Getting the best from this and other Athlon mobo's (Abit KT7-RAID)

Member Name: deecee

Product:	Abit KT7-RAID
Date:	14/10/00 (370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy start up

Disadvantages: need computer knowledge

Trouble free set-up of Athlon / Duron Mobo's that use KX133 and KT133 chipsets

There seem to be a number of problems with the different boards
that use this chipset , most problems have been identified and
the board manufacturers are trying to address them as fast as
they can , this is just a brief article on how to get around some of the
problems I have come across when building my computers, don't get
me wrong , I am not the wizz kid who discovered the answers , I
went around the various sites on the net and researched the
answers that cleverer guys than me had come up with .
OK you have built your computer and are ready to load it up ,
STOP right there .
Check that you have placed the various cards you have fitted to
the mother board staggered in every other slot starting from the
AGP slot , as each pair of slots tend to share IRQs this cuts
down the chance of conflicts .
Some of the boards are experiencing problems with memory
management , to make sure yours doesn't , then start here .
The very first thing to change is your BIOS , even if your Mobo
is new the BIOS will probably not be the latest , check the
version when you boot your computer and then go to the website of
your Motherboard manufacturer and compare , download the latest
BIOS and the correct flash tool , the instructions for flashing
will also be there read them if your not familiar with flashing
BIOS's , this should overcome the current rash of Dimm
instability problems .
There is a problem with some of these boards not recognising 128
meg Dimms (PC133 only) , if you have not bought yours yet then
buy 2 x 64 meg Dimms . If you have already bought your memory
then you are going to have to find a friend who will loan you a
64 meg Dimm, all you will need to do is boot the machine with a
64 meg Dimm in the slot you wish to place your 128 meg Dimm and
then
swop them over , that's it your system will now recognise
128 meg Dimms .

To set the BIOS for best performance do the following ;-
1/ Load Optimal settings
2/ Tell the Bios where you do NOT have hard disks , this stops it
wasting time looking for something that's not going to be there.
3/ Set system BIOS and ROM Bios as Cacheable this speeds system
up
4/ Set memory speed to default for stability or turbo for
performance .
5/ If your using Soundblaster card you MUST enable memory hole 15
- 16 , otherwise your system will either lock up or end up with
the speakers screaming at you .
6/ Set 1st display device to boot to as AGP .
7/ Enable "assign IRQ for VGA" this helps to stop conflicts
between AGP socket and whatever you have put in the first IRQ
socket .

With the above changes and settings you should have a trouble
free start-up and end up with the machine you wanted

Summary: