Killer Upgrades!

07.22.05

Upgraded the T3882 from a Celeron 335D 2.8MHz 533MHz Bus to a Pentium 4 3.2MHz Northwood 800MHz Bus 512MB Cache processor. Works great and may actually run a bit cooler. The 3.2E Prescott with 1MB Cache might have worked and is cheaper, but apparently runs hotter and performs about the same with most applications.

I was interested in updating the BIOS. Motherboard is an Intel D865GVHZ (current BIOS is P20--12/15/2004). Intel offers newer BIOS (P24--03/15/2005) but Intel's BIOS upgrades don't work on the eMachine board. eMachines must have installed a proprietary BIOS chip. eMachines techie advised against changing processors and said they offer no BIOS upgrades and that doing so would void the warranty. But for the price I paid, I'm not concerned about the warranty.

Board has on-board SATA and I've successfully added the following:
+ WD120GB SATA drive (boot drive)
+ Plextor 716-SA SATA DVD writer
+ 2 sticks of pqi TURBO 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200)
+ 128MB PCI video card* with dual-monitor, DVI, and S-Video outputs

* After disabling the on-board video under setup, on-board video still worked and add-on card did not after booting to Windows. The solution was to disable the onboard video under Device Manager/Display Adaptor.

meltonjohn

Intel BIOS Instructions

11.28.05

[This] is how I flashed it to the Intel BIOS, and what Intel BIOS file I used. Let me start off my saying you can not use the Express or Iflash method to flash your OEM board to the Intel BIOS, or back to your OEM BIOS. When you try to flash the normal way it will refuse to flash due to a system check that verifies the BIOS String Vendor ID, along with Board ID against the BIOS you are flashing with. Now the Vendor ID for eMachines is 15A which is Gateways vendor ID, Intel's is 86A.

To get around this is pretty simple, and only takes a few seconds and you only need the .BIO file, and a formatted Floppy Disk. The Floppy disk needs to be blank and does not have to be nor should it be bootable, just blank with the .BIO file on it. What you will be using is the motherboard's BIOS Recovery system, which I think all Intel based motherboards have. To do this you will look on your motherboard for the BIOS Jumper block. There should be three options, Normal, Maintenance, and Recovery. For recovery you remove the recovery jumper and boot the system with the black formatted floppy disk with the .BIO file on it. This is the lowest state your PC will operate in, and no video will be displayed. What will happen is your system will read the floppy and load the .BIO file into your computer replacing your existing BIOS. This is the ONLY simple and fool proof way to flash any OEM Intel motherboard with a retail Intel BIOS. Once that happens your PC will beep a few times and will turn off. Now you remove the floppy disk, and put the jumper back on and to the normal position and restart your computer.

For information about the Recovery System can be found here: http://intel.com/design/motherbd/recoverybios.htm

You have successfully and easily flashed your computer with the Intel BIOS. Now if your system does not work right, which in my case it did not. Unplug your system from the wall and take out the CMOS battery if you do not have a jumper that will break the CMOS connection. The T3406 did not have those jumper points soldered on so I had to take the battery out for a few seconds, even though the motherboard had the points for it. Pop your CMOS battery back in, and turn on your PC, it should work and allow you to get into the BIOS and try and figure out what if causing a conflict. In my case it turned out to be the integrated LAN, which was fixable by disabling the integrated LAN.

If your computer starts just fine then excellent, everything worked perfectly and you should not have any problem. I would double check everything as again in my case the Fan headers were switched which caused my CPU fan to run at full speed all the time. Double check to see if everything is working correctly in Windows, just to be sure something is not messed up or not working to correct specification.

The differences between the Intel BIOS and the eMachines BIOS was pretty much night and day feature wise. I had total control over every part of the BIOS, it unlocked all of the features the eMachines BIOS locked out. I could change ram timings, I could set RAM Speed, I could see all of my hardware temperatures, voltage readings, etc. Many options were new that provided a new level of tweaking, and well as some new features. The other difference was the Intel BIOS also provided an updated version of my Video BIOS which did give me more resolution options in Windows. Now I am curious to see once I reformat my computer and use the latest Intel Extreme Graphics 2 drivers (and not the drivers dated from early 2004 that eMachines loaded on) if I can acquire more resolution options that way as well.

Now onto the BIOS I used to get my PC back to normal along with how I got them. First off the BIOS that Steve posted are the exact same BIOS that my PC shipped with. I am sure you know Gateway is the parent company of eMachines and they share the same parts. The Gateway BIOS are the eMachines BIOS and eMachines BIOS are the Gateway BIOS. The Strings and coding are identical, that I can tell that just from the BIOS string that was present. To flash back to the eMachines BIOS I just extracted the .BIO file from the BF86510A.15A.0087.P21.EB package and copied the file P21-0087.BIO onto the blank floppy and did what I explained above. That took me back to normal and all the issues that I had and previously corrected were no more.

As I was writing this I was doing some checking of the BIOS for the D845GVSR and the .BIO file is much smaller, only 65K which leads me to believe your motherboard does not have the BIOS recovery option and what I mentioned above will not work. I do notice you have six BI1 – BI6 files, with the same file size and name as the .BIO file. I would check your manual and look at your motherboard to see if you can do a recovery in a different fashion then the way I suggested. If you can not do a BIOS recovery then you are out of luck.

