ATX power connectors

Maybe some info (?). My Athlon XP 1700+ (Palamino) is reported as 7.6.2, Generation 7, Revision 6, Stepping 2.

Matt

 

Mattman to the rescue - thanks. Always seen steppings as 5 letters on die but glad to learn of something new and different. And, if Idlemind has similar 1700+ Palamino, then you can advise him re: multiplier and settings. I'm about to hit the road, heading back home.

Note: Idlemind - if you or your girlfriend have been under the impression that its a 1400+ (unknown to me), then this suggests that your bus speed may be set at 100MHz instead of 133MHz where it should be. You can check this pretty quickly.

 

Well, that amdcpuinfo.exe that sparrow posted showed the processor is generation 7, revision 8, stepping 0. Does that mean it's a 1700+, just a more recent chip?

 

andcpuinfo also showed the cpu speed and other info such as the name.

 

No, no name was given. I posted a link at the top of this page to the image. It's there for everyone to see. But, it's a link, not an image. It's in post #15 of this thread.

 

I am a little worried because the AMDCPUid does not list the name.

Here is the info I have on Palaminos:
Athlon XP 1500+ - 1333MHz (133x10.0) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 1600+ - 1400MHz (133x10.5) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 1700+ - 1466MHz (133x11.0) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 1800+ - 1533MHz (133x11.5) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 1900+ - 1600MHz (133x12.0) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 2000+ - 1666MHz (133x12.5) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)
Athlon XP 2100+ - 1733MHz (133x13.0) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (Palomino)

My 1700+ now runs at 1466Mhz (133Mhz X 11.0 multiplier). Originally the setting was 1100Mhz (100x11.0) at the motherboard's setup default setting. I had to manually change it.

I looked at the motherboard manual and specifications for the Asus, it supports a Thoroughbred or Barton core. If the CPU is not a Thoroughbed or Barton, that's maybe why the CPU identification will not give the NAME of the processor.

I would not advise you to overclock (?...increase the fequency of) the processor without knowing exactly which one it is. I'll leave you to work that out with rockster2U (EDIT: back in your court rockster! ). If you are certain it is a 1700+, you should be able to set the frequency to 133 without problems.

If you saw "1700+" during startup, when you start the machine, start tapping the Pause key. You can scroll through the configuration screens by using Pause/Enter, Pause/Enter....

I can see what rockster is aiming at, if you can gain that extra speed it will be a bonus for running some of those larger applications/programs.
(Although my money for the cause of the problem is still on graphics, Sims2 has a minimum requirement of an 800Mhz CPU, 1100Mhz should be running it easily.)

Matt

 

That's what it's at now. At least, that's what Everest shows.

I will try watching more closely at start-up, and see what it says.

 

Back home after 3 weeks. Now to Idle Mind's dilemma - it was my assumption that this was a Palamino based upon original memory and age of machine. Perhaps this is a thoroughbred but it shouldn't make much difference assuming the MoBo and BIOS can handle the instruction set. Both of those CPU's are set to run at 2x133 or 266MHz so your default setup was incorrect. If this is a 1700+, it should be set to run at 11x133 as per mattman's table. Now, this is also going to impact your memory settings depending on how they were setup - if they were matched to the FSB, then you were trying to run your PC3200 at 100MHz - sure it's supposed to be backwards compatable, but I'm not so sure that would work under any conditions. Regardless, you should be able to run that memory at 266 or 333 depending on your board and the BIOS. Yes, I know it will run at 400Mhz but I'm not so sure this board is going to be able to let you do that. Why don't you try memory both ways and let us know whats happening.

I too am a bit concerned about this CPU and its proper identification but the only sure way to ID it at this point is to pull the heatsink, clean the die and post what you can read with a magnifying glass. Then you'd need more heatsink compound and if your're not careful, you could trash this processor. Thus, I'm not advocating this as your next step.

Keep us posted. Could well be video as mattman suggests but you need to get this thing configured properly because a lot of this is inter-related.



Edit: Hold the phone - just re-read parts of this thread. You say this is a new MoBo. It could be that this board doesn't officially support a Palamino and although we don't know for sure what your CPU is - you may want to contact ASUS and find out if there is a problem with a palamino or if you need some kind of a patch or specific BIOS bin file for compatability.

 

AMDs cpuinfo shows it to be an athlon 1.1Ghz according to Idle Mind's post: http://img216.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img216&image=bamdid0is.png

 

One would have to say - therein lies part of the problem - if it were a 1.1 GHz Athlon, it would only be able to run on a board with SDRAM, either PC100 or PC133. Since this CPU is currently mounted on a board that is running PC3200 DDR at an as of now unknown speed (to us), then you can probably flush the validity of his ID'ed 1.1MHz Athlon right down the drain.

There were two 1.1 GHz athlons made - one ran at 100Mhz and the other ran at 133Mhz and was actually a 1.13Ghz processor. Neither of these are even going to run on that MoBo so what should we conclude from Idle Mind's post?

 

Hmm, I figured compatability to be a lot more simple. I'm still learning a lot of this hardware stuff, and I appreciate your guys' time.

So a SocketA CPU isn't necessarily compatible with a SocketA board?

However, I did try to up the timings to 11 x 133, and I guess it didn't like that and clocked it back down to 11 x 100. So perhaps compatability is the issue here.

