Quite strange, I swapped to an Asus P4S533, and the PSU (Enermax Whisper 365W) that powered my now dead Asus A7V333 is also dead. Seems more than a coincidence, but I can't fathom how a motherboard can kill a PSU. Now I have to hunt for another A7V333 with a universal AGP. Having a dead one doesn't seem right.

I think next time I have to deal with one of the coolers that require a flathead screwdriver is to loosen up the retention clip a little (some of the later Athlon XP era heatsinks were stiff as hell). Also put some foamy padding underneath the area so when it does slip, it may not KO the motherboard.

Sorry for the stupid question, but it couldn't be that You somehow flicked the switch on the PSU off?

If the PSU is dead, what makes You now think the A7V333 is dead? unless You haven't told us everything You have tried.

dexvx wrote:

Quite strange, I swapped to an Asus P4S533, and the PSU (Enermax Whisper 365W) that powered my now dead Asus A7V333 is also dead. Seems more than a coincidence, but I can't fathom how a motherboard can kill a PSU. Now I have to hunt for another A7V333 with a universal AGP. Having a dead one doesn't seem right.

I think next time I have to deal with one of the coolers that require a flathead screwdriver is to loosen up the retention clip a little (some of the later Athlon XP era heatsinks were stiff as hell). Also put some foamy padding underneath the area so when it does slip, it may not KO the motherboard.

Happened to me too. Since then I always protect the area around it and never had problems with "scratchin" since then.

dexvx wrote:

Quite strange, I swapped to an Asus P4S533, and the PSU (Enermax Whisper 365W) that powered my now dead Asus A7V333 is also dead. Seems more than a coincidence, but I can't fathom how a motherboard can kill a PSU. Now I have to hunt for another A7V333 with a universal AGP. Having a dead one doesn't seem right.

I think next time I have to deal with one of the coolers that require a flathead screwdriver is to loosen up the retention clip a little (some of the later Athlon XP era heatsinks were stiff as hell). Also put some foamy padding underneath the area so when it does slip, it may not KO the motherboard.

my Asus A7N8X has some plastic protection foil around the CPU pins, just for that I guess....

I've built the system for the GPU scalling comparasion, is based on my Athlon XP-M 2400+ @ XP 3200 and 1 GB RAM on my MSI K7N2, but somehow the board detects it as Unkown CPU Type (running latest BIOS) and CPU-Z hangs the system when i try running it, do anyone know about that issue when running an XP-M?

Imperious wrote:

Sorry for the stupid question, but it couldn't be that You somehow flicked the switch on the PSU off?

If the PSU is dead, what makes You now think the A7V333 is dead? unless You haven't told us everything You have tried.

A7V333 worked fine with Palomino and old PSU.
Removed Palomino, put in Thoroughbred and 'chipped' motherboard during heatsink install with flathead screwdriver.
A7V333 will not power on regardless of old or new PSU. Tried Palomino (original), Thoroughbred.
A7N8X will not power on with old PSU. Switched to new PSU. Powers on with Palomino and Thoroughbred.
P4S533 will not on with with old PSU. Switched to new PSU. Powers on.

Since those boards are of the same generation, I'm assuming my A7V333 and old PSU are dead. All CPU's are alive.

Still saddened and in disbelief. Just yesterday, I tried to power the A7V333 on to no avail. I need to buy a magnifier and try and locate the damage.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

I've built the system for the GPU scalling comparasion, is based on my Athlon XP-M 2400+ @ XP 3200 and 1 GB RAM on my MSI K7N2, but somehow the board detects it as Unkown CPU Type (running latest BIOS) and CPU-Z hangs the system when i try running it, do anyone know about that issue when running an XP-M?

You need an older version of CPU-Z, I have had the same issue with many socket A boards and not just with Barton CPUs.

The Windows 9x version of CPU-Z 1.57 seems to play nice with most configurations, even in Windows 2K and XP.

http://www.oldapps.com/cpuz.php?old_cpuz=51

Skyscraper wrote on 2017-03-02, 17:59:

Here are some performance results with the Asus A7M266 AMD 760 chipset motherboard. […]
Show full quote

Here are some performance results with the Asus A7M266 AMD 760 chipset motherboard.

The CPU used is an unmodified Barton XP-M 2800+, the maximum "PowerNow! multiplier" this CPU can use is 16x. XP-M CPUs POSTs at the 11x multiplier in this motherboard.

I did not run an overclocked FSB other than a quick tests at 150 MHz, it seemed 2D stable but 3D-tests showed artifacts. I will test FSB overclocking with my other AMD 760 motherboard to see if this is a chipset limitation, if it's just the A7M266 or if it's the X1950 Pro which can not handle a 75 MHz AGP bus.

Barton XP-M 2800+ (16x133=2133 MHz): Super PI 1M

Barton 2800+ SuperPi1M.JPG

Barton XP-M 2800+ (16x133=2133 MHz): 7-Zip 32M

Barton 2800+ 7zip32M.JPG

The 3D benchmarks are heavily bottlenecked by the AMD 760 chipsets memory speed at 133 MHz. The gain between 1466 MHz and 1866 MHz in 3dmark 2001 is only 1000 points.

3dmark can't even initialize the X1950 Pro with the CPU at the 15x or 16x multiplier. This do not seem to be a stability issue but an AGP timing issue and is probably unrelated to the stability issues I saw with the Catalyst 9.3 driver.

