Bios Questions

[Nacho]

had some quick questions. here's my setup:

A7N8X-X
Athlon XP 2600
512mb of PC3200 (they are not identical)
Radeon 9600XT 128mb

so my questions are, i had to reset my settings back to factory default which are real tame. i'm assuming since the RAM is pretty cheap and not identical, i should leave my 3-3-3-8 setting?

my other question is now my external clock frequency is at 100mhz. is this accurate for my processor? (not looking to overclock)

my final question is what should my aperture size be for my vid card? default now is 64mb. the reason i hesitate to change it is that i hear that the aperture size has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of video card RAM you have.

my main use for this machine is for work. about 90% for my work and about 10% for games. so i'm not looking to overclock, but i do want some semi-aggressive settings so i can have some fun every now and then. thanks in advance.

[Midknyte]

you need to be more specific about which 2600+ you have. it could be 133 or 166fsb.

http://www.thedigerati.us/info/amdcpuchart.html#xp

leave the memory settings alone. allow the system to take the settings from the memory SPD.

you can leave the agp aperature at 64 for now. You can try other settings later, but you may not see a significant difference.

[The Lodge]

Download everst and install. http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=1 Under motherboard\spd it will list the timings of your ram. Set your aperture to 128MB.

Do you know what 2600+ you have? They made three versions of it. If you at least know the clock speed of it we can figure it out from there.

[Nacho]

i'm almost positive it's the 333mhz FSB.

[The Lodge]

Is it a barton or tbird? You should be able to set the cpu clock frequency at auto and it will detect the correct settings.

[Nacho]

there is no auto setting for that one. it was at 100Mhz and i just changed it to 166. as a result, when the comp starts up, it now says "Memory frequency at 166Mhz Single channel mode"

since PC3200 is capable of 200Mhz, should i bump it to 200?

i have the other mem settings in the bios set to optimal and auto.

[Midknyte]

only set the ram to 200 if you can run it async from the cpu. you said you weren't looking to overclock.

64 or 128 is fine for AGP aperature, but you might not see a difference.

[Nacho]

so does that mean 166 is alright? or do i need to reduce it?

[Midknyte]

166 is correct if it is a 333FSB rated cpu. increasing to 200 would put the cpu at 400.