A Palomina Athlon XP will work with a BIOS Update: http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/down... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...

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CPU-Z says its "AMD Athlon MP" code named "Palomino" and i guess if you need to know anything else let me know, i got CPU-Z now. Core speed 1104.8MHz right now. Bus speed 100.4 right now. Rated FSB 200.8MHz. Yeah. Is "Palomino" the same as "Palomina", itguru? Also, my graphics card is a GeForce 5200 FX. I downloaded something for it that would let me overclock it (in fact it tests the system automatically to what it feels is the best for your PC). The best part was that I can make it last only until I shut down my computer and it goes down to normal. That means when I activate when I need it.

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"CPU-Z says its "AMD Athlon MP" code named "Palomino"" There you go, you have the CPU clocked wrong. All Palomino's run at 133MHz. Athlon MP's were designed for servers & workstations running dual CPUs (MP = MultiProcessing). I suspect you have an Athlon XP & it's being misreported by CPUZ. Regardless, there's little difference between an MP & XP. Here's a list of all the MP's...notice that there's none that run at 1100MHz or 1467MHz (11 x 133). You more than likely have an XP 1700+. Also, the FX5200 is a budget card & was marketed as such when it was released many years ago. Overclocked or not, it's not good for gaming unless you play games that are 5 yrs old? Even back then it was at the very bottom of the performance pile. Check this benchmark chart from 2003. "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

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So what do I do now? I mean to fix the problem and maximize my cpu usage?

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Read the motherboard manual which will show you what is needed to change the Front Bus Settings from 100 to 133:

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Is this your board? http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware... Abit uses BIOS to set the fsb...they call it SoftMenuIII. If you set the fsb to 133Mhz your 1700+ should be recognized as such. As to the particular chip, you have two choices. At this stage, I'm inclined to believe it is a Palomino. CPU-Z should tell you it's a Model 6. If it's a Model 8 you have a Tbred A or Tbred B. You don't have a MP 1700+, AMD never sold one. Palomino ain't a bad chip; just runs a little hotter and doesn't overclock as well as the Tbreds. So for now, do a little homework and set your fsb to 133. Once you get that done and everything's running right, we can talk about going further. With a little luck and a larger inexpensive cooler you might just be able to make a 2400+ outta that thing. Your motherboard should have stuff written all over it. We need to know exactly what the model number is. jam's called every shot so far. Maybe he'll find you a deal on an ATI 9550 or 9600 series video card. This all works out, you might want to download the Far Cry demo. Skip

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Yeah, SkipCox, that's my motherboard. I guess now I'll hope I kept the documentation to the hardware all this time. I'll check what CPU-Z says about the model number and I'll open her up and see what is scribbled beneath the layers of predeluvian dust sediment. When I find out I'll edit this post and put it below. Edit: I found the manual and was flipping through it. I checked out the BIOS settings and it said that the CPU Operating Speed was set at "1700+ (133)" and the CPU FSB Clock(MHz) was set at "133". However, in the Advanced Chipset options it said that the "Current FSB Frequency" was set at "100 Mhz". The DRAM freq is 133MHz. Some additional stats which may or may not be relative- Ratio FSB:AGP:PCI is 4:2:1. Speed Error Hold is Disabled. CPU Fast Command Decode is set to Normal.

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Cool. It's time now to read all the pages I linked to...those pages will give you a good idea of what that all means. It's been a few months since I've set up an old Abit board but, I believe you just select the speed you want (133) and save the settings. Don't worry about the ratios right now. They are correct for 133Mhz; i.e.133/4=33, 133/2=66 and 133/1=133. Leave the CPU Fast Command Decode alone for now. We want to get you up and running as a 1700+ first and check temperatures. Skip

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Here's a couple of possibilities: ATI Radeon 9550 256MB DDR AGP - $37 +/- (Not 100% sure if it's 64-bit or 128-bit though. 128-bit is what you should go for) Radeon X1600Pro 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP - $47 +/- The X1600Pro might be a little much for your system, but it's definitely the better of the two. It requires a floppy style plug-in from the PSU though. I was hesitant about posting this one due to the bad reviews, but as one of the reviewers put it, "Most of the bad reviews for this card are from people who don't have a clue about technology". It's more powerful than the X1600Pro & requires a HDD style plug-in: Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP - $46 (after rebate) "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

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Ran across this one looking for DVD writer. http://www.compusa.com/applications... The ATI part number (100-437105) says it's 128 bit and $29.95 ain't too bad. Geeks wants 70 bucks for the same card. Here's Abit support; http://www.uabit.com/index.php?Item... and the manual; http://www.uabit.com/index.php?opti... Skip

