A common misconception is that a CPU has a *speed*. It really doesn't, it has a speed range. From my understanding most CPUs after fabrication are tested for what is the max speed they will run stable and then sorted by speed stability and sold at that price point/chip designation. The speed is derived from the front side bus times the clock multiplier. Your multiplier is 12.5 and the FSB is currently set at 100, that's is what to look for when discerning what speed your system is running at. 12.5 x 100MHz = 1250MHz. If you go into the ADVANCED screen in the BIOS, you can likely manipulate the FSB speed but not the clock multiplier (that may be incorrect, differerent MBs allow greater speed control but I'm an ASUS man so I'm not familiar with MSI BIOS settings). As suggested by StrangeDaze, in the ADVANCED BIOS screen look for a field currently showing 100 or 100MHz and change that to 133MHz. That should bring it up to it's safe recommended speed. 12.5 x 133MHz = 1662.5MHz (hey, what's a few clock cycles between friends ). You now also have the knowledge to overclock your system. If there is also a Custom or User Defined field for FSB in BIOS you can increment it up and reboot each time until the system no longer runs stable then back it down an increment to where it did run OK. That's sort of a layman's overclocking. To really max it out you also need to manipulate the voltages and install more cooling products but that's probably not something you feel comfortable with. Good luck.

 

You guys rock. I'm almost certain I remember the FSB being set at 100 MHz and the memory at 133 MHz. If the computer shop doesn't get in touch with me promptly tomorrow, I'll suggest they check those settings. There will definitely be hell to pay if they try to charge me for the work.

StrangeDaze, the top board on that page is very close to what mine looks like, though if my memory serves some of the slots are in slightly different positions. Close enough though...thanks for the research .

On a separate note, I found it interesting that there was an overclocking utility included with the mobo's driver disk. It sequentially incremented the clock speed until the computer failed, then rebooted at the last safe speed. I tried it once a couple days ago and got about 10% additional speed. However, once I get the full performance out of my chip, I doubt I'll fool with it for awhile. A 2 GHz processor with 512MB of RAM should be plenty quick for awhile .

 

they busted u up with a generic brand.....i've heard of albatron be-4......tis generic......ur processor is fine.....it's just slower than wut u thought.....and with that type of mobo....i wouldn't change the bus or the timing settings.....if u run it at max speed.....ur bound to run into problems.....the mobo will probably fry up.....happened 3 times to me......or wuz that my voodoo card.....hm...

 

Exactly what he said. If your computer guy can't figure out how to clock the athlon chips the right way (i.e. 133) then he shouldn't even be allowed to touch a computer. I'd be afraid to have him work on my stuff, just take your computer back and do it yourself. At bootup screen just press the delete key until you hit bios, then look for your fsb speed and it should be at 100, press enter, scroll down to 133, press enter, choose save and exit and reboot and you should be clocked at the right speed.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tedow
[B]You guys rock. I'm almost certain I remember the FSB being set at 100 MHz and the memory at 133 MHz. If the computer shop doesn't get in touch with me promptly tomorrow, I'll suggest they check those settings. There will definitely be hell to pay if they try to charge me for the work.

StrangeDaze, the top board on that page is very close to what mine looks like, though if my memory serves some of the slots are in slightly different positions. Close enough

 

There was a jumper on the motherboard itself that needed to be switched from 100 to 133. I'm not sure if the same task could have been accomplished from within the BIOS alone. Next time I boot up I'll fiddle with it and see if I can switch back and forth without changing the hardware. I'm now running at 1.679 GHz...woot! .

For now, I'm gonna make sure everything is stable before playing with the overclocking utility again. The chip is currently running at 53 degrees C (127 F). Any ideas on what a safe operating temperature is?

 

Dude, I appreciate the input, but for the love of god, speak English, man. People will be prone to not taking you seriously if you communicate this way (I notice you're new to s2ki...just some helpful advice).

 

The temperature you see right now (127 F), isn't a great sample. Normally your processor is running at very low utilization. The heat really only builds up when crunching very intensive software and using all available CPU cycles. If you want to see what I mean by that, most versions of Windows have a system monitor that will allow you to view CPU utilization as a graph over time. Rarely will you peg the CPU unless you're compiling (without disk I/O limitation), gaming, or running a dozen programs all at the same time, all crunching numbers.

That said, as far as safe heat levels, obviously the lower the better. Repeated heat cycling over time fatigues micro-electronics and will 'eventually' lead to failure. The question is will it take 2 years or 20. Generally speaking, people I know who overclock try to keep temps below about 175.

 

Ah, okay. I know some of the early Asus systems that allowed you to control those settings via BIOS also had jumpers on the mobo to set the speeds. I'm not sure if your's is like that, but have a look and see what you can see.

As Jeff says, CPU temps can vary greatly. I see the highest temps after playing 3D shooters or anything that uses my graphics card heavily. This is not really a surprise considering that newer graphics chips are getting bigger and hotter to the point where many (most?) of them now come with their own fans!

 

Take a look at www.tomshardware.com . They review many MB, processors, etc. and may have a link to the jumper/bios settings for your MB. They even have a nice little video of what happens to an Athelon if you loose the fan.