Help needed with processor upgrade!!!!

james123

Hi guys,


I'll try and give as much info as possible, but as you'll soon realise im a bit of a novice!

Anyways, I have just replaced my amd athlon 2400+ with a amd sempron 3000(barton core i believe if it makes a difference)

now i believe the 2400 had a fsb of 266 (133 in bios) however the 3000 has a fsb of 333. however the option in the bios to change from 133 to 166(333) is greyed out. any ideas?

My motherboard is a Time K7M-400 Motherboard which i believe has a VIA chipset?

BIOS: Phoenix technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 07/08/2003

memory = 512MBDDR PC3500 256MBDDR PC2100

Windows xp home edition Service Pack 2

because i cannot change the fsb the processor is only running at 1.6ghz


any ideas guys?


thanks

Jim

weegie.geek

pc2100 memory = 133mhz

It's probably locking you to a 133mhz fsb because of that stick of ram.

You MIGHT be able to run the cpu's fsb and the ram asynchronously, so running your ram at 133 and the cpu at 166 (or 200 if the cpu will do it - bartons are nice overclockers).

The best bet would be to replace the pc2100 stick with a pc2700 or greater stick.

james123

thanks for the quick reply! i thought the same so tried it without that stick in, but it still locks it at 133, although the dram clock speed has gone upto 166, its SO frustrating!

tomsolomon

Might be an idea to upgrade you BIOS if you havent already. A newer BIOS may have updates to support your newer processor, and may well cure the problems you are experiencing. If your upgrading your CPU its always a good idea to make sure you have the latest BIOS for your MOBO. Oh and lose the 256Mb PC2100 It will slow your system to a point where it would be slower than just using the 512Mb of PC 3500

weegie.geek

Could be that your bios isn't identifying the chip properly? Worth flashing to the newest bios?

The fact that there's an option to set the fsb is good, even if it's greyed out. Now all we have to do is work out why it's greyed out.

Are there presets like safe/optimal/turbo or whatever in the bios? Might be worth having a fiddle with them to see if they let you choose the fsb manually.

james123

sorry for bumping guys but am really pulling my hair out! Would really prefer not to flash the bios as have heard all sorts of horror stories, any other options??

timread

It seems that your Time PC motherboard is made by FIC. There's only the original BIOS release on the FIC site - VRC43 from 2004, so I don't think you'll have much luck by re-flashing it anyway.

Hate to say it, but you might be stuck. Does the BIOS actually recognize it as a Sempron 3000? Have you still got the motherboard manual? It's not available on the FIC site any more.

james123

hmm, my pc was bought early 2003 so the 2004 bios maybe be newer? Also the board is apparently upto 333. as for the Mobo instructions, it was a TIME computer, i think i was lucky to get a keyboard let alone instructions lol

Conor_3

Err, hate to tell you this but you've actually taken a step sideways with that processor. The Sempron is the Celeron of the AMD world.

mdbarber

Would agree with the sideways step comment on speed but i think the semperon maybe a 64bit capable chip so at least u could run windoxs x64 if u wanted, do you have the manual for this board could be there is a jumper on the mb controlling busspeed, check bios to see if there is an "jumperfree" config option