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Hey, that's the same one as I posted. I kicked in an extra $7 for shipping. TigerD & CompUSA are one & the same. TigerD bought them out at the beginning of the year. "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

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Yep...thought so. Everyone else is selling used cards or charging 60-90 bucks for a 9550. 9600's are getting scarce. Guess I'd better spend $32-33 and buy a dongle for my AIW 9600np so I can sell that old 9600se and tv card to the next needy dude with an older machine. The Fresno store has that 9550 in stock. I should go down and grab one for a "just in case" card. Skip

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Okay I'm looking around those articles but I'm not seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing. What I think I'm supposed to be doing is overclocking this thing to where it should be, or figuring out why its reading 1700+(133Mhz) when in reality I'm getting 1.1ghz at 100Mhz, right?

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Kinda right. You're not overclocking; you're simply trying to properly set the fsb. On this page, second picture... http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware... I want you to do only one thing. Where it currently says 100, I want you to change it to 133. Press ESC until you're asked to save changes and exit. Save changes and exit. You should now have a processor running at 1700+ speed. Don't worry if it isn't identified as a 1700+, as long as it's running at ~1467Mhz. Skip

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Done. I changed it from "By SPD" to 133. One thing I noticed is that the information listed during bootup said the mainboard was an Athlon AMD XP +1700 even though the others call it an MP. Maybe I'll have to look in just to confirm. Both Belarc and CPU-Z confirm my PC is now running at "1.47 gigahertz"

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Don't worry about what it's called. AMD never made a MP1700+, only 5 or 6 flavors of the XP1700+. Now, get back into bios and go to the "PC Health Status" screen. Let us know the following: System Temp CPU Temp CPU Fan Speed VCore +12v +5v +3.3v Skip

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System Temp: 82 F CPU Temp: 125 F ( When I run the PC it usually levels out to around 140F. It bobs between 132 and 140F (says speed fan) ) CPU fan/speed: NA VCore: 1.76V +12v: 11.97F (jumps from there to 12.03) +5v: 5.40v +3.3 (No such option or listing)

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We speak in degrees celsius around here when we're talking about computer temperatures. Fahrenheit is OK but not preferred. Case temp is swell...pretty durn cool in your house. CPU temp ain't too bad but could be improved if you want to spend a little money. Palominos do tend to run hotter than other Athlon XP's and any Palomino user should keep a pretty close eye on the cpu temp. It's likely you have the small aluminum heatsink and fan that AMD packaged with the processor or another brand that measures about 2.5" square. The fan is slightly smaller (60mmx60mm). Things you can do to help bring the temperature down: Wait for winter. Insure the accumulated dust is blown out of the hsf (heatsink and fan). Same for the power supply and any case fans you might have. Replace the small hsf with a larger one using a larger fan (80mmx80mm). The last one should cost you less than 20 bucks. Something like this one. http://www.compusa.com/applications... Another good investment is a product like this. http://www.compusa.com/applications... Follow these instructions regardless of which thermal compound you use. http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/app... If you haven't already spent some time gaming, shoot hell out of something for an hour or two and check your temps immediately after exiting the game. Good luck, post back if you want to take this thing any further up the road. Skip

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Gamed for about an hour or more, sort of lost track of time. Temp went up to 147F and I decided to shut it down and let it cool. A friend's PC runs at 214F and he laughs about it saying he can boil water on it. I don't know how hot is too hot but I was afraid my CPU would die if it went any higher than 148F.

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You're OK. An Athlon XP will usually vary about 10-12 degrees C between idle and full load temps. When you exit a game, temps will start returning to "normal". Usually takes 15 to 30 minutes. Don't start worrying until temps hit 70-75C (158-167F). Also, reported temps may be somewhat inaccurate. Your friend sure isn't running an AMD at 101C and if it's an Intel, it's not running very well. I think that's a good example of inaccurate temp reporting. A diode on the motherboard reports system temperature and a diode under the cpu reports cpu temp. That's interpreted by the bios and can be reported higher or lower than actual. Programs like speedfan or mbm5 do likewise and can add to the inaccuracy. Example, if my 2400+ reports 50C in bios, mbm5 reports 48C by the time the machine boots into windows. Likely neither is telling the absolute truth. A good hsf cleaning can help a lot. Dust acts as an insulator and prevents airflow. Both add up to elevated temperatures. Now is the time to begin keeping a notebook. You know your temperatures swing between 125-147F. If you blow out the dust and temps go to, say 115-140F, you'll know you did some good. Likewise, a better hsf might show a 105-130F range. Successful cooling is all about change in the right direction. Didn't mean to rant on here but, better cooling gives you more room to overclock. Anyway, want a 1800+ now? Change the 133 fsb to 140 and you'll run slightly faster than a stock 1800+. Skip

