TH7II Settings Advice

[TC]

I just got a TH7II and performed the volt mod via defogger repair kit. The board is as troublesome as ever as far as booting. It often takes a dozen or more attempts to make it post after changing bios settings. I've tried holding down the insert key while saving the new settings, holding insert while pressing the reset button, praying, chanting, etc. My question is where can I find the ideal settings for the board. Should I change any of those dip switch settings from default? What's best for that rdram differential current? Right now I'm using Mr. Natural's bios. Any tips would be appreciated.

 

[MrNatural]

I just got a TH7II and performed the volt mod via defogger repair kit. The board is as troublesome as ever as far as booting. It often takes a dozen or more attempts to make it post after changing bios settings. I've tried holding down the insert key while saving the new settings, holding insert while pressing the reset button, praying, chanting, etc. My question is where can I find the ideal settings for the board. Should I change any of those dip switch settings from default? What's best for that rdram differential current? Right now I'm using Mr. Natural's bios. Any tips would be appreciated.

When you make your FSB and voltage changes, are you going straight from say 100mhz to 120mhz or something like that? If you are then that is part of the problem. i've found that if you do you increases in speed in increments of say 5mhz steps with a bump in vcore of .025 every 2 steppings then you should have an easier time with the booting and such. Big jumps in speed tend to choak and not boot.

 

[TC]

Not big jumps - even increments of 1MHz and no voltage change. Actually it does this at default speed too. It takes me a good 5 minutes just to get the thing to post.

 

[MrNatural]

Not big jumps - even increments of 1MHz and no voltage change. Actually it does this at default speed too. It takes me a good 5 minutes just to get the thing to post.

Which bios version are you running right now? 38? 4W?

 

[TC]

Which bios version are you running right now? 38? 4W?

Your 39a version.

 

[MrNatural]

Your 39a version.

Ok. Give this one a try and see how it does. I set 1 setting back and am testing now and so far things are still running smooth. No hiccups. Prime95 seems to be runing a little better also.

TH7H-39C.BIN

 

[TC]

Ok. Give this one a try and see how it does. I set 1 setting back and am testing now and so far things are still running smooth. No hiccups. Prime95 seems to be runing a little better also.

TH7H-39C.BIN

Okay I'll give it a whirl and see how it fares. Thanks for working with it.

 

[TC]

Well so far the boot problem remains. I honestly think it's just something in the hardware itself, and not the bios. The first TH7II I owned did the same thing. Even with default settings I have to use reset several times before it will post. Occasionally I can't get it to post with reset at all, and I have to do a cold boot with the insert key held down. Sometimes it takes several goes with that!

But once it's actually up and running it does pretty well. The key I guess is to find the best overclock you can run stable and never reboot it after that.

 

[MrNatural]

Well so far the boot problem remains. I honestly think it's just something in the hardware itself, and not the bios. The first TH7II I owned did the same thing. Even with default settings I have to use reset several times before it will post. Occasionally I can't get it to post with reset at all, and I have to do a cold boot with the insert key held down. Sometimes it takes several goes with that!

But once it's actually up and running it does pretty well. The key I guess is to find the best overclock you can run stable and never reboot it after that.

From what I've determined and I now know that Gigabyte has also determined and has fixed in their bios is that the i850 and i845D boards seem to have a problem in setting the VID items before power up/down meaning that when you shut the system down, certain hardware register settings need to be set so that when you power back up the setting of what was being run would be there at power up. This is what is not being done. That's why the error code of 26H. When the system boots it can't find the VID settings required to continue through the detection phase before handing over to the part that turns the monitor display on and all that. Gigabyte just released a bios for their i845 board which resolves this problem

Finding this out I in turn have sent an E to my Abit guy giving them the info on the problem and what I have found so far and the information from over at Gigabyte. Hopefully this will get Abit pointed in the right direction to finally get this problem resolved.

 

[TC]

A couple other things that are weird are 1) windows does not shutdown or restart the system. It just goes to a blue screen and sits there. I have to hit reset or power off. 2) when I try to use the latest version of set fsb it gives me an sm bus 0 error and won't open the program. Other than that I'm getting my system up a little bit higher than it was with the P4TE.

 

[MrNatural]

A couple other things that are weird are 1) windows does not shutdown or restart the system. It just goes to a blue screen and sits there. I have to hit reset or power off. 2) when I try to use the latest version of set fsb it gives me an sm bus 0 error and won't open the program. Other than that I'm getting my system up a little bit higher than it was with the P4TE.

