Help with Asus K7M + Athlon700 !

[MK]

Hi there,


I´m going to build a new sys next week. A Asus K7M board with an AMD Athlon 700 MHz, a G400 32MB and a Creative SB Player1024 on Win98SE.

Are there "general mistakes" to avoid ? What about AMD-Chipset-Drivers ?


Thanks

MK

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ASUS P2B (1010), Celeron 266@412 MHz, 128 MB PC100, OEM G400 16MB SH (Bios 1.3-20,PD 5.41, TGL), IBM DJNA 15,2 GB U-ATA66, SB PCI64, Mitsumi CR-4801TE, Pioneer 36x slot-in, Iomega ZIP, Iiyama Vision Master Pro 400, Plustek OpticPro 9636T, Win`98SE

[This message has been edited by MK (edited 12 March 2000).]

[This message has been edited by MK (edited 12 March 2000).]

[Designer]

Hi MK, I have the K7M, with an Athlon 550MHz
and have had very little problem with either.
The one thing which you should check with the Athlon 700 MHz is it's L2 chase. The L2 chase is on the pc board and not internal to the chip. The L2 chase is also running at half bus speed,or something along those lines. If you have the coins, I would go for the Athlon 800 MHz chip, with internal L2 chase, running at full speed and .18 technology. If you can find one that is copper based, even better. All the details I have put forward here are not perfect, but close enough that you can start asking the right questions. Designer

[Wombat]

I don't think the 800 has full-speed cache. I'm actually very sure of that. No Athlons do, yet. It is coming, though.

[Thundrchez]

Several of us had to download the PD 5 registry hacks and install forceagp2x.reg to prevent cold bootup plaid deaths. This seems to be very specific to K7M + G400. Other than that, it runs beautifully.

Don't even try to install w95 on that setup, but you list w98 which works very well with it...well, as good as w98 is going to work.

The drivers on the Asus CD for via southbridge and amd northbridge work OK.

[This message has been edited by Thundrchez (edited 13 March 2000).]

[MK]

Hi guys,


thank you all for your reply !

Designer - not one of the currently sold Athlons has a full speed L2-cache, only 1/2, 1/3 or 2/5 speed of the CPU-core, depending to what model you are using.

Wombat - yep! We have to wait until Spifire and Thunderbird.

Thundrchez - Thank you for your info. I will install PD 5.xx and will install the reghack for AGP2X.


Greetings

MK

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ASUS P2B (1010), Celeron 266@412 MHz, 128 MB PC100, OEM G400 16MB SH (Bios 1.3-20,PD 5.41, TGL), IBM DJNA 15,2 GB U-ATA66, SB PCI64, Mitsumi CR-4801TE, Pioneer 36x slot-in, Iomega ZIP, Iiyama Vision Master Pro 400, Plustek OpticPro 9636T, Win`98SE

[Targon]

Athlon 500-700 has L2 cache at 1/2 clock
Athlon 750-850 has L2 cache at 2/5 clock
Athlon 900-1GHz has L2 cache at 1/3 clock

There's no issues with the G400 on the K7M that I've seen, if you run the current 1008 BIOS. There MAY be some issues, but without overclocking, the system runs beautifully with the G400 MAX

[Targon]

That's not entirely correct. The boards that are put out prior to 1007 had those problems. I purchased my K7M back in November, and it had the 1007 BIOS on it. Not a single problem with what you were mentioning, though versions with a pre-1007 BIOS DID have a number of problems. New BIOS fixes MOST issues. Also, a weak or low quality power supply WILL cause problems with many motherboards. The K7M is more tolorant of power supplies than just about all the others.

[Rohde]

Remember to download the flash util and a newer BIOS from the ASUS site.

The BIOS that the K7M comes with have some kind of powersupply problem that makes you push the powerbutton several times before it boots rights. Otherwise a very nice MB.

Torben Rohde.