Simple upgrade turned nightmare

[Ron_Jeremy 0]

I recently upgraded my ABIT BF6 mobo from an older 433 Celeron to a newer retail/boxed 100MHz Celeron II 850. I thought it would be a simple swap but 3D apps in Win2k are telling me otherwise. I had never had a compatibility issue until now.

 

The original Celeron was seated in a ABIT-Slotket. The new one is paired with a ASUS S370DL Slotket (Coppermine support). All Slotket jumpers are left to automatic (voltage default). There is no overclocking of any component going on. I used 6.5x66 for the original chip & 8.5x100 for this new one. The mobo handles all voltage & AGP/PCI divider parameters automatically.

 

When I attempt to play Counter-Strike, the machine hangs consistantly. Sometimes I'm not even in a game server & it will hang if I click a menu icon. When it does hang, there is no BSOD. The game/screen just freezes & I can hear a continuous sound loop of the last (in game) sounds being played when the machine froze. I CANNOT ctrl-alt-del either. I am forced to hard reboot.

 

To remedy, I reinstalled the game, even reinstalled Win2K again with all packs/patches/etc etc & already had the latest mobo BIOS before I bought the new chip. Nothing has helped.

 

I suspected maybe an unhappy marriage between the ABIT mobo & ASUS Slotket, but this was dispelled since the old 433 chip runs fine in the ASUS Slotket too. I have tried drivers from the 6 series to the brand new Detonators for my TNT2 with no results. Reapplying SP2 between cpu swapping made no difference.

 

So far my record for playing time before hanging is 22 minutes. I could normally play for hours on end without issue.

 

Two things I've noticed:

 

> SCSI/NIC/Sound/Video are all on IRQ 11

> The factory Intel heatsink/fan can be "wiggled" approx 2mm either way while mounted & strapped down onto cpu. The old 433 Celeron/Hsf doesn't do this.

 

Any help or pointers will be most appreciated. This pc is used mainly for Counter-Strike & am finding this extremely frustrating. Thanks again!

[Brian Frank 0]

The IRQ sharing is normal. People tend to blame the IRQ sharing in ACPI mode for problems, and it is very rare this is the problem.

 

I'd scrape off the thermal pad on the Intel heatsink and use some thermal paste--don't use the Radio Shack stuff, it's terrible.

[Ron_Jeremy 0]

Quote:

I'd scrape off the thermal pad on the Intel heatsink and use some thermal paste--don't use the Radio Shack stuff, it's terrible.

Brian, I made some changes for some better reults, but don't know if one or all helped:

> In the BIOS I set ACPI to disabled & I disabled another APM setting (forget which one)
> In BIOS I set "Plug n Play OS" to NO
> I switched the PC to "Standard PC" (Device Manager/Computer/ACPI). Upon reboot had to reinstall adapter drivers. Now just about everything has its own IRQ
> I used some Arctic Silver compound, like you said

I gamed for almost 90 minutes before the system froze, much better than before. What do you (or anyone else) think of being able to move (clockwise-counterclockwise) the heatsink/fan 2mm either way while its strapped onto the cou? It's a retail boxed cpu/hsf. I mentioned it in my original post & was wondering if this is normal?

[Brian Frank 0]

Some BIOS's had problems with Win2k when it came out, namely with not being fully ACPI-compliant.

I don't think it's an issue, but AS could become conductive under high pressure--which I'm not sure is happening here. Make sure you don't have it anywhere else than on the CPU die.

If ya haven't tried it, reset your BIOS to the defaults and manually select the voltage on the Asus Slocket, then play with the BIOS settings little by little.

My dad is running a P3 800 coppermine with the Asus Slocket on a BE6, and just had to update his BIOS, which you've already done.

I'm not sure what else to say.

 

I've got a couple boxed P3 800EB's, and the stock heatsinks do move a little, but only when you're putting them on or taking them off.