A few P4C800 Deluxe Questions - Should be fairly easy to answer!!

[Andrew Stirling]

Got a couple of questions just to make sure I'm on the right track with my
new system. Please forgive my ignorance - I haven't upgraded in a couple of
years and I'm a little out of touch with the new technology.
When i switch my system on it states that my ram is running at 400Mhz dual
channel linear mode. Does this seem right and am I right in thinking that
this is my system running at 800Mhz FSB? I've got 2xKingston3500/512Mb chips

I've only just fiddled with the overclocking options and if I set the
overclocking to 10% then I notice my memory speed drops to 266Mhz. I assume
this means that it is running out of sync with the processor?
If I manually set this to 400 and put the CPU FSB to 220 - I end up with a
3.31Ghz system - is the memory then running in sync at 440Mz?
Should I leave my AGP bus on Auto?
Finally, when I switch the performance mode to turbo (in the jumperless
overclocking section of the bios) - I repeatedly received a bios checksum
error and I was forced to install the bios from the CD. It didn't seem to
work and it repeatedly done this until I switched off for a period of time -
a simple reboot resulted in the same error - you can imagine my panic by
this stage. When I powered back on..I was allowed into the (now older) bios
and was able to deselect this option - which then disappeared - and
everything worked fine. I haven't touched this since. Any ideas? I had
recently upgraded to the1008 Bios at the time but I've now only flashed my
way back to 1007.


Thanks in advance..

Andrew

 

[**Jerry**]

From my previous post, hope this will help:

Motherboard is P4P800 deluxe with 1008 BIOS.
CPU is 2.4 GHz at 800 MHz quadpumped bus (200 MHz FSB).
Memory is Kingmax 2x256 Mb PC-400.
At default voltages I can reach 250 MHz FSB (1 Ghz quadpumped bus) for a 3
GHz speed with Intel boxed cooler. Memory ratio must be lowered to 320 MHz
because setting it to fixed ratio doesn't keep a memory speed at that fixed
speed. Why? At 320 Mhz memory is running 4:5 ratio (4:5=320:400 Mhz, your
memory is running at 320 MHz and CPU at 400 MHz). Pushing FSB up is pushing
up memory speed as well so if you push your FSB to 215 MHz (860 MHz
quadpumped for CPU) it is pushing memory to 430 MHz at 1:1 ratio but only at
344 MHz at 4:5 ratio (4:5=344:430 MHz). With that calculation you can see
that at 250 MHz FSB and 4:5 ratio (or 320 MHz selected in BIOS) your RAM is
running at 400 MHz DDR speed. The most confusing thing is that 320 and 400
MHz speeds displayed during boot and in BIOS ARE NOT a final and locked
speeds of your memory. It will be better to be shown and understood as
memory:CPU ratio - 320 MHz is in fact 4:5 ratio and 400 MHz is in fact 1:1
ratio - and if you push up your FSB you are pushing up your memory speed. It
is not locked as your AGP speed. This is preventing many users to overclock
their computers.
Hope that this is a clue to someone who is going crazy not be able to
overclock...
Thanks to "Uncle Maddog" and "jaeger" for answers in previous post.

FYI, my CPU temperature is 3-4° higher at 3 GHz compared to 2.4 GHz.

 

[BNR]

Hi Andrew,

I have the same setup. I'm using 1007 BIOS tho, going to install 1008,
tonight. I am using 2-2-2-6 with my HyperX KHX3200/512(not A) DDR400. So
far so good. Going to run memtest and see just how good tho, once its all
patched up. Will try and keep you posted. Right now I'm downloading the
e1224_p4c800.pdf from:

http://www.asus.com.tw/support/down...id=15&l3_id=20&m_id=1&f_name=e1224_p4c800.pdf

to see if it has an updated list of compatible modules. Gotta find which cd
has the acrobat reader. It helps to be organized, I am not. LOL!

Brad

 

[**Jerry**]

Thanks...seems like I was on the right lines. Any disadvantages to the
memory and processor being out of sync?? I mean not running at a 1:1 ratio.

--

Yes, your memory bandwith might be lower. Check with some software like
AIDA32 or Sisoftware Sandra. I have FSB set up to 250 MHz at 4:5 ratio (320
Mhz) and memory is running at 400 MHz (4:5 = 400: 500 MHz). With this
settings I have bigger memory bandwith compared to 200 MHz FSB and 400 MHz
for memory (1:1 ratio). It is impossible to have 1:1 ratio at higher speeds
because there is no memory for speeds over 450 Mhz (225 Mhz FSB).

 

[**Jerry**]

Great! But it is not an official standard. I hope that next step is going to
be PC-600 DDRRAM as a standard speed.

 

[Luis Bendezu II, MD]

Me too, Jerry..I'd love to crank this up as far as possible!

 

[BNR]

Asus blacked out the qualified vendor list on the updated english manual.
That's not helpful at all. They must not be testing their products after
releasing them into the wild.

I ran memtest with 2-2-2-6 like it says in Kingston's spec. I got errors,
so I used 2-2-3-6, like it said in Kingston's FAQ. You can see my results
here after relaxing the RtC# manually:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50180

Thanks for the timing tips. I will try them once I get a stable box.