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*grin* I pushed it up to 140MHz and told the DDRAM thing to start choosing its speed automatically since I can't set that above 133. My computer got 1.54MHz but it seemed to run SLOWER than at 1.47MHz. So then I boosted it up to 150MHz just to see you know? I mean i knew it probably wouldn't run. Or at least not as good as before. Well.. heh... it didn't start up. I read about that in the manual and it said to remove the internal battery which I did- I opened it up and pulled it out for a couple seconds. Well I popped it back in and started it up and still nothing... I know nothing fried, its just not wanted to start on those settings. I have to figure a way to reset it but I'm not sure how. In any case, that was a hell of a lot of fun. I figure I'll probably, once it gets working again, try to set it at 136 maybe 137MHz as a compromise since I can type any number between 100 and 250. But yeah, how do I get it up again?? o_o EDIT: Tried it again about 20 min later. It worked, just reset the BIOS. its back at 1.47Ghz. So we're good.

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If it happens again, there should be a jumper next to the battery labeled "CCMOS1". With the machine turned off and unplugged, move that jumper from from pins 1-2 to 2-3. Leave it there for a few seconds (with the power cord unplugged pressing the power button can help), return the jumper to pins 1-2, plug it in, and everything is reset. "it seemed to run SLOWER" might just mean something. A shaky stick of memory or PC1600 memory mixed in with PC2100 could be near it's functional limit. If the Palomino is the culprit, a vcore increase can help at higher frequencies. Problem is that,taking the vcore from 1.750 to 1.775 increases the cpu temp. 1.800 pumps out even more heat and so forth. So, what to do? I'd leave it all at 133Mhz for now. Get used to it and try a couple of benchmarking programs. For Video, 3DMark2001se http://www.futuremark.com/download/... General, MetaBench good for comparisons. http://www.7byte.com/index.php?page... Don't worry about the scores. Worry about differences in scores. If things are working right, scores might progress something like this. This is why you need to keep a log FSB 3D01 MB98 133 2000 2000 136 2025 2050 139 2055 2100 That would mean "seemed to run SLOWER" is not true. Bottom line is that even though benchmark scores increase, you likely will not see the difference. You can see the difference between 1.1 and 1.47 Ghz. Although some of that difference is due to raw Mhz increase, most of it is due to fsb increase from 100 to 133. If it were possible, you'd be better off at 10 x 146 =1460Mhz than you are currently at 11 x 133 =1463Mhz or maybe even 12 x 133 =1596Mhz Get the idea? There's an unbelievable amount of information on this forum about overclocking the 1700+. This information goes back to when the 1700+ was brand new. Have fun, you killed your machine and brought it back to life. Looks like you're an overclocker now. Skip

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My friend says not to mess with the VCore settings so I'll just accept what I have. What um, what does that 3DMark2001 program do? I have it installed and I'm looking at it, but I'm not sure what the purpose is - if I know that, I'll know what to toy around with.

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3DMark is mostly for your video card but, cpu speed also plays a role in the score. For your rig, later 3D Mark versions would look like a slideshow or not run at all. So, you run it and get a score of xxxx. Then, up the fsb to 136 and run it again. That score should be slightly higher than the first. The MetaBench score should do likewise. Basic overclocking rules: The system must remain rock solid and as stable as stock. Temps will go up...watch 'em closely. Only change one thing at a time. Make many small changes rather than one big change...you already "been there done that". Don't be afraid to raise vcore a little; just insure temps don't go out of sight. If it takes 1.775v to reach 150Mhz, it's OK as long as temps are good and the system is solid. Not So Manditory Disclaimer: Raising fsb can lead to data loss or corruption. The PCI and AGP busses also go up with FSB. Remember the 4:2:1: thing in BIOS? At 150FSB the PCI buss is running at 37.5Mhz up from 33.0 and AGP is running at 75Mhz up from 66. That's getting into the ballpark where audio or video card or modem or some other component gives ya trouble. Skip

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So with that program I ran the benchmark just playing around, before I read your reply. You want me to run that at 133MHz and record my score, then go up to say 136MHz and run it again and it should be higher. Okay, what do I do if it is not? Then again I'll try it when I get home (at work now) and we'll see what happens.

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Yep. If lower, just go back to 133. But, that would be a first for me. Skip

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