Support for Barton CPU for GA-7VRXP rev 2.0

[Peregrine]

I know this is an old board, but I happen to have this CPU and wanted to make it work. Is there any way to modify the BIOS for this board to support axda3000dkv4e ?

I know The Wiz is good with this stuff
Thanks!

[presola]

I don't think that's possible. 333MHz FSB is the chipset limitation - hence it's called KT333.

Even if this Barton starts on this mobo, it's gonna be limited to 333MHz FSB and it'll run at 1743MHz. Unfortunately, the CPU isn't multiplier free, otherwise you could have set it to run at 12.5x, achieving 2075MHz.

[Peregrine]

Running it at 333MHz is exactly what I need. So if I unlock it by turning it into a Mobile Athlon XP (mod on L5 and L6 bridges) I can then run it at a higher multiplier. Question remains, will the current BIOS support this CPU (regardless of multipliers)? There are Bartons spec'd to 333MHz, yet according to CPU support list, this motherboard doesn't support any Bartons.
Is there any way to modify the BIOS so it would?

[presola]

Huh... The Bulgarian Gigabyte site claims the board supports 333MHz Bartons, but the others don't. Must be a typo. I'd suggest you try the CPU regardless the support list - if my observations are correct, the board:

1) Wouldn't start at all, or
2) Will start and show Unknown AMD Processor instead of Barton 3000+.

[Peregrine]

ok, I fired it up and it starts just fine. It reported unknown AMD 1600+ when CPU bus was at 133. I raised it to 166 and then it reports unknown AMD 2100+. It runs just fine through posts and gets to a logon screen of XP. Then it crashes. Wouldn't just updating the CPU microcode do the trick? I know the Wiz did that for me with another BIOS (although that was a more complicated case and the microcode update didn't suffice). If anything, this board has dual BIOS, so we can safely experiment.

[presola]

Well, we might not know that until he cooks a ROM Thing is, i'm not sure there's Socket A microcode available. But than again, I'm not the BIOS expert

[Peregrine]

Thanks!
I thought you could pull it out of another BIOS, but I'm no expert on that, neither (obviously).
I PM'd the Wiz. Hopefully he'll have some answers.

[TheWiz]

I have just the tool that should be able to patch this BIOS with all the K7 CPU support and fix some generic errors found in these older BIOSes. If you attach the right BIOS file I'll be happy to help you out

TheWiz

[Peregrine]

Excellent!! Thank you!
Here's the last BIOS v F12 for GA-7VRXP ver.2.0:
http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIO...xp_f12.exe

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BTW, just curious now that you mentioned the "generic errors found in these old BIOSes" The few errors I noticed are:

1) If you select CPU bus "by hardware" instead of setting it to the actual numeric value, then the Promise chip becomes disabled.
2) Even if you specify memory bus at 333, for PC-2700, at some scenarios is still defaults to 266.

Are these the type of errors you're talking about?

Plus there is no way to actually set individual timings for the memory. Is it possible to add more control over memory settings to this BIOS? Hope I'm not asking for too much.

[Peregrine]

If you're having problems opening this BIOS with MMTool, I found out it has to be opened with ver. 2.22.1. I tried and that works. Newer versions report an error when trying to load it.