tee charoen

Hi Idb, Hmmm, depending on your room ambient temperature it can! I have an average ambient room temp of 30c (86Fahrenheit) it's the sweaty tropics - lol! Here I have tested a variety of Northwoods particularly the 3.0 - 3.2ghz and when I am in the Bios, I would usually peep at "Hardware Info" - lo and behold I do get 40c-41c (about 107 F), (I believe you meant Degrees Fahrenheit as u mentioned 100 degrees without C or F, else had you meant C that wd have equalled 212 Fahrenheit! could boil water for tea there! If its really Celsius you meant then its time to junk the mobo. ) Continuing.. once I get into the desktop the 3.xghz Northwoods would settle to about 36-37C (98F), and if air conditioning is switched on they go down to the 31-33C's (88-91F). Incidentally I have always observed that being in the Bios, or in Dos, cpu temps *are* generally 3-4 C higher, but that pertains partly to the hot ambient temps I get here. Surely 98se doesnt have cpu throttling ability. Maybe better brains than mine can explain. Still, those are my figures for comparison. Just my 2 cents. Best! tee Charoen

Hi Idb, Its perplexing allright! Whatever the problem is it would seem that it points either to the motherboard that has gone faulty for some reason or other, or just as likely the fact that you mentioned you got the cpu clocked to 2.133ghz from 1.6ghz. I am more inclined to guess that it's the latter, why dont you try clocking it back to the original rating and go through booting up to Dos again with the Usb drive attached. Watch if cpu temp climbs again. I have seen a fair share of motherboards/cpu's and I dont think that your having added more ram, or upping color depth on the desktop has a bearing on the issue. Try touching the heatsink the moment you have switched off the pc and if it's hot to the touch you probably would do well to get a better heatsink. Pentium Northwoods in my experience invariably run cool and when you touch the heatsink they are mildly warm but never hot. Even a well cooled P4 Prescott is much warmer than a Northwood when you touch the heatsink its attached to but it never feels so hot that you would move your finger away. Still, its a mystery and it seems that the Motherboard/overclocked cpu combo that has worked so well in the past is beginning to get flaky somehow. It also helps if you have a spare mobo to test with all settings identical, and see what voltages are reported in the bios. I would have thought overclocking requires one to step up the voltage in small steps and not stick to the original cpu voltage rating. Sorry cant be of more help. Gd luck. tee charoen

Hi Folks, As my motherboard (asus m2v) only has a pci-ex vga slot, I have been using a Sapphire Ati Radeon X300se pci-ex vga card and later upgraded this to a Powercolor Ati Radeon X850xt pci-ex vga card. They are great for gaming under 98se and had never given me any issues. The driver I use is Catalyst 5.8 as I found this best for my particular system. Unfortunately since Amd/Ati launched their Radeon X1xxx series of vga cards they cast 98se users adrift and afaik drivers for 98se has never been written for the Radeon X1xxx cards. Pity. Best to all the good people here! tee charoen