I have recently upgraded from a 750mhz to 1.33ghzAthlon processor altho it is limited by a 115mhz fsb and only clocks 1.15ghz. Do i need to upgrade my bios. I know that it isnt the latest available and I do have a few problems with crashing and freezing. I have tried to upgrade my bios but the flash utility Im using says that the chipsets arent available, the chipsets arent supperted and that the flash item isnt supported. Ive tried manually loading the bios but when I try to load the bios from floppy at boot it just tells me that 'ntldr cant be found'. Im really tired and i just want my puta to be stable. If it helps the motherboard is a gigabyte GA-7IXE4, chipsets are AMD751&756 and the bios is AMIBIOS F7. I used the driver detective and it said that the following drivers needed updating. IDE ATA/ATAPI contollers, AMD 756 PCI Bus Master IDE Controllers V1.36, Universal Serial bus Controllers AMD756 PCI to USB open host controller. Where is the best place to get the right drivers. Will updating the Bios help. Thanks in advance for your help

A BIOS update will NOT help you with your CPU problem. Your system is unstable because your motherboard does NOT support a 1.33 Athlon. You should always go to the board manufacturer's website to check the specs BEFORE upgrading the CPU. That's also where you'll find the drivers for your board.

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/CPUSupportList/CPUSupportList_GA-7IXE4.htm

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-7IXE4.htm

I just had a thought. 115mhz FSB is too high...it definitely will cause stability problems. It's not the fault of the CPU.

Also, the multiplier on the 1.33 Athlon should be unlocked, so here's what to do...

Set the FSB to 112mhz & the multiplier to 12x. Your CPU will run at 1.344GHz & your system should be stable.

Thanks for that Jam. Can you tell me how to set the multiplier. The motherboard only allows fsb increments of 5 so I can choose from 105, 110 or 115(max). Should I go with the 110. Can you explain the relationship between the fsb and multiplier. What is the multiplier. I am pretty fresh at this stuff. 10 months ago I hadnt even touch a computer before, except the commodore 64 I had as a kid. Thanks for your help.

Yes, go for 110Mhz. The multiplier should be adjustable in bios and should also be on the same screen you adjust the fsb.

Skip

I had a quick look at your board's manual & didn't see anything about multiplier adjustment, so it must be autodetect only. Therefore you're stuck with a multiplier of 10, unless you wanna modify your CPU...I'll get to that later...

CPU speed is the product of the multiplier x FSB. Your 1.33GHz Athlon is meant to run with a FSB of 133mhz & a multiplier of 10. Since your board only officially supports 100mhz (& 105, 110, 115), the best you're gonna get out of it is 1100mhz (10 x 110mhz).

Here's a quick explanation of why 115mhz FSB is unstable....

The PCI bus is based on the FSB & is designed to run at 33.33mhz. On a 100mhz FSB system, the PCI divider is 3...so 100/3 = 33.33333mhz. Since the divider is fixed on most older boards, when you raise the FSB, you also raise the PCI bus (newer boards have the option to lock the PCI at it's default speed). Most PCI cards & hard drives can handle up to about 38mhz...above that, things become unstable. So with the FSB set to 115mhz, the PCI speed is 38.33333mhz (115/3) & that is probably what was causing your problem. You should have no prob at 110mhz because the PCI will be 36.66666mhz (110/3).

If you're willing to try modifying your CPU, you should be able to change it so that the multiplier is autodetected as 12, that way you could run your CPU at 1320mhz, which is pretty close to it's design speed of 1333mhz. All you need is a steady hand, a magnifying glass, & a sharp pencil to connect the "bridges". Check the following site for how to do it:

http://www.ocinside.de/go_e.html?/html/workshop/socketa/socketa_resistors.html

Jam you are soooo 'da man'. Thanks for the awesome explanation. Im gonna play around with it and let you know how I get on. As you seem to really know what you are talking about could I possibly get your help on the little matter of my graphics card. I bought a second hand graphics card,Geforce4 MMx 480. This replaced my earlier graphics card, Ge Force2 mx. I cant install the drivers for the gf4. I have done everything including uninstalling the old drivers, downloading the new from nvidia but when i restart it still says found new hardware. The interesting thing is that it keeps saying that the graphics card is a GeForce4 MMX440 instead of a 480. My puta also says 'found new hardware - video controller, vga compatable'. I cant install either. Is it possible that this graphics card just isnt compatable with my current configuration. I would really appreciate your expert help (yes I know grease, grease and all that). Thanks dude.

