To Dom Green: it could be a heat related issue. check your heatsink. what processor did you get by the way?

Responding to JU 4a55

I see that you haven't experienced what you would consider a major problem w/ this mobo, but I did, twice, verified by the Giga-byte tech dept (for the same non-ocin' reason). Now I am not bragging, but I am qualified. With my experience in engineering manufacturing, at GM Pontiac Truck & Bus Engineering (I am a Automotive Engineer), I will state as gospel, if you have a 2% failure of a product requiring factory service within the waranty period, you have a DISGRACE.

You talk of logic, while jumping to so many half baked conclusions.

I read your BIO, you have all of what?, 2 posts?

You just got here . You need to keep your mouth shut, and your ears open, then maybe you will learn something.

Have respect for your elders.

and clean up your grammer. what is that/? ebonics?

ps. If you are literate, then you know my first Oveclockin' project was stable to 3600+ (Multiplier 15/175FSB*2640mhz for 3600+) for 6 months.

Bow before the "Server of Power"

The Over Clocking Grand Wizard has spoken.

Peace

To Ali Jiwad:

Got a fairly standard, but rather large, heatsink and fan. Not OCing at all, and the processor has been tested with the same model heatsink. Thanks, but don't think its that.

To JU 4a55:

If everyone operated on the "IF IT *WERKS* DON'T FIX IT" approach, technological advancement would have stopped about 3000 years ago.

To OCGrandWizard:

Thanks very much for your help, think I'll have to bow to the inevitable and buy a new board. Any suggestions? Love the spec on this board, does everything I need at the moment, would really like a fairly "direct replacement" although quite loathe to buy the same one again, for obvious reasons!!!!

Oh my god! I got post number 666! Lol.

That all in great if ur designing the technology Ali jiwad another ova clker who has NFI about what there
Doing no original thought. maybe u should think DONT FIX IT IF IT WORKS not dont invent something
u girls havnt invented anything here ur just pushing an old MOBO ova WOW
U can change values yippie for u have heaps of fun wow i can buy a HSF from a company
i so cool haha 3000 years ago stupid ass muslim name u got too

TO Ali Jiwad:
If everyone operated on the "IF IT *WERKS* DON'T FIX IT" approach, technological advancement would have stopped about 3000 years ago.

OGCWIZARD IM JUST TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH UR POST OK

Hi,

I am an electronics engineer, and have been building systems for over half a decade. I have seen many posts about how bad this Motherboard is, and all the problems people are having. I do not think the board deserves such a bad reputation. For me, it is the best motheerboard i have ever bought. I also use it in all systems that I build.

I used the Full Raid F11 hacked bios, and have successfully O/C 1800MHz to 1956MHz, and its been running very stable for the last year.

For people havng problems, try dissabling onboard sound, as I know that can cause problems.

The only major issue i have eevr had is that Win9x kernel O/S will not boot with 2x 512 DDR333 sticks, though will be fine with just one. I have read previous posts and some people seem to be having the same problem. The issue has never been addressed.

Tried all memory timing options in all different slots, with most bios options dissabled witnout O/C, without any luck. The system will either BSOD or just shut down.

WinXP etc have been running perfectly however, though games inherently run better on Win9x with Virtual Reality apps - iv been having to play in XP with greatly reduced performance.

Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated.


For the record, My moto is: "If it ain't broke, Fix it till it is!"
It is the only way to find the limitations of a device, and ultimately, the best performance attainable.


--RAGEdemon

To Dom Green

I have been building up a system based on a FIC AU13. It has a nFORCE2 northbridge chipset, dual channel memory (Their tech people tell me that the nVidia solution allows you to use all 3 mem slots in dual channel as long as all the dimm modules are identical), & sata RAID. Seems to be very stable so far. It has all the oc'in features that anyone would want.

I bought it at COMP USA w/extended no questions asked extra extended warranty so if I have a catastraphic failure I can get a exchange on the spot or apply the money I spent toward anything I want.

Preliminary oc'in tests got me up to 3000+ w/o tweaking mem timings yet.

Peace

the voltage regulation is the bios can adjust the unstability of the board that all have been complaining about. the problem often lies in the power supply. you often think the supply is giving the provivisional minimal allowance and it is not. but 9 times out of 10 you have to just adjust the voltage allowance a little to recieve full cooperation from this board. i grabbed the board brand new from a guy on my job to build the machine for the wife and kids and it is running fine right now. i have played bf and unreal with no problems. so it is not the graphic strain that is unstable but it is the amperage that supplies the vga that causes these problems.

RICK

To Rick Hill

I am not knocking you. You seem to know what you are talking about, but remember, complex electrical devices have inherent traits that may be more apparent in some examples than others, as well as the occasional anomollies

With Power supplies voltage is as important as amperage.

Not all devices can be helped with extra voltage, my kingston valueram for example does not run any faster w/ extra voltage, nor does my 2500+ cpu.

