Gigabyte GA-5AX Rev3.0 to Rev5.1 - The road to K6 victory
 

Hey guys,

It has been a while since I took my K6/2 500 for a 720MHz spin, but I'm back with another (read: better) motherboard. Yes, I needed a new one, as my P5A completely maxed out at 120x6 ... maxed out as in this is the maximum I can set the board to work at theoretically.

I needed to find another board, one that can do way more than 120MHz ... and I found one!



The Gigabyte GA-5AX Rev5.2 goes all the way up to 140MHz FSB, which suits me perfectly. Having looked on Ebay Belgium, but not finding anything, I switched to Ebay Germany as those pages have an incredible amount of hardware ready to be purchased. Veni, Vidi, Vendo ... yes, I found a GA-5AX and after a week it got here.

BUT ... (I guess you all saw this one coming, no?)



When I opened the box to have a first glance at my board of glory, I noticed this wasn't a Rev5.2 board ... it was a Rev3.0! Optimistic as I am, I quickly tried to find out if the revision might not be as bad as I thought it would be.

http://tw.giga-byte.com/Support/Moth...ProductID=1578

Perfect! A motherboard that has different manuals for different PCB revision, it doesn't look good.



Nope, it doesn't look good, only 100FSB at most ... this board wasn't worth the euros I spent on it and the worst part: it costed me quite some golden coins to bring the board to Belgium. Already brought down, I decided to have quick look at the Rev5.2, just to see what the big difference is.



Yeap, that's what I was looking for: 140MHz FSB. But wait, JP9 ... I came across that multiple times already. Yes, in the first manual as well and ...





You see that, lads and gents? I can turn this baby into a Rev5.1 with one simple modification. Turning this board into a Rev5.2 requires me to find the missing JP10, which I haven't found on this board.



Now, all is well, you'd think, but this is MADSHRIMPS, my friends, we are always pushing things over the edge. How can I eventually make this board run higher than 135FSB? In theory it's possible, the PLL supports 140FSB, the only thing I need to figure out is how I can find that last jumper: JP10. That'll be something for Geoffrey, I'm afraid :ws:.

I have to work in Kortrijk next monday, maybe I can stop at your place, don't know the exact hour though. In between 9u and ... :p

Or maybe next thursday, then I'll be in Waregem.

Next thursday I'm in Gent to do my first exam, tomorrow is not a problem, though. Back in the lab in the attic? :p

No time tomorrow, neither sunday.

Woops, I meant monday :)

Where did you find the datasheet if the ICS 9148BF-36 PLL?

Are you 100% sure that rev3 and rev5.2 use the same PLL?

I'm pretty sure the ICS is the exact same, there exist windows overclocking tools for the GA-5AX and there's no difference between the revisions.

Datasheet was from another pll: the ICS9148BF-04. I reckon they work the same?

I know the ICS 9148BF-04, recap of its datasheet:



3 Frequency Select pins, maximum front side bus clock = 83.3MHz.

The Pcchips Socket 7 board I have over here has the ICS 9148BF-17 PLL, which has the option to set up to 100MHz front side bus clock via BIOS, no datasheet available either. The main pin functionality remains the same probable.

This datasheet should be it: http://www.idt.com/?partID=9148BF-36

Up to 100Mhz, so says the datasheet. So ICS 9148BF can have different frequency select with different Pattern Numbers. -04 up to 83MHz, -36 up to 100MHz. What precise pattern number do you find on the rev5 board?