You cant make someone love you, all you can do is stalk them and hope they give in.

How are you going about installing the drivers & what version did you get? I recently downloaded & installed version 61.76 from nVidia.com. They recommend that you uninstall the previous drivers, which you apparently did, & they also require that you disable the antivirus software prior to installation. The driver file name should be "61.76_winxp2k_english_whql.exe"....when you double click on it to install the drivers, you should getting a warning message about the antivirus program...make sure you shut it down before clicking YES.

Hey Jam, I have downloaded several versions including61.77, 53.03, 53.04, and 28.84. Dont ask me why. I just thought if I get an old one and latest and a couple from the middle that at least one of them might work. Before I did anything I turned of the zone alarm and the norton systemworks. I completely unistalled all the previous drivers and even went so far as to go thru my files in explorer and delete any residual stuff. (I was advised to do this because windows kept trying to reload the default driver (winfast). The card has MX480EL on it. It appears to be an Albatron. I went to the albatron web site and got a spec sheet for it. 1)The memory size is 64Mb DDR, I am using SDRam. does it matter. Mem bus is 64 bit, engine clock 275mhz and ramdac is 350mhz. Does any of that help.

You cant make someone love you, all you can do is stalk them and hope they give in.

I'm still unclear about what you're doing? Do you cancel the installation of video drivers then? what drivers are currently installed?

Go to device manager & click on "Display adapters"...is your MX480 card listed there? Double click on it, then click on the driver tab. What driver version is listed? If it's not the correct one, click on "Update Driver"...then at the Update Wizard, select "install from list or specific location" then click "Browse" & go to the nVidia folder where you have the latest driver. Make sure to disable the anti-v 1st....

Okay 1) In device manager 'display adapters' arent even listed. The closest I get is the video controller(vga compatable) listed under 'other devices'. The properties of the V.C are as follows;
Device type: Other devices
Manufacturer: Unknown
Location: PCI Bus 1, device 5, function 0

Device Status: Not configured correctly (code 1)
When I click on the driver for this device all I get is unknown for everything and if I select any of the installation options like reinstall, rollback, update I get told that there are no driver files for this device.
I then went to desktop and Rclick to bring up properties, settings, advanced. On the adapter tab it says the following;
VGA Save
Device type: Non plug and play drivers
Manufac: unknown
Location: "
Device Status: ok
Driver;VGASAVE
service name: VGASAVE
Display name: VGASAVE
Current status: Started
Startup type: System
Resources;
i/o range 03B0-03BB
i/o range 03C0 - 03DF
Memory range 000A0000 - 000BFFFF
Conflicts;
All of the above are conflicted with the AMD 751 Processor to AGP Controller.

I have no idea whats driving my graphics as I cant find anything. I think i have on board graphics. I have done everything you told me to...several times and everytime after it says that the drivers were installed correctly i get a message saying that something failled to initialises. I cant tell you anything more than that because the message flashes for about 1 sec as the puta shuts down and when it restarts I get that frickin 'found hardware' all over again and a message saying that 'cant istall hardware cos the data is invalid.So then I have no choice but to shut the diag box and leave it. What am I missing? I feel really stupid for not getting this thing sorted out by now. Ive been reading around the forums and I can see that you are the answer guy.Thanx for your help.

You cant make someone love you, all you can do is stalk them and hope they give in.

This is one of those things that's hard to explain, but if I was sitting at your PC, I'm sure it'd be up in running in just a few minutes.

Your board does not have onboard graphics. Check this setting in the BIOS...under the heading PNP/PCI Configuration, make sure "VGA Boot from" is set to AGP, not PCI...