VOGONS


First post, by Omarkoman

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I hope some can help.

I have this motherboard:

GA-7ZM

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/10828

The board has dip switches to set fsb which I set to 133mhz as I am trying to run Athlon 1.4ghz

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon% … google_vignette

Im running latest bios from rtw.

Issue is when fsb is set to 133 it wont post. It works with all other fsb options but that obviously doesnt let the cpu run at its intended speed.

Ram is definitely 133mhz and is reported correctly in cpu or hwinfo. In Bios i set the ram to 133mhz.

One thing i noticed on rtw is it says fsb is 200mhz. But then the board itself has table on it showing various fsb all the way to 133 next to the dip switch.

Any ideas and suggestions how to get this going at 133?

Reply 1 of 23, by pete8475

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Well that would be because the KT133 chipset does NOT support 133FSB.

The KT133A does support 133FSB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_chipsets

Last edited by pete8475 on 2026-03-28, 04:00. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 23, by Omarkoman

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Oh bummer! I should have done a better research!!!

Reply 3 of 23, by pete8475

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Omarkoman wrote on Yesterday, 03:59:

Oh bummer! I should have done a better research!!!

The naming for those old via chipsets is insane.

Reply 4 of 23, by Omarkoman

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Hm, so will this board take Athlon XP? If yes, whats similar to 1.4ghz thunderbird?

Reply 5 of 23, by pete8475

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Omarkoman wrote on Yesterday, 05:36:

Hm, so will this board take Athlon XP? If yes, whats similar to 1.4ghz thunderbird?

Well according to the retroweb page you linked yes it does work with Athlon XP processors.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigabyte-ga-7zm

Obviously YMMV I'm just going with what the retroweb says. I'm no expert on this era of AMD stuff, I was dealing with Intel hardware in those days.

Reply 7 of 23, by Omarkoman

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Its very confusing as the GA website says it will do all those cpus so im confused.

Reply 8 of 23, by Omarkoman

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pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 05:46:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7ZM-r … ort-Cpu-Support

The info on Gigabytes website seems to say it DOES NOT work with Athlon XP processors btw.

So I wouldn't buy one just on the hope that it would work.

The link you gave literally shows it can do XP and Barton etc

Reply 9 of 23, by marxveix

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Usually with latest bios you may get newer Duron / AthlonXP support at 100Mhz FSB.

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Reply 10 of 23, by pete8475

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Omarkoman wrote on Yesterday, 05:52:
pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 05:46:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7ZM-r … ort-Cpu-Support

The info on Gigabytes website seems to say it DOES NOT work with Athlon XP processors btw.

So I wouldn't buy one just on the hope that it would work.

The link you gave literally shows it can do XP and Barton etc

No it does not.

I added some color coded arrows.

Red = not supported
Green = supported

But hey go ahead any try one out and let us know what happens!

Last edited by pete8475 on 2026-03-28, 06:13. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 23, by Omarkoman

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Well ok but it shows athlon 1.4ghz as ok as well as XP 1500 Palomino which is also 133fsb.

Reply 12 of 23, by pete8475

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Like I said YMMV, personally I'd scrap the board you have and get something better.

Reply 13 of 23, by Omarkoman

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I wanted athlon 1.4ghz build as i have xp 2600 build, athlon 64 and athlon 64 x2 but wanted an earlier gen with a thunderbird 1.4

But yes, I will get a different board that can run the cpu and 133fsb.

Thank you for the advice.

Reply 14 of 23, by rmay635703

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pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 04:01:
Omarkoman wrote on Yesterday, 03:59:

Oh bummer! I should have done a better research!!!

The naming for those old via chipsets is insane.

KT133 - pc133 clk2 sdram support

Omarkoman wrote on Yesterday, 06:14:

I wanted athlon 1.4ghz build as i have xp 2600 build, athlon 64 and athlon 64 x2 but wanted an earlier gen with a thunderbird 1.4

But yes, I will get a different board that can run the cpu and 133fsb.

Thank you for the advice.

You could just throw your xp2600 cpu in the old board at 100/200mhz FSB and see what happens.

I ran a 1400mhz FSB 100/200 Duron in a motherboard that claimed it could not support it and it worked mostly fine. (Got an occasional crash)

Reply 15 of 23, by rasz_pl

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pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 04:01:

The naming for those old via chipsets is insane.

VIA being scammers as always 😐
That FSB switch block is fakery, anything above ~105MHz will randomly crash or just not boot at all.
You should be able to run at least up to Thoroughbred B 130nm athlons/durons/sempron. Main problem will be lack of multiplier change functionality limiting you to whatever the CPU comes with x 104MHz. On high quality KT133 boards (like Asus A7V) I was able to mod the cpu and run at max multiplier = 24x100MHz. This is budged board tho, weak power section.

https://github.com/raszpl/sigrok-disk FM/MFM/RLL decoder
https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module (AT&T Globalyst)
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 ram board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad

Reply 16 of 23, by dionb

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rasz_pl wrote on Yesterday, 17:19:
pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 04:01:

The naming for those old via chipsets is insane.

VIA being scammers as always 😐
That FSB switch block is fakery, anything above ~105MHz will randomly crash or just not boot at all.

I'm no Via fan, but that switch block is Gigabyte implementing something that will never work, not Via. Via is clear it's 100MHz FSB max, Gigabyte makes it look likes it can do 133MHz.

Reply 17 of 23, by Omarkoman

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I found an affordable GA 7ZX which has KT133A chipset and already comes with a 1.4ghz Thunderbird so grabbed it, it will serve its purpose for what I am trying to achieve.

I’ll keep the other board with the original Athlon 900 it had.

Reply 18 of 23, by DaveDDS

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pete8475 wrote on Yesterday, 03:58:

Well that would be because the KT133 chipset does NOT support 133FSB. ...

Curious how you arrived at this? (I don't have a lot of experience with Athlons)

I don't see "KT133" within the original post.

The CPU specs page linked in that post says "AM1400AMS3C" and says it supports 200mhz bus.
The mainboard link also says 200.

The wiki page you pointed to doesn't show bare "KT133" and other KTs go above 133.

Just curious - would like to understand Athlons better (I have one somewhere in a box - If I ever find a board that it works on I'd like to bring it up)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 19 of 23, by Omarkoman

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The cpu supports 200 fsb but its stock setting is 266 and it has. 10.5 multiplier (so 133x10.5 =1.4)

The KT133 can only do 200mhz or 100fsb or slightly overclocked.