Bios settings on MSI KT333 ULTRA ???

[Neoprene]

Hi all,

Ran Goldmemory 2.5 , excellent RAM checker and no problems . Switched DVD and CD burner power supplies to one PSU line and the HD and Floppy to another. Reseated the RAM in another slot ( tried all 3 now )..no change .

Ive the same prob posted on AoA and Via forums , someone suggested clearing the CMOS then setting the ram to user first then the FSB to 133 ...how do u " claer the CMOS "

Thanks ,

Gerry.

BTW went up and down the AGP and DDR voltages today one at a time , also the CPU voltage ..unsuccessful .

[Wiggo]

Your motherboard manual with describe the way to clear the CMOS for your board. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Neoprene]

Hi all ,

Lol I`ve been resetting the CMOS like this for some time now, but didnt realise this is what it was !!

I`ve made progress , but like all good problems , this one has MUTATED :-))

I`ve set the FSB to 130mhz, and tried setting the DRAM clok setting to user , then SDRAM speed to SPD . Now the proc works at (nearly ) full speed ..but if I try to play GFX intensive games get a total power down , not even blue screen . Random intervals too.

My temps at 130mhz are listed in my sys specs below, and both those and my voltages seem fine .

Next step seems to be getting the Geforce card to stability ..any ideas where to go from here ?

Gerry

[Neoprene]

Hi all ,

STABILITY !! but why ?????

OK. took off the heatsink , eyeballed the CPU , even took the chip out and reseated it again!! The chip had something etched on it like axda 2200 which I took as being ID for a 2200 chip. So not an overclocked XP 1500 under the hood !

I then took out the mobo battery ..a fussy pain in the a** to do . carefully replace it, then booted up again.

The boot message said something like " somethin/NV CHECKSUM BAD "

So went into BIOS , and simply set the FSB at 133 , did nothing else , then rebooted .

And PRESTO ! Booted up with the proc at max speed , seems totally stable so far, played an hour of Battlefield 1942 , no crashes !! Sys temps after an hour of play were CPU 43 c , system temp 36c.

I had always felt this was some sort of BIOS setting problem , but I`m at a loss to know how taking the battery out fixed it. After all , I did nothing to the BIOS prior to trying to install XP ..so why a change now ??

My grateful thanks to all who made suggestions ... I`ll keep u posted how extreme gameplay fares up ! Now to flash my DVD to region free once an RPC-1 flash is out

Ciao for now ,

Gerry

[Neoprene]

Hi all ,

I really appreciated all the advice given to me.

Right now i`m enjoying the system properly for the first time . Spoke to a friend of mine tonight who tells me that on the MSI website they state that the manual has a mistake, the jumper for resetting the CMOS should be left switched for 5 mins . Seems strange to me that when u reset settings via the BIOS to default , they`re not really at default !

I hope all my ranting is of use in the future to anyone else who has similar problems .

Good hunting and faster frame rates to all ,

Gerry

[reebz]

u wanna know why?

you probably didnt reset the cmos properly the first time (like you said you have to leave the jumper off for a while) :smokin:

but taking the battery out resets the lot... bios...etc etc....

I also run the same motherboard as you, I would recommend flashing the BIOS to the latest version, it provides native support for the new 166mhz FSB AMD Cpu's and it will also identify ALL AMD cpus as they should be.... so a 1800+XP will not be identified as a 1533mhz Athlon anymore but a AMD 1800+ on the post when u turn the pc on.

: peace: peace

[Neoprene]

Hi ,

Thanks for your post. I still find it frustrating that the manufacturers handbook for the mobo mentions NOTHING about leaving the jumper switched for 5 mins minimum . Also it`s natural to assume that when u hit " Restore BIOS to default settings " in the setup it does so ..when in fact it doesnt !! This info could have saved me a LOT of hassle , I`m just glad I hit on the answer ( thanks to here ) before I went out and bought a whole load of new RAM . Like many things in life , u have to learn some the hard way !

Cheers ,

Gerry :flames: now kranking up BF 1942 yee har ..........

[Wiggo]

Actually a lot do but some don't, I clear the CMOS from habbit now as soon as I pull a mobo out of it's box. ;)

You'll be surprised how many serious probs come down to a small technicality. Good luck with ya gamin'. :thumb:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Paul Moredock]

Purchase matched DDR sticks. Tested and certified as CL-2; NOT as CL-2.5. Try Corsair or Samsung branded...

The timing issues are only showing up when the error tolerances are exceeded on only one of the DDR modules -- at slower speeds the memory R/W timings allow the slower one of the two to get in the cache before the busmaster slams the door shut. The diferences in timing only have to be 5% to cause problems at FSB 133. Logic it out: Video failures only at higher memory demand clock speed cycles... Where does your "video memory aperture" come from? Hint: The bios sets the amount of the shared memory from main memory installed on your motherboard.