It's possible to get 2500+ mhz's on that MB with a good unlocked Athlon Barton XP 3200 and OCZ DDR. A 1.83 X 11 Barton will run at 2230Mhz 24/7 forever on it ;o)
Over the years I have modified my GA-7N400Pro2 (rev2) BIOS for HDMI support running a Radeon HD2600XT AGP and have updated the MB BIOS Sil3512 SATA Data to Ver 4.3.84. I presently run Win7 Ultimate 32 bit SP1 on her at 2230MHz on an ATA HDD with a 1.8G Barton and 2 G's of OCZ running at 406 Mhz 2-3-2-5-1T. It's a fantastic 1 core Barton Mainboard that has not hick-upped in 10 years. I've pushed her over 2500mhz's on occasions.
I can't remember if WinXP SP3 have native SiI3512 SATA Drivers but I know Win7 has - At least Ultimate does.
The Gigabyte BIOS support for the Sil SATA is rather poor and you get errors like where the Sata Controller will not recognize certain SATA HDD's or a
system with 2 HDDs attached to a Sii3512 may not boot... etc.
I personally ran 2 80G SATA Maxtors in Raid-0 on her for years before they died.
Go to Sil Image Download to UpDate the MB BIOS Sil3512 Data Info here:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=29&cat=15
This download includes BASE, SATARAID, and system BIOS. The r####.bin file is the SATARAID BIOS and the b####.bin is the BASE BIOS. The ###.bin is an abbreviated BIOS intended for integration into system BIOS. Do NOT flash system BIOS into an add-in card BIOS. Use the included BASE BIOS with with the latest BASE driver(s). SATARAID BIOS supports RAID levels 0, 1, and 10. Use the included SATARAID BIOS with the latest RAID driver(s). Use the included system BIOS with the latest SATARAID Tool: SATARAID Management Utility 1.23 (Java) or 1.0.0.26 (non-Java)
BIOS files with suffix "e" such as r###e.bin or ###e.bin should be used for SiI3512 e-PAD designs.
Always keep a Copy of your Original Bios incase something Fails - The 7N400's Dual Bios comes handy here ;o)
NOTE: All my early Maxtor 80G SATA drives failed due to Heat Issues but their 80G ATA's where great. If your SATA drive reports not accessible in DOS, the Drive my have a Bad Sectors.
Remember to choose SCSI as 1st Boot for the SATA if your OS is on it.
INSTRUCTIONS
view what's currently in the MainBoard bios image
cbrom MBBIOS.bin /D
You should see something like this:
No. Item-Name Original-Size Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
================================================================================
0. System BIOS 20000h(128.00K) 13BB6h(78.93K) 7nnxp.BIN
1. XGROUP CODE 0E0A0h(56.16K) 09A35h(38.55K) awardext.rom
2. ACPI table 046ACh(17.67K) 01890h(6.14K) ACPITBL.BIN
3. YGROUP ROM 06660h(25.59K) 042CEh(16.70K) awardeyt.rom
4. GROUP ROM[ 0] 06380h(24.88K) 02826h(10.04K) _EN_CODE.BIN
5. PCI ROM[A] 0C000h(48.00K) 0585Bh(22.09K) 4333.bin
6. PCI ROM
0D000h(52.00K) 07C3Eh(31.06K) 540_pxe.bin
7. PCI ROM[C] 10000h(64.00K) 07593h(29.39K) NVPXES.NIC
8. EPA LOGO 022C4h(8.69K) 0080Ch(2.01K) logo.bmp
9. OEM1 CODE 09770h(37.86K) 00C9Eh(3.15K) BSMICODE.ROM
10. PCI ROM[D] 0A000h(40.00K) 058EDh(22.23K) ITE8212.ROM
11. OEM4 CODE 0637Ah(24.87K) 030D7h(12.21K) FINER.BIN
12. OEM0 CODE 02549h(9.32K) 01B11h(6.77K) DBF.BIN
Total compress code space = 5E000h(376.00K)
Total compressed code size = 45D1Ah(279.28K)
Remain compress code space = 182E6h(96.72K)
** Micro Code Information **
Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
we're interested in are the PCI ROM[] entries and
replace the old, included rom files with the new ones we just downloaded
you have to remove the previous component MainBoard BIOS first.
to remove my SiliconImage Raid controller, type: something like
cbrom MBBIOS.bin /PCI release
CBROM V2.15 (C)Award Software 2001 All Rights Reserved.
PCI ROM - - - A : 4333.bin
PCI ROM - - - B : 8169pxe.082
PCI ROM - - - C : ITE8212.ROM
Enter a choice:A
In the same Session, add the included MainBoard Rom file with the new
Sil Bios 4384.BIN - so type this:
cbrom MBBIOS.bin /PCI 4384.bin
You should see a message something like this:
CBROM V2.15 (C)Award Software 2001 All Rights Reserved.
Adding 4247.bin ..... 51.5%
Now when viewing the debug output again, by typing
cbrom MBBIOS.bin /D
notice that 4333.bin has been replaced by 4384.BIN
No. Item-Name Original-Size Compressed-Size Original-File-Name ======
You can follow the same procedure to update other rom files. When you're done, bios.bin will have the latest firmware images included in it, and if you flash it and reboot, you ought to see that they have taken effect.
FLASH the MB BIOS
PS: I've also got an 1800 Mhz ASUS P3V4X Slot 1 (remember the VIA Chipset) with a vidded 1.3 Celron Taulatin mounted on a conversion card - That's a 13 x's 100mhz CPU running at 138 Mhz's with 150Mhz SDRam at 1:1; however, she prefers to cruise at 1729 Mhz - 200 Mhz Clock Generator in that MB ;o) , Radeon 9800XT, WinSE combo and that`s on Air - Eat your heart out Abit and Epox - LOL. I still fire that Hot Rod up occasionally to surf the net, play Quake III and War Birds ;o)
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