M2N-E Experiences and Q about AMD X2 EE CPU

Hi,
bought an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU and Asus M2N-E MB, plus 512 MB DDR2 RAM.
Installed, all came up OK on Linux (Kanotix). But with WinXP I had
nothing but problems, continual blue screens with "page fault in a
non-paged area". Most tips point to this being a RAM problem.
I am not overclocking, all BIOS settings are set to "AUTO".
Installed a small XP on a different partotion, and all was OK.
As that XP and Linux, plus memtest86 were all OK I assumed it was not RAM.
Well no amount of ****ing around with drivers and safe mode could get
the old XP installation to work for more than about 2 minutes. So I did
a clean install again after formatting the partition, and it now seems
to be stable. So YMMV.

One thing is not yet clear to me. Is the EE CPU recognized correctly and
the VCORE set as it should be by this board? I have a V304 BIOS
installed. As I couldn't tell I set the VCORE manually to 1,225Volt, my
understanding is that EE should use 1,2 to 1,25 Volts.

Cheers Brian

Brian wrote:

Hi,
bought an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU and Asus M2N-E MB, plus 512 MB DDR2 RAM.
Installed, all came up OK on Linux (Kanotix). But with WinXP I had
nothing but problems, continual blue screens with "page fault in a
non-paged area". Most tips point to this being a RAM problem.
I am not overclocking, all BIOS settings are set to "AUTO".
Installed a small XP on a different partotion, and all was OK.
As that XP and Linux, plus memtest86 were all OK I assumed it was not RAM.
Well no amount of ****ing around with drivers and safe mode could get
the old XP installation to work for more than about 2 minutes. So I did
a clean install again after formatting the partition, and it now seems
to be stable. So YMMV.

One thing is not yet clear to me. Is the EE CPU recognized correctly and
the VCORE set as it should be by this board? I have a V304 BIOS
installed. As I couldn't tell I set the VCORE manually to 1,225Volt, my
understanding is that EE should use 1,2 to 1,25 Volts.

Cheers Brian

The 65W processor here lists 1.2/1.25V .
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desk...=ADO4200IAA5CU

If your Linux install is working, then why not try running
Prime95 (torture test option) from mersenne.org . There is a
Windows version and a Linux version. When I overclock, I use
a Knoppix CDROM and no hard drive, so there is no chance of
corrupting anything. I put a copy of the Prime95 executable
on a floppy, and copy that to the Knoppix (ram) disk and
execute from there. Prime95 is a good test of whether the
processor and memory are working well, and is a more sensitive
test than Memtest86. When I push the overclock too far, Prime95
will error out in less than 10 minutes. It shouldn't error out
if things are working well. And in Linux, it is dead easy to
run multiple copies of the executable (just make a private folder
for each copy, so they can each have their own option file -
you can set the memory size tested by each copy).

What I did to figure out Vcore on the machine I'm typing on right
now, is:

1) Go into the BIOS. Set Vcore to "Auto". Save settings.
2) Re-enter the BIOS and go to the hardware monitor. Read the
measured Vcore value and record it.
3) Now, setting Vcore to "1.2V". Save settings.
4) Re-enter the BIOS and go to the hardware monitor. Read the
measured Vcore value and record it.

By doing that, you should be able to determine which value you
get at auto and correlate with the manual settings. (The measured
Vcore is always on the high side, due to how droop and load lines
work. And that is why the measured value is not an "absolute"
enough quantity to use directly. By comparing the behavior of
Vcore with the Auto setting, to the manual settings, you should be
able to identify which setting does the same thing as the Auto one
is. Asus generally doesn't allow significant undervolting in the
BIOS, and you may find yourself prevented from selecting Vcore
lower than 1.2V anyway. That is, if the BIOS has properly identified
the processor.

Paul

In article , Brian_dorling@t-
online.de says...
Hi,
bought an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU
snip

First I've heard of one of those. What does an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU get
you that an AMD X2 4200+ doesn't have?

Bill
--
Gmail and Google Groups. This century's answer to AOL and WebTV.

Bill wrote:
In article , Brian_dorling@t-
online.de says...
Hi,
bought an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU
snip

First I've heard of one of those. What does an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU get
you that an AMD X2 4200+ doesn't have?

Bill

Less power consumption..

--
Tumppi
=================================
A lot learned from these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================

In article ,
says...
Bill wrote:
In article , Brian_dorling@t-
online.de says...
Hi,
bought an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU
snip

First I've heard of one of those. What does an AMD X2 4200+ EE CPU get
you that an AMD X2 4200+ doesn't have?

Bill

Less power consumption..



Arrgh! Looks like they're only AM2 socket. 65 watt Windsors, correct?
Oh well. Next motherboard upgrade won't be 'till the quad cores are
out. Thanks for the info.

Bill
--
Gmail and Google Groups. This century's answer to AOL and WebTV.