Athlon XP Mobile 2800+ and A7N8X Deluxe

[HorseloverFat]

Hey everyone. I have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, and I had my old Athlon XP 2500+ die on me and the only thing I could find at any store to replace it with was a 2800+ mobile XP. I've read lots of forums where people have said that mobile CPUs work fine with this board, but I can't get it to work properly. I set the external freq. and clock multiplier to 133 and 16, as AMD said I should, but the clock speed in the POST and in Windows is showing up as around 1ghz instead of around 2ghz, where it should be. I've changed the frequency and multiplier settings around quite a bit and every combination seems to result in half the clock speed that it should be.

So next, I thought maybe it was just reporting half the speed but running at double like it should be, so I did some benchmarking with PassMark Performance Test, and my other computer with a Sempron 2400+ scored considerably higher than the 2800+ so there definitely is something wrong.

The other issue is with the temperature - the hardware monitor in the BIOS is reporting around 70 celsius, but the PC Probe software temp. monitor is reporting around 42 (at idle). Thus I'm somewhat worried about turning the freq. and multiplier up too much because even though it seems to be massively underclocked right now the temperature is still being reported as relatively high. However I'm not even sure if that's accurate at all because the heatsink barely feels warm to the touch.

Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

 

[FlailBoy]

Seems like both the multiplier and temp questions are addressed in this review .

Check out this thread .

Might work, but also check the ASUS mobo section to see if anyone posted anything on this trick working for this cpu/board.



And to the forums.

 

[HorseloverFat]

Thank you! Let me give this a read.

 

[HorseloverFat]

Okay, so as I understand it from the review, a multiplier higher than 13 gives an incredibly low multiplier instead because it only uses 4 bits... So, I set it to 166 and 12.5, and got it running at 2083 mhz, which is a lower clock speed than what a frequency of 133 and a multiplier of 16 (what the mobile 2800+ should be set to) would generate. However, the hardware monitor in the BIOS now reports 95 degrees celsius and the computer powers down as soon as it enters Windows, presumably to prevent heat damage. However, I doubt that it is actually running that hot, because the heatsink still does not feel hot at all, only slightly warm. I don't understand

 

[FlailBoy]

Okay, so as I understand it from the review, a multiplier higher than 13 gives an incredibly low multiplier instead because it only uses 4 bits... So, I set it to 166 and 12.5, and got it running at 2083 mhz, which is a lower clock speed than what a frequency of 133 and a multiplier of 16 (what the mobile 2800+ should be set to) would generate. However, the hardware monitor in the BIOS now reports 95 degrees celsius and the computer powers down as soon as it enters Windows, presumably to prevent heat damage. However, I doubt that it is actually running that hot, because the heatsink still does not feel hot at all, only slightly warm. I don't understand

Ok, if you are getting it to run at the right speed w/a 12.5 multi, then it might be the 4bit issue. Don't know if this would work, but see what happens if you set the multi to 5 (i.e. see if it wigs out and gives you the 13x).

If your processor is running hot enough to shut down but the HSF feels cool...:

1. Check your BIOS to see if the fan speed controller is enabled. If it is, try disabling it and get those fans running at full speed.

2. More likely-I'd pull off the HSF, clean, and then re-apply the thermal compund. If you're running hotter but the HSF is cool, this suggests bad contact. If you do this, jot down the steppings on the CPU and post out here.