AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU And Motherboard Questions?

[JonathanF]

I just received my ASUS A7N8X Motherboard and will be receiving my AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU from NewEgg on Monday.

I will be using an AMD approved TAISOL CPU Heatsink and FAN.

What are the correct ASUS Motherboard BIOS Settings to fully utilize the AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU Chip?

I have two sticks of Kingston HyperX PC 3500 DDR RAM which I will be installing in the Memory Slots 1 and 3.

Jonathan

 

[Jeff7181]

Make sure the FSB is set at 166... I don't know if they still do it, but even my MSI KT4 motherboard defaulted to 100 Mhz.
They also say to disable spread spectrum for better performance.
You might also try more agressive DRAM timing... Athlon's don't really need DDR400 RAM... I've seen some benchmarks where running the RAM at 400 Mhz hurt performance because the RAM and FSB were then running out of sync and that created more latency. I'd suggest running the RAM at 333, and run it at CAS 2.
Also disabling stuff on the motherboard that you don't use will help too... stuff like onboard 56k, onboard sound, etc.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Make sure the FSB is set at 166... I don't know if they still do it, but even my MSI KT4 motherboard defaulted to 100 Mhz.
They also say to disable spread spectrum for better performance.
You might also try more agressive DRAM timing... Athlon's don't really need DDR400 RAM... I've seen some benchmarks where running the RAM at 400 Mhz hurt performance because the RAM and FSB were then running out of sync and that created more latency. I'd suggest running the RAM at 333, and run it at CAS 2.
Also disabling stuff on the motherboard that you don't use will help too... stuff like onboard 56k, onboard sound, etc.

Yep, on the Asus A7N8X, it will default to 100mhz FSB. About RAM running at 400mhz hurting performance, that was with VIA's crap KT400 chipset (I've been using VIA for so long, but how they could screw up like that is beyond me). I've really only seen reviews where they're running the Nforce2 motherboards in sync with the FSB, so I don't know if Nvidia goofed on this too. I have the board right now, and I'm going to try running some benchmarks at 166mhz spd and 200mhz spd to see if I get slowed up. Use the onboard sound! It's damn good, and sell that SB Live/Audigy . But for example, disable the SATA controller and whatever other crap you don't need like Jeff said. Also, after you have everything setup, turn off the LOGO screen and that annoying POST reporter. I'll see if theres anything else in the BIOS I should tell you about.

 

[Noid]

My KX7-333 runs 1:1 @ 191 right now... VIA KT333

I curently have the XP2600+ runnin 11 x 191.4 = 2105 @ 1.65v (default, after unlocking L1's)

anything higher than 191 wont run Prime95

This chip boots beyond 200Mhz ... (dropping the mult)

But I got artifacts and file errors. (MB or VC limit)