A7N8X Processor Settings

[Phil Murden]

Gents,

I have an ASUS A7N8X Motherboard, Ver 1.04, BIOS 1003. When I had an
XP2400+ installed, the CPU External Freq in the BIOS was set 133Mhz, the
Freq Multiplier to Auto resulting in an XP2400+ being reported and on the
General Tab in System Properties under Win XP, the processor was reported as
running at 2 Ghz.

When I exchange the Processor for a XP2500+ with the CPU External Freq set
to 166 in the BIOS, Freq Multi to Auto, the processor is reported as an
XP2500+ but on the General Tab in System Properties under Win XP it is
reported as running at 1.83Ghz.

Can anyone explain this anomaly, have I set something incorrectly? I notice
that the 2400+ has a 266FSB and the 2500 a 333FSB.

Regards,

Phil.

 

[Doug Ramage]

Gents,

I have an ASUS A7N8X Motherboard, Ver 1.04, BIOS 1003. When I had an
XP2400+ installed, the CPU External Freq in the BIOS was set 133Mhz, the
Freq Multiplier to Auto resulting in an XP2400+ being reported and on the
General Tab in System Properties under Win XP, the processor was reported as
running at 2 Ghz.

When I exchange the Processor for a XP2500+ with the CPU External Freq set
to 166 in the BIOS, Freq Multi to Auto, the processor is reported as an
XP2500+ but on the General Tab in System Properties under Win XP it is
reported as running at 1.83Ghz.

Can anyone explain this anomaly, have I set something incorrectly? I notice
that the 2400+ has a 266FSB and the 2500 a 333FSB.

Regards,

Phil.

This is down to AMD's marketing strategy - to advertise their cpus as the
equivalent performance of the relevant Intel cpu, rather than its actual
clock speed.

It sounds like you have a "Barton" 2500XP, which clocks at 1.83GHZ.

What speed memory are you using?

 

[Rainman]

| Gents,
|
| I have an ASUS A7N8X Motherboard, Ver 1.04, BIOS 1003. When I had an
| XP2400+ installed, the CPU External Freq in the BIOS was set 133Mhz,
the
| Freq Multiplier to Auto resulting in an XP2400+ being reported and on
the
| General Tab in System Properties under Win XP, the processor was
reported as
| running at 2 Ghz.
|
| When I exchange the Processor for a XP2500+ with the CPU External Freq
set
| to 166 in the BIOS, Freq Multi to Auto, the processor is reported as
an
| XP2500+ but on the General Tab in System Properties under Win XP it is
| reported as running at 1.83Ghz.
|
| Can anyone explain this anomaly, have I set something incorrectly? I
notice
| that the 2400+ has a 266FSB and the 2500 a 333FSB.
|
| Regards,
|
| Phil.
|
|
|


You don't have an anomaly. Those reports are exactly correct.

The Athlon XP 2400+ internal clock is running at 1.93MHz (WinXP must be
rounding that up in your report). The Athlon XP 2500+ Barton internal
clock speed is 1.83MHz. At default settings, it performs a bit better
than the 2400+ by virtue of its 333 MHz effective FSB, increased cache
and other features/improvements.

This is why some people hate the AMD "+" nomenclature. Although it does
pretty well represent the performance compared to the Intel P4, it can
get confusing when comparing one AMD CPU to another looking at the FSB
specs.

 

[Phil Murden]

Many thanks to everyone who replied to my query, it is now not only clear
but I can go and drink wine tonight instead of sitting in front of my PC
trying to come up with an answer.

Regards,

Phil.

 

[geezer]

I also have a7n8x dlx w/2400+, PC2700 memory -- I am almost positive it was
running @ 2GHz originally, but the other day I noticed it had deprecated
itself to 1.8etc. (I wasn't paying that much attention, sorry).

I was able to putz around with the BIOS settings and actually now it thinks
it is a 2600+ running at a little higher than 2 GHz (again, a brain cloud).

I wasn't too worried about it, but reading your post made me think and it
occurred to me that the only thing that I had done since was to add one of
those 200 Gb hard drives that use the special capabilities of the Asus BIOS.

Now I'm thinking that this could possibly have had something to do with the
clock deprecation. Anyways, that's my two cents worth.

geezer