Up
Hardware Sales/Swap
Overclockers' Forum
PC Asylum's Price List
Hardware One
Talk to me

I got it for free at http://come.to

ABIT BH6 Report Part 3
by Overclocker (6/8/98)

System Configuration

ABIT BH6
Celeron 266 o/c 400Mhz (100 x 4)
2 x 32 Mb Hyundai SDRAM
SiS 6326 AGP card
Quantum Fireball ST 3.2Gb
Yamaha Sound Card
Panasonic 4x CDROM
USR Sportster V.90/x2

The Exploration

6/8/98 - It was not an easy task to dis-assemble and assemble into the same casing (as I only have one ATX casing at the moment). I spent quite an amount of time unscrewing my existing BX6 from the case.

I screwed on the retention module. I suppose this is the one which is Pentium II and Celeron compatible. The design is very unique and I really like it. Installing it was a piece of cake.

I plug in all the neccessary cable, one piece of my 32MB Hyundai PC-66 RAM knowing that it will certainly work on BH6 since it worked so well under BX6. I slotted the Celeron 266 (SL2QG) into the Slot 1, SiS6326 AGP Graphics card into the AGP and ISA bus. Everything looks perfect with the same cables used to connect my previous BX6. My FDD, HDD, CDROM are all intact. I was so excited that I wanted just to press the ESC key to go straight into the CMOS Main Menu do set it to 124 x 4 immediately to see whether it will work or not.

I switched on the power supply, my monitor starts up. Shucks, I didn't hear any beeps at all. There is no output on the screen at all. I was scratching my head. Could it be the same case like BX6 which defaults the voltage to 3.5v and my Celeron is dead !!! Shit. The next thing I thought was to check my cables and took out my sound card. I rebooted the machine, still there is no sound, no picture. I was wondering. The Celeron's fan is rotating. I touched the chips on the SiS6326, it is warm. The HD and Power indicators are on. It shows that the machine is powered on.

I went through lots of trouble and installed my BX6. Slot in the BX6 and it works perfectly. Now I suspect it could be a faulty motherboard.

I tried at least 3 times fixing up BX6 and then dismantling the BX6 and install my Celeron on BH6. But the BH6 does seem to respond at all ! I was quite disappointed after much tries and decided to give up. I almost wanted to return the board.

7/8/98 - I decided that to give it a last try before returning it. I noticed something strange on the BX6, if you look at the Celeron, there is a inverted U shape at the middle of the Celeron Stick. I noticed that it fits very well into the Slot 1. While I tried it on the BH6, it does not seem to be. I decided to take out the retention module and give it a harder push. Tada, it fits all the way in. I was wondering if I was too gentle with the Celeron on the new BH6 :-) Maybe I should not have.

I booted up the machine and set it at the speed that I know will work. That is 112 x 4. It boots up with no problems.

While running thru the CMOS settings, I tried the new settings call Power Overclocking (SEL#66/100). It doesn't seem to work at all e.g. disabling the higher clock multipliers. I need to investigate into this area.

The next time I saw is the new FSB of 124Mhz. I tried it immediately. Surprisely, the system reboot and POSTed! It showed 496 Mhz. Everything seems ok until it hangs at the message "Starting Windows 98" and it just hangs there.

I will try and borrow some PC-100 RAM from my friend and try it again tomorrow. I will keep you posted on this issue. I presume with the correct SDRAM, I should be able to overclock my Celeron 266 to above 500Mhz.

8/8/98 - My friend came and I invited him for a drink. His name is Lester and he will be writing a review on his Chaintech 6BTM and will be posted here real soon.

We took out the PC-66 SDRAM and slotted in the PC-100 Hyundai SDRAM. The first thing I did was to press on the DEL key to go into CMOS menu. I selected it to 112 x 4. I also set the CPU voltage to CPU Default which is 2.0v. I saved it into the CMOS and rebooted the machine by CTRL-ALT-DEL.

The system POSTED, go straight into Windows 98 with no problems. From my observation, it is much faster than my PC-66 SDRAM. I checked out the specs for the Hyundai SDRAM and found that it can only operate at 100Mhz and not 125Mhz. So, I anticipate that I might fail in the 124Mhz x 4 test.

Lester is very happy to confirm that his Celeron is indeed a SL2QG and his Hyundai PC-100 SDRAM is a CAS 2. His system can't even POST at 112 x 4 on his Chaintech 6BTM with the overclocker's version of BIOS. (Chaintech releases 2 versions of BIOS, one for safe users and the other for risk takers :-)

We rebooted the machine and changed the settings in the CMOS to CAS 2 in the RAM settings. Surprisingly, the machine hang after a while. I was quite surprised as it is a certified CAS 2 RAM. We switched it back to CAS 3 and rebooted the machine and press the ESC key to go into CMOS setup.

We increased the CPU voltage to 2.2v and change the FSB to 124Mhz. We stronly believe the machine will POST since PC-66 SDRAM would do so. Our predicition is correct. It POSTED showing 124x4= 496Mhz on the screen. The machine went into "Starting Windows 98" and later displayed my config.sys contents. I know the machine is trying to load Windows 98.

We waited a while hoping to see Windows 98 boot up. We looked at the HD light indicator, seems to be flashing. It went dead after a while and we have to reset the machine.

Now, the interesting part is that if you were to set to a higher front side bus and the machine hangs, no matter how you reset your system or press the INSERT key during start up, the machine will still boot at the last set FSB. In this case, the system will boot at 124Mhz and will hang after which.

I tried pressing the ESC key just after reboot so that I can go into the CMOS Setup. I was surprised that the CMOS menu is a page of blue and non-readable text. I wondered why. Could it be because the AGP card is running at 2/3 x 124 = 81 Mhz ? and my SiS 6326 AGP cannot run at 81 Mhz? Strange ..

The failure to overclock it to 124Mhz using PC-100 SDRAM is somehow a gamble. I will keep posting to this page with latest developments. I will try to hunt for some SDRAM which can run at 124 or 133Mhz. If you know of any good RAMs, do recommend it to me by email at [email protected] or you can contact me at ICQ# 13779872

Coming your way on National Day

13 September 1998 11:33 AM