New Abit VL6, how to question

[Pinky]

I got a new proc and mobo today. Everything runs well, superfast (compared to the celeron world I escaped from).

I get the processor to post and run windows at the mobo max of 150mhz (1125mhz). I even have a fan on the northbridge.

When I reboot I can keep the settings. If I power off and back on, bye bye settings. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this is happening.

 

[Placid]

No idea, sounds like a similar problem that asus cusl2 boards had. They fixed it with a bios upgrade, might be a newer bios for your board.

 

[outhouse]

Maybe the battery is dead on your MB.

goodluck

 

[Lancelot]

Ehh, I know it can't be this simple but still; Did you check for a 'clear CMOS' jumper before you installed the board? Might be it's still set to 'clear' instead of 'normal', which would cause the BIOS to loose it's settings when you power off.

 

[Pinky]

Well, the bios is already the latest (3/21/01 -VZ).

It keeps all my settings (have onboard sound disabled and cas2 set), even the CPU's. When it boots it says it's at 1 GHZ, but in the bios the settings are user defined 7.5x150

 

[Placid]

Have you verified that its really at 1ghz and not higher with a program like cpuid?

 

[Pinky]

No, I haven't .. I was thinking that myself.

I'll check and be right back.

**I can change the softmenu settings, save and exit. If I power off and back on, they stay. But if I run windows, shutdown, and power back on they're gone; so it's got to be ACPI, which I don't use anyway, so that's a matter of deactivating it if need be.

I get 1125mhz quite easily at default voltage (1.75).

[img="[URL]http://speshalk.dyndns.org:1812/benchcpu.jpg[/URL]"]

I can play UT, but if I go online I can only fire. I've seen this before, it's probably the NIC card (Intel NICs are a bit fussy). I will try to raise the CPU voltage to 1.80 and see it helps (when I exited UT I got a Dr. Watson error).

Right now the extra 125mzh won't make a difference; when (and if) the time somes, I will tweak or get another NIC that will handle 37-38 MHZ better.

I'll check back here with my results.

 

[Placid]

Might be your nic. I have heard intel nics were good for overclocking.
When I first tried 150mhz fsb my computer went into windows then when my firewall started I got a windows error.
I rebooted and set my memory timings to all 3s and and didnt have anymore errors and I am now at 160fsb stable now.

 

[Pinky]

Well, it runs at 1.80V @1125 very stable (no errors and the UT online error went away). The NIC appears to be working fine... I'll add it to my sig. and to the cpu database...

Still having the same issue with the mobo. It actually says something in the manual about "powering off or resetting" will change to default CPU settings. I always thought of Abit boards as overclocking friendly.... hmmm.... there's got to be something I'm missing.

I screwed up my acpi settings, had to blow away my partition and ghost... thank god I learned (the hard way) to do this !!!

 

[Pinky]

I may have found the answer to my own question...

Although the board has the newest bios, the bios only recognizes P3s up to 1000 mhz /133 bus (7.5 multiplier). Anything beyond is user defined and not recognized by the bios as a valid setting for a P3. However, it runs fine at the overclocked speed (verified it above and with CPUID). For now it's an inconvenience. I am going to write abit to see what they have to say (like they really care).

When and if I need the extra juice I can up the FSB and voltage to 1.80

 

[Placid]

The abit boards I have all use softmenu 3.
The VL6 uses sofmenu 2 I think.
I dont know the difference but I wonder why your board would use it.

 

[Zuck Gou :)]

It uses it because the board is cheaper than their other boards, but its very good quality still, so they did that to seperate it from more expensive boards.

I did a lot of research on that board cause I was going to buy it.

 

[Pinky]

Bumping.

I'm getting a nice Pal heatsink and (alright) fan from coolerguys.com, but I need to get this bios/mobo issue resolved (it's really annoying to have to boot into my bios everytime I need the extra cpu power).