Weird problem with the BIOS in my motherboard

[gustavo]

It seems when I change some settings it gets confused. It happened several times in the past and the only solution I found was resetting the CMOS jumper, uncomfortable thing because I have to take PCI cards off to get to it.

Last time what happened was I raised the FSB from 133 to 135 for a week, then I decided to set it as it should, but I run wcpuid and cpuidz and found my Tbred 2400+ was running at 2030MHz instead of the normal 2000MHz.

So I went to the BIOS and thought I wanted to see what would happen if I set the FSB to 135 as the machine wanted to run. The result was a cpu running at 2060MHz. So I set it back to 133 and have a cpu running at 2030MHz.

Any idea?
Thanks Gustavo.-

[alex zorrilla]

My guess is that your motherboard just naturally runs the FSB a little bit faster than normal. Motherboards have always done this, to a certain extent. In fact, some people have accused motherboard makers of doing this on purpose just to get higher benchmark scores. I do not know how true this is. With these days of 15x multipliers, though, it is just a lot more noticeable.

I do not think this is really anything to worry about unless your computer is having problems.

--Alex

[gustavo]

Alex:

This is not the case, my cpu run at ~2000MHz before I changed the FSB, and as I mentioned above this is not the first time this issue appears.

One time I disabled the cpu internal cache just to see if there was going to be any noticeable difference, my good soooooo slooooow I thought it could not be possible, some long minutes afterwards, when I could reboot and reenable the internal cache, machine was still slow so I had to get to the clear CMOS jumper.

Gustavo.-

[alex zorrilla]

Oh, I see what you mean. I am not sure what to do about it. Have you tried reflashing the BIOS?

[gustavo]

You think I should give it a try?
To the same BIOS version or the new one?

Gustavo.-

[gtr225]

Well if a newer flash is availible that will benefit you, then why not? Otherwise if a newer flash has improvements you will not utilize, then just stick with a the version you have.

[alex zorrilla]

Pretty much like gtr225 says. Your choice.

[gustavo]

I did the flash to the newer BIOS version. So far so good, FSB speed corrected without the need of opening the case :).
Funny thing is the cpu temperature displayed lowered by 7-8 degrees Celsius, the cpu temperature detection was one of of the changes introduced with this new BIOS version, but now I have not a clue about which temperature is the correct, now is showing 38 Celsius with the old I would be around 46:mad:

Gustavo.-

[alex zorrilla]

It's hard to tell for sure about the temperature without an external probe. Sometimes the BIOS actually does affect the temperature because of changes to the power management features.

--Alex

[gustavo]

Well, the only thing written in the description of this version release is ‘Modify CPU temperature detection’
I guess they just lowered the readings due to customers claims.

Gustavo.-