Help with A7M266 Mobo and Athlon 1.4 Chip

[Eil Atan]

I just bought a new system that I am putting together. I have experience putting together systems from scratch but not with new motherboards or with overclocking. From what I can tell the A7M won't go above 1.33 Ghz. Any tips on running a 1.4 T-Bird on this motherboard?

 

[Flash]

Since you can't adjust the cpu multiplier, you can only overclock the A7M266 by raising the FSB speed. That's not really a bad thing, since you get higher overall performance with higher FSB as opposed to higher multipliers.

First, you have to set all the jumpers on the board to allow adjustment of the FSB in bios. I don't have my manual with me, so I can't be more specific--sorry. Second, you have to enter the advanced section of the bios utility and set the FSB to "user define". Then click on the FSB setting and a box will pop up giving you the option to increase the FSB by 1mhz. Keep doing this until you get to where you want to go.

Before you try this make sure you have a top-rated heatsink/fan, like the Glaciator, etc. (check the reviews on this site). Assuming that you also have good case ventilation, and your peripherals and memory can handle it, you should be able to run a FSB of around 150mhz for a total speed of around 1.6ghz. Oh yeah, you'll probably also need to adjust the jumpers on the board to raise the voltage to 1.85. The voltage jumper is in the corner by PCI slot 1. You'll have to remove any PCI cards from that slot to get to the jumpers, and even then tweazers will be a big help.

A word of warning: if you go too high the board may not be able to post. If that happens clear the cmos (see manual around p. 57--set jumper near battery), then reset all the jumpers to default and 100mhz FSB.

Good luck.

 

[toomnymods]

Dear eli:
Well I have good news and bad news.. The bad news is this motherboard isn't fully overclockable (unless you wanna attempt a resistor and dipswitch modification) as I found out after I bought mine, although it perferms superbly also being the top ranked ddr motherboard the only drawback is no damn cpu multiplier.. Well I currently have a 1.40 ghz amd chip in with the 266fsb ( using the jumper free mode.. should auto detect processor ) so I know this board can handle it as I have even overclocked it up to 1.53 ghz just by messing with the fsb. I Should be able to easily get 1600 to 1650 out of this chip if i just had the multiplier. The only things that will limit your overclocking ability on this baord will be your pci cards and your power supply and a good processor heatsink & fan Get a Swiftech 462-A rev.1 or a Glaciator Both of these will get your temps like down below 90f mine sits at 87 f at idle and right at 97f running Seti.. Make sure you unlock the L7 bridges on ur processor to get that extra amount of voltage to your processor (mines sitting at 1.89vcore just by doing this and it will make higher overclocking speeds more achievable and stable.. just take small steps with your fsb.. Also don't overclock by the jumpers set everything in the default jumper mode, and overclock by the bios. Last note I started out with samsung chips and they suck for overclcoking only got mine up to 142mhz stable and my 512mb of micron memory right now is stable at 146 rock solid running seti 24/7 Should be able to get above 150 fsb but I think my soundcard or my modem is keeping me from achieving this.. Hope this info helps and doesn't confuse you repost back if you have any more questions

System stats:
Asus A7m266
Amd 1.40ghz AYJHA week 11 w/ 266fsb Overclocked to 1532 using 146x10.5 Unlocked L1 (factory unlocked) & L7 bridges @1.89Vcore
Swiftech 462 -A Rev.1 cooler
Enermax 451 watt Power supply
512mb pc2100 ddrsdram (micron) cas2/2t/2t
Ibm Deskstar Gxp60 60 GB hard drive Ata100/ 7200rpm
Windows 2k w/ Sp2 installed
Hercules Prophet II Geforce 2 Ultra w/ Hercules 12.40 drivers
19” Viewsonic PF790
Ls-120 Superdisk
Kenwood 72x cd-rom
Yamaha 16x10x40 cd-rw
Soundblaster Live Platinum 5.1

 

[Eil Atan]

I updated this with my system stats in my signature... just bought the micron memory (it is in two 256 MB chips)... I am pretty new to the overclocking business and also new to AMD chips (I have been using intels since the Pentium came out) so I am trying to get the hang of all of this... I bought the A7M since it was one of the best DDR boards, and I knew I was going to go with DDR RAM... I will get a new heatsink to keep this thing cool, because I don't think the FOP 32 is going to cut it... other than that this system should run pretty solid though, irght? any other advice you might be able to offer me? what do I have to do with the L7 bridges?

thanks for all the help...

 

[mikes]

or you can download the new bios on asus website it can help you