I have a Chaintech 7aja2mother board with a AMD Athalon 1gig processor, I have a Nvidia Gforce4 MX440 video card and 380meg or ram.

I also have the same freeze up problem.

I also have tried several video cards and all have the same result.

I have been able to reduce the frequency of the freezing problem by changing my case (mor space/air) and adding a better cpu fan and 2 additional system fans. ( I also crank up the A/C)

Before I added the extra cooling power I would freeze after 5-10 minutes of playing Generals or Army Men RTS, All other games and software seemed to work fine, as do all adobe products (even when rendering takes over 20 min).

Now with the extra cooling and new case I may be able to play for several hours or days before the freeze, but it still freezes (especially on hot days)

Is it possible that the CPU is overheating when the games are playing?

If so, what should the normal operating temp be of the CPU?

Just turned on my system temp is about 35 degrees.
Immediatly after a freeze if I check it it at about 47 degrees.

any help would be appreciated

The friendly Spider
www.thefriendlyspider.com

The latest Bios for that mb is 1007

Well, I think the problem is the compatibility with the chipsets VIA kx133 and NVIDIA chipsets.

I have problems like yours, random lockups.

I solved my problem installing the latest 4in1 Via driver, in Standard Mode, not Turbo Mode.

My 3d card was able to work only on AGP 1x, but is not locking anymore.

I will buy another motherboard later, and I believe not to have problems.

Athlon K7 800Mhz - Slot A
Asus K7V Via kx-133 chipset
Geforce 4 MX 440 AGP 4X
256mb SDRAM

Originally Posted by dontwanna13
AMD 1Ghz Duron
Chaintech 7AJA2E MoBo
VIA Apollo KTE 133/686B
392 MB SDRAM PC133
nVidia Geforce2 Ti4200 4x AGP
(using nVidia 32MB M64 PCI card right now cause of freeze up probs. Note: No lock up probs this way)

Ok, I just wanted to let you guys know that the above system has exact same problems as you all describe. I too have invested hundreds of hours on this and all to no avail. I\'ve tried every BIOS, driver, patch, and even have tried four different agp cards, NOTHING. My advice?? SiS has some very new, very well reviewed, 8xAGP, DDR400, 533FSB MoBo\'s available at very competitive prices, (under 150 bucks, under 100 in some cases).I\'m comparing that to the price tag on the new Intel 8xAGP board which would set you back about 230-250 bucks!
Which brings me to my final question-does anyone with a newer VIA chipset, still have these lockup problems??

Athlon 750 MHz
Epox EP-7KXA
SB Live! Platnum
512 mb sdram
elsa erazor x2 (GeForce 256) <-- with latest nvidia drivers

For some reason when i play strategy games like Age of Empire II or Warcraft 3 or Starcraft, the computer locks up after some random amount of time. I can never get a whole complete game in without a lockup.

Originally Posted by bobthefisher
Well Damage i think that confirms it, the Asus K7V and the Abit KA7 seem like the only reliable KX133 systems.
I know i\'m happy with my K7V.

Config:
Athlon 700 @ 824
ASUS K7V (latest BIOS 1006)
nVidia TNT2 pro (5.30 drivers)
Windows 2k
SB Live! 1024

I use win2k with the latest VIA 4in1 drivers and have installed the update viaagp.sys found @ Tom's Hardware. I must say I have random lockups in 3D. It has become better with the newer VIA 4in1 drivers and the latest nVidia drivers. But I still have lockups from time to time.
Although my video card and CPU are overclocked, I still got the lockups when not overclocked. I can only hope that VIA releases an updated viaagp driver soon, so things may be a bit better.

Originally Posted by dobyvatel
I have the following:
K7V (bios 1.03, or something like that)
800 classic
256 PC100 Viking
SBlive!
Geforce DDR (creative)

My system is mostly stable, rarely crashes and seems mostly because of win98. I wanted to upgrade to WinME, anyone know any problems with WinME as of yet.

Also, my system doesn\'t see a 4x agp, is that just a bios problem, or is there some other fix?

I have a lockup issue after the monitor goes into power save to, happy to see it\'s just the bios, does the bios upgrade also help the system suspend issue, or is that just my system?

Any useful info would be appreciated, e-mail: srk@jps.net

I've got a K7V, 750 Athlon, SBLive, 256MB Corsair, Leadtek GeForce DDR, an excellent power supply
(which, as I understand, is very important), nothing OC'd, running Win98SE.

I crash once in a while, but almost never inside of a program. It usually happens only after the monitor
goes into power-saving mode (about one out of every ten times or so), which I believe I read was a
BIOS issue, and should be fixed now. I can usually attribute any other crashes to a Win98 issue.

I just upgraded the K7V BIOS and installed the new Via 4-in-1 drivers. After that, I could install nVidia's
latest reference drivers (5.32) where before I could not (well, I could install them, but they didn't work
properly).

(Side note: For anybody with a similar configuration, this allows the use of Direct3D in Diablo 2.)

All in all, I'd say ASUS' design using the KX133 is pretty solid, especially with the latest BIOS revision.

--KM

FWIW-

I put together a:

Athlon 700 classic
Abit KA7 RX Bios
SBLive
256mb Mushkin "Athlon Tested" PC133 SDRAM
Elsa Gladiac GeForce2 GTS (drivers that came with it 5.13??)

system for a friend. I only installed the VIA drivers that were on the Abit CD-Rom (I guess they are the 4.20 4in1's), no extra VIA AGP drivers. He's running Win98SE. He hasn't one bit of trouble. I haven't upgraded to the new VIA drivers due to the fact he's happy and I don't want to muck up a good situation. =)

amish

Originally Posted by bobthefisher
I don\'t know about anybody else but according to the last post i was beggining to see a pattern. I noticed that the Abit KA7 and the Asus K7V have reported far less problems. I myself have a K7V and have had no problems what so ever. In fact i have both the SB sound package that came with my motherboard and a SB Live card with no problems to report. Also, I have a overclocked Voodoo 5 5500 AGP (hehehe i\'m sick) vid card in my AGP slot. I have even test this my running a Quake 3 Arena demo001 for about 4 hours with no lockups. To back this up even more you can go to Tom\'s Hardware and read the tests he had done and you\'ll see that the K7V came out on top just about everytime.