I am a newbie in BIOS setup matters and I would appreciate a piece of advice. I have an MSI K7N2G-L motherboard with an ATL XP 2000+ 266MHz SocketA CPU and a DDRAM 256 Mb 400 MHz chip. When I first installed everything, my bus speed was 100MHz and DRAM/FSB ratio was Auto. To my surprise I saw that DDRAM speed was 333MHz and the total performance stood at 1250MHz. I found it kinda funny and changed my bus speed to 133MHz and the DRAM/FSB to 1:1. Then I saw my total performance rise to 1662MHz (12.5x133MHz?) but my DDRAm speed dropped to 266MHZ. What should I do to get DDRAM speed to 400 and the total performance to at least 1700 as they advertise? Thanx.

I'm guessing if you set the dram ratio to 'auto' it should run at 400mhz ddr.

Thanks, Kev. Somehow I can't see the POST screen. If I don't press delete, then it 'wakes' up with Windows already loading. If I do press delete, then I end up in BIOS. Any suggestions?

Sorry man, i didn't know that was going to happen. but usually when you set it to auto that means it's set "by spd" which means the m/b will check the rams spd built into the ram, which tells the motherboard to run the ram at the speed it's supposed to run at..400mhz. i have no clue why it's doing that. i do know why your ram speed is 266mhz because a 1:1 ratio will give you a 266mhz ram speed. you see ddr is double data rate 133x2= 266mhz so if you set the ratio to 1:1 the ram speed will be the same as the fsb speed. that's why your supposed to set it to auto. if you had a fsb speed of 200mhz it would make the ram speed 400mhz ddr if you had a 1:1 ratio. I think you have to clear the cmos, remove the battery and atx power from the m/b for 30 secs and replace. after you do that all the settings in the bios will go back to the way they were when you first bought it. but you still have to keep it at auto if you want 400mhz, ask johnoh or someone else if you don't trust me.

If you have a cheap ram brand or it's not 100% compatible with you m/b then sometimes you could have problems when running it at 400mhz but when at 266mhz it works fine. Make sure you always get corsair or kingston. your less likely to have any probs with that ram then any other brand.

With an XP you are better off running the ram synchronous with the CPU ie. if your cpu is running 266, run the ram at 266 as well. You will get better performance at 266 than at 400.

Thanks Kevn and Adam for your tips. Indeed, Auto means By SPD. Now I understand better what is going on behind the screens. My motherbord allows me to switch between 100, 133 and 166MHz, but at 166MHz the computer won't boot. I had to reset the CMOS with the jumper. Same happened when I tried to set DRAM/FSB ratio to 2:1. Adam believes that 1:1 isn't such a bad idea, at least an for XP. That gives me some consolation if the worst comes to the worst. One tech guy from the shop I bought my stuff from promised to help me online later today. I still have to sort out the total performance, which seems yet too low. And by the way, how do I make my monitor show me the POST screen? Normally it wakes up after some 10 seconds when it is too late. Madrus