Bios Help

[Able Archer]

Hello forum members.

I am hoping someone can give me some advice on how to tweak the Bios settings of my PC.

What I have is a home built gaming computer that was built by my father a few years ago.

I have been working overseas for a few years and I am back home now .I decided one morning to switch on the PC but received a “CMOS Checksum Error “this was due to the Mother Board battery being flat, I replaced the battery and the PC booted up, I had to re-set the Time, Date, etc on the first Bios screen and found that the Bios is now running in it’s default settings. The PC does boot up all the way through into Windows but it is not running as fast as it use to do, which is understandable.

I would of liked to have asked my father to restore the Bios settings but unfortunately he passed away back in 2008, so I would be grateful of any help or advice from forum members to get he PC running like it use to .

Here is the Hardware and Software contents of the PC:-

Motherboard Asus A8 SLI Delux
CPU AMD Athlon x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
4 x 1GB of Ram DDR 4
2 X Inno 3D 7300 GT Graphics Cards
1 X Maxtor 6L200M0 Hard Drive
OS Windows XP Home 32 bit

I have some knowledge about computers but the Bios side of things is something new to me and don’t really know what to adjust .

Thanks

 

[Robert17]

to OCF.

Your MB should OC pretty good. You'll find all the settings that are adjustable in the Advanced tab within your BIOS. The manual for the A8-SLI Deluxe is available here:

http://www.asus.com/supportonly/A8NSLI Deluxe/#support_Download

It's a pretty comprehensive 176 page booklet. You should have an easy time of OC'ng the system if you follow the guidelines in the book. Just be sure to check out the PC first to know that there's no dust buildup in the heatsink or fans. Heat is the enemy.

 

[Able Archer]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply and welcome to the forum.

I have had a read through the Manual and it looks quite daunting.

I take back what I said about me having "some knowledge" about computers , after reading that manual it is apparent that I know very little lol.

Would it be possible for somebody to give me some suggestions on what to alter in the Bios ?

 

[Johan45]

That's Itronic I had the same board and CPU a long time ago, it still pumps away to this day. All your overclocking is going to be done with the FSB and voltages. Have a read through this guide and consult your manual. This will help familiarize you with the bios layout and terms we'll be using.
Welcome to OCF Archer

 

[Firas]

Updating all drivers will do the trick also

 

[trents]

You need to locate the bios items that allow adjustment for the following items:

1. FrontSideBus (aka, CPU frequency, HT Reference)
2. CPU core voltage
3. Memory Frequency
4. HT Link frequency. On that CPU generation the HT Link and the NB frequency are not separated (not a split power plane CPU) so the control for the HT Link will also affect the NB frequency.

Your basic approach will be to make small incremental increases in the FSB and the CPU core voltage while lowering the HT Link and Memory frequencies at the outset to give them room to grow with the overclock. The HT Link and Memory frequencies are tuned to the FSB so when the latter is increased the other two get bigger as well and may quickly cause instability unless you lower them at the start to create some headroom.

The other thing to keep track of is temps and voltages under load as you add CPU core voltage. HWMonitor non pro is great for that. Also download and install CPU-z and Prime95. These are the three software tools we constantly use around here to monitor and stress test.