Bios/Chipset/Board issue

[whistlerdash]

Ok. Just came across this site about 15 minutes ago. Basically I'm checking every forum I come across until I find an answer, or find some article/manual/otherwise that gives me an answer :)

Anyway, I've been having a ton of problems with my PC lately. (video card went, HD went, IDE cables went, power supply went.... I've been tossing in cheap $20-50 replacement parts, since I'm saving up for the "dream pc" I'll hopefully get at the end of the summer.... anyway..). After finally fixing the last of the problems (hopefully.. for now..) I noticed something while my PC was booting. My memory was reading at 133mhz.

I wondered why it was so low, I double checked the memory, it's 333 memory. Reading at 133. Ok, time to find out why.

Checked a bit. My chip (yes, all these parts are extremely old.) is an AMD Athlon XP2100+. (1733mhz). At default it runs at 133mhz fsb(ddr), 13.0 clock.

(For reference - my board is an Epox EP8RDA3+Pro). I'm running a Phoenix bios (Forget what revision exactly. Not exactly rebooting mid-post to check.) I go into the bios to try and mess around with the fsb, and multipliers and other nonsense.

So here's the problem I keep encountering. If I make *ANY* changes to the default ("optimal" according to my bios) chipsettings, it stops recgonizing my chip as a 2100+, and starts reading it as a 1500+ (1333mhz).

For the life of me I cannot figure out WHY it's doing this, or why I can't manage to increase the fsb at all. (Also, every time I try, and it starts reading my chip at a much lower speed, it gives me an overclock warning and refuses to boot. This is regardless if I set it to match 1333, or 1733, or anything inbetween.)

If anyone has any insight, it'd be much appreciated :)

[stinger608]

First, welcome to HardwareLogic!!!!

Now then, does this board have any DIP switches or jumpers for the FSB that may be in the wrong position?
Not sure if that Epox board allows you to adjust the memory bus separate from the CPU or not, but you might want to check that.
Also check, when increasing the CPU fsb, if the board is by default, lowering the multiplier. I soyo dragon socket A that would do that. Took me awhile to figure it out.

One other thing, what power supply do you have in the system? Brand, model, and wattage?

[RAID]

system specs would be helpful

[whistlerdash]

Well, the only jumper setting on the board goes back and forth between 100/133mhz, and 133/166/200. I might look into that a bit later after work, but..

I'd assume this board allows you to be as liberal as you'd like with the changes. For one, the bios I'm using is the stock bios for this board. Plus, the manual actually goes into (limited) detail about HOW to change all these settings. Would seem pretty silly to do so, if it's not gonna allow you to do it anyway.

As far as the multiplier goes, I've been lowering that along with increasing the fsb, if that's what you meant.

Aside from that though, still any change I make results in it recgonizing a lower class processor. (For example, default memory timing is auto. You can set it to By SPD, or a manual %, anywhere from 50% to 200%. Changing this from auto, changes how the processor is recgonized.)

As far as the power supply - right now it's an Antec 450W, I'm late for work so not taking my case off again to check the model #. However...

Like I said, this is a rather old machine. So far I've replaced the video card, HD, and ide cables in the last month, last night I realized I need to replace the power supply too. Hopefully I can find a cheap one today.

Oh well. I'll keep looking into it anyway. This machine might be on it's last legs, but I'm gonna squeeze every last thing I can out of it before it goes. thanks for the responses.