ASRock K7S41 and XP-M 2400+ Woes

[JeffChrisope]

I'm building "critters" for a Grid.org stack, and the route I've opted to take is an OC'd XP-M 2400+ on a microATX board. I ended up going with the ASRock K7S41 because it had OC features either by jumper or in-BIOS, and sure enough, some of those features are there.

Trouble is:
a) when I set the FID jumpers to change teh clock multiplier, nothing happens - can't go down, can't go up
b) the BIOS I see in reviews of teh board differs - there are more settings in the reviews than v1.7, which is what I have now ... were they cut? Is there a modded BIOS out there? didn't seem like it.
c) I'm using the integrated graphics system to cut costs ... but folks have said that this will limit my OC. I'm cruising steady at 2.3Ghz now, however, and if I can figure out the multiplier thing, I sould be okay ... right? wrong?
d) Finally, the AGP slot on this board is "spcial", and supposedly can NOT take 3.3v AGP cards ... so anybody know of super cheap 1.5V AGP cards?

Thanks!
Jeff

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

a) I don't think the jumpers work for Mobiles.
b) There's a "performance" BIOS which adds performance settings (memory timings) and other options, and boosts performance a little. You can get them at OCWorkBench.com.
c) You should be ok with multiplier setting.
d) Basically all the new cards are 1.5V. If you want something cheap get a Radeon 9250, 9550 or a FX5200. Make sure it has a 128-bit memory interface (8 memory chips on these cards), as that makes quite a difference from 64-bit cards.

For multiplier adjustment you can use a software called CPUMSR. There's a small chance the latest performance BIOS adds this setting for Mobiles.