Got her up and running! WOOHOO! Only problem now is setting up the frequencys, etc. in the BIOS. I'm running the A7N8X with a AMD 2800+ w/ 333mhz FSB, Kingston PC3200 400mhz 512MB RAM, with the PowerColor 9800 Pro. Hoping someone could give me the run down on the BIOS settings. I noticed that as I'm booting up the memory frequency is just 200mhz....that doesn't seem right but I could be wrong. Please help! Maybe a link to a website or something if you don't wanna go through the whole BIOS.

Thanks,
William T. Thompson

get into your bios

look for frequecy timings.....adjust to read hclk+33.........something of that nature to get correct fsb........get your dram timings correct............and, i take it you got two sticks of 256 to take advantage of dual channel.......check that you are in agp mode..........optimizations enabled.......fast writes etc..save and exit

Eh, sorry thats a little vague to me. I'm new to this BIOS stuff and I can't really seem to find what your talking bout. If you could be a little more specific?

Thanks,
William T. Thompson

yes i could also use a lesson in the bios too

start with tapping on the delete key

as you boot.........this allow s you access to your bios......arrow keys and the enter key wil allow you to meander around.........page up/page down will allow you to manipulate settings........you are most likely to enter the frequency/chipset categories when you are first confronted by the menu.......you will see dram timings/agp and like.......practice going in and out by making minute changes/saving/and then exiting......which slams you back to the boot process......of which you can reboot again, after you do some homework on the web, as to the optimal settings, based on you configuration

OK, i've managed to get my processor running at the 2800+ speed, i've got the agp card setup for 128mb runnning 8x. The only thing I can't get is for the memory to run at 400mhz i believe its only running at 200. The timing settings are greyed out for some reason.

Thanks,
William T. Thompson

ok

you have to establish a........user setting.....then the grey areas will light up........this allows for the manipulations of quite a few more things...but, to keep you on the straight and narrow.....do not clock your memory to 400.......you could, but it would be out of sync......try to keep your memory@ fsb(front side bus)of the cpu.........correct your cas settings to optimize.......there she be...ready to overclock:grinthumb

that processor supports only 333 fsb. why did you get memory that exceeds that? you will have a 400-333 bottleneck. like jsr said, you will need to keep the memory and cpu speed correct. leave the fsb at 166 and multiplier to auto. change the memory to use 100% and the cas to 5, 2, 2.5t.

Ive got the same motherboard and it detected my amd 2400+ at only 1800+ however i overclocked the cpu to 2700+ at 2.165 mhz at fsb 333 (13 multiplier + 166 memory frequency) I found no problems. The cpu didnt like been overclocked pass 2200 mhz and or above 333fsb as windows became a bit unstable and cause a bottleneck. Although the A7n8x deluxe does support up to 400fsb as ive read it in the documentation. It might be my crappy 20gb ATA hdd 5400rpm slowing it down? Im going to get 120gb HDD Serial ATA and see if that improves the bottleneck and the unstableness in windows.

you have to remember that you are dealing with Double Data Rate (DDR) here....
when you set you memory to 200mhz frequency you are running the sticks at 400 mhz....
you will also need to up the processors fsb so that you can get the memory to work syncronisly....since you have a barton chip i've read that it is very possible to run your processor @200mhz plus fsb with absolutely no problems....(of course with propercooling )