Why is my P3 1G as fast as either a P4 2.0 or XP 2400 with same amount of ram? And Why did it take 5 boots to post when I replaced the processor (100mhz fsb/800mhx to a 133 mhz fsb/1ghz)and did I affect my pci or agp speeds going from 100 mhz to 133 mhz? I just set the switches to auto detect fsb and lit it up without reinstalling anything but cpu.

I don't know anything about benchmarks or overclocking except raising bus speed (thats all my mb will do).But this computer is at least as fast in Gaming,Word or Adobe than 3 P4s and 1 xp2400 I use and games load faster than anyones computer I play against when online gaming.(The Reason for still using this.)

It is an old FIC FA13 mother board with Simple Tech ram 133 mhz 1G P3 processor and 133 mhz ram.I swapped my wifes 1G with my 800 mhz P3.(not paying for 200mhz)It was already fast with 800 mhz.Comparing it against 3 other P4s 1/1.8 and 2/2Ghz.Combat Flight Sim 2/1st screen loads in 15 Seconds(13 secs oced to 1.13ghz) as compared to 1 minute to 1.5 Minutes on the other computers? It worked fine at 117 mhz=933 before, fine at 140mhz=10.5ghz now, but 150mhz=1.13ghz crashes during the game only. Once blue screen, once back to desktop,so back to 133 untill I know more.It runs applications fine at 150 mhz.It is still only a 17 mhz increase for either processor.

Should I have done more when Installing the processor?The video card in mine is g4 mx440 64mb/P4s were ti4600 128mb and Athalon was ti4200 128mb/.512mb ram in the other computers also.Thanks if anyone could shed some light on this.If possible I would like it stable at 150mhz, only an 11% gain.
Thanks, WB

you need to reset the bios when installing a new cpu

program load times are a function of hard disk speed, fragmentation, and background programs more than cpu speed. Your 1g p3 is not faster than any p4 or any xp, but your os config may be cleaner, your hard drive less fragmented, your background programs fewer, or any number of things. Your cpu is slower, but that only means it takes others .01 seconds to do what your does in .02 seconds.

fsb also does make a difference, and at 140mhz your comoputer has the fastest fsb in the house. but 150mhz may be too much to ask of a 3 year old motherboard

Hmmmm...let me see what I can do with this....since you didn't mention the model number of your board, the answers will have to be somewhat generalized.

If your system is designed for either 100mhz or 133mhz FSB, when you change the setting (jumper?), the PCI/AGP automatically adjust & stay at their defaults of 33/66mhz...but as you adjust your FSB from the base clock speed of 100 or 133, the PCI/AGP will overclock right along with it. Some boards however, have the option to lock these settings at their defaults, & other boards have the option of changing the divider. The divider at 100 FSB is 3 (100/3 = 33) & the divider at 133 FSB is 4 (133/4 = 33). Assuming your board doesn't have either option, your PCI/AGP will overclock right along with the FSB. Generally, the max safe limit for the PCI bus is considered to be about 37.5mhz...so your max FSB will probably be right about 150mhz (150/4 = 37.5mhz). However, being able to run stably at that speed depends on whether all your components can handle the increase or not...meaning sound card, modem, video, hardrive, etc...your RAM has to be able to handle the increased speed as well. There are a lot of variables involved...there's also the temperature issue...

Doing system comparisons are difficult...unless you're using the exact same components & changing only the CPU, there are many variables involved there too...it's like the old "apple to oranges" thing. Hard drive size/speed, mobo chipset, video card, background apps, operating system, BIOS settings, etc all factor in. It's entirely posible that a P3 wil run some apps just as well as a P4...for most of us, we'll never take advantage of the full processing power of today's machines...yet we keep upgrading & overclocking anyway...LOL!

As the first P4 came out I read some tests and the interesting thing was that in some Benchmark tests the P4's hab been slower than the last but slower P3's in some areas.

Still with a 1GHz P3 and a geforce4mx the pentiums with the TI4200/TI4600 video cards should be faster. With the same amount of Ram the video cards alone should make a big difference.
But you may be lucky to own a nearly perfect configured P3 system while the P4's are not so optimally set or have a lot of stuff running in the background.

If you really want to test download the 3D Mark 2000 and 3D Mark 2001SE Benchmarks and run them on both systems. If the P4's are still slower or around the same speed check if you use the newest drivers.
And some games may run much better on a system with components from the time they've been made than later. I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago on a Half-Life Lan meeting. We had been 15 people and some of them had up to 3GHz cpus and all blown up systems. I think my old Asus P2B slot1 system with a 733MHz (OC to 1100MHz because of the hot temperatures - normally 1232MHz) Celeron (upgraded from Pentium2 350MHz) was the oldest and slowest system there but it was also the only system that ran perfectly smoth and round for three days in a row. We found that some had the graphic settings of the game badly configured but with others noone knew why there had been so many problems with a game that should run smoothly on a 233MHz Pentium MMX!

