Author Topic: About to Upgrade my Pc!! (Read 1101 times)

woodfordb · « **on:** August 22, 2001, 10:40:00 AM »

Hi. im currently 4 days into my two week trail and im about to do upgrade from win98 to windows 2000. Will this effect my trial? should I wait until im over the trail and a paided up memeber?

also hardware wise. Currently running a T-Bird 900 and GTS2. Thinking of going to a 1Ghz P3 with the same vid card just so I can bin the via MB thats causing all my stability issues (Not in AH, in simple things like web browsing etc)
Any comments on how it will effect my AH experience?

Best Regards

General ZOD.

214thCavalier · « **Reply #1 on:** August 22, 2001, 02:01:00 PM »

1. Why do you think its your VIA MB causing your problems ?

2. Even if it is surely it would be cheaper to replace the MB with a good one rather than convert to a P3 which would be slower and mean buying cpu and MB.

Lots of other things can cause instability when web browsing in particlar a certain spyware product who's name escapes me at the moment.

woodfordb · « **Reply #2 on:** August 23, 2001, 03:13:00 AM »

Hi.
Thanks for the response.

I know its the via board. im running into the usual via board problems. SBlive locking etc, ide copies causing locks. well documented on the web.
When the machine is running its very fast. Its just im fed up of Via MB. I have a AMD 500 Classic and a early AMD 750 chipset board. Nice and stable. I do not like mixing chipset and cpu. therefore Intel chip + intel Board.
The AMD 760 is a nice board, but it still uses the via 686b south bridge chipset. this causes the same problems as I have as that controls the IDE devices etc. Check out www.amdzone.com and read the BBS.
I must admit MB like the Tyan Thunder & Tiger look nice because they are AMD north and south, but because they are aimed at the SMP market they cost almost £400-500. that is far to much.
I picked a P3 because its 815 chipset is tried and tested, its near the end of its life. Its proven to be very reliable and its remained static for a while. That is a good sign. Via keep release revision new chipsets so quickly, each one combats previous bugs, but releases more.
Its not just IE thats causing problems, that was just an example. Word, Excel. Even on boot I get intermitent blue exception warning.

General ZOD

Lephturn · « **Reply #3 on:** August 23, 2001, 06:40:00 AM »

Sounds like you have a much more serious problem than simply VIA mobo issues. In my experience most of those issues have been resolved by updated VIA 4-IN-1's, BIOS updates, and OS patches. I'm betting that in your case you either have a serious resource conflict or a bad piece of hardware. Low power or heat could cause similar problems as well. Although earlier VIA boards had issues, I've helped friends put together several machines now on Abit KT7E boards that have been excellent and trouble free.

I personally went through some of the same issues with my Abit KA-7-100 board and classic Slot A Athlon 700 at first. Once I worked out the resource sharing issues, heat, power, and updated 4-in-1's and all, everything works great. My big problem was resource sharing issues, specifically with the SB Live. That thing just doesn't share at all. Once I got things re-arranged to prevent IRQ sharing, things got a whole lot more stable. Oh, and I toejamcanned my cheap RAM. I had all kinds of weird toejam happening until I got rid of the cheap RAM and slapped some good crucial stuff in there. Yeah and a 250 watt power supply? Bawahahaha, good luck, I had to go to 350, although I admit the Voodoo 5 5500 certainly played a part in that. I also found that the heatsink mating for those slot A Athlons SUCKS, and I still get stupidly high temps even running at stock speeds.

I do admit though... ya still can't beat that good old Intel BX chipset. Man that chipset rocked. My server box is an Abit BP6 dual Celleron BX based machine. What a sweet, reliable, and high performance little beast that is. I long for that kind of cheap MP solution for the Athlon chipset that has that kind of flexibility, power, and stability.

woodfordb · « **Reply #4 on:** August 23, 2001, 07:56:00 AM »

My board is an early Via... Origonal A7V.

ok. Using the correct via's. 4.31. running two 300 watt PSU's. one for the Board, the rest drive the fans, HD, CD's etc.
Running a very nice copper base TAISOL hs/F with a no conductive shim. Inc Artic Silver. Have 120mm blow hole, and 2x 80mm fans front and rear.
Temp is'nt a poblem. its just stability. Compared to most peoples machines its probably rock solid. But I want more. After 8 hours of rendering 3d images I want a machine that can cope with another 8 hours gaming.... Not one that throws a funny when I close down MSN messenger, or jams the screen when I open a jpg.

