Actually I've got a KM133A chipset motherboard, but the KM133A is
basically the KT133A with onboard video.
I've tried the 3rd party PCI Latency patch, I've tried changing Bios PCI
settings, I've tried the VIA chipset drivers, but nothing stops these
corruption issues. PCI activity jams over each other, giving graphical
corruption and lockups.
Can anyone give me any more tips on what to do before I have to junk
this motherboard?
Thanks for any help
The nearest Asus board would be a7v133-vm (KM133A chipset,
VT8365A Northbridge, evil 686B Southbridge). I thought the
Via 4in1 chipset drivers solved the problems, as much as
they can be solved. Some people still have problems, so
there are a certain percentage of boards that still have
problems. I thought one problem was disk corruption.
I don't remember reading about any graphics corruption.
You should uninstall/stop using any third party PCI
Latency patch. Try to use the Via 4in1 driver, and
let the Via supplied values drive the chips for a
while. Including both solutions means not knowning
just what settings are being used.
One post in Google mentions:
"You have to set the following parameters to ensure a save
operation of the VIA Southbridges (in particular the 686B):
PCI Delay Transaction = 0 (off)
PCI Master Read Caching = 0 (off)
PCI Latency = 0 (Values from 0 till 32 seems to be save,
all over 32 are not!)"
Of course, these settings just destroy performance. A PCI Latency
of 16 is about as low as I would want to go, as any lower than
that, video updates to the screen will start to stutter. A sound
card would have a hard time producing clean sound, when Delay
Transaction if Off (but you'll have to leave it that way, to
avoid disk corruption).
Your statement about similarity of Northbridges doesn't necessarily
apply, as a chip with built-in graphics is quite different from
one without graphics. The silicon die would be much bigger, and
build-in video functions make the Northbridge run hotter. You would
want to check that the fan is functioning, if there is one, and
that the Northbridge is warm to the touch, as that means heat
is being transferred successfully from the chip to the heatsink.
If the heatsink is cold to the touch, it either means the chip has
no appreciable heat output, or there is an air gap between the chip
and the heatsink.
Have you tried modifying any clocks on the board ? Maybe the
symptoms change if the FSB is reduced.
If you post back, include the model number of the board, as
it helps when Googling.
Paul
