P3B-F disappointment

[Johnny Ray]

I've been using an Asus P2-B since they first came out, and was extremely happy with it. I was able to use PC66, PC100, and PC133 on it all together and successfully overclock my PIII450 to 500. Rock stable, std cooling and voltage. But that motherboard was limited to a 112 MHz fsb, and since I wanted to eventually switch to a Coppermine, which it won't use, I just picked up a P3B-F. Disappointment abounds. I can't even get it to run any 3D game/benchmark at 500 MHz with only my PC133 MHz ram installed, even at higher voltage. It seems although I've upgraded, I've taken a step back. I thought it would at least be as stable as my P2B. Also, I liked the P2B keyboard power-on. I have this enabled in the P3B-F bios, with all the same hardware, but it doesn't work.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

John

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PIII450 => 504 MHz, Asus P2B, G400MAX, PowerDesk 5.50, Aureal SQ 2500 (Vortex2), Klipsch Promedia V2.400 speakers, DirectX 7.0A, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and Fireport40 Dual UW SCSI controllers, Quantum Atlas 10K and WD Enterprise HD (no more...it died!), Plextor UtraPlex Wide, Plexwriter 8/20 CDR, the last ISA modem, etc.

[Rick]

Johnny, sorry to hear about your problems. Got a couple of things I've heard. Apparently some people have gotten a coppermine working if they manually set the voltage on the SlocketII to 1.8v, that's the lowest the P2B before rev 1.12 will supply. I haven't tried it and your mileage may vary. The other thing is that the P2B does have a 133 FPB setting. The jumpers should be set as follows:

Settings for P2B 1.02 @133:
FS0 off
FS1 on
FS2 on

There's also an article over at AnandTech where someone tested a P2B and it appears that a P2B set to 133FSB uses a 1/4 PCI divider. That should mean you don't have to overclock your PCI cards, only the AGP one. Here's the link
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=34

Best of luck

Rick

[dwright]

Johnny, I also picked up the P3B-F and have been using it for 10 weeks now. It is revision 1.03 (printed on the board - don't use the Asus Probe it reports incorrectly). I flashed it bios with the 1004 bios. It has operated perfectly. I am running a p500e FC @133 giving 667. I have 256mb standard pc100 8ns memory. The pci is not overclocked but the agp is with the G400max (there is no .5 setting for agp). I tried the P500e @140 fsb giving 700 and it ran fine but I settled back to 667 so I have a standard pci clock.
Please make sure you have the current bios, and check your memory settings (mine are set to cas 3-3-3). I did not shadow video memory. All the p3b-f features are operating correctly in my machine. With win2000 even suspend to ram is working (it doesn't in win98se).
Good luck, I think your setup should work.

[Johnny Ray]

Thanks for the replies. After a night of fooling around with it, let me elaborate.

I dropped down to 450 MHz, the std, non-overclocked speed of my PIII. Same problem. If I play UT or try to run 3DMark2000 demo or the std benchmark, they crash to the desktop. Not hard crashes, or freezes, just a dump to the desktop. 3DMark always crashes during the 16 MB texture rendering.

I basically took it all apart and re-assembled it all, making sure all my cards were seated properly. Bumped the CPU core voltage to 2.1 and FSB to 115, and with just my PC133 memory, can play the Soldier of Fortune demo and Half-life with no problems. System seems pretty stable, except for the same UT and 3DMark2000 crashes. Not knowing what else to do, I re-installed DirectX 7A and PD 5.5.01 as a long shot.

The keyboard switch now works occasionally.

Thanks again.

[SCompRacer]

Hi Johnny Ray,

I put a PC together for a friend using a P3B-F and experienced a problem with keyboard on. With the P2B series MB, even if you shut power off to the PC with power strip or UPS, the keyboard on will still power up PC. The P3B-F is set up differently. With the P3B-F, if you shut power off to the computer in same way, you have to use the power switch to turn on.

What I ended up doing was going into BIOS and enabling AC Power Loss Restart. (I am pretty sure that is what is was called). Now when surge suppressor power strip is turned on, PC starts up. If you shut down without turning off power to PC, keyboard on will work all the time.

Other than that, the only other disappointment was not being able to convine him to get rid of that TNT card he had insisted on reusing.

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ASUS P2B-LS*Cheetah LVD*Barracuda UW*DiamondMAX IDE*SCSI ZIP Insider*Plextor Ultraplex*Plextor Plexwriter 8/2/20*G400 MAX*SB Live*3Com Courier V.*Hollywood +*Win 98SE, Win 2000*Sony 400PS*Desktop Theatre 5.1*


[This message has been edited by SCompRacer (edited 21 February 2000).]

[Freakie]

I'm sorry to hear this guys,

I'm running on a P3B-F with a PIII450, 256 MB Mem and a G200. And I'm having no trouble at all with the board, keyboard on works very well, I always use it.

Good luck working this thing out..

[Johnny Ray]

Hey SCompRacer,

Thanks.....that's exactly what's going on with the keyboard switch. I'll do the AC power loss in the BIOS and it should do what I want it to.

So now I'm running at FSB 124 with my PC133 and PC100 sticks in my rig. Core voltage at 2.1. Played TFC for a few hours last night without a problem.

I still don't understand why I can't run UT or 3dMark200 at std settings. I don't care for UT too much, but it is fun playing on MURC server
John