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General discussion

PC2700 only at 200mhz

Dec 16, 2003 10:00PM PST

I have just built a PC for my niece - 2.2 Celeron , Asus P4S8X Mobo , 256Mb PC2700 , Asus DVD.It works , hasnt crashed - has been a good build and I'm sure she will be very happy with it,but the RAM is only working at 200Mhz.I have looked in the BIOS and i cant increase the speed of the RAM unless i overclock the CPU - the max setting is 200Mhz otherwise.Any idea why the RAM is operating at this slow speed and how would i change it?Would an updated BIOS help ( flash it?)

Discussion is locked

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Re:PC2700 only at 200mhz = CORRECT for this CPU.
Dec 16, 2003 10:07PM PST

That CPU (from memory) would run the memory at that speed.

You would have to change out the CPU to run the memory faster.

Bob

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Re:PC2700 only at 200mhz
Dec 16, 2003 10:39PM PST

I agree with Robert. Reading your post and seeing Celeron installed that was the key for me, that cpu int. buss is rated for 200Mhz, but if your niece spending $ later, the best upgarde besides memory is to get a higher rated Intel P4 cpu provided the mtrbd. supports it. Happy

good luck -----Willy

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Celerons 1.7 and over have a 400 fsb
Dec 17, 2003 9:51AM PST

I would say you have a jumper set wrong but when I look up the board it says it's a jumperless board. You might try to update the bios.

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Re:Celerons 1.7 and over have a 400 fsb
Dec 17, 2003 10:10AM PST

One thing to learn about FSB speeds, is that they're never quite as fast as they seem. AMD and Intel advertise the EFFECTIVE speed, not the actual speed.

In this case, you have a double pumped (data is "processed" on the up AND down cycle) 200MHz FSB, giving the effective speed of 400MHz. The 800MHz FSB speed of some of the P4s is quite often times even more deceptive by being a dual channel double pumped 200MHz FSB. Basically 2x400MHz FSB speeds combined to total 800MHz. It's one of the things Intel's marketing department has had to resort to with AMD continually putting out chips that are cheaper and considerably faster clock cycle to clock cycle. Not to mention the fact that AMD's Opteron is shipping more units per quarter than Intel tends to ship Itanium's per year. The moral of the story is, don't believe everything you see until you've read the fine print.

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Actually if you are getting the "operating at 200" from the bios
Dec 17, 2003 2:20PM PST

you have to double that speed because it is ddr ram, your lucky that it runs stable because the pc2700 is actually 333mhz, which the correct setting for would be 166. I looked up what your mother board is and found this page.
http://www.firingsquad.com/media/article_images.asp?fs_article_id=1105&page=1
and more importantly
http://www.firingsquad.com/media/article_image.asp?fs_article_id=1105&pic_id=12
If this is your bios the correct setting if you don't want to over clock your ram would be 166 for pc2700.