Not sure what could be causing the error or why Windows won't restart or shut down now. All looks good on this end.

When you said you did the VMOD do you mean the POT or the wire wrap? Eitherway, remove the wire wrap or disconect the POT from grount and see how it does.

 

[shintai]

Hello!

MrNatural for you: realy good work thanks for all.
Would be a big problem to make a BIOS exactly the same as official Abit`s "TH7H_38" only with the change made in the Core voltage settings for up to 1,8V? It`s very important for me because I have my system for work (and not only for my self) and I get now 100% stable run without any "crash" or something similar from the time I set it up. But I want try it. Maybe there are more people like me.

THANX

TH7II-RAID/offic. H38 Bios/1.8A @1800-2200 stable max so far.

 

[TC]

Not sure what could be causing the error or why Windows won't restart or shut down now. All looks good on this end.

When you said you did the VMOD do you mean the POT or the wire wrap? Eitherway, remove the wire wrap or disconect the POT from grount and see how it does.

I used a defogger repair kit and painted the socket. I tried the wire wrap once before and had problems with it. I'll pass on removing my mod for the time being. It was big pain to do it and I can't run at this speed without it. I'll live with the restart problem for now.

 

[jdmcnudgent]

when i get that bin from mr natural, how do i load it? do i just use my old boot disk from my bd7 and rename the bin? also, which is the best bios to use? thanks.

 

[MrNatural]

when i get that bin from mr natural, how do i load it? do i just use my old boot disk from my bd7 and rename the bin? also, which is the best bios to use? thanks.

Boot into a safe DOS prompt on a floppy disk that has only Command.com, AWDFlash (or AWD800) and the bios file. Then use the following line to flash the bios.

awdflash xxxxxx.bin (xxxxxx.bin is name of bios file) /py/sy oldbios.bin /Wb/cd/cp/cc/LD

this will handle flashing the totaly bios and not just a portion of it and at the same time clear the cmos. It will not reboot the system because this will then allow you to drop back out to DOS prompt if you encounter a flash error. Then you can flash the oldbios.bin file that is saved taking you back to the original bios you were running. Remember to have you cpu and memory set to default settings before flashing to insure a safe, clean flash.

 

[jdmcnudgent]

ok, mr natural, i flashed to your bios with no problems. my question is, how high will i be able to overclock my 2.0a chip with 1.85 v core? i would like to take this sucker to atleast 3.0 gig, and that is why i bought this board. thanks

 

[MrNatural]

ok, mr natural, i flashed to your bios with no problems. my question is, how high will i be able to overclock my 2.0a chip with 1.85 v core? i would like to take this sucker to atleast 3.0 gig, and that is why i bought this board. thanks

Seeing as how you are running a vaporchill then you should be able to hit at least 2.8-maybe 2.9ghz on 1.85v. If you haven't done any vmod to your board then this may be a problem as the voltage output to the vcore when just using the bios setting of 1.85v will yield a 1.75v reading which is what is being used. This will inturn lower you OC ability. I usually recommend using the POT vmod because it allows for fine tuning the vcore while at the same time correcting the problem with the vcore reading and output. After doing the POT vmod but not having any resistance placed across the POT the 1.85v vcore settings reads a true 1.85v output. So you may not even need to adjust the POT but if you do then it will aloow for smaller increments of increase in the vcore to allow for higher clock speeds (as long and cooling allows of course).

 

[jdmcnudgent]

any special links you can post to do this mod? or with your bios, can i just do the v-pin mod, and be able to reach 2.2? thanks.

 

[MrNatural]

any special links you can post to do this mod? or with your bios, can i just do the v-pin mod, and be able to reach 2.2? thanks.

You can use the Vpin setup for your voltage but that just tells the system what voltage to default to or how hight the voltage can be set to but it does not fix the setting to put put problem from what I have found. The putting the signal to a more direct path to groud seems to clear that p=roblem up tho.

Here is a pic of the mod that will fill you in totaly.

 

[ColdDisposition]

a 50k VR from pin7 to pin 9 will give you what your looking for.
Its the chip above the agp slot. If you look at the chip you'll see a little crater in the corner thats pin 1 just count from there.

any special links you can post to do this mod? or with your bios, can i just do the v-pin mod, and be able to reach 2.2? thanks.