CPU Speed lolocaust extravaganza

After some poking around today, I finally solved the mystery of why my processor was working at a speed far slower than it should have been.

It turns out I had my CPU FSB set to 100Mhz instead of 133MHz, thus making my Athlon 1800+ run at 1.15GHz instead of 1.53GHz.

So, I set the jumpers on my motherboard so that the FSB is running at 133MHz. However, after I did that, I could not boot into Windows. Almost as soon as the splash screen shows up, it will blue screen, displaying what appears to me as a random STOP error (they were different every time, from 0x0000008E, 0x0000007B to 0x00000005. Those just appear entirely random to me, considering Micrsoft says somewhat different things for all of them.) Completely ignoring these BSOD's, I try my Ubuntu 5.10 live-cd, to no avail. when I try to boot it, it would stay at decrompressing the kernel, or giving an immediate kernel panic.

I tried flashing the BIOS (even though the manual says it fully supports my CPU,) and that did nothing noticable.

When I put the FSB back to 100Mhz, everything acted as it should, just with the processor not running at it's max speed.

So, how would it be possible for me to keep my motherboard running at 133MHz, yet be able to actually use my computer?

Note- yes, I did take out sticks of RAM and swapped them out to see if it was just some weird memory issue, to my knowlege, it isn't.

It also isn't a heat issue, the case is sitting wide open,and the power supply is sitting on top of the case.

CPU: AMD Athlon 1800+
Motherboard: Soyo K7VTA Pro V1.0 (I just call it the POS-1)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by rendr

Just curious, but how did your processor change from stock speed to snail pace?

Because the FSB speed went down.

100MHz * 11.5 gives you 1.15GHz
133MHz * 11.5 gives you 1.53GHz

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Have you made sure your HSF is seated properly with new thermal goop? It happened to me last time I took my computer apart. :/

Why would I ever have had to take off my heatsink to just change jumpers.

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Be sure to double check your voltages for RAM and CPU, and make sure that your multiplier is set to 11.5X for that CPU.

The CPU multiplier has to be 11.5X, since that's locked into the CPU, as that's how AMD made the Athlon XP line. There was no change when I manually set the multipliers, but I believe they get ignored anyway when the multipliers are locked on the CPU.

The voltages are correct.

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I might also suggest testing other hardware such as a new PSU, different mobo, or different CPU.

The PSU is hardly entirely used up, and I don't have another CPU/motherboard to test out.

Originally Posted by Magic

Doesn't RAM have to be able to run at the same speed as the FSB? Are you sure yours does? It may also just be Windows acting wonkey over you changing your hardware configuration.

The RAM is all 133MHz, and was 133MHz when the FSB is running at 100MHz.

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Got a Linux LiveCD you can try out? Those're always helpful.

Originally Posted by Dayvon

I didnt notice if you tried booting from a boot disk or not... If you are changing the FSB and trying to run windows off of your hard drive, you might have problems.

I did use a linux live CD. I said "Ubuntu 5.10 live-cd" right in the first post. Again, it either froze at decompressing the linux kernel or gave a kernel panic when I tried to boot.

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Also, although mobo's "support" stuff, POS mobos are very picky and quirky. So you might be screwed.

Maybe so, but I'd like to remain hopeful right now.

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Other than that, my initial reaction is memory issues. Your memory timings might need to be changed now that the FSB is faster. I don't know much about tweaking memory, except that higher numbers are generally easier on the memory than lower numbers (ie. 3-3-3-6 is VERY tight timings, and 3-5-5-6 is loose). So you might try to custom time your memory a bit in your BIOS.

No such options are in my BIOS setup, sadly. Although CPU-Z reports that all three sticks of memory (2 256 and 1 128) are running at 3-3-3-6.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'll have to look into that.

I just assumed that the BIOS was properly IDing the CPU (in 100MHz, it reports as "AMD Athlon 1150MHz," in 133MHz it reports as "AMD Athlon 1800+") that there wasn't much to do in the BIOS.

Sometihng I definitely shouldn't have overlooked.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah, I thuroughly checked through the BIOS setup and there's nothing about setting the FSB in there.

And on the manual end of things, it only says to change two jumpers, and that's it.

How ya doing, buddy?