good ram advice to BURN an old slot A Athlon TB

[Jose]

Hi. Sorry PC related ...Not that familiar with PC hardware, but know the basics.

I happend to have got hold of a SlotA Athlon Thunderbird at 1Gz. Yeah  8-) :lol:
Got it as a cheap upgrade to be able to Play DVDs at full speed, wich the old 600mhz Athlon couldn't (amazing). Maybe it was just the Gfx card, an old Riva128Zx. :-D

 I haven't tried the 1Ghz TB yet. Yeah, I could've got a new mobo but that would mean new processor and memory too.
This  is a rare processor as AMD only realeased the Thunderbird slot A versions to OEMs. The 1Ghz version is even more rare.

The motherboard is a good old Asus K7M with irongate chipset.
I'm planning to overclock it and see what it gets, after all this motherboard was famous for overclocking stability at it's time, and the Thunderbirds with it's faster L2 cache (at bus speed) and copper interconnects or something, is much more easier to overclock from tests I've read on the net.

So, what ram brand etc. would you recommend considering the bus is 200Mhz and the motherboard accepts pc100 modules (though I have a 133 128mb one in there and it works fine at 100mhz but the other one is a pc100 64mb). With the Athlon600 (older non TB version) I could raise the bus only to about 105mhz stable!!!

Do you think it's worth it ?  :-D  Anyone had any experience with a similar system, I know there's some AMD users out here too..

[crystall]

The motherboard is a good old Asus K7M with irongate chipset.
I'm planning to overclock it and see what it gets, after all this motherboard was famous for overclocking stability at it's time, and the Thunderbirds with it's faster L2 cache (at bus speed) and copper interconnects or something, is much more easier to overclock from tests I've read on the net.

My advice is to avoid overclocking it unless you have a very good cooling solution. Thunderbirds were pretty hot at the time and I've seen a number of them burned in the past few years.

So, what ram brand etc. would you recommend considering the bus is 200Mhz and the motherboard accepts pc100 modules (though I have a 133 128mb one in there and it works fine at 100mhz but the other one is a pc100 64mb). With the Athlon600 (older non TB version) I could raise the bus only to about 105mhz stable!!!

It's getting hard to get PC133 these days, most of the RAM brands have dropped it. Kingston should still offer it though and their products are of excellent quality so I'd recomend picking a stick from them, especially if you are going to try some OC.

[Zac67]

Dunno what freq the Irongate is capable of - RAM should pose no trouble if you take PC133 and play with timing parameters a bit (CL etc).

Beware that o'cing the board will o'c the PCI and AGP as well - not all cards handle that well, and the Riva's probably not one of them.

The TBird most probably could handle 1300-1400 MHz with proper cooling - but does it run on the K7M? The reason AMD did not release the Slot TBird was lacking compatibility with existing boards...

O'cing the CPU w/o running the board beyond specs means changing the multiplier, so look for a goldfinger device or try to do it yourself (should be somewhere in the web).

But - is it really worth it? Much higher clocked Semprons are available cheaply and you can get cheap mbs, too.

[Jose]

@Crystall

Hmm, but I want to overclock it 8-) As for the Ram, well there's still eBay, I'm sure I could find a few bargains there (or hope...)

@Zac67

The mobo I have can go up to 150mhz FSB, wich steps of 1mhz from 100 to 125 (or 133 can't remember).

"Beware that o'cing the board will o'c the PCI and AGP as well - not all cards handle that well, and the Riva's probably not one of them."

Yeah, maybe that was the problem with my Athlon600..
"The TBird most probably could handle 1300-1400 MHz with proper cooling - but does it run on the K7M? The reason AMD did not release the Slot TBird was lacking compatibility with existing boards..."

I didn't buy it without doind some research and I knew about that, my motherboard is fully compatible. There were faster chipsets lauched after the Irongate (Apollo etc..) that were not compatible..

"O'cing the CPU w/o running the board beyond specs means changing the multiplier, so look for a goldfinger device or try to do it yourself (should be somewhere in the web)"

The Thunderbird was locked.. dunno if there's anything will have to check it out, but I prefer to overclock the bus too.

"But - is it really worth it? Much higher clocked Semprons are available cheaply and you can get cheap mbs, too."

You're probably right, and that was my dillema before buying it. Even having to get another mobo would probably be worth it and not make much difference. But if it can play DVD's all the way, I'll be satisfied as the Athlon 600 already did most things I want (PC gaming is not worth it IMO, just get a console and play on the living rooms big TV).

[Tomas]

Got it as a cheap upgrade to be able to Play DVDs at full speed, wich the old 600mhz Athlon couldn't (amazing). Maybe it was just the Gfx card, an old Riva128Zx.

I have a silly question.. Did you activate the DMA for the dvdrom?? The dma for cdroms/dvdroms in windows are usually running without dma as default, and this would cause the dvd playback to be choppy.. I have had no problems playing back dvds even on a old pIII 450mhz.. A 600mhz athlon should definitely be up to the task.

[Jose]

@Tomas

Already checked that! It still missed frames. I'm using PowerDVD BTW. I was assuming the Gfx card has the bandwith to do it and the blame's on the processor. If it'snot I'll have done something really stupid :-o

[Jose]

Hi. I just checked the Bios and the stupid asshole where I bought the DVDRom installed it as Primary Slave. I was out of time and asked if they could install it for free if I bought it there. Thanks! The secondary channel is not being used at all. Will that disable DMA ? I'm not using the HD while the DVD is playing...