About the 17MHz you forgot that your 1GHz P3 runs at 7,5x 133MHz so if you raise the FSB by 17MHz the cpu raises by 127,5MHz!
The Ram speed also raises and only very few SD Ram sticks can do that speed. Check the CAS settings of the Ram in the Bios and if it has 2's there change the 2's to 3's and the last setting from 6 (maybe a bit different) to 10. That may help!

Johnoh,
Thanks for the answer to cpu install and I am assuming that the bios reset automatically somehow after 5 boots.And I should probably leave it alone as there are no problems now except with 150mhz oc.Please correct me if I am wrong on this.As for the hard drive info Thanks also as it has a Western Digital 80G 7200rpm with XP(I Checked the Athalon today and it has maxtor 80G 7200rpm and a Biostar mb with with via 266 chipset in it)and it had the longest launch time of all 4 other pcs.(1.5 min) I shaved 15 secs off that by cleaning it up defrag and a lot of spyware it had, and turning off programs to 23 processes.So the difference must be the WD/Maxtor Hard drives. All Pentium 4s have Intel MBs and Maxtor also.I never would have suspected such a difference.And I could still be wrong of course.

jam,
There are 6 tiny switches to change for cpu total mhz and clear cmos and I changed that to auto detect (the newby part exposed).and I missed the jumpers because it is adjustable in the bios. Thanks a lot as I didnt change this.I had to do it on the other pc that the 800 went into.

I see jumpers by the agp and the cpu in the manual now. It wasnt in the text, only on a diagram and tells nothing about which one goes where but maybe it does on the motherboard I know the cpu is running 133 (at least mb bios says it is) but the agp jumper may have an effect.I will look at that tomorrow.No agp lock in bios.Maybe the jumper does that,I have to look,no info in manual about this.As this only happens when game is in play flying turning and shooting the agp may be the culprit. Temp is 36C,@150,but it took 20 seconds or so to get to that reading in the bios after it crashed.

Video card has no fan, memory timings are set to 2 but only because the motherboard post told me to change it after i removed the old 100mhz 128mb memory chip last year when i added the 2\512 133 mhz,it only offers 2 or 3 in settings no second number that i can find at least not yet, there is a jumper for voltage settings to be enabled i have no idea what to do ith those anyway.So it seems as though the agp could be causing the crash, MB is only 2x agp. Thank You this is very good information.

Free Weasel

Im getting my oc info from Overclock Partner that came with the mb it could be higher I just bumped it up to 933 a couple months ago and left it.Only afterward i looked in the bios and did some reconfiguring and found you could change fsb speed from there.I have changed a lot of the setting in bios cmos and chipset through trial and error to see what worked best. I didnt forget about the cpu raising so much I never knew,LOL. 2 and turbo is the only ram settings I have changed I dont remember a second number something else I can look for.Combat flight sim 2 is over a year old nearly two i think, so game and hardware timeframe makes a lot of sense. Game launch is my main concern as it is the pits to wait forever on line or off to get started.the difference in video cards is nill once in the game they all look about the same,Great.
Thank You also.

This is very good and interesting information from everyone, thank you all as I know it took some time to think and answer my post.It is plenty fast at 140mhz and I should probably stop there as the next jump is to 150.I'll probably fry it anyway, maybe not though.

Thanks,WB

"and I am assuming that the bios reset automatically somehow after 5 boots."

Why would it?
Where did you hear this?

Read 1st response.It didnt post with the new processor untill the 5th boot.I dont know how or why it did it, or if it did it.I did say correct me if Im wrong.Im guessing I was from your response.He said I should reset not that I must.I hope it is fine now,without a bios reset.It still works fine.In fact now that you got me to thinking which is a feat in itself the auto detect without the jumpers being set right must be why it didnt post.Something reset to detect the 133mhz change not bios obviously.
Thanks WB

OK man, just curious.

Skip

I tried several ram settings still crashed.Then took it apart, jumpers were right,for auto detect.Changed fsb1 and fsb2 to 133, both are next to the agp slot.Change a jumper to enable over voltage driving dont know what it does but the manual said it would help in gaming.. I still cant adjust voltage.It did cool off here today so its about 5* cooler in the room.Put another 256 stick same ram in it I had laying around, Lit it, set fsb to 150mhz and ran game for 30 min, smooth as silk, rebooted to bios checked cpu temp, 37c,I am afraid of the video card getting hot so back to 140mhz.Whether the 3 jumpers or room temp made the difference, Ill get a another case fan and a card fan before I leave it at 150mhz.14 sec launch is great.even 30 sec would be.I probably wont risk frying it for 1 extra second.I doubt the extra 256mb of ram had any effect but It didnt slow it down any.It is nice to know it will handle the maximum fsb overclock this board offers though.

FIC FA13Mb, vac43 bios
p3 1ghz
3-256mb simple tech 133mhz set 2 and turbo
wd80gig 7200rpm hd
pny g4mx440 64mbddr (not se) agp set at 2x and 64mb
win xp
300 watt power supply
sb live 5.1 audio
realtek ethernet to modem

Thanks for your help guys, WB