 

Asus lists all possible(?) CPUs as supported (in their CPU support listing for the A7V880) from Athlon 1000 to Athlon XP 3200+.

I can only think it might be this:
Athlon 1.1G - 1100MHz (100x11.0) - 1.75v - 256KB L2 (socketed Thunderbird)
(Note it is named is Athlon not Athlon XP, my CPUid listed mine as an Athlon XP)

I cannot find information on the generation/revision/stepping.

For the moment, 1100Mhz maybe all you can get, there is room for improvement though .

Matt

 

There's a time for humility and there's a time for humility - I just went to the ASUS site to confirm Mattman's last post re: CPU compatability and sure enough, both of the 1.1GHz Athlons are listed there as being compatable with this A7V880 MoBo. That also makes Sparrow's comment a most valid one and my previous post re: either of these processors is what should be flushed down the drain.

I also wanted look at the MoBo manual to see if there was a jumper for the system bus but can't read traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese or Japanese and ASUS didn't provide any other options that I could see. So, whatever that processor is, its being read as a 100Mhz Athlon 1100 and I'll mark this as a first for me re: a Tbird running on DDR. Yes, there's a time for humility and there's a time for for humility.

 

Hi Fellows,

Sorry to butt in here but CPUinfo will only correctly report the CPU info IF the BIOS is set up correctly. If the user enters for instance the FSB wrongly, CPUinfo will report finding the wrong CPU.

I found this out recently when I set an Athlon XP2500+ to an FSB of 200MHZ and Cpuinfo reported that it was an Athlon XP3200+.

The only 100% sure way to identify the CPU is to remove the heat sink, and read off the OPN.

Roger

 

Found an English version of the manual. Although Mattman is most certainly correct in that ASUS specs state this will run anything from 1 GHz on up, page ix of the manual states that this MoBo is for Thoroughbred or Barton Core Athlon XP's. Similar spec referenced here.

Go figure .......... I still don't believe this is a 1.1 GHz T-Bird but it would be unwise for me to dig a deeper hole.

Now, this isn't really helping resolve your problem. Seeing as how this is referenced as a dual channel board, the next question I'd have to ask is what slots do you have your memory in, how many sticks and is it still mixed (yours with hers) ? Second question is what video card are you using and how is it setup in the BIOS? That is an 8x AGP slot which provides you with considerable flexibility.

Sidebar comment: Did a little browsing re: DDR with TBirds and discovered that this has been tried before with some pretty impressive results in all but graphics applications/benchmarks. There is an issue with instruction sets, cycles and timing.

 

AMD states that athlon 1.100Ghz will run with pc1600 ddr memory.

EDIT: Forgot to include the reference: here

 

Sparrow - Thanks for the reference - sure learned something I never heard of or tried before. I did a quick Google earlier this AM re: DDR + Tbird and ran into some issues on some benchmarks as mentioned. Most in-deph thing I read got quite Geeky, but went into great detail re: 3D instruction sets.

As this may relate to Idle mind - not sure he can throttle down his MoBo to run an equivalent of PC1600 as it references 266Mhz on the low end. Then again, while I might be getting gun-shy on this one, there appears to be some contradiction with the ASUS specs within their own documentation.

Thanks again for the info - thats what I like about this BBS. Knowledge.

 

They are in Dimm slots 0 and 1, and although one of the sticks is mine, they are identical. You can find them here.

The video card is a Celestica Radeon 9200 SE Gold Edition. When I built my first system last January, I got it for $63 CDN (I live in Canada, but I felt I should specify for those who are not). I wish I hadn't cheaped out after a while, but then I moved and built my current system. The circumstance that led my roommate to get it, since I sold the first system to my parents, was I upgraded mine, gave my old one to my brother (who games more than my roommate), and took theirs and gave to her. He didn't have any problems with the 9200, and he was running Far Cry on it...which is a heck of a lot more resource heavy than the Sims 2. I apologize, but the playing with the BIOS is something foreign to me. What should I be looking for?

 

I ventured back to the beginning of this thread to re-read and familiarize myself with a few things. While I could be wrong, it appears that you have used the basic setup parameters in your BIOS. That should or would leave you with conservative but safe settings for the most part and after some reflection, its probably best to leave well enough alone for the time being, including your video settings.

Now, lets review a couple of other things. You have an excellent Motherboard and an adequate power supply. Your memory is excellent and your video card is well above "average ". There is no obvious red flag signalling what ails your system. At the same time I think its safe to say we don't know what your CPU is, and because of that, whether or not its configured properly. However, your board should auto detect it. Regardless, lets leave that one alone for right now too.

So where does this lead us? Your friend's machine shuts down intermittently during SIMS2 and this is the only problem we are aware of. At this point, it might be advisable to un-install and re-install that software and see what happens. Depending on the outcome, we may want to run a torture test on your machine to try and isolate this problem but lets wait for your feedback before we get ahead of ourselves. I'll send you a link if this becomes an advisable next step.

My bottom line here is that I'm not real comfortable making other system changes when I am suspect as to the current CPU configuration.

 

Okay, reinstall didn't fix anything. Also, I should mention (should have a while ago, but forgot since it isn't regular), the computer would just shut off during Windows installation. It would always do it around the same place, where you choose a partition.

One time it finally just worked. Also, the hard drive is new. Could that be the issue?