[Zac67]

Guess the mobo's making UDMA33 at best, the DVD's probably limited to MWDMA16, but that'd be fine unless you're using both at full load at the same time. I'd use the sec IDE for DVD though.

I can't think of why an Athlon600 should'nt play DVD flawlessly. Years ago I had a K6-III/400 on an old Socket7 mobo (T2P4) w/ a Voodoo Banshee and it was working AOK - maybe half the speed of your 600. I guess you're missing something... What OS is that on?

[srg86]

The Slot A Tbird runs perfectly well on the AMD 750 Iron Gate chipset. It's the VIA KX133 chipset that didn't like it. I have a 900MHz Slot A Tbird and it run like a dream.

BTW With PowerDVD my K6-2 400MHz could just about play DVDs smoothly, an Athlon 600 should have no problem.

srg

BTW The Iron Gate chipset was also used on some Alpha 21264 boards AFAIK.

[Star69]

DVD drives are best set as the master on the secondary bus.  Having the DVD device set as a slave MAY cause jerky or uneven playback...  

Good luck with the oc!

[Jose]

Hi. Thx for all replies. I changed the DVD drive to master on the secondary bus but had the same result. I also made a benchmark with a DVD (Iron Maiden's Rock in Rio :-D ) and Sisoft Sandra said my drive was up to 6MB/s.

The OS is W2KPro. I have the latest drivers from AMD for the AGP port and Via ones for the south bridge. BTW isn't this the same southbridge as the A1's ? :-)

I want to solve this before overclocking the Thunderbird.
Any clues of what else could be? The Gfx card ?

BTW, I'm thinking about getting a good Vortex cooler, cause I want the overclock to be silent but also take it to extrems. If I burn it I'll probable make a video of me smashing it :-P

[Zac67]

Have you tried reading a DVD-ROM? Should be a lot faster than 6 MB/s, otherwise the drive is the problem...

[billchase]

It still sounds like a possible DMA issue.  I assume you have
already enabled it in the windows device manager or whatever
2000 calls it.  In XP, the properties tab also tells me what
mode it is currently running.  Maybe the w2k IDE channel
properties tab will report the status as well.  Try the
following link to enable DMA if PIO is stuck on.

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

I had to do the registry fix under the following heading:
"Re-enable DMA using the Registry Editor"

As far as overclocking, the northbridge will probably be
more of a factor than the memory.  Everything on the irongate
runs in sync.  The goldfinger device to change the CPU
mulitplier that some others mention will probably be the
best bet in order to allow the rest of the system to run at
spec.  Even though you won't reach near PC133 speeds, just
stick with good quality PC133 ram so that it will run faster
than 100Mhz if you do choose to push the fsb. It will possibly
run tighter timings at 100Mhz than regular PC100. I ran
crucial in my slot A system, but I sure some of the other
top brands will work just as well.

One more note about memory, I have never had any luck running
1-sided memory in my K7M.  Only recognizes half the capacity.
Stick with double-sided if at all possible.

C Snyder

BTW, are you using the w2k ide driver or VIA's?  Stick with
the generic w2k drivers, but if you are running the VIA
set, check their site for the DMAtool, it might be required
to enable DMA if nothing else does.



 





 

[Jose]

@Zac67

Yeah, but 6MB/s should be more than enouph anyway, MPEG2 is around 3.5MBits/s IIRC, unless the machine is unstable.

@ billchase
Hi.

"It still sounds like a possible DMA issue. I assume you have already enabled it in the windows device manager or whatever 2000 calls it. In XP, the properties tab also tells me what mode it is currently running. Maybe the w2k IDE channel properties tab will report the status as well. Try the following link to enable DMA if PIO is stuck on.
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm"

Properties tab  reports Ultra DMA as the current mode.

"...
 One more note about memory, I have never had any luck running 1-sided memory in my K7M. Only recognizes half the capacity. Stick with double-sided if at all possible."

I'll take that into account.

"BTW, are you using the w2k ide driver or VIA's? Stick with
the generic w2k drivers, but if you are running the VIA
set, check their site for the DMAtool, it might be required
to enable DMA if nothing else does."

VIA's, but W2K reports Ultra DMA as the current mode so it's working. I've also found some references on the net advicing to remove DMA tool before installing VIA drivers so I assume the drivers substitute it.

Still the same... :-)

[billchase]

"VIA's, but W2K reports Ultra DMA as the current mode so it's working. I've also found some references on the net advicing to remove DMA tool before installing VIA drivers so I assume the drivers substitute it."

I actually I had heard that DMAtool was sometimes required to activate DMA
with the VIA drivers installed.  Maybe newer versions of the drivers eliminate
the need for DMAtool.  Probably wouldn't hurt to try it anyway.

Are you running with the ACPI HAL installed?  I have also not had any
luck with ACPI on older hardware including irongate boards. If you are going
to do another install of Windows anyway, try just using the Standand PC HAL
if you are not already.

Good luck with it, outside of what has been suggested, I am not sure what else
it could be.

C Snyder