I recently upgraded my system from an Athlon XP 2200+ to an Athlon XP 3000+ Barton. I gutted the entire case in the process. While I can see definite bursts of power when opening some programs like Word, this new system is not able to multitask as well as the 2200.

Here are the specs:
Athlon 3000+ CPU - 333 FSB
ABIT AN7 MB - 400 FSB
PNY Geforce4 Ti 4400 Video
1 GB 3200 Corsair Memory - 400 FSB
Allied 500 Watt Power Supply
80 GB WD HD 7200rpm
XP Pro SP2

In the BIOS, I set the CPU Thermal-Throttling as high as it would go (87.5%), and the Memory Timings to “By SPD “. The system is not over-clocked.

The CPU rarely heats up to 44C even with ZoneAlarm, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, WS_FTP Pro, Winamp, Word, Email, and several instances of Firefox running. But the system struggles sometimes with this workload, when the 2200 did not. I need to be able to multitask, so I am eager to find a solution.

My question to you is: could there be something in the BIOS which is not letting the CPU run at it’s full capacity 100% of the time, or could my problem be related to the differences in the FSB speed of the memory and the CPU?

I appreciate any advice you may have.

Why have you set the Thermal Throttling High?

Tt Lanfire
nf7-s v2.0
XP-m 2500@211x11
SP 97
512mb pc3200
Jou Jye 550w psu
FX5600
WDCaviar 160gb sata

;~}

"I need to be able to multitask, so I am eager to find a solution"

You could always go back to the 2200+...lol! What board do you have? There are several versions of the AN7. Have you scanned for spyware, viruses, trojans, etc? Have you run MSCONFIG & disabled any useless programs from loading at startup? How many icons do you have next to the clock? How many really HAVE to load into memory at startup?

And I 2nd indigian's comment.

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB

That is an option... LOL

There are several versions of the NF7 board, but only one version of the AN7: http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/

My system is clean as a whistle. It’s a matter of ritual to counter spyware daily.

Actually, MSCONFIG is OK, but I use RegSeeker to keep the startups controlled.
The only icons next to my clock are Sound, and ZoneAlarm.

As for the Thermal Throttling, after reading the indigian's comment, I decided to look into just why I did set it High, and found information leading me to better understand it's function. I have since disabled it, without any noticeable change in performance.

I believe I have narrowed the problem down to the main board. While ABIT claims to have tested the 3000+ on that board, I fear it is insufficient to handle my workload.

God I love upgrading. :-)

Thanks for taking the time to spin this around.

Sorry, I was thinking of the NF7 when I wrote that.....

This isn't related to your prob, but I'm curious as to why you bought the 333FSB version rather than the 400FSB version of the 3000+?

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB

<<I'm curious as to why you bought the 333FSB version rather than the 400FSB version of the 3000+?>>

Brain Damage!

Actually, I had a limited budget at the time I purchased those components, otherwise I would have gone for the 64 FX53 Boxed CPU, and the proper components to support it.