Got the motherboard working...sort of, chip running too slow now
 

HEy, I'm back with another problem. I got it to boot into windows (was just needing a good copy of XP) and now I have another problem.

The chip speed is 2.8 gig, but right now its only running at 1.2. I have gone into BIOS and it doesn't have an option to change this speed. The motherboard is a new ASUS board and the BIOS is updated. Are there any suggestions as to how I would get my chip to be recognized by the board as a 2.8? Thanks! And thanks to SiN for helpin out with the last problem!

Check the motherboard to see if there is a front side bus (FSB) jumper on it. If there is, you need to switch it to the correct FSB setting. If the switch is on the lower setting then the FSB will be lowered resulting in a lower clock speed. The jumper is either a little switch on the mobo or a 3-prong pin setup with a little hard drive jumper covering two of the 3 pins.

-Lasereth

Hey thanks Lasereth! I'm gonna try that now. Whats weird though is that the BIOS doesn't have an option for changing the cpu speed. All the other BIOS that I have worked with have those options. But anyway, I'll switch it and see what i can get outta it. Thanks again!

Here's a detailed jumper instruction page with visuals! I was right about the mobo having a FSB jumper on it. It is the 3-prong setup like I thought.

<IMG SRC=http://www.appstate.edu/~bt52438/a7n8x-x.jpg>

You need it in the top position to support 400 MHz FSB!

-Lasereth

Thats the position that I just changed it to, and its still only recognizing it as a 1.2 gig. It said during boot up after I had to hard restart it that it was running in safe mode to go into bios and chnage the CPU speed. But there's no option in BIOS.

That's really weird. Asus motherboards almost always allow tweaking of FSB and clock speeds. You're right though, in most boards you change the jumper on the mobo and then it lets you switch the FSB correctly if it doesn't do it automatically. Are you sure you're not missing it? Is the FSB setting grayed out, or is it just not there period?

-Lasereth

There's just no option to change the speed. There's an option to set cpu external frequency...system performance. Thats all i can see that would maybe have an effect.

It says in the manual: CPU ext. freq.

The system normally autodetects the frequency capability based on the type of CPU installed. The FSB is equal to 2 times this field value.

It also talks about setting the CPU freq multiple setting in conjunction with the CPU frequency to match the speed of the CPU, its set to Auto right now.

Hope this stuff maybe helps!

Yeah, those are the settings you're supposed to change. The External clock speed should be set to 200 MHz and the multiplier should be set to whatever *200 = CPU speed. By the way, what processor do you have? There is no 2.8 GHz Athlon XP. Are you talking about an Athlon XP 2800+?

-Lasereth

If it is indeed an Athlon XP 2800+, the external speed should be set to 166 MHz, not 200 MHz. It's imperative that I know what processor you have!

-Lasereth

Yeah, its the AMD 2800+, I misunderstood for a second, lol

That external frequency change did it Lasereth! Thanks a lot! It recognizes it as an AMD 2800+ now running at 2 gHz....thanks again!

No prob!!

-Lasereth