downclocking cpu to upgrade ram

S

sizk

New Member
hi,
i hope i'm not too out of topic with this...
i went to a technician because i was having trouble putting together 2 different ram sticks, i'm not sure but let's say 1 PC2100 & 1 PC2700.
anyway, he told me he had to downclock the cpu in order to put the 2 ram sticks together which sounds pretty weird to me afterward.
my cpu was formerly an athlon xp 1.4 Ghz (1 Ghz now), the mobo is the abit kg-7, can i safely turn it back to 1.4 Ghz?

thx for your help
 
wow, that's not how it's done. his description of what he did was probably jsut confusing, but i think he did it wrong too.

With PC2100 and PC2700, you have to run both of them at PC2100 speeds in order for it to work. This lowers your FSB (if you are running 1:1 which i bet you are) and in turn lowers your clock speed (hence, 1.4 to 1.0GHz)

BUT

What he should have done is raise the multiplier, so you can run 1.4GHz even with the slower RAM installed.

133*10.5 = ~1.4GHz

The 133MHz is your RAM speed (which is DDR266 or PC2100). Raise your multiplier to 10.5 instead of 8. Also make sure you are running at your default voltage to achieve 1.4GHz (he might have lowered it.)
 
4W4K3 said:
wow, that's not how it's done. his description of what he did was probably jsut confusing, but i think he did it wrong too.

With PC2100 and PC2700, you have to run both of them at PC2100 speeds in order for it to work. This lowers your FSB (if you are running 1:1 which i bet you are) and in turn lowers your clock speed (hence, 1.4 to 1.0GHz)

BUT

What he should have done is raise the multiplier, so you can run 1.4GHz even with the slower RAM installed.

133*10.5 = ~1.4GHz

The 133MHz is your RAM speed (which is DDR266 or PC2100). Raise your multiplier to 10.5 instead of 8. Also make sure you are running at your default voltage to achieve 1.4GHz (he might have lowered it.)
Click to expand...

ok great, thx for the explanation :D
just one thing, how do i know what's the default voltage?
 
If it's an Athlon XP 1600+, i believe the default voltage was 1.75v. But if your board has a "default" voltage, select that first.
 
ok, here it is:
the multiplier is actually 13, the fsb 100 and fsb rate 3:3:1...

is that normal? can i do change the multiplier anyway?
 
hmm, 3 ratios? somewhat confused here. is this CPU, RAM, FSB speed in that order? i hate running anything but 1:1 cuz' i suck at math and can never figure it out.

i would say that is not normal, and optimal settings would be 1:1. you should be able to run 133*10.5 to get your original 1.4GHz. if your motherboard supports a FSB speed of 266MHz, then there should be no problems.
 
4W4K3 said:
is this CPU, RAM, FSB speed in that order?
Click to expand...

in fact it's cpu:ram:pci and is a normal feature of the kg-7 mobo, allowing to high cpu and memory without changing pci.
so, i guess, if we don't care about pci, then we've got a 3:3 ratio for cpu and ram. but what's confusing is that with a multiplier of 13 and fsb of 100, my cpu should be running at 1.3Ghz instead of 1050Mhz...

about your question, i've read this mobo won't support fsb speed over 200Mhz.
 
well.. you can make that a total of 400MHz i think. ( because my old thunderbird was running at 133 * 2. so at a fsb of 266MHz ;) )
 
Archangel said:
well.. you can make that a total of 400MHz i think. ( because my old thunderbird was running at 133 * 2. so at a fsb of 266MHz ;) )
Click to expand...

that's confusing me... what do you mean? what's this calculation?
 
The system, if set to use defaults, will always use the slower option. And may get confused depending on the order of the memory in the slots. Dump the 2100, and everything will run smoothly.

The general rule for memory is use MATCHING-PAIRS...
Same company, same type, (ECC/NON-ECC), same size, (MB).
 
ok, let's say i dump the 2100, would it make any easier to have the cpu running at its former 1.4 Ghz?
 
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