I had an Athlon 2.2 in my PC and I put in a 3.2 and was told to up the front end bus speed to 400(what ever that is) in the BIOS. So I start the thing up and it goes straight into the BIOS, great just what I needed, or not perhaps. Sometimes it tells me that the memory is slow but I have 1gb of ddr400 and others it tells me that I have the wrong multiplier and that the problem is now solved and to restart my PC but when I do I get the same message. Also when it goes into the BIOS after about 20sec it shuts down. I have tried putting the old processor back in and it just gives me the same problem. Motherboard ASUS A7V8X.

Cheers

kevnewcastle

Hi kevnewcastle,
Think that motherboard supports processors up to 2.4 Ghz (that's what I've found on the net:

QUOTE

Processor Socket A for AMD®: Athlon XP/ Athlon/ Duron up to 2.4GHz+ Thoroughbred core CPU ready Chipset North Bridge: VIA®: KT400 South Bridge: VIA®: VT8235 FSB 266/200 MHz Memory 3 x DDR DIMM Sockets Max. 3 GB unbuffered *PC3200 /PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 non-ECC SDRAM Memory (Note: PC3200 Max. to 2 banks only; PC2700 Max. to 4 banks only) Expansion Slots 1 x AGP 8X 6 x PCI (one shared with optional ASUS proprietary wireless slot) IDE Ports 2 x UltraDMA/133/100/66 Flexible Serial ATA (optional) Promise®: controller supports one ATA133 and two serial ATA connectors

(If yours is quite or slightly different, you must have some MB manual with it)

Have you changed any jumper during your upgrade attempt ?
Have you tried to remove and reinstall the memory banks ? (I know, seems to be obvious, but I've had a similar problem before and fix it by doing this)
Are the CPU voltages (Vcore, VDD, 3.3, 5 and 12V) values still correct ?

There might be some other reasons to your problem, but it's not so simple to remotely diagnose it.

regards,
Chris

I get basically the same supported CPU findings as Ironbender. On page 1.4 of the (online PDF) manual for the ASUS A7V8X motherboard it states;

"CPU socket. Socket 462 (Socket A) surface mount, Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket for the AMD Barton/Thoroughbred/Athlon XP/Athlon?Duron Processors, with 600 MHZ ~ 2.25GHZ system bus."

If the system is not responding to the "jumperless" CPU settings with the old processor in, try removing the cmos battery, or, resetting the bios to factory defaults.

Here is the link to the Asus site with information on that board: ASUS

That board has some nice features, including voice actuated system error troubleshooting help. That should prove interesting.

According to them, your board supports pc3200 RAM (400 FSB), so its fast. I notice that they specify no more than two banks; you might check your manual to make sure; and try also moving the sticks to different slots if nothing else works.

Like Danpenny suggests, reset the BIOS back to factory default so that you can start booting clean. Once that is done, you go back into your BIOS, go to memory settings, and move the setting to 200 (that translates into 400FSB for DDR memory). I am not as well acquainted with your BIOS setup and how it's described-if I were sitting in front of it there would be no problem. Just post back when you are ready to start bumping up your settings and anyone here can help you so that you get the full speed on your FSB and memory.

Thanks for the heads-up on the processor, I will take it back to the shop. I have tried removing the cmos battery with the old 2.2 processor installed and still no joy. The pc starts up in the bios with the speed setting at 1.3 and no matter what you set it to after restart it runs for a couple of secs then shuts down or starts in the bios saying that the processor speed was incorrect, the problem is now fixed and ok to restart . I am going to try and upgrade the bios and see if that helps. I will let you all know how that goes. If I can not get this thing going I am going to invest in a 64 bit board and processor, what would you recomend?

I recently upgraded my PC with a 64bit Athlon 3500+ socket 939 CPU and a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard.
I chose not to go PCI-Express route so I could keep my existing AGP Video card. I already had PC3200 ram so the upgrade was pretty cheap.

I can't fault this motherboard at all. Solid as a rock, great performance and was a great price ... I thoroughly recommend it .. I upgraded from an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe motherboard and AthlonXP 2500+ by the way

Hi all, no luck with the bios flash, looks like I'm sh@gged. can you tell me how much the upgrade to the 64bit cost?

QUOTE

when it goes into the BIOS after about 20sec it shuts down.

If you've changed the CPU, my first guess is that the cooler isn't installed properly and the system is shutting down from over-heat. The heatsink may be set on the cpu improperly or the thermal compound isn't applied properly - is the plastic tab covering the thermal compound on the heatsink removed?

The FSB settings of 266, 333, and 400Mhz are DDR rates and relate to clock speeds of 133, 166, and 200 Mhz - they use "hi & low" from each clock cycle, so you're using a "tick" every half cycle instead of every full cycle. You can set the CPU FSB speed to 200 to get the 400 DDR FSB.

QUOTE

Hi all, no luck with the bios flash, looks like I'm sh@gged

How bad off are you? Does the computer attempt to start in any way?

QUOTE (kevnewcastle @ Apr 16 2005, 06:25 PM)

Hi all, no luck with the bios flash, looks like I'm sh@gged. can you tell me how much the upgrade to the 64bit cost?

For motherboard and CPU it cost me £305.65inc vat at the time, though it will be cheaper now.

Hi all, will try the old fan but when I check the processor temp it is always about 40 C.

cheers

40C is very acceptable, especially if it is under load.

Hi all, finally got the BIOS problem sorted with my PC (it was the cpu fan). The problem I have now I have already built a brand new shiny one from scratch much to the distress of girlfriend, HE HE HE.......

This is what I got

Motherboard
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 Nvnf4sli Atx - Snd 2xgln 1394 U2 Fsb2000 Satar

Processor
AMD (Winchester) Athlon 64bit 3200+ 939pin 512kb L2 Cache 90nm OEM Processor

Graphics Card
XFX 6600 GT 128MB PCI Express

Ram
1 GB Kingston

All for about £400

I am reading about RAID and how to connect 2 hard drives together for better performance. I have a 30gb IDE hard drive at the moment but I am about to order a SATA drive. I know I can have boatloads of drives but can I connect 2 different kinds of drive with this RAID facility on my new motherboard?