Chaintech support answer verification.

[Hormel Bait]

Hello.

I've recently built my own PC, its the first time I've attempted such a
thing. I went with Chaintech's 7NJS, and an AMD 3200+ Athlon XP processor.
(I've even given water cooling a shot.)

Being a novice at this, I did what research I could and went with this
combination to get a 400mghz front side bus, and the dual channel ddr ram. I
was really looking for performance, and easy overclocking, which the 7NJS
gives me.

In the BIOS for the mainboard I was setting up stuff, and the setting for
the FSB only went to 200mghz. I was annoyed at first b/c all the packaging
said "400mghz!!". So I wrote support, and the answer they gave me seems
fishy, however not knowing my bumhole from a socket A, I have to accept the
answer, or ask folks that might have more of a clue than myself.

If someone could check the logic below and let me know if I'm getting a bum
answer, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,

--Brian

---- snip ------

Dear Brian, your cpu Athlon 3200+ is already set to 400mhz fsb when you
set your motherboard on 200mhz frequency. 2x200= 400fsb.

Chaintech technical support team

-----Original Message-----
From: *** [mailto:***]
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 11:25 PM
To: support@chaintechusa*
Subject: New Required from Chaintech Web

Frist Name : *
Last Name : *
Mail Date : 7/11/2003
Mail Address : (e-mail address removed)
Select Country : US
Telephone No : *
FAX No : *
Main Board Model : 7NJS
VGA Type : Chaintech Geforce
Product Serial Number : i have no idea
Distributor / Retailer : Googlegear.com
Problem Description : After installing the 7njs with an AMD Athlon
3200XP+, I went to the bios to find that the FSB was only at 200mghz.
There was no option for 400mghz. The AMD box clearly says "400mgz", as
does the mainboard box. How can I determine why I'm not going 400mghz?
BIOS Date : 2003/4/14
CD Version :
Operating System : Windows XP
CPU Type : AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Memory Modules : Corsair Dual DDR
Other Devices :

 

[MiniDisc_2k2]

Hello.

I've recently built my own PC, its the first time I've attempted such a
thing. I went with Chaintech's 7NJS, and an AMD 3200+ Athlon XP processor.
(I've even given water cooling a shot.)

Being a novice at this, I did what research I could and went with this
combination to get a 400mghz front side bus, and the dual channel ddr ram. I
was really looking for performance, and easy overclocking, which the 7NJS
gives me.

In the BIOS for the mainboard I was setting up stuff, and the setting for
the FSB only went to 200mghz. I was annoyed at first b/c all the packaging
said "400mghz!!". So I wrote support, and the answer they gave me seems
fishy, however not knowing my bumhole from a socket A, I have to accept the
answer, or ask folks that might have more of a clue than myself.

If someone could check the logic below and let me know if I'm getting a bum
answer, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,

--Brian

---- snip ------

Dear Brian, your cpu Athlon 3200+ is already set to 400mhz fsb when you
set your motherboard on 200mhz frequency. 2x200= 400fsb.

Actually, that's a really confusing answer for a novice like you but it
completely makes sense. There's actually two FSBs. One is on your
motherboard, and one is on your CPU. Technically, the motherboard's is
called the system bus, and the CPU's is the FSB. Unfortunately, they're both
commonly referred to as the FSB, thus giving you confusion.

The system bus is what sets the clock for everything in your computer.
Apparently, it's set to 200MHz on your computer. You have a FSB multiplier,
a CPU multiplier, RAM multiplier/divider, PCI divider, and AGP divider.
These modify the system bus settings to make the clock speeds differ. _Your_
CPU multiplier is 16. _Your_ FSB multiplier is 2. Your RAM PCI and AGP
settings I cannot tell you, but your PCI and AGP dividers are probably going
to set PCI to 33MHz (standard) and AGP to 66MHz (standard). They could also
be ASync, meaning they are not dependent on the system bus and have their
own clocks (making it easier to overclock).

Now what this means for you:

System bus: 200MHz
CPU speed: 200x16 = 3200
FSB speed: 200x2 = 400

As you can see, the multipler sets your settings to the proper speed. This
is also the most common way to overclock. Increasing the system bus enables
you to increase speed. Take a 10MHz increase, for example (very minimal
increase):

System bus: 210MHz
CPU speed: 210x16 = 3360
FSB speed: 210x2 = 420

Also, because you have an AMD processor, you're able to change your CPU
multiplier. Either you can do this in the BIOS or you could get a
"goldfinger" (do a google search on that) to change it:

System bus: 210MHz
CPU speed: 210x18 = 3780
FSB speed: 210x2 = 420

So, for a short answer, your system bus and FSB should be named separately.
The 200MHz is your system bus, the FSB is your CPU's bus. Don't worry, your
computer is running exactly the way you expected it to.

 

[Hormel Bait]

Wow.. What a GREAT answer.. Thank you!!

Do you know of anyplace to read up on this kind of stuff.. I tried
Tomshardware.com, but its just reviews, no education really.

Thanks again!


....

 

[Hormel Bait]

BTW: Never do that again. Enough of us in the alt.comp.hardware related
newsgroups have had enough bad experiences. In fact, I'll bet that if we all
wrote our bad experiences with them, there would be more messages about
googlegear than the rest of the messages combined. In short, find someone
else. The only reason their prices are cheap is because they keep losing
customers...

Interesting.. Pricegrabber.com has them as a good rating. Thanks for the tip
(and the website in your other post.).

I actually had to RMA 2 things with them, and I didn't have a problem. The
pricing with free shipping is hard to beat also. I'll caveat emptor however.

 

[Poop Shaman]

If you're reading this message, I'd say you're in the best place out there
to read about this stuff. www.anandtech.com also has reviews, but they tend
(IMO) to give better background and explainations than tomshardware.com



--
===

To reply, remove dead bodies from email address.

===

Wow.. What a GREAT answer.. Thank you!!

Do you know of anyplace to read up on this kind of stuff.. I tried
Tomshardware.com, but its just reviews, no education really.

Thanks again!


...