kt7a bios above ww fsb problems?

[Hoot]

Has anyone running a kt7a with wz, yh, or yp revision bios had problems getting the FSB to run above 136mhz, when it ran okay with ww?
I'm grasping at straws of explanation for spending a frustrating evening trying to get my 1G/266 AXIA Tbird to run an FSB above 136 at any multiplier. Upping voltages had no effect. Going from PC133CL2 to PC150CL2 had no effect. Temps in the 30s. 400W PSU not overworked. Tried all kinds of conservative setting in bios. The processor will run 10x133 rock solid as well as 12.5x100, but as soon as I try to go above 133, with mults from 5x to 12.5x stabilty gets shakey and by 137, it won't even try to post. Had hoped to lower the multiplier and get 140 or 145 on the fsb. Not even 5x140 will try to post. Very peculiar. I have checked some other forums and this is not a unique occurrence.

Thanks
Hoot

 

[SharkyTM]

yup..... planning on ditching yh, and going back to ww... whatever you do, dont use the wz... they are horrible for ocing..... my tbird did 1430 with ww, now wont do 1300 with yh...............

Shark

 

[The JoJo]

I'm back to using ww. All the others really sucked when oc'ing, more unstable.

 

[Hoot]

Alright, I did some testing last night and here's what I found. Forget the FSB issue for a moment. Starting with rev WZ, the fastest my setup would go, error free, was 10x133 at any core-i/o voltage up to 2.0/3.6. Burned YH with same result. Burned in WW and whammo, now it'll run 11x133 @ 1.85/3.4 and runs 12x124 @ 1.85/3.5 okay (P95+3D Mark 2001). Almost runs 11.5x133 @ 1.95/3.5 (fails during 3D mark) Reburn WZ and back to only runs 10x133. Ditto on YH. So, there's definitely a tie-in to bios revision on OC below 133 FSB.
Above 133 FSB, it's not the CPU, memory, NIC, AWE64-ISA, or the GF2MX-AGP. It's the motherboard (KT7A). I have tried 3 different bios revisions, three different CPUs, three different video cards (PCI & AGP), no NIC or AWE64. Starting with "YH", everything at room temperature, cover off, it will boot at 7x140 and run prime95 rock solid for an hour. As soon as I reboot, Boom! won't post. It will not boot under any circumstance with WW or WZ at 7x140. Let it sit for a few minutes, and you can do the same thing again. Put all the cards back in, put the cover back on and it booted at 7x140 just fine. Let it run P95 all night and was chugging along when I got up this morning. Stopped P95, ran Sandra benchmarks and 3D Mark 2001 just fine. Rebooted and again, Boom, won't post. The HS and dinky fan on the northbridge seems very loose (you can wiggle it). This evening, I will do some "Freeze Spray" troubleshooting. The bottom line is, the common denominator at every failure is the KT7A.

Hoot

 

[SharkyTM]

hoot... you saying the board itself is unstable??? you seem to have a lot of experimenting, but few definitive results... i've done much the same thing... different results... ww is the best, and im staying with it. Please keep posting, im interested


Shark

 

[Hoot]

Yeah, I'm throwing more hand grenades than I'm catching right now. This started out with me thinking something was wrong with my CPU, so I bought a new one. Then I thought it was my PSU, so I bought a more pwerful one. Then I thought it was my memory, so I bought a faster one. I'm running out of culprits. Perhaps I have given the KT7A too much benefit of a doubt through this whole journey. I will be hunting again, this evening.

Hoot

 

[AZZKICKER]

hoot

did you ever put thermal paste unde the heatsink on the chipset?

also did you try putting a heatsink onto the clock gen??

 

[Hoot]

I took off the Northbridge HSF assembly, lapped it (it was concave to start with), applied AS and remounted it more firmly on the chip. I have done nothing with the PLL chip because the outward blast from the MC-462A fan (67cfm) saturates it with airflow already. I just checked it with a thermal probe and its running right now at 22C. Case temp is currently 20C in a 19C room. I's likes it cool

Hoot

 

[diehrd]

After reading this post I went and reset my board to 8x150=1200 My procesor is the 1.2 266 fsb processor.

I am amazed at the ability to run at this bus speed LMAO,she is stable so far I will attempt a little stability testing.

Well I had trouble at 136 as well seemed even 133x11 was impossible.So i had her set to 130x11 for 1430.At that setting it was rock solid seems like i have new peramaters to work with now THANKS !!!