Actually you want to avoid using extra voltage as it causes extra heat.

That being said, have a good day

To Shahzad:

I haven't had a single problem with my 2x512MB sticks of 333MHz RAM, the system has been stable from the word go, the only problem I did have was needing to update the BIOS to F9 as it wasn't too happy about my 2600+ chip and the ATI 9700 Pro was overheating (the fix is in my bio for the card).

I did read somewhere though that if you have the two sticks of RAM in slot 0 & 2 you will have a much more stable system, not sure how true that is but it worked on my old AMD Athlon 700 system and it seems to have worked on my current system for the last year and two months.

Thank you for the reply. I reopened my system, and although the swapping the sticks didnt help, id did give me some time to eperiment.

It turns out that the poblem is ACPI in the bios. When Dissabled, WinME finally boot just fine, but WinXP refuses. When Enabled, Vice Versa.

Atleast now it works.

Thank You very much for the reply

--Shahzad

I am running an unlocked Athlon XP 2500 at 13X170= 2210Mhz It's stable but the problem is that my GA-7VAXP motherboard temp. (system temp.) is higher than the CPU's temp by 3-5 Centigrades when on full load. Is this a sign of a defective motherboard? I know this isn't normal. I use Sandra 2003, MBM5, and Aida32 to measure my temps.

Example: When CPU is running at full load, CPU temp. may be 45C but my motherboard's temp is 49C. This also depends on the room temperature. If its running idle, CPU temp may be at 39C but motherboard temp at 40C.

Anyways, has anyone experience this before? Please any comments, suggestions, solutions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Edward

My current system's config:

Athlon XP 2500+ (13X170) 2.2Ghz
GA-7VAXP Rev.2 Bios F13
Vantec VA4-C7040 HSF
Antec True480W PS
Crucial 512MB PC2700
PNY GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB
Maxtor 160GB 7200 8MB
Seagate 80GB 7200 8MB
Lite-On 52x24x52
Pionner 16x DVD
Iomega 250MB zip drive
Antec SX830II Case

Hey Edward, how many case fans do you have installed in your system? Do you have a fan blowing the hot air out of the system and another pulling cold air in? For example, have one fan on the lower front-side of the case pull air into the system and another fan on the back-side of the case up near the CPU blowing air out.

Another possibility is the thermal diode used to measure the temperature of the mobo may be faulty. If your system is acting funny, then I would worry.

I want want to buy new ram for my mobo. Anyone have any Ideas for what I should get. Right now I'm running.
BIOS-F5
Althon XP 2600+
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
Western Digital HD (1) 80GB and (1) 250 GB
Sound Blaster 5.1 Live
O\S-Windows XP Pro with SP1
512 Megs DDR Ram at 266 speed

I have the latest drivers for all my hardware. Plese give me a clue on what to buy for the upgrade as well as how to speed up the FSB for the upgrade. Thank you. Magickflash2

Hi,

I have a problem about my GA-7VAX rev 1.1 board.
My PS is keep on getting burnt out and i am not sure what is going on,
I burned out 2 300W PS in like 2 days... then I bought a 400W PS and less than 2 months later,
it burned out. I am not sure what is going on. All i know is this,
I am just running 2 programs. 1 is Lineage (lineage.com) (MMORPG 2 D game) and WinAMP to play music.
for the 300W its gone that quick, For the 400W one I start play Lineage2 (lineage2.com) and winamp, and the 400W PS lasted like less than 1.5 months.
BTW my PS is generic brand.. .So should i try to buy a ANTEC case + their PS???
PLEASE HELP

my System Spec
Ga-7VAX rev 1.1
XP2600 Barton- Dont know if its lock or Unlock.
Elixir 512DDR 400 but Running 333 on the board when i turn it on.
WD 80 GIG HD.
Chain Tech FX 5200 128 megs VC

Hi,
I have a rev. 1.1 GA-7VAX . Currently overclocking an unlocked XP 2500+.
On this revision the dipswitch multiplier settings only go as far as 12.5..
I have my FSB up to 175. But am I limited to 12.5 . How do I go higher???
How can I get the dip switch settings of the Rev 1.2 board???
Thanks.

you can go higher by increasing the fsb

thanks, but I am limited because of a AGP/PCI goes out of spec and I've experienced HD corruption when I get near 185-190 FSB. Raising the multiplier would be better for me (this board doesn't have a /6 divider). Is that possible on the Rev 1.1 board - I know it is on 1.2. ? Thanks.

About the PSU problem:

In my experience, it has always blown out when i set the CPU over-voltage too high. In early bios versions, there was a temperature proble, where (atleast i believe) the bios was supplying too much voltage to the CPU, no matter what the setting.

This could be what is happening with yours.

Re-Flash your bios with the latest version, and dont over the voltage.

There are also good PSU's available that will give you extra supply for the CPU just for overclocking.
My 400W gives ~+/-60% and only cost £22.

Best of luck.

-- Shahzad