VOGONS


First post, by d1stortion

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I made a topic on an issue with a P3B-F some time ago. Since then I switched to a CUBX-E; it has a PIII 800EB, so I ran it at 133 MHz FSB/33Mhz PCI, which worked fine for over a month. It started with the board simply not POSTing a lot of times, being just stuck in limbo, accessing the DVD drive (this issue I even randomly had on the P3B-F). What's new is that it wrecked some of the drivers of my 98SE installation; even the BIOS was garbled, see pic. I figured it might be a capacitor issue, but they all look good visually; the PSU's about a year old.

Anyway, I did a CMOS reset and the last time it booted up fine at 100 Mhz. Hell, aren't the ASUS BX boards supposed to do 133 without problems? I don't seem to have a lot of luck with those then 😒 I still don't trust this board... Has anybody had a FSB overclock messing up things this bad? Just want to hear some opinions on this before I install a new Windows or check on the other parts of the PC...

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Reply 1 of 7, by TELVM

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Seems to me that garbled BIOS comes from your AGP graphics card, which isn't happy at all at 133MHz FSB / 89MHz AGP, overheats and raves (if not plainly fried by now).

The GPU can be the Achilles' heel when overclocking 440BX boards to 133+. Some older cards can't just cut it, others need stronger cooling to go. As a rule one must implement overkill cooling before overclocking anything.

If the GPU works OK at 100 FSB (= it's still healthy), try applying quality fresh thermal paste under the heatsink and larger/stronger fan/s on it.

Reply 2 of 7, by d1stortion

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I've a V3 3500TV in there right now. Those get pretty hot even by default, I have a modern case fan blowing at it full speed. It still works fine, nothing fried there.

I saw you posting screens of a BX board overclocked @150Mhz in the other thread, which is quite a heftier OC, even with more cooling. Are you totally sure that my problem is just due to the AGP overclock? The thing that worries me most is that, like I said, it managed to delete the video card drivers and change some Windows settings by itself... Seems a bit hardcore for an OC that was common back in the day, doesn't it?

Reply 5 of 7, by TELVM

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Found it, uncle Tom's March 2000 article on the subject:

Exploration into Overclocked AGP Graphics

Although the Voodoos passed uncle Tom's test at 133, they ran unhealthily hot:

image003.gif

Let the air flow!

Reply 6 of 7, by d1stortion

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I also had this topic concerning visual glitches in Descent and some other DOS games. Through testing I now found out that it's mainly affected by AGP bus speed rather than core clock; it seems to be still there at AGP@66, but much worse at 89, so this hints at the video card being the culprit as well. I'll do a new Windows install and see if any crap occurs without overclocking anything.