Hallo Leute!

Gosh, it's so quiet here, I guess those 3dfx days are really getting old.
Anyway, I've recently built a setup around a V3-2000 PCI and it'all peachy as long as I keep the fsb at 133 mhz. As soon as I put it at 166, the computer boots to windows 95% of the time, and then gets stuck within maximum 30 minutes, both with Windows 98 SE or Windows XP PRO SP3.
Here's the rest of the setup:

AsRock K7S8XE
Athlon XP 3000+ (fsb 166)
2*1 gig DDR PC 2700 (A-Data Technology)
Soundblaster 128 PCI
ExcelStore Technology J360 hard drive
Powercolor ATI Radeon 9200 Pro

I've changed the CPU and put an Athlon 2400 (fsb 133) and it's 100% stable.

Earlier efforts to troubleshoot:

• Swapped athlon xp 3000 for another athlon xp 3000: same results: stable with fsb @ 133, crashes with fsb @ 166.


• Removed v3-2000 and set fsb @ 166: no problem.


• Removed soundblaster and kept v3-2000: same problem  


• Tried V3-2000 in my Dell XPS 8100 (Intel® Core™ i7-860 Processor
  (8M Cache, 2.80 GHz)) under win xp pro 32b: crashes after a while

Have you guys ever seen anything like this?

Let me know!

Hi pierrickuk,

it looks like a problem related to the frequency of PCI slot(s) where you install the Voodoo3 card. Maybe, working with FSB at 133MHz, the motherboard raises also the PCI frequency and this one can cause the instability.

Please check if you can force the PCI slot(s) via BIOS to default frequency value and let us know.

Thanks.

Bye bye

Hi and thanks for the quick reply.

I can't change the PCI frequency in BIOS.
There's a set of jumpers on the motherboard to set the fsb at 133, 166 and 200 for the CPU.
In BIOS there's a menu to adjust or overclock the fsb, and another one for the memory. I haven't tried overclocking as the computer is not stable. I have tried with cpu fsb @ 166 and ram @ 133, still crashes.

So far it looks like this voodoo3 doesn't like anything over 133 fsb. I don't really understand why, as, to my knowledge, the PCI frequency should stay within standards when using standard values for the rest of the motherboard.

When I get more time and courage, I will try it on another motherboard (AsRock PE Pro) with a Pentium4 or a nForce2 motherboard, with my other Athlon XP 3000 @ 166 fsb. I guess that won't happen for another 10 days or so. In the meantime, if anybody has some explanation, I look forward to reading them.

Hi pierrickuk,

I think your motherboard could configure the PCI frequency (much) above 33MHz value when you set the FSB frequency to 166MHz.

You could validate or not this supposition using a system information tool able to read the PCI frequency when FSB is working at 166MHz with the Voodoo3 card (or with another more tollerant video card).

Bye bye

Try to manually set PCI bus frequency @default.