"Ian" said:
Hi,
Please excuse me, I am a complete novice at tweaking processor and memory
performance, but I have the following query:
Asus Probe software reports that my Athlon XP 3200 has maximum speed of
3000Mhz and its current speed is 2200Mhz.
Is this normal?
How can I increase the speed?
Ian
AMD processors are named according to their "Performance
Rating" or P.R. value. The AthlonXP 3200+ is equivalent to
a Pentium4 3.2GHz. A Sempron 3200+ would be equivalent to
a Celeron 3.2Ghz. (I.e. Semprons are compared to Celerons,
while Athlons are compared to P4.)
The normal speed for a 3200+ is 200x11=2200MHz, as you have
noted. When running at 2200MHz, the processor performs like
it was a P4 at 3.2GHz.
Before you increase the speed, you should be running
Memtest86 (from memtest.org) and Prime95 (from mersenne.org).
Memtest86 will format a floppy for you, and the floppy will
boot your computer standalone, with no OS. Prime95, on the
other hand, runs from Windows. If you cannot run the Prime95
"torture test" error free, you need to fix up your memory
first, before you can consider overclocking. The Nforce2
doesn't tolerate cheap RAM, and it is a struggle to work at
DDR400 or higher. (I had to buy new RAM for mine.)
If your RAM is error free, then head on over to nforcershq.com
and read some of the postings on overclocking, in the forums
over there.
Paul