There is a slim chance at another way but since you do not have a way to recover for it if it does not work you will not be able to boot your computer, and your motherboard will be dead. I am talking about using a Hex editor for the numerous listing of the BIOS strings in your .BIO, and .BI1 – BI6 files and changing the BIOS String to match the current eMachines BIOS String. I have done this and it had worked for me with a Dell computer from 1998. What it does it changes the verification string to match so it will pass the system check and allow you the flash with the new BIOS. I will say this now: I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS UNLESS YOU CAN DO A RECOVERY. If you do try this and your system just beeps when you try to turn it on your BIOS are not working and can only be recovered with the low level BIOS recovery, which at quick glance looks like your computer does not have. I will say again DO NOT TRY THIS WITHOUT A RECOVERY METHOD.

Brett VanKirk

Overclocking the T3406

11.30.05

So I picked up the T3406 at BestBuy on Black Friday for $149, it was the complete package with the 2.93GHz Celeron D 340, 256MB DDR400, Intel Extreme Graphics 2, DVD/CD-RW, 8-1 Media Reader, 17" Flat Screen CRT, Speakers, Keyboard, Mouse, 56k V.92 Modem, Integrated LAN/Audio, XP Home SP2, Software Bundle, and a 1 Year Warranty.

Some of you might have seen my thread about acquiring the eMachines BIOS, and that whole ordeal. When I had the T3406 flashed with the retail Intel D865GVHZ BIOS it unlocked everything except changing the FSB and VCore. I went poking around looking to find out the PLL information to see if I had a chance with Clockgen or CPU-FSB/Cool. My D865GVHZ has the ICS - 952601 PLL, so I did some research and it turns out the ICS - 952601 can not be overclocked using any software. Doing some more research it turns out the ICS - 952601 is extremely similar to the ICS - 952607 which can be overclocked and will most of the time work with the ICS - 952601. With the ICS - 952601 being so close to the ICS - 952607 the PCI and AGP frequency are locked down in Clockgen, and in CPU-FSB/Cool you are given a fine tuning option which allows you to change the clocks with the PCI/AGP frequency's locked, which is needed otherwise I couldn't overclock this for crap.

I downloaded Clockgen and tried my luck, and to my surprise I was able to easily overclock this system no problem. Clockgen does read the system information incorrectly so you have to use CPU-Z to see where you are at, it's really not a big deal. The biggest limit I have is the ram maxing out since the BIOS forces a 4:5 divider when the CPU has a 533MHz FSB. Tomorrow I am going to flash back to the Intel BIOS and see if I can not force it back down to a 1:1 divider. Since the system comes with DDR400, and I am running a quad pumped 133MHz FSB I will have a great deal amount of head room when overclocking the Celeron D 340.

As of right now I have the system stable at 4GHz under full load with Prime95, with temperatures getting no higher then 60C under full load. I know it is kind of high, but it is a Prescott which can easily take the heat. I did clean off the old thermal paste and replaced it with AS5 which did help on the idle and load temperatures. I did this before I starting overclocking so I do not know how much it helped once overclocked, but it did make a difference with the stock settings and I know its helping me out when overclocked even more.

I am not able to push it past 4GHz because I am maxing out this budget ram which is running around 220MHz+; I don't remember exactly what it was running at. I am going to replace the crappy 60mm fan with a better 80mm fan with an adapter that I have laying around, which will help a good deal on the temperatures, and more so on the noise. I feel once I can take the ram out of the equation, I should be able to hit around 4.3GHz+. I am just basing this off what a good overclock is with the Celeron D, which by the way if you hadn't noticed is a very nice overclocker.

Now this does not come with out problems, as I have come a crossed a few. I have not isolated the issue but I believe it is with Clockgen, but I need to do some testing with just CPU-FSB/Cool. Once I begin overclocking with Clockgen it reads the frequency's wrong so it allows me to clock from 3.67GHz+, but I am pretty sure this does not happen in CPU-FSB as it reads everything correctly. Another problem is when I overclock with Clockgen I completely loose my sound, the physical hardware aspect of it in Windows completely disappears and will not return with out a reformat or when the system crashes when its pushed to hard and Clockgen's settings go back to stock. I do believe this is Clockgen related, but can be sorted out with further testing. I am going to talk to the programmers of clockgen and see if they can not incorporate some of the ICS - 952607 information into something to better support the ICS - 952601. I do not see how the ICS - 952601 doesn't support changes via software but when you run it as ICS - 952607 it works just fine.

Overall I am pretty darn happy with the Celeron D 340 running at 4GHz with decent temperatures. I have 1GB (2x 512MB) of quality DDR400 coming to replace the one budget stick of 256MB DDR400. This should allow for 20MHz+ more on the ram, which will be nice if I am not able to force a 1:1 divider. I know I will soon hit a wall on the Celeron since I can not up the Vcore; which stays at 1.29 and doesn't drop under full load. I must say I am impressed with the power supply in this system as it has good power on the rails and doesn't fluctuate hardly when massively stressed. I can be thankful that this system doesn't have a AGP slot as the power the video card would draw would severally stress this PSU, and of course the video card would be running way passed specification as well.

Once the ram comes, or if I am able to get it to a 1:1 divider before hand I will do some more testing and see what this Celeron D 340 has left in it. I hope this helps others that are looking to push their T3406 or any eMachines that has the ICS – 952601 PLL.

Brett VanKirk