My current system board doesn't support PC2700 DDR, but I have 256 MB of it. Any BIOS revision that can change that? Or is it hardware?

I told you she would never consciously betray the rebellion...

What's your system specs??? Motherboard especially....

Athlon XP 1900+ w/ an Asus A7V266 - VIA KT266 chipset. Plus my PC2700 OCZ DDR...

your asus might not officially support it, but you have your FSB overclocked, so that is stressing your memory. I kinda doubt ASUS will release a patch for 2700 memory, you would probably have to get a mobo with a newer chipset

-Bourbon

My FSB is at 280-90 somethin right now. My memory supports 333. It's not stressing it at all. I could push it up to 350 if my system board would support it...

can you change the pci divider, or the agp divider? if so you can bump them up and put the FSB up to 150+

The only thing you ahve to worry about then is heating, more specifically your CPU

-Bourbon

Heat wise my CPU's fine, it runs at 45C idle. The thing that'll heat up is my Northbridge...it only has a puny 10mm fan on it

My PCI has nothing to do with my FSB anyway.

actually, it does. The FSB controls the clock frequency of almost everything. There is a number, called a divider, that determines the frequency of the PCI bus, usually it is three. But if change to four, you can crank your FSB even higher

-Bourbon

the FRONTSIDE system bus (FSB) is the cpu-memory, right? I think you're talking about the system bus. And the backside is cpu-L2 cache.

The divider is the relationship between the FSB and the AGP/PCI. When the FSB is running at 100 and the divider is 3, then the PCI is running at 33.** mhz. The higer the divider, the higher you can push the FSB without overclocking the PCI.

Example

100 FSB with divider 3 -> PCI 33.33
120 FSB with divider 3 -> PCI 40.00

the manufacturer of the mobo and chipset decide what FSB gets what divider. That's why

133 FSB has divider 4 -> PCI 33.54

so if you had divider 5 at FSB 166, you could have an FSB of 166 with the PCI still running at 33.33

You have the same for AGP.

Some overclockermobo's have extra dividers which are not required or made by the chipsetmaker.

FSB/DIV = PCI

The PCI clock is linked to the FSB.

In most cases it's :

• FSB / 3 for 100 fsb CPUs
• FSB / 4 for 133 FSB CPUs

Some OverClocking cards from makers such as ABIT & EPOX have 1/5 & even 1/6 dividers so you can get that FSB up to 166 & still have you PCI running at 33 mhz.

Is your Athlon L1 locked ? You can always lower the multiplyer & get that FSB running @ 166 !!! :grinthumb

Of course my L1 is locked...I don't feel up to unlocking it...Do you think I should?

later...

I didn't unlock it also, because I don't need it right now, but you can be sure I will when the 1.4GHz isn't doing it anymore.

Re: later...

Maybe by then we'll have 0.13 2.0 GHZ Athlons

your motherboard doesnt OFFICIALLY support the ram. The only difference between PC2700 and PC2400 is the speed (nanosec.).. PC2400 is basically 150mhz(x2) bus ram and PC2700 is hmm, 176(x2) or somthing like that, inm not really sure of the math. Anyhow, you need faster ram for high bus speeds. Most P4 boards only officially support 100 or 133mhz bus, but we all know that these babies can go beyond 150mhz, even though its not offical. To do this, you need better ram, at least PC2400 in order for it to run at that speed..

Old reply in old forum about fsb and PCI dividers

If your board is designed to use 100Mhz fsb it will be a 1/3 divider used to generate the PCI bus frequency (i.e. 33.3Mhz). A 133 system uses a 1/4 divider to generate a 33Mhz frequency for the PCI bus. The new Iwill 333Mhz board has customizable dividers so that you can overclock parts of the system bus without endangering other parts.
If you try using 133Mhz with your existing board(if its even possible to attempt) the PCI bus will be overclocked to 133/3 = 44.3Mhz which would not be a healthy thing to do. The same goes for the other buses of the system, they would be similarly overclocked. Without changing motherboard you are stuck at 100Mhz bus or maybe 110Mhz or some other small increase with overclocking...

Check out this thread about whether to upgrade or not

In a preview article at accelenation.com the bus speed divider system is explained as the Iwill 333Mhz board employs this new system for manually setting dividers.

I must face him. Alone.

Overclocking the PCI bus is NOT a cool idea in my opinion. The situation is a lot better now that graphics are on a different bus, but in the days of PCI graphics cards, it tended to be a big no no.

I've had BIG problems with an overclocked PCI bus before.

Generally when you overclock on the FSB you can have serious HDD problems. What's the relation between the PCI speed & HDD problems ? In what way are they linked ?

The IDE controllers share the PCI bus.