Hi there

Just built a new system for DAW (digital audio workstation) use only:

Asus NForce2 A7N8X mobo (w/potential for 400mhz fsb?)
AMD Athlon XP 2.8ghz cpu
1 gig (2x 512mb) Corsair PC3200xl ddr ram (400mhz fsb?)
Maxtor 80gb hard drive (programs, swap file)
Maxtor 250gb hard drive (audio data)
Asus 64mb video
Antec slk 1650 case w/350 watt ‘smart’ power supply (quiet)
Windows XP home edition

(hardware purchased from NewEgg—very quick order processing/delivery, btw)

It’s running winxp okay so far (I haven’t installed my Delta44 soundcard or Guitar Tracks Pro v.3 audio interface yet)...her are the bumps I’ve encountered so far...

*On startup, the system information reports a ‘memory frequency’ of 200mhz...shouldn’t this be 400mhz? Isn’t this supposed to be the FSB? Please correct me if I’m wrong...I have the jumpers set on the motherboard correctly to allow for the higher bus speeds...

*On startup, the system information reports a “CPU of unknown type—1250 mhz”. The control panel in winXP reports a “CPU of unknown type—1.24 ghz”. Any ideas on how to make my Bios and winXP know that this machine has an AMD Athlon XP 2.8 ghz cpu?

*When I go into my Bios to try to make adjustments (and even when I make no adjustments), I press F10 to “save and exit bios” the computer does not continue booting up. Fans are running, blank screen...but nothing else. Monitor is not even reporting ‘no signal’ like it usually does... What I tried initially was to (hard) power off, then turn the computer back on. Nothing (in terms of bios or OS). Fans running, monitor reporting ‘no signal’. No startup info, or anything. What I ended up doing is using the jumper on the motherboard to reset the bios to its defaults. This is not helping in terms of making adjustments to the bios, if needed. Do I need to ‘flash’ my bios? I’d rather not, without some thoughts from other folks...

Please forgive my ‘newbie’-ness...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Tom

Tom K

Disconnect EVERYTHING and replace. It maye be just lose connectors, or some screwed too tight causing a short, but it sounds to me like your Motherboards or AMD are damaged.
Your first problem is different though. I believe the answer to this (without seeing it for myself obviously) is that your FSB may be 400, but your RAM is only capable of 200, and this will make your FSB run this speed too, as the two things are tied into each other.
Bring the other components back to where you got them and get the changed or tested. I reckon thats your answer.

faster, better, MORE!!

Yep, send it back. I know a lot of people like newegg but I prefer brick and mortor stores where I can bring a system in and show a tech exactly whats going on and get one on one answers.

But thats just me. Anyway, something is definitely haywire here because of what you're describing.

Asus K8V-X
Athlon 64 2800+
ATI AIW 9600XT
512 PC3200
20 Gig Maxtor & 80 SATA HD's
HP CD-RW
LG DVD

By "AMD Athlon XP 2.8ghz cpu" I am guessing that it is an XP 2800+? If so, the jumper needs to be on pins 1 & 2. In the BIOS set the FSB to 166 and the multiplier to 12.5. This will give you a FSB of 333 with a processor speed of 2.08GHz, the default for this processor.

Appreciate everyones input so far...

Any thoughts on whether or not GerryC's suggestion will allow me to make changes in the bios?

Tom

Tom K

Thanks Dave!!!
Thanks for your thoughts.
Major breakthrough!!!

I was searching around my bios...looking into some of the ideas that folks had offered.
There is a setting there that allows the memory setting to be “set by SPD” (I don’t know what ‘SPD’ is—my mobo manual doesn’t say, either...any thoughts???)...the other option is ‘auto’. I changed this setting from ‘auto’ to ‘SPD’. I also changed my clock speed to 166 because (as I have been corrected on) the AMD 2800 (yes, 2.08ghz, NOT 2.8ghz as I had originally thought) DOES NOT have a 400mhz fsb, it runs (as people wiser than myself have pointed out) at 333mhz fsb.

Lo and behold, the comp booted right up, no problems whatsoever. The startup system info still says “cpu of unknown type”, but the speed is correct. System info also reports that the ram is running at 200mhz, but I think that’s just because of the type of ram it is (Corsair DDR 1gb PC3200xl rt).

At this point I need to put it through its paces recording digital audio. I will do this as soon as I get my old comp ready to give to my parents, which is where it’s headed.

The comp doesn’t really seem to be loading programs or running much faster than it had been (running an AMD Athlon 1800, 768mb sdram on an Epox board), but I don’t think I should really be expecting ‘leaps and bounds’ above and beyond the speed I was seeing with the old system. The main thing I was hoping to get from an ‘upgraded’ system was stability. I was starting to see ‘dropouts’ (that’s what Cakewalk—my audio interface—calls them. Not quite ‘crashes’, but close) with the older system, as my recorded audio files got larger and more cumbersome for my old comp.

At this point, I don’t think I’ll feel gypped if I get the stability I was searching for. I also have yet to make all the tweaks to Win XP that digital audio aficionados make to our machines. Faster would be nicer though...

We’ll see...

Thanks again for all your thoughts.
Tom

Tom K