[edit]

Ignore these benchmarks, I found out whats needed to be done to make the AMD 760 chipset run much better in 3D and I switched to the faster (at least with the X1950 Pro) Catalyst 9.3 driver. I ran into exactly the same performance issues with the X1950 Pro running in an Abit KG7 AMD 760 motherboard and also the exact same issue with 3dmark even failing to initialize the card at speeds greater than 1866 MHz. This made me try some other video cards using PCI-E-AGP bridges like the Radeon X850XT, the Geforce 6600GT and the Geforce 7600GS, none of them ran at a decent speed and while the system was perfectly stable in 2D at 2133 MHz it wasn't even fully stable in 3D at 1866 MHz.

At that point I thought perhaps the AMD 760 chipset sucks will all cards using these PCI-E-AGP bridges and switched to a Geforce 6800GT but the instability got even worse, this made my tinker with the advanced settings. I knew Asus recommended changing "CPU skew" from a default 3 to 0 which I tried in the Asus board. With the Asus board I diddn't see any real difference going from the default skrew value to the recomennded "0" though, performance was still good in 2D but the 3D performance kind of sucked.

I tried to change the CPU skew to 0 with the Abit board but found this setting amazingly unstable. If going in one direction makes the issue worse perhaps the other direction makes it better I thought and tried the other extreme, setting 7. Suddenly the stability issues were gone and the 3D performance is what could be expected with both the Geforce 6800GT and the Radeon X1950 Pro and the initialization issue with 3dmark is gone.

There is still the issue with The X1950 Pro not running 3Dmark03 Battle Of Proxycon with the Catalyst 9.3 driver when the CPU is running at a speed over 2 GHz just like with the ECS KT600 motherboard. I have inspected the cards cooler and it's not filled with dust, I replaced the thermal paste. I have also added one fan blowing air on the cards power circuitry and another fan blowing air on the PCI-E AGP bridge but the issue remains the same. This seems to be an issue with the combination of this card and the Catalyst 9.3 driver.

The Catalyst 9.3 driver also still produces a more uneven frame rate in 3Dmark 2001 compared to the 7.10 driver though as the memory becomes an even more obvious bottle neck with better video card performance.

The conclusion is that these old motherboards with AMD 760 really needs a hands on approch with faster CPUs and settings I would have thought only could affect stability also affects 3D performance.

edit2

After some more testing I'm now confident that no Nvidia card with PCI-E - AGP bridge will work with the AMD 760 chipset, or at least not with the Abit KG7. I have retested the 7600 GS and 6600GT and also tested a 7600GT and a 7800GS, none of these card works with any kind of stability regardless of CPU skew setting but briged ATI cards seems to work. Even if ATI cards works and performs well I think that it's probably best to use a non bridged Geforce 6800GT with AMD 760 motherboards.

/edit2

[/edit]

Barton XP-M 2500+ (14x133=1866 MHz) Radeon X1950 Pro 512 AGP Catalyst 7.10: 3dmark 2001.

IGNORE these results, I will rerun the benchmarks with this motherboard later. For now I will post the results with the Abit KG7 and I would think the Asus A7M266 will perform about the same.

Barton 2500+ ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512 3dmark2001.JPG

Barton XP-M 2500+ (14x133=1866 MHz) Radeon X1950 Pro 512 AGP Catalyst 7.10: 3dmark 03

IGNORE these results, I will rerun the benchmarks with this motherboard later. For now I will post the results with the Abit KG7 and I would think the Asus A7M266 will perform about the same.

Barton 2500+ ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512 3dmark03.JPG

Hello!

I´m living a problem similar than you on 3Dmark, but for me occurs when I try to pass 3Dmark2001, on the 4th(Nature) test where shows the lake the system reboots(always on the same place) when the CPU clock and FSB aren´t very very low.

My system:
XP-M 2200+ 35W
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe(last Trats 1013 biosmod and I did a recap on it)
Radeon X1650Pro 512MB
Simple Kingston Value 512MB DDR400 CL3
400W and 500W PSU(old ones, good 5V rails)

Here where I live that AGP era cards are too expensive now(the prices are realy crazy) and I´ve found this X1650 Pro near me and for a good price. I´ve installed and was a bit difficult because when I´ve tried a few drivers and the only version that worked with it was the 8476(8.4), so this was de only chance for it. I believe that is a limitation of this board with another driver versions due to the PCIE-AGP bridge.

The system was configured for the beginning on low clock (10x166Mhz) and the problem started, I worried but started troubleshooting why was always on the same place on the test, and figured out that on ATi cards I remember that we disable Fast writes due some problems, what I did this time to, but decided to activate and boom! It solved! The AGP Spread spectrum option or elevate AGP voltage don´t solved before (and even after) this.

But after this the system so stable I started to push it to what it need and on a 11x200Mhz I see the problem again with Fast Writes activate now. I observe that it happens even on 9,5x200. At 11x166(1.8Ghz) it passes, so I decided to use the high multiplier to elevate the clock on-the-fly with clockgen for NF2, then 11x173 (1.9Ghz), 11x182(2Ghz), 11x200(2.2Ghz), 9,5x232(2.2Ghz)... its ok!!

Resume: if I configure on 11x166 on bios its ok, but setting something higher(11x200 for example) it crashes. Starting the system on 11x166 and using a software to elevate the CPU and FSB higher it passes ok.

My nightmare is that I can´t find a way to resolve, I believe that these ATi/AMD cards with PCIe-AGP bridge are hard to work but the mobo don´t like some bios setting(maybe have a background timing wrong for high FSB).

I´ve seen this with you on VIA chipset but for me is with it NF2 mobo. Is a rare problem and solution appears to be too.

Do you have any idea??

I am looking for the Beta-BIOS 001-C for an ASUS K7V (not K7V-T).

I already have the Beta BIOS 1008 001-D, but they are problems with the cache-divider.

So I hope, the previous version 001C can help me better.

Thank you all for your help.