot again, you have to do the jumper
switch again. Keep your case off for a while until you're satisfied! I've gotten
mine up to 933 now so I'm rather pleased.