The machine is at fault. my ram is decent branded stuff to. The PC was not put together on a tight budget. its old, very old. Bought it when 900mhz was the fastest CPU, and the Asus A7V was cutting edge. Now I long for the stability of my older 500. That machine takes it like no other. And even more. Also have an history relic 233mmx Pentium Classic, running on a TX board. That thing is whisper quiet, stays on 24/7 runs 2000as & MSproxy 2.0 and loves it. Has'nt needed to be rebooted unless im going on holiday and shut the house down.. see what im saying.
My AMD is a nice machine, dont get me wrong. But its had some problems. I know all machines do, but they iron themself out after bios updates, driver fixes. This one has'nt. Maybee one of the later boards would be better such a Abit K7a-raid, but whats the point in swapping like for like. Might as well buy a 760 and a 1.4ghz... or just get an 850 and P4 1.8.....

Thanks anyway guys. Ill post some pics of me stamping on it when I do.

Gereral ZOD

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 23, 2001, 06:00:00 PM »

I run the original A7v, IT DOES NOT have the 686b southbridge. It uses the 686a southbridge. Try this for me: Go into the bios and set the "system performance" setting to normal vs optimal.

I've built many systems using the original a7v (rev 1.02) and all of them used a SB Live card. (Including my personal system.) I can honestly say that none of these systems have ever exibted the problems you speak of. I can't speak for the systems I don't own, but my own system has not locked up in 9 months! (Runs 24/7 with win2k sp2.)

My system is:

Asus A7v (rev 1.02)
bios 1.06
via 4.31 drivers
Asus v7700 deluxe (gf2 gts 32mb)
win2k sp2
Tbird 1300 Mhz
384 MB pc 133 cas 2
45 gb 75GXP IBM drive
SB Live Value (in pci slot 3)
Realtek NIC
External USR modem

I run some pretty intensive engineering software and it NEVER locks up on me. (Matlab 6, Pspice, etc.)

Try that bios setting.

bloom25 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 23, 2001, 06:02:00 PM »

BTW: You may find www.a7vtroubleshooting.com interesting.

woodfordb · « **Reply #7 on:** August 24, 2001, 04:54:00 AM »

Checked that site.
Think ive cured it.
Changed the default VIO from 3.5, to the standard 3.3.

Seams ok.

If I still have any problems ill swap my A7V for your then?

General ZOD

PS: Have u noticed that the VCore says 1.75 but registered really as 1.792?

woodfordb · « **Reply #8 on:** August 24, 2001, 04:56:00 AM »

Also I think Win98 has a lot to blame.
U say Win2k SP2?
Does it behave ok with this?
Hows does AH and FS2000 etc run on it?

General ZOD.

Lephturn · « **Reply #9 on:** August 24, 2001, 06:19:00 AM »

I was going to say... based on your expectations above, no Win9x OS will ever cut the mustard. For the kind of performance and stability you are looking for, you need Win2k.

Win2k will run everything I have perfectly. You should check your peripherals though, and ensure they will all work on 2k. Since the latest updates to the OS, even most game controllers seem to work great in Win2k. I know lots of folks play AH on Win2k, so that shouldn't be an issue, and I'm sure MS's products will run on Win2k just fine.

BTW, if you have the option, try ISA server instead of Proxy 2.0. ISA is a much more powerful program than Proxy 2. It really adds a decent little software firewall to the Proxy software that is great for what I do with it. Also, ISA will do stateful proxy, so it works fine with AH using UDP and doesn't kick you to TCP like Proxy 2 does.

woodfordb · « **Reply #10 on:** August 24, 2001, 06:59:00 AM »

I shall try win2k this weekend.

All my stuff does work on it, including my Logitec FF stick, so should be a laugh.

As for Proxy 2.0. Use it for development purposes only. not using it in anger. dont use it for my main dial out. the Games PC (This one) dials out via its own modem.

I shall do the deed with win2k, have SP2 kicking about somewhere as well.

Thanks for the help.

General ZOD

bloom25 · « **Reply #11 on:** August 24, 2001, 04:11:00 PM »

General ZOD, I assuming the internet lockups mean IE 5 crashing on you. Usually this occurs when using a scroll wheel on a wheel mouse in IE. It's caused by overloading the PCI bus. Turning off smooth scrolling will fix it, as will forcing AGP 2x instead of 4x. You can do this with bios 1.06 or later. In the earlier bios revisions you can do this by setting the system performance setting to "normal" instead of "optimal". I've done this on all the systems I've built with the a7v and all have been extremely stable.

(My IO voltage is 3.5V, but it does depend on the brand of GF you have. Hercules and some others won't work right at 3.5V and need to be 3.3V.)

My V core is actually 1.82V.