Rare problem with pentium 4 550 - lga 775

[zen555]

I have a 3.4 ghz p4 550 processor... ive been trying to figure out a few minor problems ive had.. and in the course ive discovered that my processor will not run at the correct speed. I have an Abit Fatal1ty aa8xe motherboard.. gig of corsair ram 6800 gt vid card..

The problem is that even though i set my bios in the motherboard to 3400 or user define with a 17 multiplier.. i run a program called cpu - z which tells me on the fly the speed that my cpu is operating at... right after a reboot when i run cpu z it will say 17 multiplier and betweel 3.456 and 3.65 ghz fluctuating.. 5 seconds later the multiplier drops to 14 and im stuck at around 2.85 ghz.

Even if i use a program like abits oc guru and overclock.. the program will tell me its at 3.58 ghz oc'd.. and then cpu z will tell me its really running at around 2.95 ghz... im wondering what could cause this problem ive tried to manually set the mult and the standard one .. all of my bios' are up to date along with drivers.. my friend has nearly the identical pc and his runs much more solidly and cpu z reads at the correct mhz 3.46.. any thoughts are much appreciated.

Brian

 

[LTC8K6]

These processors drop to the 14 multi when they get too hot.

It could also be speed stepping, but I am betting on overheating.

 

[Markfw]

Yes, what are the temps ? My 820D will throtle when it hits 55-60c (depending on vcore) but cpu-z still says all is fine !

 

[DarkKnight69]

it could clock back during idle, make the cpu work and watch the cpu-z.

 

[zen555]

right now while my pc is idle its at 29C and cpuz still reads it at 2.856 ghz or so fluctuating with a 14 mult.... ive also tried running an app int he backround and it still is at 14 mult... so far no luck

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
These processors drop to the 14 multi when they get too hot.

It could also be speed stepping, but I am betting on overheating.

5xx series don't have speedstep..and throttling does NOT drop the multiplier, it causes clock modulation.

Perhaps you need a bios update?

 

[zen555]

i have the latest bios for everything... here is a question that is probably dumb but let me know what it should be set at... i have corsair ddr2 ram this motherboard supports 1066 fsb... right now its at 800 mhz and my ddr ram is set to auto detect speed... when i boot up the bios shows it auto detected at 533 ddr2 which would mean 1066 fsb ??

should I manually set my ram to ddr 400 to equal the 800 mhz fsb or is this ok ?

 

[LTC8K6]

Yeah, that chip doesn't appear to have EIST.

There was a notice at Intel about chips booting at 2.8Ghz.

Maybe it's a multiple voltage chip?

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: zen555
i have the latest bios for everything... here is a question that is probably dumb but let me know what it should be set at... i have corsair ddr2 ram this motherboard supports 1066 fsb... right now its at 800 mhz and my ddr ram is set to auto detect speed... when i boot up the bios shows it auto detected at 533 ddr2 which would mean 1066 fsb ??

should I manually set my ram to ddr 400 to equal the 800 mhz fsb or is this ok ?

Don't need to change anything, it's just using a divider to run the ram at that speed.

 

[stevty2889]

By the way, what version of CPU-z are you using..you might try updating CPUz, as that could be causing the glitch, an older version showed my prescott running at something rediculous like 140ghz..which was obviously not accurate..

 

[Richardito]

I've been experiencing weird FSB changes with my P4 630 (3.0GHz) and the ECS RS-400 A mobo. At idle my FSB will go up from 200 to 240 and immediatedly drop back down to 200 when there was a load on the processor. This frustrated my overclocking attempts and made my system unstable. I was also getting annoyed with the SpeedStep feature and it was giving me some unstability issues with this board. I eventually got Crystal CPU to take over the multiplier/voltage settings and I also turned off the thermal throttling from the BIOS. Now the FSB stays stable and I was able to lower the voltage (via Crystal CPU) when the multiplier changed from 15 to 14 so that my CPU now runs cooler than before. And of course, I've had no more stability issues. All of these features are nice, but they complicate things quite a bit for us power users.