Not been about for a while, looking around the forum now it looks like my system is a bit old school! Anyway, I have a mobile Barton XP-M on an Abit NF7 which has been running nicely at 210x11 for a few years now. A couple of weeks ago it reported a CMOS checksum error when booting and set the BIOS back to default settings. I re-adjusted the BIOS but it would get the same error when booting from cold. Just popped a new CMOS battery in this morning which has fixed that. However another problem has arisen. It was hanging on boot if I set the FSB etc back to what it was running so I played around a bit with the settings. It seems if I put FSB above 133 the system won't boot or gives an error around the lines of "The CPU is unworkable". I'm running at 133x13 with RAM at 400 at the mo which seems to be ok. Any ideas what could be causing it? Only thing I'd done to it is before it all went wrong is change the hard drive a few days before; it was working fine when re-installing on the new drive too. Don't know if the CMOS battery going bad could have done something? Is there such a thing as a FSB locked CPU anyway?!
- No such thing as an FSB-locked CPU. OEMs will keep you from getting to the advanced settings sometimes - both multiplier and FSB - but that's an outright BIOS restriction and it obviously doesn't apply to you. - CMOS batteries dying can't damage anything. Well, a dying/changed battery will obviously reset the BIOS settings, but no physical damage or permanent BIOS alteration is involved. Have you tried explicitly resetting all this to default settings from within the BIOS (as opposed to by removing the battery)? Have you tried flashing to the latest motherboard BIOS? - Diosjenin -
Have you forgotten to change the CPU voltage, it might be set too low at default value for the increased speed.
i remember when running my old Epox board, that if i used the simple bios options to set the FSB at 166mhz i could only overclock the FSB to 187Mhz, however if i used the simple options to begin with again and set it at 200Mhz it would boot fine and then allow me to overclock again up to 250Mhz. It was strange but it worked that way... So I would say, clear the CMOS, and use the basic options to set the FSB up, usually under these options you can select FSB presents, mine were 100, 133, 166, and 200mhz. Once booted at 200Mhz i would switch the settings over to manual and overclock. It could also be related to the fact that your ram ratio is wrong, you mentioned the memory is running at 400Mhz which is actually 200MHz, yet FSB is 133MHz. I suspect the issue to be there somewhere, try a ratio of 1:1 and you should be fine.
Ahh! someone else still holding decent Socket A gear! (my XP-M is waiting for me to re-cap my Lanparty NF2-B!) - It sounds like you've overlooked something in the BIOS mate... Worth checking that Spread Spectrum is OFF, RAM is at 1:1 with FSB (RAM dividers were rubbish/unstable on the NF2). Might be worth manually entering RAM timings to match what is printed on the sticks / in the SPD - sometimes get some goofy settings on Auto. If anything like mine, I'd guess your CPU will need at least 1.6v to go past 2.3ghz - set to 1.7 and reduce if needed.... Your RAM may also need more than default as well. Chipset voltage never made a difference on my board, but it might be worth increasing to 1.7/8v anyway... Hope you get things back to normal!
Seems it is related to CPU voltage, I had forgotten about that! It was at the default 1.575V (IIRC), though according to my notes I have happily run the CPU at 1.5V, 200x10 in the past. I'm now at 1.725V which is what I was at previously but still can't get to 200FSB. I'm at 160x10.5 which seems stable. I can set the multi down to give a low CPU speed and it still won't boot. Going to try Memtest for a bit I think to rule the RAM out. I'm at 1:1 FSB/RAM ratio now, I'd left the RAM ratio at 4/6 (133FSB, 200 RAM) to see if the RAM would boot at the higher speed. Also checked timings and its all from SPD. I've never played with the RAM timings or voltages before.
