Advice/help with my slow CPU clock [Solved]

[chinchey]

Hi everyone-

I just thought I'd post in off topic and ask for some advice. I just finished putting together a new (mostly) system and my CPU is running much slower than it's supposed to. I've got in there an Athlon 64 X2 6400+ on a MSI k9n platinum board. When I boot it up, everything works fine, but the processor is only running at about 2ghz, instead of stock 3.2ghz. The processor is supposed to be multiplier unlocked or whatever for overclocking, and the bios has a bunch of stuff to do that, so I tried to set it at x16(3.2ghz), but nothing changes. I still get only 2ghz out of it. Anybody have any idea what's going on or how I could fix this? Thanks a lot

[DontPanic]

How are you determining that it is running at 2 GHz?

Is this from the BIOS start-up screen, or from 'cat /proc/cpuinfo', or some other method?

[chinchey]

I did both of those. BIOS startup says that it's 2.0GHz and /proc/cpuinfo says 1999MHz.

[DontPanic]

A few things you could look at....

First, have you tried just leaving all the MB settings on auto, and letting the MB identify the CPU?

Second, I see from MSI's web page that most K9N's don't specifically list support for a 6400. Most seem to only go as high as 5000 or 5200. However, this wouldn't be the first time I've seen a Mother Board Mfg's web page not actually state the true capabilities of their MB. It just might be that the 6400 didn't exist when they build the Web Page.

Which specific K9N model do you have?

Do you have any documentation that states specifically it supports a 6400 ?

Can you try going for 2.5 Ghz (or anything other than 2.0 GHz)?

If this is the problem, there might be a Bios upgrade out there.

[chinchey]

First, Thanks for the help.

On optimized defaults and failsafe defaults the MB identifies it as a 6400+, but still finds it at 2GHz. I have the k9n sli platinum, and the web page at least states that it supports the 6400+ with stepping F3 and wattage 125W. This matches the specs of the processor I have, 6400+ black edition. See:

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... o=351#menu

I have been able to use the bios overclocking features to get it up to 3.0 (15x multiplier), and this is acceptable for now. But it's still not right. If I try to take it to 3.2, it just doesn't do anything and runs at 2.0 GHz, even though the bios still says that it's using a 16x multiplier. I didn't plan on overclocking it, so 3.0 isn't that bad, I'd just like it to be right.

[chinchey]

Well it's all resolved now. Thanks for the effort. It turns out that there was a BIOS update that would help me. I read through the changes in the BIOS versions and they didn't seem to affect me. Plus, their BIOS updates are a pain. You have to make a DOS bootable floppy (no, I don't have a floppy any more). Then boot to it, swap out the disk with the one with bios flashing stuff, then run it. Well, in desperation I dug out my dusty copy of windows and used the windows-only "Live Update" where you can update the bios from your browser. And it's all good now, running at full speed. Yay for things that work right!

[DontPanic]

Thanks for the feedback.

Sounds like it should be a smokin' little computer.