I think it's pretty typical what they do in repair shops. $100 to reformat your hard drive with the factory restore disk is easy money and it fixes the PC like they promised. Something you could easily do yourself. That kind of crap really pisses me off. This is why computer companies can sell cheap warranties because they know a reformat will fix 99% of customer complaints. They care nothing about your data.
On the other hand....back up your data to an external storage device!!!!
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Anyway, I just happen to have a Barton based PC running on the A7N8X deluxe mobo sitting right here next to me. This was a great board at the time. I bought three or four of them personally.
There are two variants of the 2600 Barton. The 2.0GHz with the 133MHz (266) bus speed and the 1.9GHz with the 166MHz (333) bus speed. Sounds like you have the first one.
The repair shop also probably reset your BIOS when they fu... ahem "fixed" your PC.
You should refamiliarize yourslef with the board. I found a good article here but you can probably find others.
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/asus/
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/asusa7n8xmobo/
http://hothardware.com/Article...xe_Motherboard_Review/
You should also review the BIOS section of the user manual. If you don't have it anymore you can dl from ASUS website.
First thing, find out what revision of the board you have. You probably have 2.0 but check. It should be printed on the board somewhere. You need revision 2.0 to run the FSB at 200MHz. The rev 1.1 board will probably do it but it's not guaranteed.
Go into the BIOS (press delete key repeatedly during boot).
Under "Advanced" tab go to "Advanced Chipset Features"
The default settings for your CPU are as follows:
FSB: 166MHz
Multiplier: 11.5x
The resulting CPU speed would be 1.91 GHz
If you have a revision 2.0 motherboard feel free to run these settings:
FSB: 200MHz
Multiplier: 10.0 or 10.5x
resulting in a 1.9 or 1.95GHz CPU speed. (close enough either way)
You will have to the "CPU frequency multiplier settings" to "User defined" rather than "auto" to adjust the multiplier. Be careful using the auto setting if you are running a higher FSB speed to make sure you don't accidentally overclock your CPU too much.
You memory should be set to auto and can run up to 100% on a 200MHz FSB or 120% on a 166MHz FSB but with this motherboard it's usually better to run the memory at 100% in sync with the bus even if it's running slower than it's rated speed. So just leave it at 100% or "Auto"
If you are comfortable manually setting your memory to the rated speed you can do so otherwise just use "optimal" settings. The memory's rated speed will be printed on the label.
Corsair PC3200 memory likes to have a little extra voltage so setting 2.8Volts on the DDR reference voltage should be ok unless you have the inexpensive value ram that doesn't have heatsinks. Corsair will have information on its website also about recommended settings.
Go through the other BIOS settings to make sure they are set up the way you like. Be sure to disable legacy ports that you don't use under the "Integrated Peripherals" section.
If you have any other questions about fixing up your BIOS or overclocking post back here and I'll try to answer them. I'll be out of town all next week and won't have my Barton system to look at but I'll do my best.
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